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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/699/9283/ABeardKC170807.2.mp3
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Title
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Beard, Ken
Ken C Beard
K C Beard
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history with Ken Beard (b. 1921, 1061851 Royal Air Force), his air gunners log book, and photographs of him, his wedding and his crew. He flew 31 operations as an air gunner on Halifax with 10 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ken Beard and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-07
Rights
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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
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Beard, KC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
KB: He’s very qualified.
SP: Yeah.
[recording paused]
SP: So, this is Susanne Pescott and I’m interviewing Ken Beard today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at Ken’s home and it’s the 7th of August 2017. Thank you first of all agreeing to talk to me today, Ken. So, just like to chat through first of all what you did before the war.
KB: Yeah. I went to, I was one of the few who went to Grammar School.
SP: Right.
KB: When we was, got then to Retford Grammar School there were very few of us because you went in by it was a fair, a fair fee but we didn’t pay because I got a scholarship.
SP: Right.
KB: There were only a tiny few of us from Worksop.
SP: Right.
KB: Ever got there at all. And so that’s, I made a good start in life. Yeah. So that that did make a difference starting with a Grammar School beginning. You know the beginning. Very well. Yeah. So, that I was very privileged about that. I had to work hard though and whatever.
SP: So, after Grammar School. What did you do after Grammar School?
KB: Well, one of the things about what’s it now, you don’t get it now we were, we were the last course to do Latin. Yeah. We were. Yeah. I got interested with it because we, they had sort of things about what in, all the terms of people, soldiers and what not from that period and whatever like Rome and everything about so that was, that was always interesting. Yeah. I enjoyed that like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SP: Did you go into a job after school or —
KB: Yeah. I, first of all, I was a privileged really because I’d passed all my examinations. I could have chosen pretty well lots of things but I I did advertise for a bit and I finished up which turned up very good, apprentice to a chemist shop. I started mixing medicine and everything else eventually. So that, that was quite a unique sort of thing to do. I enjoyed that. It was only because partly of my Grammar School background you know. Because, yeah it was obviously very, I learned a lot of things really. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed it there. Whatever. That was at Timothy, Timothy Taylor or, White and Taylor in Worksop. Yeah. A shop there. But then before when, when I went in to the war I lashed out a bit because I got a bit fed up and this was another unique job because I went to Shire. My dad was down the pit at Shireoaks Colliery and I got a job in the office. But I moved about a bit rather than the office. Whatever. I had a great freedom. I could wander anywhere in the pit yard. I got to know all the men. All the trades. Three times I went down the pit you know so they could, so I could have a look down. Down there. And so that’s I benefited very much by that really. It opened my eyes because I wanted, mind you when your dad had been a miner all his life I knew everything. I knew everything about the pit when I went down and yet when I got down to the bottom there it was all lit up and everything. Before you got further in to the place it was all quite big like that and that they used to send me down and bring me back up and so things like, all illegal I’m sure. I got to see people down the pit. They took me to the coal face where the hacking coal out. You probably don’t realise what it was like because coal grew up like that and then you broke through in to it. The men were broke you know to get it out and so that’s one of the things that I used to do. Very heavy going. Very heavy going really. What is more, little things about it in pits like it or not they got rats. They did. And often when, often I went down three times to see my dad. Not when I went down. I went down but dad wasn’t there then. I went down because I went down with the management and I always remember these right through odd ones were still running about here and there and when you talk about rats you’re not talking about little rats you’re talking about big rats. Yeah. And you got, you got to live like this. ‘Oh, I’ve seen the rat’s down there.’ ‘Oh, big deal. You’ll get on with the work but you see big rats.’ They were. They were frightening and my dad worked amongst them you see. And of course, for working on the, on the coal face the man was, my dad was getting the coal out and they virtually stripped off altogether it was so hot. Desperately hot I used to find it and sometimes I would. I immediately got a job in the pit yard and I got a bit of promotion because I got on to special duties. Recording all sorts of things about and having to move about through they all knew me on the pit top because I moved to pick up records and things. Yeah. It was a marvellous sight really. And then of course one of the real things was that I got, every month I got a ton of coal delivered to my house. Yeah. And that was great because we had three pits altogether and when I got started to get coal free I could, I could choose which pit I wanted to get the stuff from. And there was one particular one at Whitwell they had, they called it a hazel because it was shone It really shone. And that’s how I had that sort delivered. Delivered to home. Mind you the only trouble in those days they tipped it on the yard outside and off they went and I got a neighbour to do it. To put in to my door. I had a proper coal house. Yeah. I had to watch him though. I noted, he started, he only lived across the road, I caught him out once taking. I was intending giving him some but when he’d finished but I didn’t because he was, I found him taking this one. He only lived across the road but I caught him that day and I thought it’s bad isn’t it? You know, you trust people and you, sometimes I lose trust in people. I shouldn’t do as a Christian but I do because they exist don’t they? And I find them, I find them threatening.
[recording paused]
KB: Quite unique.
SP: So, Ken, what made you decide to join the RAF?
KB: Ah, I always wanted to join the RAF. Yeah. Always wanted to join the RAF so made no more about it. In fact, to do it my mum, my mum weren’t very pleased really because I went out one day. I went out to Sheffield and by a coincidence I used, in the Army we’re talking about. The Lord and I couldn’t believe about the [unclear] and the fact is that oh, I remember it well. I went to Sheffield. I don’t know why. I went to Sheffield and that’s I was, I was walking through the Sheffield and I saw the Recruiting Office so I went in and joined up. When I got back I was in trouble at home, I’ll tell you. I was. I just went up like that. ‘Where have you been?’ ‘I’ve been to —’ ‘What have you been to Sheffield for?’ ‘Well, I happened to going by the recruiting office. I went in.’ And it was as simple as that really. Well, it was to me. So, I made a start right at the bottom. Yeah. But because of my, rather strange but perhaps not slightly because I were one of the few who had been to Grammar School so I could get jobs. And I [unclear] I went to, have I already said I went in to a chemist shop as an apprentice. Yeah. And I was really getting up, working up because I started mixing. You know, when people brought what’s in I used to mix it and I had a, I had a supervisor though, whatever, obviously. But that’s how they made me work up there and eventually I would have gone through in that trade but then of course that’s, I’m trying to get towards the sort of when I joined up. It’s as simple as that. I was at Sheffield and no intent. Why I was at Sheffield. I never went to Sheffield. But I must have been there for something and that’s, that’s went at home, I just went. What, in Sheffield. Found the Recruiting Office. Somebody told me where to go and I signed up and went home. I didn’t dare tell my mam for two or three [laughs] two or three days and that’s, I started right at the bottom.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. So that, that the thing did get tedious after a while as I started. I say I did menial jobs in the RAF first of all and I quickly, very quickly I got my commission. Virtually straight because of my background at school. Retford. I got, I got my commission straight away and I commend and because of my background I never, in the Salvation Army we don’t, we don’t drink. Well, we can have water and tea but nothing else and that that’s never been a problem to me. Well, it was nice for me in the war. In fact, at times, I never had any trouble because usually now when I went to aerodromes there was always a Salvation Army Centre. Always for the men and that’s there. I used to go immediately. I was back in the Army again and that’s kept me going through life. But I never, I always remember, oh, I know. One, one nice thing about it was that often before take-off we’d all line, they were all waiting to take off. All kitted up ready to climb aboard and at the very first start I always remember right at the, when we first started we had an Irish pilot and they were talking awful filthy language and he was right on the ball. He was ignorant with them. He was. He really did fiercely with them. ‘Don’t,’ you know, he said, ‘If there’s ever cursing that there’s going to be some problem. You know Ken’s background and what he does and what he doesn’t do.’ And it worked out really so I didn’t have any more bother. You had to be like that sometimes, I think. If you wanted it you stuck your neck out and that’s what they did. There was never any scene about it but I never met it again. Yeah. That was nice.
SP: So what about your crew then? You’re talking about your crew there. What can, how did you crew up?
KB: Yeah. What happened, went first of all, you went to a Receiving Centre and strangely, now this was marvellous I thought like somebody had that sort of idea. You joined up Sheffield and went and then when we were called up to there sort of thing is that for the first day they just unleashed us. From everywhere they came. We all piled into this whatever. Little school I think it was for what and that’s all, that was how we met. And it was as simple as that because mind it’s surprising within a day how you can, you can work people out. I would never fly with him, you know. Language sometimes really. Yeah. So that you really chose. You went around and what it got rather amusing in a way because suddenly a pilot in front of you and, ‘Have you a rear gunner yet?’ And so it went on and I thought how lovely it was and very thoughtful I thought in a way because they could have done it in all sorts of ways couldn’t they? But that’s how we knew. And what it did occasionally somebody made a bad move or what. He was replaced. So, there were no bad feeling about it at all. So, you didn’t know what they had done or what they did and what they and gradually we got to be a family because we were going to be killed the next morning, you know. It was as simple as that. And that was a real family. To me I’ve always been ever so keen about looking through words and things to see what they mean and that he got a new, I set off at the bottom of this family thing and I built up a family. In my mind mostly but it worked there and so we were a family. You died, well in our case we could truthfully say we would die for each other and we did. I mean sometimes you use that loosely don’t you? I’m going to die. Big deal. But no. That was it. And it made a difference. You were fighting for each other as well as whatever. I enjoyed every minute and of course because of my, I know what I never applied to become an officer but one day I got a, a word in my billet. I’d got to go and see the top man and there he was. He was offering me a commission. It was so nice really and he knew about my background. Whatever. And that’s as quickly I became an officer that way. Yeah. So, you got very well-spoken people. You were doing the job. What’s that? But it did influence me that. The fact that. Mind you my Grammar School background. There weren’t many of us you know at that time went to Grammar School and that all came through. All my records and whatever. Yeah. So that’s how I got my commission and quickly worked up.
SP: What difference did it make getting your commission with the crew because [pause] did it make a difference?
KB: Well, with the crew.
SP: Yeah.
KB: There weren’t many of us with a commission, you know. They flew. They were all the tradesman what and that we flew as a gun and never was there any discrepancy or fighting because we’d got this, that and the other. You fought together. You did. And when people you can’t tell people whatever especially bad raids you know and we went seven times to Berlin and we that really got a hammering there because they soon found you coming in. Whatever. You were flying about twenty thousand feet. At no time at all the first searchlights. I’m in Germany by now. The first searchlight comes on and then the big ones. Oh, we were at thirty thousand feet and they suddenly shot out of the sky. This vast vast vast light and it was it. One of those. They really got you. You know, you couldn’t and in fact often to get out of it the pilot we were carrying bombs sometimes. We’d a full bomb load and just, the pilot just stuck the nose down and went down you know, and things like that. So we survived all these things. Yeah. Yeah. I never I never bothered. Most of us did. We were a good crew. No doubt about it. Yeah. And we bombed Berlin seven times. That was some record. It really was because it was hectic there. Oh dear. Long before you reached the target you could see anti-aircraft or the searchlights came and then these heavy guns could fire up to thirty thousand feet from the ground and you can imagine what shells were like and that. And you flew through it sometimes and you were just lucky. We did once get one hit our tailplane but it didn’t make much of a hole so that we got away with it but, but that’s how it was. I enjoyed every second. I shouldn’t say that but I did really.
SP: So obviously you talked about there was quite a lot of trips to Berlin but you also were involved in D-Day you said. So can you remember —
KB: Oh yes, that —
SP: Can you remember that from start to finish?
KB: I can. I can remember.
SP: From the first day.
KB: Every minute of it.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Every minute of it because we knew it was coming up anytime.
SP: Yeah.
KB: And how we came we were on an ordinary flight over the Channel and suddenly we realised, we’d read about it coming but we didn’t hear much more than anybody else and we, we flew over and you couldn’t see any water for ships. I’m not going to talk about ships I’m talking about us going to them to fight with well you know vast ships. Vast warships and whatever else about them scattered. You could hardly see any water in between. So we flew over them and we knew obviously that was the day. Yeah. Aye it was a marvellous experience really. I relive it at times. Never worries me really. No, it didn’t really. Good skipper. Good pilot. Makes a difference. Whatever yeah.
SP: So, can you remember what your trip was day on that day? On D-Day morning?
KB: Yeah, because we took off at I think half past, no. Half past two in the morning when we took off and that’s of course we saw, couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw the armada going out from this country. You know. Couldn’t believe it. We hadn’t been told it was. It was rather strange that because we’d been to a special whatever before we went and they never mentioned it. I think it was a device really to keep us away from whatever. Getting worked up beforehand. But so then I saw this. Oh, couldn’t see any, one harbour we were going by. Couldn’t see any water because it were full of warships. Ours. Yeah. Marvellous sight. Marvellous sight really to see and what and you knew about the third day of that there’d be millions of men dead. Dead. You know it were, you had to turn. In fact, there was one of the main things we used as a, sort of thing in Bomber Command it helps if you’re thick. I mean it didn’t sound comical but it wasn’t comical at all and, because it was true. You had, you had to be. You couldn’t worry. I mean, I climbed in my little turret and aside from being attacked no time at all and German fighters made to remove me if they could in the first place. Yeah. Mind you that it didn’t happen very often like that but of course we ran into German fighters all over the place. But a good luck amongst it I’m sure but a good pilot that made the difference yeah. Because he never hesitated. With a bomb, with us full of bombs just stick the nose down and I disappeared up in the air there still with all the bombs inside. Whatever. Yeah. You learned to live with it. I used to say it was like learning to live with marriage isn’t it, really. You soon recover sometimes. Oh, dear me. I’ve lived. I love life. The lord sent me a life and he’s kept me alive this long and whatever and so I liked it. I don’t like being here. I can’t say that but at the same time I live by the rules and I get on well with everybody here and whatever so that that’s it. And my dad not only was the band master of the Salvation Army band and I played under him. Mind you I were treated like everybody else because he was my dad and he wrote Salvation Army music. Yeah. So we played his music and my dad, I played in the band and my dad was bandmaster. I treated, he treated me like everybody else, you know. So there was no, there was no about that. Yeah. In fact, when I look back I’ve had a marvellous life really when I come to think about it. A lot of it I’ve made myself because my mother couldn’t [laughs] that day I always remember going to Sheffield for the day for no reason and passed that Recruiting Office. I thought I’ll pop in. Pop in there which I popped in. I I daren’t tell her for about two or three days. I didn’t know how to say it. But anyway she, she was a good support then. Yeah. Oh, dear me. Oh dear. ‘Where have you been today?’ ‘I’ve been joining up.’ Oh, big deal. But I’ve loved life always. Whatever. What a state. I always met, during the war with Bomber Command I met quite a nice lot of young ladies. WAAFs. Looked after me and we went out together. Nothing else to it at that. We got to know a bit about each other. Yeah. And so that was it. Made life a lot better. Especially when they, when they on the cookhouse they mostly they did all the cooking and everything and we got to know the oh pull their legs and all the time whatever. Everybody was happy I think. Never think about going later, later in the day and get shot down. I didn’t. I think some people did you know. I think they were terrified from the start but no. in fact, I went, once went and the Germans fighters were about, a lot of them that night. They did. And they wandered sometimes to pick you up. But I never, never saw one on top of me. You know. We never saw them so close as that. Whatever. Otherwise, we should have. We had a mid-upper gunner you know as well as me in the back. So that was my experience of the war.
SP: So, you went twice on D-Day you said. So, your first trip in the morning.
KB: Half past two in the morning.
SP: At half two in the morning. And then you, do do you know where you were? Obviously, you saw the armada of ships then. Do you know the final destination was on that day?
KB: No. First of all it was difficult but from where they first went. When I first went they were like a fog over them by and large. And then we saw them in their glory they were leaving you know working towards light and we actually saw them leaving. These great convoys. Yeah. Big ships and I used to, I used to get worried about I know a lot of them were going to be killed. Thousands and thousands and thousands. I thought about their mothers and their children whatever. It got to me some times but I still flew. The Salvation Army, we’re sensitive. It’s part of our religion really. Yeah. Yeah. But having said that and it was nice when I went for my final award for that. That’s the top one there. That’s quite, not a lot of us got that.
SP: So you’re talking about the Legion d’Honneur which is the special medal that you’re showing me there. Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it is. Yeah.
SP: Yeah. So where did you get awarded that?
KB: Well, it was quite unique. Well, not unique but enough because to get, to get that I forget where it was. The French president. The French president presented me with that. So, it was in Britain or whatever. I can’t, I couldn’t if I thought enough I’d know where I went. I can’t quite remember where I went.
SP: So you’ve got Retford Town Hall.
KB: Aye.
SP: You got awarded it.
KB: That’s right yeah. Aye that’s it.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. I remember. Fancy I didn’t remember that. Yeah. That was quite, quite a ceremony really because it went, it went very well. Why? The president, French president he was very unique to what was happening and whatever because there was a lot of people there. And I always remember how well he handled it somehow because he came and had a little chat with you. In French of course. No. He was friendly but that’s he just did it so nicely. Not, because there was a lot there and so they, he did it so well. I I went, we had to go up and we had to bow before him. He bowed to us back and then that’s it. He presented me with that. ‘I’ll pin it on for you.’ Yeah.
SP: And it's fantastic.
KB: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: Awarded a medal. Yeah. So that was obviously for your services to support France during the war. And you were saying the D-Day raid and then on the second night was St Lȏ.
KB: Yeah. That’s right.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. That’s right. That’s where I was. Yeah. So, yeah, I never feared. I’m a God-fearing man and never, no. I didn’t. And with the, so nicely the WAAFs were very kind to us really because once I do remember this we took it, we were due to take off and we usually, you went early before you climbed in to your aircraft. You used to lie on the grass and what not and that’s, on that this particular night out of the blue we should be taking off at a certain time and suddenly we had to go early and so the girls they were amazing. We were actually taxiing out and suddenly racing from inside from the cookhouse was the girls. They’d made some, slapped some together and threw them firstly in to the turret. It was lovely of them really when you think about it. So, you were chewing your sandwiches as you were taking off. They were lovely people. Lovely girls. Yeah.
SP: That was at Melbourne Airfield. So, what can you remember about your airbase at Melbourne?
KB: I [pause] it was pretty orthodox. You, you lived to fly and that’s what your job was. Often of course you could get home and whatever a lot in between so that I can’t think any more than we did anything like. Oh, I always got to the nearest Salvation Army if it was on a Sunday. Always. And so that kept me in touch with what, what was happening. And then its rather strange but I’ve told you already that it was my crew, how sensitive they became. Because at first they were cursing and swearing most of the time. Not most of the time but they were bad. And I only had a word with the skipper and it were like magic. They were, mind you they were a new crew. Yeah. Yeah. The way they treated me and looked after me. Yeah. Dear me. I never regret. I shouldn’t say I loved it but I did really. To be a hero. Whatever. So that’s how it went through and of course to do all those. How many? Thirty one times. The, I got something ridiculous and survived. Yeah. And often of course we didn’t see any fighters. We just went to drop bombs and that was it. And of course, the thing about, well you don’t know about bombing but the fact is how it worked they put, the navigator was to get you, get completely get you there, you’ve got to be. And so the pilot had to fly straight and level and everything else to drop his bombs. And so that’s how it got you. You had to be very careful there because the Germans knew that that we were steady and they sometimes [unclear] really but that’s, that’s the pilot. That’s how we dropped our bombs. Yeah. Came away. A lot of men died. Thousands of men died I’m afraid but that’s warfare isn’t it? I never regret. People say, used to say to me about we’re peace loving in the Salvation Army. All over the world the Army is now. And the fact is that but we I felt we had a job to do. Why should I let other people you know, losing their lives or what for the same, for the same thing? And I got very settled about that. Yeah. And we got to be a very good crew. Well, we were a senior crew eventually because we had a squadron leader as pilot. Yeah. He was.
SP: Can you remember the names of your crew? Who was your, who was your pilot?
KB: Yes. Kennedy. Dick Kennedy was the pilot. Yeah. He came from Ireland by the way. Irish free state, I think. Whatever. And so that was, Dick. Dick Kennedy. Yeah. And we had a navigator. He was even more unique because he’d come into this country. I don’t know I don’t know how he came in to and he was a marvellous navigator. Unbelievable. To get you an, to get you within an inch of somewhere and that. He’d got a German background. Somewhere in the family it was a Germans bit. Whatever. I never found out much about it but we knew that. He’d say. He told me at times about it. Yeah. Yeah. So he had a sympathy with the Germans really I suppose in a way. Yeah. But that’s it. It was quite unique I think really. Yeah. A very fine navigator.
SP: Do you remember what he was called?
KB: That was Dick Rath. Dick Rath. Yeah. And the pilot was Kennedy. Yeah. He was a good navigator. In fact, he used to cut corners off sometimes because you got one set up for the journey from the office or whatever they did. And that’s they largely followed but he did quite a few times alter it a little bit really. He knew what he was doing. He was taking you, we knew for some areas that there were vast amounts of German anti-aircraft fire and he didn’t want to fly through it which we didn’t. He got round it. Hardly lost any time. So that was a bit of a, I think that was a bit of a benefit we had really to have Dick look after us. Never portrayed his partly German [unclear] We didn’t want to hear about it.
SP: Yeah. And your mid-upper gunner. Who was, where was he from?
KB: I were rear gunner.
SP: Your mid-upper gunner.
KB: I was rear gunner.
SP: You were rear gunner but your mid-upper gunner. Who was he?
KB: In the middle.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. That’s right.
SP: Do you know where he was from? Can you remember?
KB: Let me see now. Dick. It’s difficult really. I got them mixed up a bit. No.
SP: No. No worries.
KB: I can’t really. Oh, the one, I always remember this because he came from Manchester and he was always, he swore a lot and blah blah. And after the war, straight away after I’m going, I’m going to Manchester about something and I’ll pop in. But oh, I regret going. He was dirty and ugh. Lord above. I thought, fancy him flying with us. It was that bad really. And in a way I was sorry. Fortunately, there was nobody in. So when I saw it I knew what it must have been like. It must have been such a sight. The house and whatnot so that’s it. Still, he did his job. He did his job and that was it. In fact, when when I come to think about it being a Salvation Army officer and moving about everywhere that I was, my eye was open to how some of them lived. You know what I mean. I came from Salvation Army. Immaculate. Everybody came out the Army and we don’t, we abhor bad language of any sort. That sort of thing we live by and so sometimes I couldn’t believe what I saw. I’d never been in the slums before. I mean, they were in Manchester. I’m not being unkind but it was that bad at times really. Well, you know about places like Manchester and I felt sorry for them. Some of them. I did. I come back from, in the first place I didn’t have much. My dad was a miner but I got to Grammar School. The first one in my family. I traded on it. I did well in examinations. Yeah. So overall I think I’ve had a very rewarding life. I can’t ask for more that and in the Army, we talked in the Army we had a, in the Army we had this expression. Getting people saved. Now, rogues and vagabonds, anything that came in to the Army’s sphere eventually ever so many became top salvationists they were nothing and we made something of them. In fact, we we had a sort of system. It was a confession thing really and some of them were oh so down and filthy and I used to go and pray with them and as I say in no time at all we got them in to the Army some times. Got them washed and bought them new clothes. In fact, I got them into uniform and some of them learned to play and got them in the band. My dad was bandmaster for thirty years and I took over immediately when he retired. I was bandmaster for seventeen years. Had a good band at that time. Enjoyed. Took the band out a lot and that so I got that reward a little bit. Yeah. Couldn’t have done better. I’ve had a life that’s been marvellous really. I make what it is now, I think. I think I how I was saying I’m blessed about I’m blessed in here. But where could else could I have I have gone like this? You know it’s true. I’ve been such [unclear] really over the years being a probation officer I loved that but for the first time ever when I must be fair about he retired. I took over from him when he retired. And he’d got old and whatever and when I came and took over I couldn’t believe my ears, my eyes or anything how badly he’d, how badly he’d been. They’d got away with murder.
SP: So, this was your job after the war.
KB: Yeah.
SP: You went to be a probation officer.
KB: Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
KB: And they, yes I did a bit of training and I trained some of these people. They were getting away with murder. It were awful really in a way. They reckoned to be in charge or whatever. They didn’t last long when I took over. But I really, I got people, parents from Manton a lot of them I got them into court straightaway because I wasn’t prepared to mess about with them and they soon fell into line and I, because of my Salvation Army background I always felt I did well in Manton for all sort of reasons. They were all working people and they say what they mean [laughs] and I had to get used to a sort of collection of languages. I soon absorbed them. They had. I’ve got a million. I wish I could sit all day. I went to one house and I had a chap before me who was retired and he didn’t do anything they got away with murder. Hardly any of them went to school at Manton. And then I took it on I went for about a week. I thought there’s only one way here. Get them to court. Get their parents to court which I did. For a long time courts were opening for me. For my clients to go in and that, that worked really because I never stopped going to their homes, you know and I always dressed well when I went. And when [laughs] some, some of the houses I went to were not just filthy and I used to plonk down in a mucky settee with the springs coming through. I never bothered a scrap because I’d got a Salvation Army background and people are people aren’t they? Whatever. And so I loved, loved doing that job but they knew very well not to mess about with me. The parents. They knew better and that worked out. Yeah. Of course, it worked, I did it on a bike and then we got cars after then and made it easier for me. And there was, one [laughs] I’m not quoting names in Manton but they were notorious and I had one family. They were rough and ready and I got to liking them. They just needed a bit of help. Whatever. I could arrange for food to go and clothing for the kids. I was a big man for that immediately. Poor little things because I see the parents had no money. Except when I learned that they boozed as well so they didn’t get any more money. But that’s how I dealt with them and I got respected in Manton when some people weren’t because they knew what sort of person I was really. And one house that I did used to like to go because where as soon as I got to the gate usually the man, he was a miner and I seemed to click for that shift he was on that week and he were virtually naked when he came. Big man. Big man. He real, he were real tough. And that’s strange about that man. I thought, now how am I going to deal with them best. The best way for them? And so, what I did I suddenly thought I can manoeuvre this man because he used to come shouting and bawling at me. And when he came to the gate I think I know. I know can sort him out and oh I know he came [unclear] up and I pretended to faint on the, on the gate. And he said, oh it were amazing. ‘What’s, what’s wrong with him?’ He said, ‘Owt, owt wrong with thee mister?’ I says ‘Well, to tell you [laughs] to tell you the truth I’m not, I’m, I’m really not so very bright this morning. And it worked like that. Took they took me. I got going to that house afterwards and it were nasty. I got them money. I could get money for anybody from the education. They were marvellous the education command, whatever, you know. I could get money for any, for them. All of them. In fact, there is, in Worksop in the centre of the town the whatevers they were what was the firm? A firm called [unclear] or something like that. Now, they were very cooperative because what I would do I went to them. Told them I was going to the boss man and went in and take the mother of these lads and measured. Measured. She’d tarted herself up a bit and the like and went and she got quite a [unclear] she got, she broke out of her bad background and into a new one really because she saw me. I got to know [unclear] and I just went in. He said, ‘Are you alright Ken?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, who are you sending in?’ I said, ‘I’m sending this family in and I want them equipping.’ And that they were, just did that. I went and joined them when got. They were delighted really. The women couldn’t believe their eyes and with these kids. Mind you I’m afraid to say that often they didn’t last long these lads. No. No. they were [laughs] Yeah. I love life. I love life. I really do. And I, I’ve done so many things really. I’ve got relatives in Australia. I went twice to Australia. Flew there. I loved that. I got talking to the pilot one day while we were actually airborne and I sneaked behind him and had a little chat with him. He didn’t turn a hair. He was flying along to Australia and that was his job. And I did, I got, I met, I went for people they’d got something I want you know and they makes a difference. I’m not a paragon of virtue or anything like that but I’m a Salvation Army man and I had that background always where ever I went. Well, of course during the war I went to a lot of places and I would get, first thing I found where the Salvation Army was and I was fortunate because I was, went to some cities and the Army was big. Big band. Everything about them and I played I usually would be able to play with them for a while and that’s, that’s how I got through the war.
SP: Where was the one near to Melbourne where you were based? Where was that one? The Salvation Army.
KB: At Melbourne? I can’t quite remember.
SP: York was your big —
KB: York.
SP: Town that was near you.
KB: York. Yeah, things like. I did go to York, yeah. Seems like I did go to York. Somewhere else around that part of the war. It’s beyond me.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Mostly it was with the band and things like that and I enjoyed it.
SP: I was just wondering how you got there? How did you? You know, if you were on based on Melbourne and went to the Salvation Army on a Sunday. Did you have transport? Did you —
KB: Well, often from most aerodromes they had a Liberty body. Not a Liberty body. Oh dear. That’s given the [laughs] No. I don’t know about Liberty bodices [laughs] It’s just a phrase I use. Oh dear. Give over, Ken. You ought to be shot. They used to say. ‘Time he were shot really.’ I made a lot of good friends and my crew would have been far worse if immediately, immediately the skipper picked it up. He never allowed bad language yet he used plenty himself and he was Irish but he didn’t and it worked and they got to be much more sober. Whatever. Some of them drank heavily when they were not flying of course. When they were not flying. Yeah. But very little drunkenness I found began.
SP: So, they had a Liberty bus was it that went into York?
KB: Sorry?
SP: They had a little bus that went into York.
KB: Yes. Liberty. A Liberty bus. Yeah.
SP: So, you went on the bus into York sometimes did you? What was —
KB: There was one available every day from the aerodrome.
SP: Yeah. So, did you ever go in?
KB: Nearly all the time because I could get to the city and I could get to the Army and I could get, I even went to the pictures and things like that. Filled our lives really without any problem. So that, that, that’s worked out well really when I come to think but most places my first thought when I got to a new ‘drome was to get to find the Salvation Army, which I did and they were lovely people. They used to take me home quite often. They took me to sleep at home. Yeah. it was, the Army’s like that really and that’s how it worked out that during the war very much really for me the Army was a sanctuary really. Yeah. At Brid. At Brid, yeah.
SP: So, Brid was Bridlington where you did your air gunnery training. Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Parts of it.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah, because the thing that whatever, you know a turret? Well, for the training ground I was, am I taking up your time love? The training ground was all laid out and thinking of my turret what it consisted of was a mock one that worked on lines what’s at side and that’s so he did so long in there. Now, the beauty of that place was that there was an RAF man. He was proper scruffy. Never, never put you on the spot because he was, he ran the place, a cookery thing so he had this big fire outside where he made fires for us and what. And he charged though. He charged and, and we paid gladly. But he never had uniform on and he had a big furnace thing he had to look after. He said it was like hell. That’s how he envisaged hell and that he was, he were a good lad though because he produced beautiful food. He really did. It was so nice. And we paid and in fairness he did use RAF stuff but he didn’t charge us and he, he spent it again within the set up because he never had uniform on. Proper scruffy and we loved him. We loved him. Yeah. When he, when he came the first time I went to his first meal. By gum. It didn’t cost him much. I mean, we could have done RAF food but he didn’t do that. He did it for us privately really. So that was nice. So, whatever. Dear me. Oh, the things I’ve seen. Nobody’s been better blessed than me. If I died tomorrow but the doctor says I’m not doing. No. I’ve got full health. It’s amazing isn’t it really? Immaculate blood pressure.
SP: Yeah. And how old are you now?
KB: Eight hundred thousand [laughs] Have a guess.
SP: Ninety.
KB: Ninety five.
SP: Ninety five. Wow.
KB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But age is a comparative thing. It’s what you make it. And of course, I broke away in some ways. In the Salvation Army we don’t drink. We don’t go to public houses but at the same time I, one or two people met me from one pub and said, ‘Why don’t you bring us —’ They knew something about Army, Salvation Army papers you know. He said, ‘Why don’t you come in the pub, Ken.’ I saw the boss man. Now, he said, ‘No, you come in Ken.’ And it got to be a big one. About five hundred people in and they waited for me to come to take my papers and they, and they paid. They paid generously and I never deplored it. I thought this is what, let me think there are so many things of these I could tell about the pubs actually. My brother. No, my son worked for a big firm and he could dispose at his own leisure, whatever he could dispose of. They only had a car for a year and they could, he disposed of them in any sort of way and I always remember him saying, ‘Hey ‘up dad,’ he said, ‘You’ll have to pop in.’ I said, ‘What for?’ He said, ‘Do you know that we’ve got that new —’ Oh what car was it? Oh, it was superb. I forget what it was. It’ll come later. And he said about these. What’s the name? He could dispose of them however he wants. He said, ‘Would you like one?’ And I said, ‘Well, if it’s —’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘It’s all above board,’ he said, ‘I could sell them to anybody.’ And it was a Princess. A Princess. Did you ever see the Princess cars? Oh, they were marvellous. Immaculate. Beautiful. And he got it. He could charge what he wanted really in some ways but I paid properly and everything and it was a Princess. You’ve probably seen pictures of them many a time and they were superb. Absolutely superb. I used to lie back in it and oh you could do ninety mile an hour before you moved and in that way I liked, because I liked speeding and that’s how I used to go in this Princess because my, my son worked for the place and he disposed of them whichever way they wanted to. And he always made sure I got this. He had, I’ve got, ‘Hey Ken —’ Oh, Ken, I’m dad, I’m Ken though. ‘I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve got some cars coming ready. You pop around if you like.’ And I did and that’s how I saw I saw it for the first time. This Princess. You’ve probably seen them. They were superb really. And so I got my Princess. He charged a reasonable price. He could charge what he liked but I paid like everybody else. And to drive them they were heaven. Oh, dear me. You could stop, oh you had, I don’t know what that side of the street was. I don’t know what you did by that. Perhaps I never got around to that but they were so beautiful to drive. Yes, they were. When I see. Am I rattling on? I went to this pub. I got, because I was a Salvationist I always had full uniform. Never drank or whatever. No trouble for me and the other men got to know it well. Straight away they knew me. My background. And when I got that Princess I wish you could have seen it. It were beautiful. To drive it oh it was luxury. And so when I went to, do you know I used to, Salvation Army officers we used to visit pubs to take Salvation Army papers. And the men liked something to, because some of them were comics that the kids, that they could take home for the kids and so, I went to that. And so this particular, when I got this new Princess I went to this pub and I knew about this pub because this bloke would shoot his mouth off. So, I’ll show him. So I parked it some way away from the pub. And oh, I know. Another man picked up on that from inside the pub and he said, I could tell you his very words. Educated British man said, ‘Hey up, skipper.’ He called me skipper. ‘Hey up skipper.’ That’s, that was the introduction. Stood up in the middle of the, eight hundred people in those pubs and he stood up in the mid of this, ‘I’ll tell thee something,’ these were his words, ‘I’ll tell thee something skip.’ ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘I’ve seen thee.’ And this was this was in front of everyone. Eight hundred people in that pub. ‘I’ll tell, tell thee something skipper,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen thee. I’ve seen thee.’ He said, he said what, what did he say like this? That I’d parked it away. ‘I’ve seen thee.’ He said, ‘I’ve seen thee taking that blinking great —’ oh he called it a blinking great car or something like, abusive, abusive sometimes [laughs] ‘I’ve seen thee with the what sort of [unclear] car.’ He said, ‘Parking at the back there,’ he said. And he used a bit of swear words to complement. And they never worried me about swear words. You know, I’ve never sworn in my life but having said that I got used to it. I got on well with everybody in pubs. As an Army officer I went fully kitted with my Army uniform and I was, I went to, I went to one, it was in a village outside and it was a top class place that place was. And I was so busy that I had to get there at 11 o’clock and I thought they, because I’d been to others that it would be odd. No, it was very refined. All of it exactly refined. Beautiful people I talked to and that. They get so game and I didn’t, wasn’t prepared for it but I’m coming up towards Christmas and whatever. They were always good to me and I couldn’t believe that the last one before Christmas they’d set me up something very special for me. And I went in and it was marvellous really. They’d laid it all out. Oh, I knew what they’d done mine you I’d a job to get it home. I never knew this but they had this penny thing. You know if you got a copper they hadn’t had, it was mobile and great big what’s the name so they had to carry it out to my car and then I had to set off. When I got home later that week, it was nearly all coppers my hands were red, you know. Oh dear. But I loved them in that pub. They were very caring. In fact, my last visit to them the landlord had prepared a meal for me in his own home. Yeah. I did. It shows you if you did things right people responded don’t they? And they love the Army. Most people. Yeah. So that’s how it is.
SP: Just looking as well, you were showing me photos you met your wife during that.
KB: Oh, I met my wife.
SP: You met her during the war, didn’t you?
KB: I don’t know whether I’ll reveal all but I will reveal all. I normally don’t. Bit too louder mostly. No. Now, this is, now talk about this I mean I’d love you to record this because it’s superb really. What [pause] I know when I first got there at, I think Saturday night when we used to go somewhere but I’m thinking of the first time. Oh, I know how I met her that she took me too her house, whatever. Oh, by the way she worked in a big factory and she were not very big and when to move on I used to meet her. I used to take her every morning to work and mostly pick her up at night. She was so, she had a [laughs] she had a pair of overalls about ten sizes too big. I said, ‘Don’t you dare come any more.’ I used to meet her out. Yeah. I used to meet her out from work and take her home. But I said, ‘If ever you come, if I come to pick —’ Oh she had a bike so I had to push her. I went to her home straight. They accepted me in to the family. Marvellous. Straight away in to the family. So when I saw her with this bike and these overalls and I said, ‘If ever you come again like that I’ll forget. I shan’t be coming anymore.’ But she were lovely, lovely, lovely person. Well, you’ve seen my photograph. She was like that really, and beauty queen thing one year. Yeah. You can imagine what sort of person and what she was chased by a lot of airmen but I always stood my ground. What happened then? Oh, I know. She went to help in the [unclear] or something at that time and she, voluntarily and so she went there and I used to pick her up afterwards to take her home. Yeah. And, but you know I went Salvation Army and that sent, I went to homes everywhere in the country. Always. And if I was staying overnight in the church accommodation they just took it that, these didn’t even ask me if I was staying. Marvellous that you know because it means you’ve got unique, it’s unique absolutely in that way. Yeah. And with being, Brid a seaside and so one thing I did when I got to Brid I always remember, oh I know, she went to chapel and I’d seen her come out of chapel and so when I went to the Army I thought one night, one night I’m going to catch her when she comes out. And one day it was all over. It was. Just like that. Actually, just like that. She were a lovely person really. Very lovely. Well, you’ve seen her picture.
SP: So, you met her in Bridlington.
KB: At Brid. Yeah.
SP: Right. Where you did your training. Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Yeah, that’s the —
SP: And when did you get married? Was that during the war did you say?
KB: Well, did you want to hear my story about getting married? What happened was that I got to know the family. I went to everybody’s family. They always took me to bed. Or they’ve always got a bedroom spare. Can’t people believe it? It’s telling a story again. My family says so. No, I’m not. Honest. And so that was Brid. I loved Brid partly because I should have, I went for training. Part of it was to train but first of all when I got there the course hadn’t started so I had the first six weeks before it opened virtually living at their house and I used to go and meet her. She worked in this factory and I went to meet her each time. Mind you I had to walk her home because she had a bike and I hadn’t got a bike. I did later on and so I walked, she walked with me home or whatever and she always had [laughs] she always had overalls twenty sizes too big. She had. I says, ‘You’re [unclear].’ That’s me going off you so. She was lovely. She, I used to say how pretty she was. Always winning what’s the name or whatever but, and her parents were very gracious in those days you know. Somebody comes like me, goes to somebody’s house and they ask questions and they find you a bedroom. You know, it was, that’s wartime. One lovely thing about wartime I found it had got a lot going for it. Mind you, millions were being killed I know that and whatever but that was typical one. Mind you it was a big difference because she was chapel. And so I was Salvation Army and so initially that our times were different but I picked her up or whatever or when she’d been to chapel. Then gradually she fell in love with the Army and then eventually got into uniform and you know made the pattern nice for me. She got she loved the Army. As a lot of people do with the band and this choir and things that are going on and all sorts of things going, going on in the Army. Still do. So that was how, how we, I think [pause] I know we, but we had a lot of lovely walks. Lovely from the start. There was no question of anything about it or whatever and that’s, and her parents. In fact a lovely thing with am I holding you up because I went to her house all the time then and stayed and because do you know what, do you know what I stayed and not in a bed, I had a half bed because they in their big front room had a perfect one you could get during the war you know, steel things in the house. Yeah. And so I had my little bed in this steel because of air raids.
SP: Yeah.
KB: And so that I was, I was like that. So that’s how I added in to the family. People were like that in those days and that’s how I get used to that but I loved that girl. And well, she brought up a lovely family, you know.
SP: So how many children do you have?
KB: Five hundred [laughs] Do you mean around a morning or the ones that are real. You mean the ones that I met in a war? There used to be a line of them that.
SP: Your own family. Yeah. You and your wife. I know you had a huge family, didn’t you with all your friends.
KB: Well, you think yeah but think in a way she were lovely, knew how to handle children. The family. My lads, they really did and I had no problem about that. She was so thoughtful about anything and that’s how it came into the family and then well I’ve nearly got, don’t get worried about time. Is that yes I know what I want to tell you. That oh this came out. I was posted to the south of England out of the blue and I’d got to move within three days and we both cried ourselves to death. And then do, well do something sensible so she got my lifestyle right now. So do you know how we went? It was down south somewhere. We both jumped on the train. Both. And went. And do you know it was a little village we went to and when we, when we got there we were knocking on people’s doors. Too beautiful and no trouble at all. I could have had half of those houses to say, they loved it because it was a village setting. They were beauty. I could have had as many as we wanted and we had a lovely home. Yeah. Oh, and it was on a farm. That was beautiful because they I had a little dog at that time and my Jack Russell we took around with me and he loved that farm because the farmer was ever so good because he was a bit temperamental whatever. So, the farmer says, ‘Leave him with me, Ken. As long as you’re here leave him with me.’ So, he could go around the farm and he got real nifty. A little Jack Russell terrier yeah. I saw when the farmer he’d got him under his arm. ‘Leave him with me, Ken. He’ll be alright.’ So, I met these. So many people I met really in that. I mean for that I was on the farm and so he loved the farm because he let him run anywhere.
SP: Do you know where that was? What town or village. Where were you going down to, was that —
KB: Going down south aye. I’m going south again so I won’t be worried I went to some.
SP: Do know which RAF base you were going to? Is that where you were going down? Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Initially yeah. Yeah. That was it yeah that I went. Yeah. But when he got Jack under his arm at first and then he let him loose and off he went chasing the sheep and whatnot. Nearly getting shot. And a lovely dog. Lovely. I can’t tell you the story because I [pause] He died in my arms eventually. My family say I’m too soft but I’m not. Poor little thing I’d got it in my arms. I like to think that there’s a lot of God in me to know what to do in those sort of things and then of course only occasionally I’d got somebody in prison waiting to appear in court and I used to visit them. I went to prison. To Lincoln I went to twice to see two men that were coming up. I didn’t need to do that but I felt I got to know them a little bit and they were in the cell. I stayed in the cell with them nattering and what not. In fact, usually because of my influence as a probation officer I got the staff to bring him a cup of tea along with mine. Oh lord, I love life you know, love. And doctors, I’m going to live forever and that would be unique wouldn’t it? Life’s what you make it. I’ve got a marvellous family. Look how well they’ve all done really. I mean aye because I forgot to tell you, you perhaps know anyway that Jim went to Grammar School. The first one in my family. Then, then I went after that to Grammar School at Retford. So, we were a bit unique at that time. And it was, it was largely fee paying you know but I got the County paid everything for me.
SP: Yeah.
KB: So that made it handy. Yeah. I did. I had to get used to, you know cap and gown and everything and all the rest of it so I was a bit scruffy but the lads never bother do they? Lads don’t bother what you are. Yeah. I made some good friends. Quite rich some of them.
SP: So, lots of friends at school. Did you keep friends with your crew after the war at all?
KB: For a while.
SP: Yeah.
KB: For a while. Yeah. And then it became monotonous in a way because you’ve nothing else to talk about. You were going your own way and whatever so by and large not a lot I agree because you could say it wasn’t working out. You were going out to do your best for a while but it fizzled out peaceably. Quite peaceably. Yeah. And I tell you the navigator was part German. It was interesting really with the war on in this country. Marvellous. Marvellous navigator. Unbelievable. And sometimes coming back he’d take shortcuts to make it less for us. We had to do that but he’d say, ‘We’ll nip around the back —’ of such and such a city. I’d say, ‘All right, Dick. Carry on. You’re in charge.’ Did, how we broke the rules. Well, I don’t suppose it were rules really.
SP: Just looking at your logbook you were talking about you did a trip to Paris as well. So, I know you did Berlin seven times didn’t you but you actually you went to Paris on one of the trips as well.
KB: Yeah. I did.
SP: So yeah.
KB: I did go to Paris.
SP: Yeah.
KB: And I always because I did actually go to the presidential place. I got some lead for somebody who was in the palace and to get some conversation or what. So that, that made a difference really.
SP: Yeah. One of your flights here you’ve got a night operations at Paris.
KB: Yeah.
SP: And then you’ve got night operation at Essen.
KB: Yeah.
SP: As well there.
KB: We got shot at, you know. Shot at.
SP: So, were you ever under fire? I know you were under flak and that but were you ever shot at by fighters?
KB: Well, yeah but, yeah. No. Very rarely ever, you ever met a German fighter. But long range once. Never even saw him. Didn’t approach us anyway. When he saw what we were he didn’t approach. So, yeah that were no problem there. Yeah.
SP: Yeah. Because Essen, was quite, quite a main area wasn’t it? I think you were there —
KB: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: A couple of times.
KB: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t bother. Just climb in my turret. Well, we went for a briefing. Whatever.
SP: What happened at the briefing? What sort of thing happened when you went to the briefings?
KB: That was the important thing. First of all it was kept secret until the very last moment and when it suddenly appeared in the mess where it was. And that’s when we, when we started to go for briefings and things. Of course, the navigator, it was a big job for the navigator because he’s, he’s going to take us and bring us back and so that was quite demanding for him really. But for everything else we went, as gunners we went to this, our own little thing or whatever because sometimes we had new guns or all that sort of thing. Yeah. And I had a, I was very lucky a ground staff who lived for looking after my aeroplane and polishing windows all the time. All sorts of thing. I think it kept him from doing anything else perhaps he didn’t like. It was the ground staff. Yeah. And then of course they had DI inspection before take-off. Oh, I know, and we had carers who looked after us all the time. You know, every bit. What they came around and so I often go and used to join them while they were doing things what they did. Whatever they did. Except that once we got a new aircraft and they got me because I was little. You could get in to the belly of it but it’s only a little hole to get in. About that. Yeah. And they conned me of course obviously. I didn’t fly like that but that was when we was on the ground. Yeah. Some great fun really especially they knew we’d be shot down that night. In fact, once we landed away out of necessity. We were running out of fuel and some aerodrome, I don’t know where it was and we just we just landed and to get some petrol of all things. And that’s how we, we just flew out again afterwards or whatever so it’s not recorded anywhere. But that’s how we got fuel to get back. We wouldn’t have got back because we were quite running out of fuel eventually you know it’s a long way. A long way to Germany. Four engines especially. We had one, once we had an, one engine wasn’t very good and occasionally it misbehaved itself. When you’ve got four though you have to alter the trim when you’ve got only so many working. Yeah.
SP: What was the impact of that when there was one engine not working properly?
KB: Well, usually they could. They, we were inside, of course. We had a mechanic. Whatever. But he couldn’t do for anything outside but he often did things from inside sort of things connected with the aeroplane. Oh yeah, because they, we had, what was it now? I forget. But he, he had a monitor. The, the petrol tanks. Of course, they were spread about the aeroplane and his job was keeping a careful eye on because he had to redirect it from one that was going empty because he had to be careful because it altered the trim of the aircraft. Whatever. But yes, they got, they were fitters. They were very good.
SP: You got some photographs of you with your ground crew. Did you, did you get to know your ground crew quite well?
KB: Oh, very well. You were living with them.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. I mean you didn’t all go. The ones on the ground. Oh yes. They, they got very very attached to us.
SP: Can you remember any of them? Any of the names of any —
KB: Not really.
SP: Yeah.
KB: I expect they were with us a long time I know that.
SP: Yeah.
KB: But I can’t remember as much as that.
SP: Do you remember where your dispersal unit was at Melbourne?
KB: Sorry?
SP: Do you remember where your dispersal unit was at Melbourne where you had to go to to your plane? On the —
KB: Yeah. Yeah. For operations we trained a lot beforehand.
SP: Yeah.
KB: From different aerodromes.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Quite a few different aerodromes when I did my flying business.
SP: And did you have to travel quite a long way to your plane before operations or were you quite close to the briefing area?
KB: Well, we were basically, basically on top of it.
SP: Right.
KB: Yeah. Because you were living there.
SP: Yeah. Some people say their dispersal unit where the plane was kept was quite a long way away and they had to cycle to it.
KB: A long way away.
SP: Or get on a little truck.
KB: A long way away.
SP: Yeah.
KB: I had to go around, right the way around the aerodrome.
SP: Right.
KB: And everywhere to get to it but we were lucky at that we were parked very near to the runway.
[recording paused]
SP: So, Ken I just want to thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre for your time today and your stories. So, 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
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Interview with Ken Beard
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Susanne Pescott
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-07
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ABeardKC170807, PBeardKC1701
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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01:20:10 audio recording
Description
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Ken Beard served as a rear gunner during the Second World War. He has been a member of The Salvation Army all his life and his faith played a huge role in helping him through the horrors of war. Awarded a scholarship at Retford Grammar School, he left it with the benefit of a first class education. He had several jobs before enrolling in the Royal Air Force. He was visiting Sheffield and upon seeing the recruitment office, walked in and enlisted. It took him several days to pluck up the courage to inform his mother what he had done. After enrolling, he was soon selected for a commission. Air gunnery training at RAF Bridlington followed, before being posted to RAF Melbourne where he served the majority of his Air Force career as a rear gunner on Halifax aircraft. He flew 31 operations, including seven to Berlin. He describes approaching Berlin at 30,000ft and being lit up by searchlights. He recalls only once being hit with anti-aircraft fire, when they received slight damage. At no time was his aircraft attacked directly by Luftwaffe fighters. On D-Day, Ken and his crew set off on an operation at 02:30 and were surprised to see the English Channel covered in a vast armada of vessels of all sizes. Nothing had been mentioned to them at the briefing before take-off. On his return to civilian life, Ken became a probation officer in the Worksop area. In November 2015, Ken attended a ceremony at Retford Town Hall where he was one of three recipients of Legion D’ Honneur.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Sheffield
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1944-06
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
10 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
faith
Halifax
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Bridlington
RAF Melbourne
recruitment
searchlight
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10783/PdiPlacitoLH1701.2.jpg
89587cbda0f20671b0c4ea1b85001701
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10783/AdiPlacitoLH170209.1.mp3
bb9d0b5a910e57882406f39298fe61e0
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
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di Placito, Lawrence Henry
L H di Placito
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Lawrence 'Lawrie' di Placito (1922, 1646268 Royal Air Force). He served in Air Sea Rescue.
collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-09
Rights
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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
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diPlacito, LH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewee is Dav, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Laurie Placito. The interview is taking place at Mr Placito’s home in Line in Surrey on the 9th February 2017. Okay, Laurie so if we could start with you, your parents, where you were born and where you grew up.
LP: Yes, I was born in Chertsey, Surrey 21st 1st 1922. [Ringing sounds] with six boys, three girls and two children already pre-deceased at the age of three and four. I was educated at the Stepgate school, council school, until the age of eleven, where I passed the scholarship for the grammar school, which was Stroves Grammar School, Egham. And from there I left Egham, Stroves in 1936. I took up employment at the post office as a sorting clerk and telegraphist, at the wages of twelve shillings and sixpence per week, of which one shilling and three pence was stopped for unemployment benefit. War came, before the war came in 1939, I joined the sixth battalion of the Surrey Territorial Regiment, with the headquarters in Chertsey, Drillhall Road, Chertsey, which consisted then of two or three times a week marching up and down the roads, drilling and such like. This brought us up to the summer of 1939, before the war had started. I was called in to the office to say that I wouldn’t being going to the summer camp with the rest of the lads, because of my Italian parentage, I therefore, I was sort of thrown out of the Territorial Army. Now this clashed with my position at the Post Office because I was, at the Post Office I signed the Official Secrets Acts; the Postmaster told me, he said they can’t really do that he said, but things what they were, so I just had to accept it. Now in, war started September the 3rd 1939. I saw all my old friends go off before into the summer camp. They had about three weeks summer camp training. At the end of the training war broke out and these lads were shipped out to various places, with the barest of minimum of training, not firing a rifle in, in, anger or shooting, just all theory really. I therefore then, I left the post office and I was employed at a boatyard, building naval vessels in, on the Thames in Chertsey, where I was friendly, very friendly with another young lad. Now we’d talked about this air sea rescue business what we’d heard about, so we both decided to join. We went to Acton town hall to join the RAF Air Sea Rescue. We were called into separate rooms, but before this I didn’t have much knowledge of sea going, but David, my friend, he knew all about the sea and the points of the compass and such like and he genned me up on questions. So eventually we were called into two separate rooms. I was questioned concerning my knowledge of the sea but I explained I didn’t know much but anyway at the end of the day, I was accepted. You know, David came out of his room said how did you get on? He said they won’t accept me he said, because I am a trainee boat builder and I was only a labourer really, so that put paid to that friendship [laugh]. Going back previously to this, to early ’39, I was only seventeen, I went to Surbiton town hall near Kingston, was a recruiting office and I applied to join the Royal Scots Greys Cavalry Regiment, because I was so full of horses. Now the recruiting sergeant told me, he said for one thing you’re too young, you’re not seventeen and a half, he and another reason he said, forget about the horses he said you’ll never see a horse on active service. Well that, this was all previous to me joining up at the town hall. So, I waited quite some time for my application to come through before I was called up, and from there I received me travel warrant, to travel to Cardington in Bedford. Now Cardington was a pre-war airship station, and the airship mast was still in place where the, all the different airships used to moor. At Cardington I was issued with kit, which consisted of uniform, boots, shirts, etc. It was a bit of a hit and miss affair because you lined up in front of a counter and a fellow looked at you and said I think you’re about a size and threw you a coat or jacket hoping it would fit. Anyway, that soon sorted out. We was only there a very short time to draw kit, from there I was posted to Great Yarmouth, RAF Great Yarmouth to do basic military training. Now this consisted of marching up and down the, the roads, rifle drill, shooting, bayonet, with the bayonet with the dummy, you had to charge at the dummy with the bayonet. Now what that meant for me being an air sea rescuer [chuckle] I never, would never know., This was a very, quite basic training, but it consisted of assault courses, as I say, rifle shooting, the Sten gun what had just come into operation, using the Sten gun. Sitting in an enclosed room without your gas mask, when a gas was turned on you had to find your way, to get your gas mask on before the gas got too much for you, which obviously you had somebody standing by. We were there for about two, Great Yarmouth, we were there Great Yarmouth for about two, two months, marching up and down the roads. One particular thing I always remember was our drill corporal was a Yorkshireman, a Corporal Harrison. And on every march you had to sing On Ilkley Moor Bar Tat, I knew every word of Ilkley Moor Bar Tat. Anyway that came to an end and we travelled well at once to go to Tayport, on the Scottish Coast. Now Tayport, well obviously it was a port, but it was also home to RAF Leuchars It was an Australian squadron at Leuchars, mostly Australian squadron, but we were there just doing menial work ‘cause it wasn’t a training station for air sea rescue it was just a pit stop, so my day was employed either helping in the hangars, or we had a very zealous CO with his garden. That garden had to be kept up, it was pristine, there was even stones had to be painted white, all round the garden. What’s more, he had a dog, and this dog was obviously come and dig up where you had to. This lasted for a few weeks and for the first two or three weeks I was stationed, rather I was in barracks with the Aussie squadron, And all day long every time someone would come in it would play – what’s that Australian song?
[Other]: Waltzing Matilda.
LP: Yes, Waltzing Matilda, that would be on all day every day, Waltzing Matilda. Well eventually I came out of that, back into the English section of the RAF and from there, oh I had this thing of joining to be a flight, a flying airman, so I went into the office where you remuster, that’s where you changed your trade. Now I spoke to the recruiting I suppose he was an officer, I’m sure. I explained what I wanted to do. He said ‘Whatever for?’ Well I said I think I was just getting a bit fed up of waiting around for this air sea rescue. So I applied to be a wireless operator air gunner. His reply was ‘I’ll give you a bit of advice boy’, he said ‘Only birds and fools fly.’ Now I thought that wasn’t a very nice thing, because he’s sitting in an office all day long, with those poor fliers night after night out flying, doing a terrible job. Well, anyway, within the space of another couple of weeks I was posted and I didn’t hear any more of that application. So from Great Yarmouth I went up to Tayport, that’s how I got to Tayport. As I say I was at Tayport for a bit, killing time actually. And then we got posted to RAF Corsewall, Corsewall Point, that’s on the other side of Scotland. That’s at the head of Loch Ryan at the head which led down to Stranraer, the waters at Stranraer. Now here we commenced our training, our air sea rescue training proper. It was a very, very, what shall I say very complex because it covered so many subjects., We had to study for instance buoys, buoys how they was attached to lines underwater to a mooring called a mooring trot, how to scull a boat, a small rowing boat with one oar, navigation, morse code and semaphore flags. The morse code was, was [chuckle] was a bit of a laughable situation because you’d be paired off and you had to send, one would be sending, one would be receiving morse code course there was many rude messages sent from one airman to another! Also aircraft recognition you would be thrown cards and you, you had to say straight away, English bomber, English fighter, German bomber, German fighter such like, and also from school work you were given a books and pens and you had to write notes and notes down of rules of the sea, the meaning of flags and such like. And then there was the practical training where we were taken down to the waters edge to the port and it would be put on different vessels and you would practice how to work a boat. These were called sea plane tenders, there was a, an old hulk moored, moored out at sea and you had to come alongside. The coxswain would shout out ‘come along port side to or starboard side to,’ and you had to turn your boat round to starboard of course there was lots of times there was lots of crashes [chuckle] ‘cause not many boys were able to control boats like that. As I say it was very thorough, thorough training. It, although it was an uncomfortable billet. The billets were nissen huts scattered about in the woods. And for the washing facilities were very basic, you had wash tubs, but for the toilets consisted of, of a row each side just with sacking in between each person so you could have a conversation with the follow sitting opposite on the other side of you, and I’m saying when I said it was basic, it was basic. At the end of the, at the end of the, at the end of the huts, nissen huts there was a big container of a blue liquid. [Turns away] What’s that liquid, erm,
[Other]: I can’t remember.
LP: Perm, permanganate of potash,
[Other]: Yes.
LP: Every man had to gargle with it, permanganate, and if you didn’t and you went sick with a sore throat you were in trouble, you were on charge, as I say it was very basic the conditions. The nissen huts were equipped with a paraffin stove in the middle of the hut. Now you were issued with a ration of paraffin and that had to last you so much, so many days, or day or whatever it was. If you used it up that was your fault, but you’ve got to remember we’d be out at sea, or on the boats rather, you’d be wet and cold, so that paraffin did always last. Now another situation was you had to do guard duties, now the guard duties consisted of dotted around this camp, in the woods, sentry huts, well, just stands really, just a metal stand, you would do I think it was either two hours on or four hours off, or vice versa. This was after you’d done your days’ work at the training. Now, one of, one of the duties of the guard, night guard, was called a rover patrol, he would as the word say, he would wander round the camp just looking at different places keeping an eye. I’d have an old Lee Enfield rifle, First World War issue, with five rounds of ammunition. Now if you come across a German I don’t know what would happen [chuckle]. One amusing, well I don’t think it was amusing really, on my amble round the roving patrol I came across a big bowser, a big tanker, which I thought contained paraffin, I thought well this is lovely [laugh]. Now, I searched around to find a container, luckily I found this container, put it under the bowser, turned the bowser on but instead of paraffin it was all effluent, effluent that came out [laugh]. So I was in a bit of a state, the rest of the, that was cleaning me uniform. Food, I suppose for RAF food wasn’t bad you just had to line up and you were served by a WAAF, RA WAAF girls. But you held out, you had a mess tin, knife, fork and spoon and tin mug. You’d hold your mess tin in front of the WAAF and she would dish whatever was up – plonk. Well, the food wasn’t all that great, but another incident, rather amusing. The officer would come round. A shout would go up ‘Orderly Officer, any complaints?’ But the Orderly Officer would come round accompanied by an NCO, ‘Anybody any complaints?’ Well, one brave soul shouted out ‘Yes sir, I’ve got a caterpillar on my plate.’ The officer walked over, this is true, he walked over to the boy, he said ‘There sir, it’s a caterpillar.’ ‘Hmmm,’ he said, ‘just push it off’ he said, ‘with your spoon.’ ‘Well, I wasn’t going to eat it sir.’ So that was another happy episode. Previous to this I forgot to mention, when I was at Great Yarmouth there was one particular airman, late in the afternoon he would go up to the NCO in charge, say a few words to him and off he would go, well we had to continue till the end of the day. So I said to this boy, after a couple of visits I saw him. I said what do you say? What gets you to come home so early? ‘Well, I’m in the boxing club.’ So I was always interested in boxing as a youngster so I said ‘Can I join?’ he said we’d be only too glad to have you. So I joined the boxing club there which was an asset really, I boxed and a couple of times at Great Yarmouth amongst the RAF. Well also, now also, back up to Tayport, not Tayport Corsewall Point, Corsewall, there was a boxing section there. And the fellow in charge was a guy who was an athlete, a pre-war was a runner, he wasn’t a boxer, a runner oh can’t remember his name. We used to have running, training before going on duty so I joined the boxing club there. Now, I did very well there really, because I’m not praising myself, but every Sunday we had what’s called a uniform parade. We had two uniforms, there was the best blue. Now on this best blue parade, everybody was lined up on a Sunday morning had a full inspection, the flag would be hoisted, the CO of the whole section would come round and inspect each man, so he gets to me, the Orderly Officer who was with him taps me on the shoulder and says you stay there you and I thought ‘Now what’ve I done?’. And so when the parade was dismissed and everyone went, the CO and officers came up and congratulated me ‘cause I’d boxed the night before apparently and I won my two bouts. I always remember one because it was an officer and I anyway that was the end of that but also stationed there was, I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of him, a Steve Donahue, now he was a champion jockey of England, Steve Donahue, like our Lester Piggott today. Well his son was Pat Donahue, now Pat Donahue was an officer, first of all he was just a NCO but the second time I visited he was an officer and he was a very good boxer. Pat, Pat Donahue, a very good boxer and I was very friendly with Pat although it didn’t do him any favours but was just the fact that we became good friends what with him being an officer and me being NCO, just a private. What more can I say about that? Oh, another amusing incident, on a Sunday as I say, you had the day off. They used to run the transport buses into Stranraer, which was quite a bus ride away and there were no such thing as seats and you was just clinging on, hanging on as best you could. I was hanging on at the back of the bus, and the fellow next to me, he said ‘Where do you come from?’ I said ‘Oh, you probably wouldn’t know, a place called Chertsey, in Surrey,’ and he laughed, he said he lived at Everstone. Now he turned out, he was Worts w-o-r-t-s funeral directors and Harry Wort was a funeral director, well there again there was another strange quirk because when we finally moved from Corsewall Point to various stations Harry moved off and I didn’t see Harry again till he arrived a year later when he turned up at Newhaven, he’d spent what they called the white man’s grave, the Gold Coast in Africa. Well, I don’t know quite how long we were at Corsewall Point because, it was a very long, as I say, it was, covered a lot of work, classroom work, practical work, seamanship and such like but eventually I passed out from the giddy heights of AC2 to aircraftsman first class with a rise in pay. [Laugh] I’ve got my figures actually what rise in pay. Shall I get those figures now? Well, my rise in pay, my pay in 1942 that was three shillings per day. And out of that three shillings, I made an allotment to my mother of one shilling and sixpence per day, so that was ten shillings and sixpence per week. And this was for twenty four hours a day service. [chuckle] But then in March 43 I was a AC1, I was getting four and ninepence per day and I was still one shilling and sixpence to my mother. August the 1st 1943 I was receiving five shillings and threepence and still making the allowance of one and sixpence to me mother and I think it was not until 44 that I was getting six shillings per day [papers shuffling]. But I had, had a very good family. My sister used to regularly send me money, so really I wasn’t too bad. I did not smoke, when I say I used to drink, it was, you couldn’t afford to drink a lot anyway. Now [pause, shuffling of papers] Can I go back to my days at Great Yarmouth?
DM: Oh yes, yes.
[Other]: [ Cough]
LP: Yes, during my days at Great Yarmouth, the raw recruit, you obviously jumped to any order that you were given. Now, the second day I was there, the corporal in charge tapped me on the shoulder ‘Haircut Hughes!’’ I said, ‘Corporal,’ I said, ‘I had a haircut yesterday.’ He said ‘You’ll have another one today.’ So everybody tapped on the shoulder had to have a haircut. Now after you had your hair cut, you had to give the barber a sixpence, so he must have done very well out of – him and cohorts. And also at Yarmouth I think it must have been a big college because it was a big open room with showers, no shower enclosures, just open showers. You had to have a shower today – another sixpence. So that was quite a lump out of my, those must have made good living the barber and the shower man. And also I must, [shuffle of papers] injection time. Now it would be a column of men you had to bare one shirt sleeve, go past a so called medical orderly for an injection. There was no just holding your arm, just walk by one big stab. No change the needle. Next one up, another big stab. And I see grown men what I don’t know if it was fright or nerves just collapse on the ground.
DM: Can you remember when you started actually active service? When you’d finished your training. 43 or 42
LP: It was the beginning of 43. January 43, yeah. Now, I’ll come to that now. I was posted from Coreswell Point, Scotland to Gosport, Portsmouth. I was only there a very short time and this consisted of we were based on Stokes Bay, part of Portsmouth Waters, Southampton Waters, it was a testing ground for torpedoes. At the end of a long runway, a seaway, was an old hulk, bored, the aircraft would come down, drop the torpedo obviously aiming for the hull. And our job was to patrol up and down retrieve the torpedoes and so forth. Well that lasted only could have only been there only a few weeks. From there I got a posting to Newhaven. Now Newhaven was a very busy station. And it was there that the actual air sea rescue began. I was, I was told to find a billet in the town, Newhaven town, because the actual nissen huts were full and the, a certain number of airmen were billeted with families in houses. Well I was stationed with billeted with a Mrs Cook, her husband was away on war work, she had two children and an old grandmother, but she did look after me. She used to obviously get a ration allowance for food. As I say, from there I was taken straight on to high speed launch 190. Now it took quite a bit of get used to because you were mucking in with old hands really and I was a newcomer, but I got quite capable. My first job was a gunner. The gunner at this time there was a stand outside each a stand either side of the wheelhouse with a Vickers drum fed machine gun. Now my job was to hang on to that machine gun. Don’t forget the boat is not just cruising up and down its moving. But, as I say it was, it was a drum-fed machine gun but these didn’t last very long as it wasn’t so long after the guns were taken off of that and then we had a for’ard gun, revolving turret with twin browning machine guns, that was my next job I was a Browning machine gunner front turret. The turrets, the armament on the boat as I say they disbanded these two shields machine guns. There was a front turret, a rear turret, and then they decided to put a twenty millimetre Oerliken canon right at the stern of the boat. Well that did slow us down a little bit, the cannon. For there I was the gunner, that was my job, I had to be in the gun turret, and it was only after that I took my second class coxwain’s course, I was called in one day, the CO said I think you should take a coxwain’s course. From there I had been at Newhaven, I don’t know, five six months, I was sent up to back up to Corsewell Point for another bout of training as a coxswain. Well I passed that out, that meant a, that meant a rise in pay and also a jump in rank from leading aircraftsman to corporal. By this time I was quite, what shall I say, well quite at home on the boat: I knew what to do and what not to do. And my job was to be in the wheelhouse. There was a first class coxswain, the skipper and the second class coxswain in the wheelhouse. And you took it in turns to coxswain the boat.
DM: How many of you were there on the boat?
LP: Well on the boat, the boat consisted of the skipper, obviously an officer, a flight sergeant first class coxswain, a second class coxswain, a wireless operator, a medical orderly, two engineers, and two more gunners. Roughly, sometimes you’d have eight of you, sometimes there’d be ten of you. Now, the day consisted of hours and hours of searching, we had, the first boat that was always called the first boat, on first degree, that was usually, the rendezvous thirty miles south of Beachy Head, that was the usual one for the first boat, you’d be on station if you were the first boat you’d be on station, at six o’clock you’d be on station if not near that you’d be on your rendezvous. Now when you were on your rendezvous, patrol up and down just waiting orders really, it could be a long, long long day. But suddenly you’d get a crash call now this was taken by the wireless operator and ours was a very good one named Norman and a good wireless operator too. If he didn’t have his helmet on, Norman he would have it by his side. Now he could pick up our particular call we were a seagull, seagull something, I forget my number but we were seagull something. As soon as Norman heard that, he’d get the signal and that came from the Navy. Now although we were RAF Coastal Command, we were directly under the command of the Navy when it come to positioning. So you would take the course of that call and go up and down, up and down and what you would do call a square search, you would do a certain distance, a mile, one way, turn starboard right then back again so you were doing a search square all the way to where it had been reported – a crash. And you would report search and search and whatever you did your search. Now sometimes you’d be there all day log and do nothing but another time you’d be flying here there and everywhere. On one particular, one particular search, I’ve got it written down here somewhere, we had a crash call I was a gunner at the time and I was still in the front turret. This was in my early days. We were patrolling along and suddenly this spitfire came overhead. I didn’t know it was a spitfire at the time, fired his machine guns in front of us. At first thought I thought it would be a German, he turned round, turned round again and then I could see it was a spitfire, and he took us right up to this pilot sitting in his dinghy, which was a good save, we saved him. Now on that journey, the turret and I’m not exaggerating or making it up, a mine floated past and I could have stretched out and touched it. But there’s nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t the first mine I’d see, they was quite frequent. Quite often you would see a mine broken free of its moorings floating. Now we used to have to report the Navy and the navy would send out a vessel and destroy it. But that was very handy when they would explode the mine you’d get buckets and buckets of dead fish, or stunned fish and it was just a case of scooping the fish up. Although when I was in a private billet I used to have, the landlady used to supply my rations, but the rest of the crew, or those who weren’t in private, they would draw rations for the day and we would have what they call a galley which consisted of a methylated spirit stove and you would do your cooking, but the fact that I wasn’t part of it didn’t make any difference really, you was just part of mucked in together. Clothing, clothing we were well-equipped. We had duffle coats which no other RAF had, proper rain coats, rain macs, we had sea boots, jack boots, just slippers for ordinary time on the boat when you were in harbour and also our CO he was Squadron Leader John D. Syme, a very, what shall I say, a man’s man. His main concern was the welfare of the boats crews. Now all of the boats crew and the probably the base crews as well, we had sheets to sleep in, not just a blanket because the ordinary issue was blankets, two blankets, but John D. always made sure we had sheets, clean sheets. On board, when you slept on board if you were on duty at night, then you would sleep in a sleeping bag, and you had fold down bunks.
DM: Would you be at sea?
LP: I’m sorry?
DM: Would you be at sea when you were sleeping?
LP: Yes. You would, there was no regulation you would be at sea eight hours, ten hours and then come home. It didn’t work like that. You went out until you were called. You just couldn’t say well it’s time to come home, you just did as you were called. As I say, I’ve got a record of it here where you’d be out. You’d do a crash call and that would take a day and then you’d still have to go out. So the hours was long. Also, another thing, it was, it was the only base in the whole of the RAF Air Sea Rescue that received a rum ration, going back to the old days. Once you’d been at sea so many hours, you were entitled to the skipper’s, to the skipper’s, to the skipper’s thoughts it was time for a rum and everybody had a rum ration. And if you stayed out longer and longer you still had another rum ration. But that was entirely up to the skipper.
DM: Did you ever get attacked? Did you ever get attacked?
LP: No. We were always told you must never open fire on anything unless you were attacked first. We lost a couple of boats on the, what they call it, the early landing, where it was a failure?
DM: What was that Dieppe?
LP: Dieppe, yes. We did lose a couple of boats, I wasn’t at Newhaven at the time, but we did lose a couple of boats there. Two or three got killed. When DD come here around we had armour plating put on top of the wheelhouse. And on the part of the fore deck was armour plated and you had a big five white star painted on the fore deck for aircraft recognition as an allied sign. Now I’ve got somewhere I picked up Germans, shall I tell you about?
DM: Yes, that would be very interesting.
LP: Right.
[Other]: Doc here ten past one in the morning.
LP: Yeah, ten past one in the morning, crash call to position 360 degrees Hove two and a half miles, search the area till hours when message received to return to harbour. After seen in dinghy airmen picked up German wireless operator from a JU88. We searched the area for the remainder without result. Returned to Newhaven, and prisoner handed over to Naval authorities at 0705 hours.
[Other]: No further incident 1400 hours.
LP: Then 1400 hours we searched till quarter to five, 1745 hours. Now going back to that German,
DM: Yes.
LP: Now going back to that German. This was early hours of the morning and we picked him up with a searchlight. Previous to that there’d been an air raid over Newhaven, the district. The funny part of it was. We kind of felt it was we picked, he’s sitting in the dinghy, he’s got a very pistol in his hand. We said ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’ friend, no answer, he didn’t answer. And it took several minutes to realise he wasn’t British or Allies, he was a German. Part about it was on this particular journey the engineer was a Belgian. His name was Albert, They called him Albert. Now Albert wasn’t a regular on the boat, it was a one-off. Now Albert, was forced to leave Belgium in the German invasion. Albert hated [musical sound]
DM: Yes.
LP: Albert hated Germans he realised it was a German he was for throwing him back in! Well, it took a bit of persuading, but another interesting thing was, I kept his very pistol, the Nazi very pistol and had a whistle attached, and part of his parachute we divided up, silk parachute. I had quite a nice piece of silk parachute which I gave my sister for her baby girl at the time wasn’t it. It made her christening gown. I think the skipper had his boots, I think the skipper had his boots. Anyway we took him back to harbour. Oh, we clothed him, we had dry clothing, gave him dry clothing, we took him back to harbour and then it was quite a way from the water’s level to the harbour wall – which was up a steep. Somebody had the bright idea of blindfolding him. Well he put the blindfold on and he was absolutely shivering. He thought we were going to shoot him. Anyway we got him up on board and got him to naval and it was a couple of weeks later that a complaint came through that somebody had taken his fur lined sea boots, flying boots and I kept that very pistol and the whistle for not, four, five, years back.
[Other]: Four, five years.
LP: Years, then I gave it to somewhere in Newhaven.
[Other]: Museum.
LP: Newhaven.
[Other]: Museum.
LP: Yes, museum at Newhaven. Anyway to pick somebody up early hours of the morning just with a searchlight, he was lucky, wasn’t he?
DM: He was.
LP: Another. Which one’s this one?
[Other]: The Walrus, where you rescued the men from the Walrus.
LP: Not the one off the French coast was it?
[Other]: Don’t think so, no.
LP: This is another. This made the headlines in the paper this rescue. [shuffling of paper] That’s the original but,
DM: That one: ‘Six RAF men saved in the battle of the Seine’?
[Other]: That one.
DM: Six men saved from the wreck of a Wellington bomber, so that was you, you rescued those men?
LP: Well, it’s strange really, I won’t go into all the details of how we got there.
DM: Well you can do.
LP: Can I?
DM: Yeah.
LP: Well, shall I read off that?
[Other]: Hmmm
LP: If I read it off that, I can’t read it. [Pause] There’s a lot to read isn’t it.
[Other] You dropped the lifeboat.
DM: Which bit are we talking about? So they obviously came down over the other side of the Channel, the French side of the channel.
LP: The mouth of the Seine.
DM: Right. So why were you, were you sent there or were you already there?
LP: No, no we were on patrol in the channel when we got a call, so we had to break off from where we were to go there. Now, two RAF launches took place.
DM: When was this, do you know? Oh yes, July 17th 1943.
LP: Yes. Two launches were sent there. Now I was on 190 and after you see all the air, fighting going on we found that airmen, six airmen, were in an airborne lifeboat, it was one of the first that had ever been dropped. They climbed out of their dinghy into this airborne lifeboat. Now I think the other boat was 177, 190 177. 190, we reached the crew first. Now our coxswain, the first class coxswain, Bert Underwood, a very good coxswain, in his anxiety, he came along a little bit too fast for the crew. We threw ‘em a heaving line, we were going a little bit fast for them to hold onto the line, consequently we passed. 177 behind us, they picked the crew up. Strange part was, they picked the crew up, turned round and gone straight back to Newhaven. Now we were left out there, off the French coast [laugh] with this lifeboat. First of all, orders came ‘Sink the lifeboat, return to base’. So on board we had a tool chest consisting of axe and various tools these were passed along. At the last moment a message came up again, ‘Return to Newhaven with lifeboat.’ So that meant towing, so consequently, we had to put the tow line on the lifeboat and tow it back to Newhaven which took ages, ages. I don’t know what time we got back, I never know what time we got back, but that was a good rescue that.
DM: Did you rescue any other bomber crews during?
LP: Yes, yes. That another one? Routine patrol in the channel, a fine day, round about mid-day skipper said it’s about time we had something to eat, so we were preparing something to eat, when looking up at the sky, we saw a US American fighter bomber a P38 I think it was, a twin-fuselage. That disappeared and then we saw a parachute gently floating out. We followed him, where the parachute was going to land, and it turned out that when he had pulled his cockpit cover he’d dislocated his arm. He was floating in the water, unable to save himself. We were alongside in minutes. One or two of the crew jumped overboard, held him up while we got alongside him, and picked him up and took him back to base. I’ve got a letter from his CO, this letter is dated 29th of March 1944. Dear Sir, The excellent work of the members in your command when they rescued First Lieutenant T.G. Giles, United States Army, from the waters of the English Channel on the 16th March 1944 cannot be allowed to pass without an expression of appreciation. It is my very great pleasure to send you this letter of commendation for bringing about an operation with such happy and favourable results in the case of an officer of my command. Lt. Giles was forced to bail out of his plane while returning from an operational mission over occupied enemy territory. In so doing he sustained severe injuries. His condition was such that he was practically helpless when he reached the water. He was not able to find his dinghy and he would not have been able to get into it if he had and he was not even able to inflate his Mae West. It is fortunate indeed that launch 190 commanded by Craig as was brought alongside without delay. This pilot could not have survived any length of time in the sea on his own. The prompt and sure action of the ASR personnel in this instance merits the highest praise. The courageous action of the men who when over the side to render assistance is most noteworthy. I am fully aware that this rescue is not an isolated incident, but one of a number of superb accomplishments on your parts that have saved many ditched airmen, both British and American, under catastrophic circumstances, but one cannot disregard that if it were not for the immediate aid given so skilfully and successfully, and I am sure that Lieutenant Charles would not be alive today. The sentiment of the whole of this organisation when I express that thanks of a job well down. The crew of the HS190 was the Skipper, Flying Officer Craig, Flight Sergeant, first coxswain, Sergeant Placito, second coxswain, leading aircraftsman Fiddler fitter, LAC Hayes Leading aircraftsman Leading Aircraftsman Hyde crew. That was a good rescue that one.
[Other]: It was.
LP: There’s so many more [chuckle].
[Other]: Still there’s a sad one.
LP: How about or bore you too much, if you left me that, well there’s not much attached to that one, not so far off the French coast there were German floating stations which consisted of a bed, provisions for downed airmen. And on a couple of occasions we came across these stations but fortunately or unfortunately there were no airmen alive in it. We just inspected them, took note of what was there and left.
DM: Do you have any stories around D-Day? What happened on D-Day with your group?
LP: Well on D-Day it was quiet actually, our D-Day was very quiet. Our boats weren’t considered deep sea going; they were built for speed. Pictures of them where they came out. I’ve got no big thing about D-Day. We went out early, picked up odd, odd bits of floating material rafts and such like but no actual rescues. D-Day was a quiet day considering the other days you would be there all day and all night.
DM: You were talking earlier about a rescue involving a walrus.
LP: Yes,
DM: Okay so this is where you picked up a civilian body.
LP: 0710 routine patrol over Beachy Head. Crash call to position search direct by Beachy Head Beachy Head Station, that would be the station at Beachy Head.
DM: Coastguard, or maybe coastguard?
LP: Coastguard, that’s the word. We carried out in company with a Walrus and sir sea rescue aircraft at 1445 received another call to position. On position at 15:15 hours quantity of wreckage found at 1600 hours we sighted a body of a civilian
[Other]: Civilian.
LP: Position 5 degrees off Newhaven seven miles delivered body to police. Returned to patrol until 2115 hours. [shuffle papers] Yes, we picked that poor boy up, that civilian bather. What wasn’t nice, the skipper wasn’t pleased to take him on board, no he thought about either sinking the body or, but he was told, yes, that was sad that.
DM: Take you on now to the end of the war. What happened when hostilities ceased?
LP: Yes, just let me et me thoughts. Yeah, I finished the war off as a transport driver actually.
DM: How did that happen?
LP: The Japanese war finished in
[Other]: August.
LP: August. Okay then yeah. When peace, okay then, when peace was signed with Germany in May, it meant that there was no longer essential for so many routine patrols to take place owing to the fact that it was just friendly aircraft. When peace was signed completely with Japanese surrender, the station the RAF station I don’t know what to try and say.
DM: You were still at Newhaven?
LP: Yes, still at Newhaven. I know what, the end of the German surrender the Japanese war was still in. It was decided to send boat to the Far East. The boats that were chosen to go were copper plated hull that is the hill was plated with copper plate to stop borings from sea insects. 190 although I wasn’t aboard at this time, 190 got as far as Gibraltar when it was halted and that the operation to go to the Far East was aborted, was no longer necessary, The reason I was no longer on board at this time I failed a medical exam and you had to be A1 to be a boats crew. So I was taken off HSL 190 and given a shore job. I was lucky enough to be made a transport driver. We had a Bedford vehicle used to run messages to Thorley Island and into Brighton. This was a very good job because it was so easy going. The reason I got the job was an old friend of mine who was on 190 was a transport driver his job was to drive the warrant officer his name was Stevens a nice gentlemanly man, Steves, Stevenson, he was to take him where he wanted to do to go. Bill Stoneman used to frighten the life out of him wherever he drove. He wasn’t a driver he relied on somebody else to drive or whether Bill did di deliberately or not I don’t know but he fell out of favour with the WO I was called into the office by a friend of mine, Don Stovey, who was a clerk and said that Warrant Officer Stevenson wanted a new driver, a different driver would I take the job. Of course I jumped at it. So from there on I was the station driver. The strange part about it was, I was the only one knew where the vehicle was kept. It was kept in a side street in Newhaven in the town. So consequently we used it on many occasions at night for our trips into Brighton, [chuckle] but I think this soon came to an end when I think it was spotted by another, a Marines, not a Marines, a motorcraft, I beg your pardon a motorised section of the RAF in Newhaven at the time and I think it was one of their vehicles that was mistaken for us and anyway from then on the vehicle had to be kept outside the officers mess on the harbour. Yeah.
DM: So you finished your time in the RAF as a driver.
LP: I finished sa a driver, yeah.
DM: Can you remember when you were demobbed?
LP: I’m sorry?
DM: Can you remember when you were demobbed?
LP: I got demobbed in 1946 I don’t know, middle of 46, something like that, I was demobbed, yeah.
DM: Did you go back to the post office or
LP: No I didn’t I no, I didn’t I just worked for me brother-in-law driving and one thing an another. But it was such a funny thing feeling you know being under orders twenty four hours a day. I forgot to say, that when it got near D-day time, all the civilian billets were closed and where we used to have single beds in the, in the nissen huts they were all double bunked so, to get all, so all the boys were on call. Yeah, it was a good job driving because quite often they, the officer would go into Brighton to pick up papers and also the rations were picked up in Brighton at the, one of the big hotels I think it was the Metropole or the Grand Hotel which was run by RAF, yes, it was the Australians had taken over. Which was the hotel that was bombed? Was that the Metropole?
DM: That was the Metropole.
LP: Was it? Yeah.
[Other]: I think it was.
LP: Yeah, I think it was the Metropole yeah, well the Australians were living there they had taken it over, and that was also then, I used to have to go in for a clothing exchange because what usually happened, well it always happened, if you had something worn, your clothing were worn and you thought need a change we had a storeman at Newhaven, Tiny Wellman, he was a big fella, they called him Tiny Wellman, he was the storeman, and it was up to him if you wanted a new pullover or a new shirt or whatever, it was up to him whether you got it or not. Which was, you know he either liked you or didn’t like you. But after that, all the clothes were kept at Brighton and it was my job, I could take clothing in and exchange it, so consequently I did a good, had a good job changing clothes for the boys that wanted, you know new shoes, whatsoever. But you used to get up to all sorts of tricks to earn a shilling, because one particular, in the Metropole, the Australians had taken over, and there was one room with dozens of pairs of shoes, they would throw the shoes in, me and a friend of mine I used to take with me, we would sort out shoes, take ‘em in to the clothing exchange, get a new pair of shoes for pair of old ones. The things you did. [Chuckle] I tell you one other happy episode too. When the war ended, horse racing started, and Brighton was, I think it was the first race course in the south of England to open. Now, there was no signalling affairs, there was no way when the horses. I don’t know if you understand horse racing but when they go down to the start, there was no way that they knew where the horses were at the start or when the start, starting gate opened or not. So they came to Newhaven to look for a signaller or signallers. One of my best friends was a signaller so he said you come, he said you can do the transport, so I used to take the transport, it lasted for about three or four days. We would take two men down to the start of the racecourse, and two men at the finish with Aldis lamps because there was no speakers as such, and they would signal when the horses were ready to go off, to start, they would signal to us they’re off and then obviously we knew if they’d won or lost so we had a good few days, three or four days with that. But going back to that American we saved he piled cigarettes, whatever, in a day or two the CO sent down. I didn’t smoke, it didn’t matter to me, but one of the do-gooders there tried to put the block on it, to say you know you didn’t do it for, for cigarettes. Obviously we didn’t do it for that but that was his kindness to do it wasn’t it. I would have liked to have met that American some time.
DM: Yeah, I suppose all the people you rescued you don’t really know what became of them after they walked off your boat, that was it, they were gone.
LP: Yeah. We used to have something about the size of that polished wood and every rescue you’d put on you’d put a roundel on, you know, RAF roundel, you’d stick one of those on and we had that on the.
DM: Did you used to put a swastika on when you rescued a German? [Laugh]
LP: No, we didn’t put a swastika on, no. We had two Germans, two particular Germans. One German, I had only been there a short time. He was in the water or in a dinghy. We picked him up and he had the sense enough when he’d baled out he’d wrenched his leg and his leg I don’t know, was half off or half on the sense enough to have tourniquets round his thighs. We saved him. There you are, years and years ago.
DM: Yes, 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
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Interview with Lawrence Henry di Placito. One
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-09
Rights
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AdiPlacitoLH170209, PdiPlacitoLH1701
Format
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01:27:39 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
British Army
Royal Navy
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence di Placito served as a second-class coxswain on the RAF Air Sea Rescue launches during the Second World War. He was born in Chertsey and attended Egham grammar school where he was a member of the cadet force. Upon leaving school in 1936 he was employed with the Post Office as a clerk/telephonist. Early in 1939 he joined the 6th Battalion East Surrey (Territorial Army). Lawrence went through military training, but he was told he would not be allowed to remain in the unit because of his Italian parents.
At the outbreak of war, he left the Post Office and was employed building naval vessels at a boat yard on the Thames in Chertsey. It was here that he first heard about RAF Air Sea Rescue, which he successfully enrolled into. Following training at various establishments he was posted to Newhaven on High Speed Launch 190 as a gunner.
Lawrence describes rescue operations: a Spitfire leading them to an airman in a dinghy; a Wellington aircrew rescued close to Le Havre on 17 July 1943; a German wireless operator who baled out from a downed Ju 88 and his parachute being divided amongst the crew, and finally rescuing the United States serviceman T G Giles who baled out of a P-38.
Occasionally they would come across mines that had broken free. These would be guarded until the Navy arrived and detonated them. This would result in the surface being covered in stunned fish which the crew would be able to scoop up.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Chertsey
England--Great Yarmouth
England--Newhaven
England--Bedfordshire
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
France
France--Le Havre
England--Norfolk
England--Surrey
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-07-17
1944-03-16
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
air sea rescue
animal
bale out
ground personnel
Ju 88
military living conditions
military service conditions
Nissen hut
P-38
RAF Cardington
RAF Great Yarmouth
shot down
Spitfire
sport
Walrus
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10784/PdiPlacitoLH1701.2.jpg
89587cbda0f20671b0c4ea1b85001701
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10784/AdiPlacitoLH170309.1.mp3
f963356b26e31e9b1124f33db60eea09
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
di Placito, Lawrence Henry
L H di Placito
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Lawrence 'Lawrie' di Placito (1922, 1646268 Royal Air Force). He served in Air Sea Rescue.
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
2017-03-09
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
diPlacito, LH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: Today is the 9th of March 2017, this is a second interview with Laurie Placito in his home in Surrey and the interviewer is David Meanwell. Over to you Laurie.
LP: [Whisper, paper shuffling] That’s ‘44. It was July ‘43 while are on patrol in the channel, we were roughly four and a half to five miles off the coast, we sighted six airmen in a dinghy. There were no injuries, the airman were taken aboard and taken back to Newhaven harbour. Also in ’43, Ealing Studios arrived to make a film for the air sea rescue. It was called ‘For Those in Peril’. The leading actor was a David Farrar. It was quite interesting really because, they were filming out at sea, different scenes and then back in the harbour they would have airmen performing diving, off Newhaven Bridge and some off the boats. We had a number of these actors obviously dressed as RAF officers and men and it was a job to tell who was the real officer from one of our own, from all the film stars! Now, we go back to ‘44, 1944 is the next one I can remember. We were on patrol off Beachy Head, we picked up floating nets and life jackets but no personnel, we then received a message from a Walrus that could not take off due to bad weather, so we rescued the pilot and took the Walrus in tow to Newhaven harbour. [papers shuffling] This was just a few weeks after D-Day. [Whispers] Now D-Day itself, June the 6th, was actually a quiet day for us, we had no incidents to report on our sector apart from retrieving a quantity of flotsam. But it was constant patrolling, hour after hour, coming into harbour only to refuel. Of course the harbour was absolutely crammed with various landing craft. There was a flotilla of American vessels next to us. Now the American ships were dry with no alcohol allowed on board. This enabled us to do some serious bartering as we were able to buy beer when available from local pubs and of also from our own rum ration.
DM: Can you remember what you used to barter for? What did you get in exchange for the beer?
LP: The Americans had quite better rations and things we never had. Tinned butter, cream and such luxuries which weren’t available to the RAF. So we had a bartering which enabled us to feed a lot better.
[Other]|: [Cough]
LP: Now I’ll see about D-Day. In September ‘44 the airborne landings at Arnhem took place. We had orders to sail to Felixstowe on the east coast to cover these landings. But despite extensive patrols we found no survivors, only a great deal of debris. After a week or so we returned to Newhaven. It was on the outward journey, to Felixstowe, when we stopped off at Dover, only to be caught in a terrific shelling from German cross channel guns. Needless to say our skipper curtailed our visit and quickly flipped our, slipped our moorings and hastily set sail. June ‘44 was also the month that the V1 rockets or doodlebugs as they were known, began to rain on England. They were a fearsome weapon with a buzzing sound and flames coming from, from them. When they first appeared we tried to shoot them down, but flying at 350 miles an hour and we tossing about on the ocean we had no success. After a time we were told not to try and shoot them down, but to leave, to leave this to the inland defences such as AA batteries, anti-aircraft guns, balloons and fighter planes. I think one of the reasons for this was that they did not want the bombs to crash on the coastal towns. On more than one occasion I saw brave fighter pilots try to fly alongside the bomb and tilt the wing underneath it causing it to crash. ’45. These [papers shuffling] [not audible]. One of the last pickups that I can remember was rather a sad incident. This was in January ’45. We were on patrol 10 miles off of Beachy Head. We were contacted by spotter aircraft and followed them which took us to a dinghy which contained two American airmen, apparently dead. Artificial respiration was carried out until the bodies were handed over to the Naval authorities. When Germany surrendered in May 1945 things quietened down, quite considerably. Patrols were still kept up, but with no sense of urgency. And no longer could you see the fleets of bombers with their brave pilots and crew filling the skies on their way to Germany. And then just after when Japan surrendered in August ‘45, things really altered in the base with demobbing beginning to start and posting to other units and remustering to other trades, officers were also coming and going but nothing seemed to be settled. That was a bad time that was. Unlike the army where all the regiments were posted en block the marine craft section were individually posted thus having to leave out shipmates, old shipmates behind and starting afresh under completely different conditions. Before the Japanese surrender it was being planned to send boats and crews [emphasis] to the Far east. Thankfully this never happened. Our crew on HSL190 was an efficient and happy crew. With the skipper Flying Officer Craig, a most friendly person, who called all the personnel by their christian names; saluting was down to a minimum, once when he came aboard in the morning and when he left after we had tied up. Regards saluting, when we sailed past the Naval Headquarters every time we came in and out of harbour, one half of our crew would stand to attention at the bow, the other half at the stern. This was called saluting the quarterdeck. One happy incident I can [emphasis] recall was when in harbour we were tied up alongside two other HSLs. To get out it meant untying the bow lines and with the aid of a boat hooks and manpower, pushed our boat, our boat, through the opening, for some reason the skipper decided to help with this operation, when there was an almighty splash and he, being a rather large man, he fell overboard. At first his cap was visible to be seen. This caused howls of laughter. The crash net had to be lowered down before he was pulled aboard. One wag asked him if this was counted as a rescue, but being a thorough sportsman he laughed as loud as anybody. In quiet moments at sea he would allow the crew to put out fishing lines. He was a lovely man. One easy way to catch fish was when the Naval minesweepers detonated a mine. Dozens of stunned fish would be floating on the surface, but it was not a sporting way to catch fish. Now Newhaven was an easy-going station with no hard discipline. Airmen could come and go in and out of the base with no checks or guardroom. The shore-based airmen such as carpenters, armourers, electricians etc, had a very easy time. By mid-morning they could be found in the local church canteen while the NAAFI canteen van was a regular visitor. As long as the boat crews were operating efficiently the commanding officer, Squadron Leader Don G Syme, was quite happy. In contrast the boat crews had long hours aboard with no set duty times. Their time at sea depended on any incidents according, occurring, I’m sorry, any incidents occurring and only then after receiving permission from the Naval authorities could they return to harbour. Boat crews were given a rum ration after four or five hours at sea, or at any time with the CO’s permission. For those who did not drink it provided a means of bartering for chocolates or cigarettes. Hot cocoa was provided ad lib, and main meals also cooked on board if unable to return to base. Bunks and sleeping bags were provided for long hours spent at sea. Boat crews were issued with extra clothing, such as woollen jerseys, duffle coat, sea boots, plimsolls which had to be worn on board in good weather, and waterproof macs. [Shuffle of paper] Newhaven harbour was also home to a naval squadron of steam gunboats which were heavily armed and with torpedo tubes. They occupied the port quay with the RAF on the starboard side. The naval squadron was commanded by Sir Peter Scott, he was the son of Scott of the Antarctic. Sir Peter was a fearless commander and he would search fearlessly for German e-boats or any, any enemy craft. In contrast to his naval career, post-war he became kfamous for his studies of nature and wildlife paintings. There were no WAAFs, which is Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, women at Newhaven. I can only remember one WAAF officer coming there as an adjutant. I think she only lasted a few weeks, she could not put up with the strong language of the CO, who was a good and fair CO. I believe after the war he became harbour master at Grimsby. One incident I remember plainly, was when an ammunition barge full of high explosives, broke its tow lines and crashed against the cliffs outside the harbour, causing a terrific explosion, blowing out all the windows and the roof off the ablution block. Luckily no one was injured. One the, another pickup which I forgot to mention occurred in September ’44. While on patrol we received a message that a Walrus had picked up six survivors and was picking up a seventh in a position about one mile off the French coast. We sighted the Walrus in position where we could see the church one mile distant. We closed to the Walrus and transferred all the survivors who were uninjured but suffering from shock and immersion. We then soon got on our way, arriving back at Newhaven safely. All airmen were housed in nissen huts alongside the quay. In earlier days a few were billeted with local families but as D-Day drew near every airman had to sleep in the base. This meant taking out all the single beds and replacing them with double bunks, one above the other. This was unfortunate for the person on the lower bunk as sometimes you would have a foot placed somewhere on your anatomy from the airman climbing on the bunk above. The officers had their own nissen huts further along the quay which also housed our mess deck. I myself was billeted with a local family for a time. Was a very kindly landlady whose husband was away doing war work, a Mrs Cook. She had twin daughters, Betty and Gwen, son Michael all school age, and a grandma. The family spent most nights in an air raid shelter in the garden while I on my off duty nights had my own comfortable bedroom. It came as a bit of a shock when I had to return to base to sleep in a twin bunk. To the end of my narrative, and thanking the lord for my good fortune and bringing me safely through the war. We were never attacked by enemy aircraft, our biggest danger, or I’m sorry, we were never attacked by enemy aircraft or e-boats. Our biggest danger was enemy minefields or floating mines with which we had several close brushes. As I’ve said before we were a happy and efficient crew, enjoying sing-songs on board with our fitter marine, Vic Fiddler playing his accordion or board games in the foc’stle. The only time we were fired on was by our own gun battery on the Newhaven Cliffs, when two warning shells landed in the sea nearby. It was because we were flying the wrong recognition flag of the day. Needless to say it was soon changed. Remembering my old crew, we had Bert Underwood, our first class coxswain and a first class man, also we had Norman Rogerson who was our first class wireless operator; he was never seen without his headset. A lot depended on Norman who was solely responsible for all the morse code messages. Not once did Norman miss or delay a crash call. This was no mean feat when you realise he had to separate our own callsign, which was seagull 7 6, from all the other traffic which was being transmitted. Boat crews usually consisted of eight or nine men, depending on somebody being off sick with no replacement. We had one officer, usually he was a flying officer, we had a first class coxswain, a second class coxswain, we had a wireless operator, a medical orderly, the first engineer and a second engineer and a couple of gunners. Let me -
DM: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew mates after the war?
LP: Yes, after the war we had several reunions held at Newhaven where all crews and shore-based men met for a dinner in a local pub. And also I kept in touch with a great friend of mine who was the station cook, Corporal Sid Sole, he was a good friend, and we used to meet up together and, also with Harry Worts who was the local funeral director. And then occasionally I would motor down to Newhaven, to meet up with Bert Underwood, our former coxswain, who was a local, who lived locally, and also to meet Mrs Cook and her family who were so good to me during the war years.
DM: Was that the lady you stayed with?
LP: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
LP: Another good friend I met up with was a former wireless operator on the Newhaven base, the name of Pete Sisson. Pete Sisson married a local girl and I kept in touch with him, he lives somewhere on the east coast, I can’t quite recall where, but Pete and I used to meet up at Newhaven because on Armistice Day at Newhaven, a launch would take ex-members of the, of the base out to sea to lay a wreath. As I said before we didn’t have any casualties when I was at Newhaven, but sadly two or three HSLs were sunk at the Dieppe raid with several casualties and prisoners. This was before my time there. I am now passed ninety-five years so forgive me if I have bored you with my war memories. I may have missed one or two incidents but not the thrill of speeding across the channel at thirty five plus knots with the bow planing above the waves, the roar of three five hundred horse power Napier Sea Lion engines and the RAF ensign flapping against the mast.
DM: Would it be fair to say, Laurie, you enjoyed your war?
LP: Yes, yeah, I enjoyed the camaraderie of the men and that, yeah. You got bored sometimes you know, with the long patrols and that, as I say you wouldn’t go out say at nine in the morning and come home five at night: it didn’t work like that. If you hadn’t been called out, I think we used to be on seven, six o’clock in the morning we’d be on base. One base was fourteen miles due south of Beachy Head, and then a couple accordingly back up towards the channel. Not eastward because that was the Dover area. But we used to, the Point of Beachy Head was our sort of main point, and up back up to Littlehampton. Yes, it was, when you had bad weather you know, you huddled up trying to get out of the wind and that, but you had to be, had to be on board you couldn’t just all hide down in the wheelhouse out of the rain, or the weather, you had to, well you had to be sighted you see to see everything was going on.
DM: Did you ever suffer from seasickness?
LP: No, no I didn’t, which was lucky, I was very lucky, I never suffered from sea sickness. We had an assistant engineer: Jack, Hayes, Jack Hayes. He was older than, I was only twenty one, something like that, twenty one, twenty two. Now Jack, he, every time he went to sea, he was seasick, and when I, not just sea sick, absolutely laid out. And he’d go pale as anything, and he was retching and retching and this went on for weeks, I said Jack, you can’t put up with this, I said you’ve got to ask for a transfer I said, you’re going to kill yourself, and he, I’ll keep trying, and eventually [emphasis] he got quite a lot better, but he did suffer for his first times. Oh, terribly. It’s a terrible thing sea sickness, you don’t, you don’t think much of it, but when you keep retching and retching, you’ve got nothing left inside of you, but that was the only one on our boat, was well, you couldn’t afford to be seasick see[laugh]. Yeah, if you were sick you’d have to report the um, we didn’t have a doctor on board, on our base, wasn’t big enough, we had to go to the naval doctors across the other harbour. And then, they’d treat you, but it was usually medicine and duties like, take this and back to work, I was lucky really, I used to suffer quite a lot of nose bleeds. I don’t know, I don’t know ’cause I was boxing at the time, but I suffered with nose bleeds, and several times I had go to the MO, and he’d would stuff cotton wool up your nose, all he could do. After the war I still suffered with that, but I used to have to, had it cauterised, they put electric needles up your nose, in those days they didn’t though. No, all in all the camaraderie was good, and there was no discipline you know didn’t salute every five minutes like you would be on an RAF station. I mean you’d walk up the quay and you might see a strange officer and salute, but normally they just nod like, ‘cause, you, everybody knew everybody, the crews, the boat crews. Yes. It got crowded as I say, on D-Day you never got to sleep in, you had one above the other like, you know, you can imagine coming in a bit worse for weather sometimes, was a lot of shouting going on like, you know. The shore based airmen had a good time there though, I mean they’d have a so called morning parade, that was a bit of a shambles because half the fellas would be on the boats or off duty or whatever sort of thing. You know. It was such a handy place to be, Newhaven, because when you got a 48 hour pass, you could, I could slip up to here with no bother at all, the stations was on the side of the harbour, you just get on there, change at East Grinstead, I, not East Grinstead, yeah, was it East Grinstead, no not East Grinstead, you had to change just outside London to get down here. Many a time, and also we’d go into Brighton on the bus, get the bus if you were off duty at night, you’d get the bus go to Brighton and if you overstayed your time there, you’d miss the last bus, so that meant you had to sleep either if you could find a NAAFI or one of these put-you-up places, or sleep in the bus shelter which I did on more than one occasions. You’d get the first bus out, I think it used to leave, it used to get back into Newhaven before six o’clock and once or twice I’d come bouncing off the bus stop which was only at the top of the quay, and they’d already started the engines, you could hear the engines banging, just in time, but I had my best blue on then you had to change like, you know, you couldn’t cut it too fine because you mustn’t, it was a cardinal sin to have er, miss the boat, if it the boat went out without you, you’d be in trouble. Yeah, it was, but as I say it was an easy going base. The old CO he was a gruff, you know, hard-spoken man like, he’d swear at anybody, but he was fair, and he was, he was a good CO like, you know, as I say he made sure we had sheets to sleep in which was unheard of, in RAF stations you’d just had your bare blankets. The food was pretty good considering, wasn’t a great variety, but basically it was fair. The only thing I couldn’t eat breakfast it, bubble and squeak they’d gives you for breakfast, and that was about half past five in the morning, you go to sea on that [laugh] no, I couldn’t put up with that. [Tapping] When I was billeted with Mrs Cook she would make me up a tin, whatever she could find, she’d get an allowance obviously, she was being paid for it, and she’d make up a big round biscuit tin with sandwiches, sausage rolls she’d make and things like that. She was a lovely lady, quite, she, she was quite good. But as I say they used to sleep in the bloomin’ air raid shelter at night, the bombing raids and that, terrible that, two, three kids, three school, school kids, yeah.
DM: Did you have to, when you were waiting for your demob did you have to do any other jobs?
LP: When?
DM: When you were waiting to be demobbed, did you have to do anything else, any other jobs?
LP: No, I become the station driver, I think I told you.
DM: Oh yeah, I remember.
LP: Yes.
DM: Yeah, you did.
LP: Yes, goes to show a good job the station driver was.
DM: Yes.
LP: I used to take, that’s a thing I should have said, it was to keep the men occupied, as I said it was all comings and goings, groups of them used to go and work on local farms, help the farmers like, you know, which kept them busy and it was doing a good job, it got them out the way but you didn’t know who was who, as I say, officers as well were going, you know and of course everybody there was all waiting to be demobbed, all anxious to get demobbed. Yeah, no all in all it was an experience I wouldn’t have missed it, you know, I wouldn’t have missed it.
DM: You never thought of staying in?
LP: No I didn’t, no I didn’t, I wanted to get out, I wanted to get out actually, I did. I missed me fam, missed me old mother like, you know, and the family. But then there again I was lucky because as I said before the pay was well, pathetic compared today, like, you couldn’t compare it. But my sister, she used to send me regular ten shillings at a time, which was more than I earned in a week like, she used to send me ten shillings, and me brother used to send me, and if I got home, I would get some more money like, you know. I didn’t go short of money. You couldn’t go mad and spend you, ad lib like, you know. But I wasn’t a drinker, I used to go in the pubs because there was nowhere else to go, but I’d just buy my own round or, if you was with your mates like, you would pay your round and that was it. And I didn’t smoke which was another save. We had a mess deck: it was, course it was right alongside the walls, the harbour wall, it was mess, it was nissen huts, but the mess deck was an old rope, course it was, being a fishing village, it was an old rope store, you had to go up a big flight of stairs and up there was the cookhouse. And occasionally you would get these, they were nice people, different groups, singers or musicians, come and give you a concert, which was a nice break like, you know. But you met all sorts of men, all different, you know [laugh] yeah, you met all sorts of, all sorts. I didn’t, I suppose looking back at it I don’t suppose there was two fellers that I didn’t like really, the rest I got on with. Our crew were, well we were close on the crew like, but there was only two particular I never did get on with. Yeah, I often think of, think of them old days. [Chuckle] When you’re young it’s different isn’t it, you don’t look, if you, as I say it was a bit dicey going out minefielding, you didn’t know where, and the fact when you, when you were ploughing there along whichever speed you was going, the bow, if that’s the sea, the, the bow of the boat would be like that, the water coming underneath. If you were in the wheelhouse you couldn’t see anything, and you were going, you’d see a mine in the water but it had to be close before you could spot it. As I say once or twice we got very close to ‘em, yeah. We set one off one day, it could have been one them acoustic mines, it’d go off with heavy movement, without hitting it. And we were, we were, good job we were going a fair speed and suddenly there was this almighty explosion at the back of us like, but of course we’d gone. But we had to go in to, where did we used to go, down the, down near Portsmouth somewhere, Mount, was it Mountbatten? To have the, I think we’d damaged the props, change the props like, you know. Another time I [emphasis] was, I was at the wheel then, I hit a, oh great big log I suppose, or a timber, come off one of the ships, a big timber, and that caused the boat to jump like and we had to take that back, as I say back down to Portsmouth wherever it was, to have a repair done down there. You couldn’t help it, ‘cause you just couldn’t see it like. One, only one occasion did, I thought we were going to be attacked by air, we were just patrolling like, you know, and this aircraft, German he come diving out the sky and he swoops right low over us, and I suppose he thought it’s not worth stopping, ‘cause he was, not far off the coast like, you know, he went on, but he scared us for a minute, ‘cause we had orders not to shoot unless you were shot at. As I say, when the doodlebugs started to come over, specially at night, all you could see was the flames burning, flames coming out, but you had no chance of hitting them like, you know, I mean you’d see your tracer bullets go, but he’s doing, they used to do three fifty to four hundred mile an hour them things and you never hit one of them. But that’s true what I see about that pilot: he’d fly along and he’d tip his wing just underneath the wing of the, course any movement on the, they were set, set to go straight, it was only when the engine cut out they were timed, that they would dive, you know, crash. Oh yeah. I came home, I didn’t, it could only have been only a forty eight hour pass and I’m coming over, got out the train at London, and going over Waterloo bridge was a terrific air raid, bombs were coming, the anti-aircraft fire going all that, and I’m running across, you had to carry your tin hat with you with a bit of luck, but it wouldn’t have made, save you, would it? Anyway, I got as far as Waterloo and I got the train, it stopped somewhere, Walton I think, five or six mile out of Chertsey. No more, no more trains, bombs and that on the line, so I had to thumb a lift, and of course that time of night, it was pitch black and that, you know, but a bit of luck a milk lorry came by and he stopped. And he said where you going? I said I’m going to Ch, he said I’m going to Atherstone, which is walkable distance between Chertsey and Atherstone, you know, ten minute walk, so anyway he dropped me off at Atherstone. Then, the nearer I got to my home, you had to turn a corner, turn a corner and come straight up, I lived there, there was piles of glass, and the nearer I got to my home got bigger, the piles of glass, and it dropped this doodlebug, right opposite our house. It blew all the windows out and cracked all the plasters and that and of course I was terrified for me old mum like, you know, but me eldest brother was a foreman in a, what do they call the vessel goes under water and on the road?
DM: Oh, amphibian.
LP: Yeah,
DM: Yeah.
LP: And he was a foreman in the works there ‘cause he was, although he, he wouldn’t have been, I don’t know he’d have been about thirty five, thirty six I think, thirty six was the limit wasn’t it, for call up, something like that. Anyway he, he made my mother a great big steel table, oblong table, thick steel on steel legs with a wire mesh front and he put a bed in there for her, so she’d sleep there, which was, safe. As I say I come down, all the glass was cracked and all that, frightening that was. But there, people worse off than that though weren’t they, come home and nothing left, just, hard living, people don’t realise today Dave, what war time people.
DM: It’s true.
LP: Then you had to queue up for your food, coupons and 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
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Interview with Lawrence Henry di Placito. Two
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-09
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AdiPlacitoLH170309, PdiPlacitoLH1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:43:56 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence di Placito served as a second-class coxswain on the RAF Air Sea Rescue launches during the Second World War. Henry gives further details of his experiences in rescues, both successful and those with a tragic ending. He also tells of Ealing Studios arriving at the base to record the film ‘For Those in Peril. He also recalls witnessing RAF aircraft chasing V-1s and using their wings to tip the flying bombs off course.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
air sea rescue
ditching
entertainment
ground personnel
home front
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
V-1
V-weapon
Walrus
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/804/10785/ADoneI170710.1.mp3
a679c46d2ab8e21a7291e79ecf95f1f5
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
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Done, Iris
I Done
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Iris Done (b. 1920). She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-10
Rights
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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
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Done, I
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GC: Thank you very much for letting me do this. Tell me a bit about your life before the war.
ID: Um, well my life before the war I was working for the London County Council in County Hall, which of course doesn’t exist anymore as a, and eh I was I wasn’t reserved because my age didn’t reserve me, so that’s why I married in eh 14th of February 1942 and I had applied for call up because I thought that it was better, that having got married, to leave home in that way rather than go into a factory. I would have had to have done something you see. I couldn’t have stayed at County Hall, so that’s why I chose the WAAF and em I was, I was very pleased I did because I had some very happy times. It’s amazing the comradeship in the services.
GC: Yeah.
ID: Anyway, I, as I say, I married in forty, forty one, forty two, eh February forty two, and I was, I was called up in June forty two. I had to eh report to Bridgenorth, which seemed a long way to me but eh we moved around so much in those days. Anyway I arrived at, I think it was Euston Station and em wondering what the dickens I was going into really. Got on the train, of course, and it seemed such a long journey and interesting in a way because it was the first time I’d actually seen coal and coal mining equipment. Em, I’d seen it on the eh on the films and things like that but I’d never actually been anywhere where they’d had coal mines. Anyway, we arrived in Bridgenorth and eh it was better then because there was a lorry waiting to take us to the camp and consequently the people that had been on the train, who obviously didn’t know each other, so had had quite a lonely journey, we all met up and we started nattering wondering what the dickens we had let ourselves in for and eh we went to this, it was a large camp, I remember, and we were only there for, we were only due to stay there four days, which was to be sworn in and get our uniforms and various, you know, just get us used to the Services to some extent. So anyway we, we arrived there in, at supper time, and, and had the food was very good, very nice, I still remember. We had a very nice eh stew, but huh the jam, because we could have as much bread and marg as we liked, it was still on the plate, on the side of the plate which seemed rather strange. [chuckles] Anyway, after that we said, we were given our, what we called our irons, knife, fork and spoon and eh well when we came to wash it, we had to put the knife in the ground to clean it up, and there was this huge trough of ooh, quite brown looking water to wash the other things so it, it was all, all a little bit of a sham if you can imagine it. And anyway we, we, I think we were about eight to a hut and, and of course, it, it, life was so different and when we washed we had to wash in a public, another hut, which was sort of very public. But it’s like everything you soon get used to it because everybody’s in the same boat really. And um the four days went quite quickly, and then we were off to Morecambe. So that, that was another fortnight. You see I didn’t have to do any special training because I was a shorthand typist and anybody who had that, that kind of skill, they obviously didn’t want to train, it was expensive to train people, and we were already trained, so, and so, all, in the end we all more or le, similar people really on the whole. And em, anyway, we got to Morecambe and of course they have these em, what d’you call them, houses there, you know, boarding houses and, I don’t know if you know anything about the North, I didn’t know anything particularly, but the lady in the house is always the [emphasis] one, which leaves a poor little husband trotting along beside doing as he’s told. Anyway they made us quite comfortable but eh it was all very bit primitive then of course, but em and eh then we had drill. We had to do that on the front. By this time we, we had a, I think they called them passion killers [mumbles] [chuckles] whatever they are. They, they, just you know, ordinary, ordinary pants, that eh they were sort of Airforce colour and of course, because we, we didn’t have any special equipment, we did our drill on the front in these. Which of course the locals liked [chuckles] [unclear]. Anyway at eh every, every sort of coffee time, we went round and we stopped at various em hall, church halls mainly and there was normally a piano. Now if you had anybody who could play anything they, they really were the cats whiskers because we had a girl who could play “She’ll be coming round the mountains”, and [chuckles] and she played every time, she played the tune and we did the singing and I shall always remember that song. Anyway, we also of course had a lot of injections in case we went abroad or anything like that. So one weekend, we were feeling very sorry for ourselves, when we need injections, but other than that, we couldn’t move around, we weren’t allowed, we, we could look, look at you know, across at Sunderland, but we weren’t allowed to go there and, as I say, we only, we only stayed there a fortnight. And then we moved on and, and of course we were saying “I wonder where we’ll get posted?” And by this time we, we’d made friends and “Oh, I hope we go together,” and all this business. Anyway, I, I was told that I was going to Fighter Command and eh my friend Betty who, who I’d made friends with, she was also going to Fighter Command so that was rather nice. And em where is this Fighter Command? It’s in Stanmore in Middlesex. Which of course was quite good because I, we only lived in South London, so we knew that if we had a weekend or forty eight hours, as they say, we could get home. And so, we did this long, long, it did seem a long journey. We had to go to London and then from London down to Stanmore, which is the end of the Bakerloo line. So, so it’s em, it was quite convenient for travelling really. And eh and then we were taken to Fighter Command which actually is a beautiful house. It, it belonged, it belonged to the Hamiltons. Now, he, Lord Hamilton was em, oh I can never think of her name, Nelson’s girlfriend, I can never think of her name.
GC: Emma.
ID: Emma.
GC: I think it was Emma.
ID: [mumbles] So, it was, it was Lord Hamilton’s estate really of course, and we didn’t actually live in the big house, it was the Air Officer Commanding, and various officers, but there were some very high officers there, obviously, being in Command. And, but we were all in sheds in the grounds. Em, which is, is quite interesting. When I told the people at Stanmore, they said “Well I’m very glad. We wondered what those sheds were.” So, so [chuckles] that was quite, quite good. So, anyway, em we were, we were shown these sheds and really, I must say, it was only really like a civil service job. But, of course, with all the restrictions obviously of a, of being in the Services. And we still had to do drill and stuff, but em we were then taken to our billets. But of course, it’s a very nice residential district round there and we were, Betty and I were still together, which we were very pleased about, and then we came to this very lovely place, it was really a nice, lovely house, which was called Green Lane Cottage, in Green Lane, and, of course, they weren’t people who wanted to have people billeted with them, but they were made to take however many they thought they could. But eh, they were two very elderly gentlemen. I believe they’d been West End solicitors and eh and, and their sister, and two maids, so you can tell we didn’t have any cleaning to do [chuckles] so we were very lucky actually. Em anyway, that, that seemed very nice and it was very cosy, and it, it was a charming house, you know, and, and the old, old people, although they really didn’t want us, they were quite kind. Every so often they’d leave a basket of apples in the, in our room. Or, or if Mr Churchill was speaking, and I think he did once or twice while we were there, they’d knock on the door and say, “Mr. Churchill’s speaking. Would you like to hear him?” [chuckles] Which was nice of them. Anyway [chuckles] so, we sort of settled in to just ordinary office work really. Um, there was, now, it was Command, I was in Command Accounts and my friend was in Medical, but our, our two em huts were together, not working together but placed together. And so in the, in the office there were, I worked mainly for a Flight Lieutenant, em but we all had to do [unclear] the head of the department was an Air Commodore, then a Wing Commander, then a Squadron Leader, who was a regular. My, my officer who, who was only, who had joined up for the war, and eh and then the officer was in charge of civilians, so he was a civil servant. So em, that was, and we, you know it was a very nice atmosphere and he was a very nice officer I worked for. And of course in those, at that time everybody was referred to by their name, I mean, I was Mrs. Done, not Done. So it was, it was quite a, and eh as I say, the, I remember I used to get a newspaper in the morning and so did he and we used to exchange newspapers before we started, so it was quite, it was quite an easy thing in, in one way. The worst part of course, is in war you never know how long it’s going to last and your life’s come to a fully stop really, you know until war ends. But em you know, it was, we, we didn’t feel that Command Accounts was very glamorous, but eh, obviously it’s essential for people to have their money [chuckles] but em, of course, the glamour girls in eh, on the camp, which we didn’t have anything to do with were, of course, the plotters. The plotters were, were right down in the, I don’t know, tremendously deep into the ground. They’d made these, these offices and eh, and eh, you know, they, they always looked very glamorous and seemed to be very glamorous but eh, as I say, we, we, we were very lucky really to have such a, such a, a nice billet really, because obviously, being a Command, we had very good entertainment. We had em, often had West End shows, not really for us, but mainly for the bigger boys and we, we also once I suppose this was really em was really amazing em [telephone ringing in background] the red letter day was when Glenn Miller and his band came to play in the grounds. That was, that was really quite exciting as you can imagine. But he was, well he’s always had, he always had a very good band and, so of course that was, we were always out and listened or very sure about it, but of course it wasn’t very long after that that he had a plane, took a plane to Paris and got killed. So em we had actually heard him, just before, you know just before he died really. But [coughs] because there weren’t many celebs in those days but there was one he, he was actually a newsreader called Alvar Lidell and of course, everybody was very thrilled because he was, he was called up was eh “Do you know who is here? Alvar Lidell.” [laughs] I don’t suppose he’d have made any, much of a hit these days, but anyway. So [pause] so I was, I was there for three and a half years, which sometimes seemed a very long time. You wondered if eh, you know, you really wondered if the war was ever going to end to be honest. And eh, and of course, very often you would see pilots who possibly had to come to report. Who obviously had been in a dog fight or something and terrible burns and things like that. But strangely enough we had no bombing there while I was there, but if you went out, South London and all round you know, there was the doodle bugs, but I don’t think I was ever in any of those but you, you could have been and the people were there. But why they missed Stanmore I never can understand, but anyway that was lucky that they did. And eh so really life, as I say, it was, you know, it was, quite, quite pleasant in a way because comradeship is very, very strong in the Services and there was Betty and I and she was, as I say, in Medical where, and I was in a little office and the other girl in the office we made friends with um she, we all used to go round together. They used to call us the three musketeers. But eh because you see all, most of the officers, I think all of the officers, without exception, they all lived out in houses, they, they didn’t, nobody lived on the camp. We had, we had army practicing and eh we would perhaps meet them for a, a, what I say a drink. We didn’t even get much drink in the NAAFI, you know, coffee really and because they, they were obviously practicing em for D-Day you see, everything was working up to D-Day when, because I wasn’t there for the Battle of Britain which of course was forty one. I came along after forty two, but of course there was an awful lot to prepare and one day walking in the grounds there was Tedder and Montgomery and Eisenhower, who’d obviously come down to talk about the eh, you know, the, the landings. So [chuckles] because they didn’t know we existed but [chuckles] that was quite a, that was quite exciting really. Em but eh other than that, as I say, we were near Watford, so we were able to go to the theatre there if we wanted to. Em it, it was, it was really quite a good life. I can’t really complain about it. It would have been worse I think before I joined up because, of course, being in South London and working in County Hall that was quite a journey and eh there was bombing. It could be at times when there was bombing, or, or the night before there had been bombing. I remember once going through Kensington and somebody saying, “Oh, yes, that shelter. Five hundred was killed last night.” You, you know, because all those places were very, very badly hit. And so really it was much, much more dangerous before I was in the Service and [mumbles] I wanted to go to India. But unfortunately, I was married and I had to get my husband’s permission [chuckles] and he wouldn’t give it [chuckles]. I’ve always wanted to go to India [chuckles] but eh I never got there. I only got as far as Stanmore [chuckles]. But em, but as I say, it [pauses] we had, we had good food. We, we were, no well we had to, you know, work reasonably hard em and eh I, I don’t know if Ken might have mentioned he, [chuckles] of course we being at Command we knew exactly where all the units would go, all the Fighter Command and one day he phoned from London all very secret and said, “I can’t tell you where I’m going, but I’m going abroad.” Huh, so I said, “Yes, I know you are.” Because we’d sent [chuckles] we’d sent papers for the, for the unit. But em, so I suppose I worked, we often said “Oh, I wish we were doing something more,” you know, “more glamorous.” I suppose really, but I, I mean presumably, as I say, people do need their money don’t they? And, and, and eh, you, you know, it was certainly, it was quite, quite a busy office and eh and eh how much [unclear] [pause] Yes, we, we, we had one Squadron Leader who was a regular and he was very kind. He had his family living somewhere near and occasionally he’d say to Pat and I, “My wife’s invited you to a meal.” Which was very nice and it did mean a lot, I must admit, to, to go to a family again. So that, that was very nice and eh but otherwise, as I say, the, the officers were very nice as bosses but we didn’t have much contact really with them after that. Except once we did have, we had a lovely em party, um I think it was, oh I can’t, I can’t remember, a fancy dress party actually. We, we, we had on the camp a chappie called Carpenter. I remember his name he eh, he, he was entertainments officer and he managed to get all these costumes from one, one of the musicals, so we, you could either be an Austrian boy or an Austrian girl. [chuckles] Part of it and eh we eh, that was a, that was a, really a lovely, that was really a lovely do because, I suppose it was so unexpected, you know, and, and eh as I say, we, we certainly didn’t, didn’t have many drinks because the NAAFI I don’t think, I don’t know if they had beer, I suppose they did. But em mainly coffees, but em I know we had a very good time on, on eh, coffee and whatnot. But it was sort of quite memorable, you know. It was really quite good fun and eh and then of course I remember, I do remember once, we, everybody accepted lifts in those days and I remember once waiting at a bus stop and an officer drew up and it wasn’t that far to eh to the station, but he said [unclear] I think I was the only one and I got in. And he said, “I’ve just come back from Belsen.” He said, “It, I can’t describe it.” So he’d been in Belsen the day before. He said it was really, really terrible. So you did get pictures of the war like that, you know, it uh, but other than that we, we were very lucky really. But em, but, but it’s a wonderful experience to be, there’s so many different types that you’d never meet in the, well maybe more now, but certainly then you wouldn’t. It eh, you’d get, as I say, you’d get the Ops girl who were very Ops, if you know what I mean. And I remember one of them, not, not, nobody we really knew, just sort of the rumour went round. Obviously if you were, spent the night you, you had to get a pass, and apparently she hadn’t come back. And eh, I suppose she was hauled over the coals, obviously, and she said, “Well, I’m very sorry, but we were dining with the Halifaxes.” But that was Lord Halifax, I think he was the Foreign Minister or something. [chuckles] So they were that type if you know what I mean and eh, and, and then they would perhaps get cooks who did a marvellous job. They had to get up about three in the morning I think to light the fires in those days, but we, we were, had to spend a week in their hut at one time, for to do fire drill I think, and eh they, I think they rather resent, you see there was so much more class distinction in that, those days and I think they rather resented us and perhaps we resented them. Anyway, we were in their hut and one girl came in and said, “Oh, what a nice hut.” Or something to that effect and they didn’t actually [unclear] our huts [chuckles] We were scared stiff. [unclear] So you’ve got to, you see, you did mix with so many different types that eh. As I say, it doesn’t apply so much today but then it, there were divisions really and eh it was, it was so good to meet people from, not only different types, but different countries and, and eh, and of course, that was life you know, regulars generally rather, they, they, they like everything just so, where of course the volunteers were much easier. I must admit the boss I had was a much easier man than the Squadron Leader. But em they were all very, very nice to work for. I can’t eh, I, I can’t complain at all really. And eh so I was there for three and a half years. I think I was only at the billet for two, if I remember rightly because my, my friend, I think, I was, I think she was married at this time. Her husband, he’d been in Malta, during the, [mumbles] and he caught amoebic dysentery and he was really a very, very sick man and I think they sent him home and because he lived somewhere not too far away, I think she went to be with he and his mother. And fortunately I had a cousin, a well Ken’s cousin actually, who lived in Wembley. So after two years I went to em to stay with them and em they, they were quite an interesting family because Ken’s cousin was a really good ballet dancer. He worked for the Festival Ballet in the end. He was one of, one of the principals. But he was a trainee, he was a boy when I lived with them. So he would, he was quite an interesting person to be with, so even that last year I suppose it was, was quite interesting. I met a Canadian. I don’t know how or why, I can’t think. But we used to go to the pub once or twice. Well I’ve often, I’ve often wondered and thought, you know, the Dieppe raid, I wonder if he was in that because these were all ships that pass in the night really. And you often wonder, especially now, now I’m old, and can sit here, I often think “I wonder what happened to them?” And we, I knew a Sergeant in, you know, when we were on, in, in the camp and eh they used to say “Oh, I don’t know that they, they don’t seem to be doing much.” But of course, they were training them up for D-Day and you think “I wonder if he ever, if he ever got out of the war,” you know, which, possibly didn’t, if we, because it was so, so much, you know, it was so awful when it, when it, once it started. But, but as I say, I wouldn’t have missed the experience because it’s very good to meet all kinds of people isn’t it? And to, and to try to understand each other. I think this is the, this is an important thing, really. Because em we, I suppose we lived quite, you know, individual sort of lives at one time. But em, as I say, we often said, “Oh I wish we had a more glamorous job.” [background laughter] But eh, perhaps people received their weekly pay, which wasn’t very much [chuckles] were perhaps pleased we didn’t. Now I can’t think of anything else, dear to
GC: Can you remember D-Day?
ID: Sorry?
GC: Can you remember D-Day? What happened. Can you remember what happened on D-Day? Where you were?
ID: Oh. Not really, not really to make it clear. No I can’t. But I can only, I can remember all these planes going over. I can remember that. But of course, it wouldn’t have actually affected us because anybody that was on the camp, we, we were sort of stationary there, and anybody like the soldiers who, who were training on, they would have gone, I think, before. So, but I, that’s the only thing I can remember and I can’t remember em [pause] what was the, what was the first one? Em, we got em, [pause] we em. You know when the war over, the war in Europe was over I can’t, I think I was still working there then, but I can’t, I can’t remember anything clearly about that either.
GC: So you can’t remember VE day?
ID: Not, only, only as much as, of course, reading it in the paper and eh, as I say, I can, I can still hear these, all these planes going over. So that must have been the beginning of it all. I think I, I think I can remember us looking forward say “Thank God it’s started,” because we would say, every day, “When’s it going to begin?” Because it can’t stop until it begins. And so I do remember that, but I don’t remember any, anything else, not, not clearly. But I presume we would have just carried on doing our work in the office. And eh I can’t think we would have got, we wouldn’t have got any spare em any time off or anything like that. And we wouldn’t, of course, it was a very secret thing so you wouldn’t really know too much about it, you know, even, even in the Command you, they, they liked to keep their secrets obviously. But em, but as I say, it eh, it wasn’t a very exciting life really I led in the Services, but em I certainly, well enjoyed it, as much as you can enjoy anything in war time, you know, because you’ve always got that at the back of your mind. You pick up the paper and one day perhaps a battle ship has gone down or, or there’s been fighting and thousands of people have gone, so obviously you, you’ve got all that and you eh you know, it did affect you. There wasn’t so much emotion as there is now. There’s an awful lot of emotion these days, isn’t there, about everything? There wasn’t. Because I think eh if there had been all that emotion, I don’t think we could’ve coped, to be honest. You had to, well, you know, keep, keep calm and carry on sort of thing. Which is always said to us. But of course then you’ve obviously got people who, friends, we, I mean, I had a friend and her husband was a pilot and we heard that he was killed and eh, as I say, my cousin’s husband was killed. You know, all those things were, they, they did affect you very much. But I got just a nice little, little, well it was nice for me, to show how friendship really means something. I, as I tell you, I was billeted with Betty and we, we used to just catch the bus in the morning to go to the camp and there was a little shop there. I suppose it, I don’t know whether it sold antiques or, funny little shop it was really. And in the front of this shop, there was this little corkscrew. I think it was possibly Cornish, you know, you get the Cornish pixie, and it was lying there, and of course this shop was always closed and why I took such a fancy to it, I don’t know because I hadn’t got any bottles to open. But every morning I’d look at it and say, “Oh, I do like that. Oh, oh, it’s still there.” And one day I said, “Oh Betty, somebody’s bought it,” so she, so she said, you know, I think a few days after, it was my birthday and when, on my birthday, she said, “Here’s a little present for you.” And I’ve still got it. It’s a corkscrew with a little pixie. But as I say, why I took such a fancy to it, I can’t think. [chuckles] But it, you know, every day I checked it and, of course, I could never get in and buy it, you see, cos it was always closed and so she must have put in a lot of effort, she must have gone one lunchtime to buy it when the shop was open. But I’ve always thought about that every time I, I see it, I think of Betty. Because we were very, very good friends and then, of course, you drift away eventually, don’t you? But em, two or three friends I kept for many years, really, until, you know, until they died actually. But em, but I always think of that little incident, and it meant so much to me. [chuckles] Strange, isn’t it? [chuckles] But em other than that I, I’m really, as I say, I didn’t have a very exciting time.
GC: Did you go home a lot?
ID: Em quite, quite a bit. Yes, we used to have forty eight hours, I think. We, I suppose, I suppose about once a month, really, possibly. And eh, we lived, I don’t know if you know the Crystal Palace area, do you know Buelah Hill? You might not know Buelah Hill. It, it sort of goes em, it goes from, well from Knights Hill it comes up to Buelah Hill. It’s a long, long road actually. And we didn’t have so much bombing there but, while I was, while I was there one, one night em well we thought the house was coming down it shook. I can’t explain how it shook. And we had quite a longish garden, I suppose, to that tree there, you know, and then there was another road, and there was, about there was a house. And I think it was only a five hundred pounder fortunately, but it fell on that house and killed two people. So that’s the nearest, nearest I’ve, well the nearest I’ve been to a bomb so I, I mean, it’s very lucky really isn’t it? But, but I remember another occasion. I used to sometimes go, when I worked at County Hall, go to Ken up at Chelsea, he worked at Chelsea in those days, and one evening the siren had obviously gone and the, I couldn’t get in the front of the Town Hall because it was closed and I had to go round the back because there was this bomb warning and just as I got to the door I looked up and I could see this face on the roundel on his, on the plane and that’s the nearest I’ve been to a German plane. By the time I’d got in he’d dropped his bombs. Well I mean you know they can travel quite a way. [chuckles] That’s the nearest I’ve been. [chuckles]
GC: I mean, were you aware of what was happening in London with the bombing and like Coventry and Liverpool?
ID: Oh, very much so because, very much in London, because, you see, working at County Hall em what happened in County Hall was when it first, you know, when the war first started, it was all very quiet for a few months, and so they sent everybody to different places em because our nearest one was Tooting. We went to a fire station in Tooting and, of course, that was, that was quite, there was no work to do. It was terribly, terribly boring. But of course you would watch the firemen practicing and things like that. And we must have stayed there for, I can’t remember how long, but quite a time. But then everybody said, “Oh, what’s the point?, so everybody came back and did their normal job, in the normal places. Well, of course, being in County Hall which is just opposite Saint Thomas’s as you know, well of course, it’s a hotel now, it’s not open. But em consequently, of course, every night, and because Mother and I were the only ones, there wasn’t a man in the house, we had to take our, I think a man came with us, but we did have to do fire watching. So we, you know, we did take them two till, two till four or one till three or something. Anyway we had to take it, obviously cos everybody was expected to take their part and that wasn’t very pleasant really [unclear] you knew it was shell cases or something falling and of course when, when, where you lived, as you say, all them fires, we could see them from, from where we lived. Well, well, when I say see them, we could see that glow in the sky and and, as I say, we travelled, you see, to London every, every day and eh I, I can, as I say, I can remember passing through Pennington, Brixton which got an awful lot and em and of course eh all round there really it was eh and, and you know, some of the girls would come in who lived in different parts and say “Oh, it’s been terrible tonight.” I didn’t know the girl very well, but she was a lovely girl, I remember that worked in County Hall and one lady in Fern Hill and I remember one night her whole family went. [pause] Anyway this bomb just hit their house. So, as I say, even though some people were, well I consider we were very lucky, but even so, you never knew what was going to happen to you, you know, but em, that’s why I’m so sorry for these people now, you know, in that burnt out building, but I do think their milking it a lot, you know. Because, when, when you think of it during the war you might get, I don’t, ten incidents like that in a night.
GC: Was it easy to keep in touch with Ken while he was away and you was in Middlesex? Did you write a lot?
ID: Oh, well, well, he’d got, he’d got leave and I think we went away once to somebody, who knew somebody who was in Weymouth or somewhere like that. And em and we had one or two weekends, but it wasn’t very easy when once, of course, when once he went abroad. He was there for a fair time I suppose really. I’m sure he was. And of course I got, I, I didn’t have a, I suppose I got out of the Services three or four months or perhaps more before he did because you, you know, I don’t think it took all that long after the war for, for people like, you know, doing our job particularly and I know Ken had to go to, I think he went somewhere near Bournemouth for a time. They, they just sort of sent you to different places, you know, whereas, whereas, em with us they just, you know, said em “That’s it. Thank you very much.” But now of course the em it’s a museum now, Fighter Command. Yes, as I understand it, Barratts bought it. I don’t know how to, I, I did read that there were very expensive houses put on it. And Barratts also used the top of the house, you know, the big house. But I haven’t been myself so I don’t know. But I do know the big house is used now and they’ve got it, they’ve got a plotters’ room and I think it’s quite interesting em and various things. And of course the Air Officer Commanding’s office, you know. While I was there that was Leigh-Mallory. He, he was, he’d been very well known in twelve group. He was a Wing Commander then I think. Then he came to Stanmore and he, he was posted abroad somewhere and he, he bought it, as they used to say, and em and then we had another one called Park, I remember. I remember that. But of course Leigh-Mallory was quite well known, you know, anybody who was more or less [unclear] would know because, as I say, I think he planned a lot of wings, you know, he was very good at that kind of thing. But I’m not sure because obviously we didn’t see much of any of those people at all. But em, I know, another interesting thing I suppose is, my other friend, who I worked in the office with, was, had a billet on Stanmore Hill, and that was David em Selznick, [?] you know, the, well you see in the war we were very near the Elstree and all those. So she was there and she, she was so miserable. She would buy herself one thing. Then she said “I’ve got a little cell-like place . Nobody ever speaks to me.” [chuckles] And eh, and so eventually she said “I can’t stand this anymore,“ she said, “I’m going to desert.” [chuckles] I remember she got her big case and we said “Oh, we’ll come down to the station with you,” and of course we were walking through the grounds of the em Fighter Command and of course we felt so, we thought we were doing something so very dreadful and were worried in case somebody would discover us sort of helping Pat to desert. [chuckles] I don’t believe anybody, well she, she did get a doctor’s certificate. She really, she, some people aren’t suited to that kind of life, I think, and to be fair, I mean, Betty and I were together which makes so much difference, doesn’t it? And, and of course, in our billet, as I say, the only people that really didn’t care for us very much were the two servants. They got called up and we had a, such a lovely lady, who, because the old lady I think had dementia, they got her this lady as a housekeeper and she, she really sort of, well mothered us more or less in a way. And the em she, she had a daughter and a son, who was a pilot and after a while she came one day and she’d lost him. You know, that kind of thing you never forget. I can see her now, you know, it must have been so dreadful for her. But em, so there were those sad, very sad, really bad, you know, awful things happening. But em, but personally, you know, it’s like everything, it’s the luck of the draw, isn’t it, really. And all our family were lucky, in that, that respect apart from my cousin, who lost her husband, but she was the only one I think. But, you know, everybody, I mean, I had another cousin who was in the Merchant Navy and that, that was dreadful. They really did suffer in the Merchant. But he, I don’t know, he must have had a charmed time. He was, he really was a funny chap. He, he tickled, he always tickled me, cos he was always seemed to be [unclear] He was going to get married. So his mother said, “Well, you must get yourself a new suit.” So he went to Burtons or somebody, you see. So he said, “I want, I want a suit.” You know. “Well sir, what can I do?” “I want a suit,” he said. Em “Oh yes sir,” he said. “I know. We’ve got a fine Director’s suit.” [chuckles] So he said, “Why? Doesn’t it fit him?” [chuckles] I can always, I can just see him saying it. I don’t think he was, he was so harmless, you know, he didn’t [chuckles] [unclear] poor man, cos he was actually shaking when he, when he said that. But em, no it, I think now when I’m very old and can’t move very much, I do think quite a lot about the war years, really.
GC: Do you remember after the war? Coming back into civilian life?
ID: Yes. That wasn’t easy.
GC: No?
ID: No. Not easy because in some ways, it certainly wasn’t easy for the men either, because although, unless you’d had a terrible injury or something, em you had a certain freedom I mean, you see, we were married, but when I say freedom, we didn’t go mad, but I mean we, if we, if we met somebody as a friend, you know, and went dancing, you, you can’t sort of say, “Oh no, you don’t want to do that,” because you’ve got to live you life, haven’t you, when you’re there. But afterwards, of course, em money was very tight for most people. You see, Ken had only been, he’d be only about twenty when, you see, he didn’t, although he worked for the Town Hall, he was only on the bottom rung, so there wasn’t much climbing up really. And then after, you see, I was twenty seven when I came out, no twenty two, no about twenty six, I suppose. Well then you want to start a family, so we had Sue and of course, you know, with money being tight and having had quite an easy, you didn’t have to, you didn’t have to think about whether you, where the food came from. It was all, you know, it was easy in some ways and no I don’t think it was too easy for people at the beginning until, and of course housing was very difficult. We were lucky to get a little house in Putney, because our friends, he, he was a pacifist actually, but he did work for the Forestry Commission, and after, after the war he got a job teaching in the Sudan, so we bought their little house in Putney and of course, there was a lot to do. It hadn’t been, it hadn’t been decorated for years and what I did do, was eh, because she’d done it, because Ron had been a university student, she’d taken university people, you know, to help with the money, and so when we, she said, “Well you’ll find I’ve got Lucy who’s an Indian. She’s got another three months.” She was doing her PhD. She said, “Would you consider taking her?” Said, “Oh, yes. Fine.” So we had that, that was an experience too. Because she was a lovely woman and we got on so well and she was a Christian Indian, and it was just the end of her, you know, she’d done all her exams. Just waiting to go back to India really. And she met a Hindu, and they, I don’t know, they went for six weeks on the Continent. Anyway, when she came back, I don’t, I don’t know anything what actually happened. She’d got this message once that he’d, he’d, I don’t know where he’d gone, or he was married or something. And because, being an Indian, you know how they, they sort of [unclear] you know. I mean she was terrible really, she was terribly upset. But of course Sue was a little girl of about eighteen months. And she thought this was great fun, so, poor old Lucy was going [unclear] and [chuckles] Sue was, Sue was doing the same thing. But I often wonder, well we got on so well, and I, she said, you know, she promised to write. I didn’t know her address in India, so I couldn’t write to her. And after a while cos her PhD degree came through and somebody phoned and said “We’d like”, “Would you please bring her degree to,” em, oh it was a long way, London University, which is a long way. Cos I had Sue as a little tiny girl. Well I, I said yes, so I, anyway, got on the bus and these two men. So I, you know, as soon as I, “Ooh, how’s Lucy?” Really we had, really got on well. She was a lovely person. She was about forty, she wasn’t a young girl. And they hardly answered me and I never heard from Lucy again and I often wonder what happened to her. I mean, it’s quite a sad thing really because she, she was so clever, obviously, to get a PhD and I, I don’t know. So, so in that res, that was another way of life, it was quite interesting really, but you know, because, then we had a medical student who was at Saint Thomas’s and after that we had a girl who was doing Geography and [chuckles] I can well imagine she was a teacher because I can remember once going into her room and she had a go at me, “This is dusty.” [chuckles] And, and the houses, because it was [mumbles] Victorian houses, you see, and you had to go in the back, you had to walk through the kitchen and eh, or you could just go round because it was the last one and there was a space between and she had a friend, and I remember, she did, I suppose she knocked on the door and she said em, “Yes, come through. It’s quite alright. Come through.” [chuckles] So you, it’s amazing the difference in people that um, you know, that’s interesting really. I wouldn’t have missed that really because it was very, very interesting to meet different eh types. And we had two Polish fellows next door, who, who’d, well I’d say, you know, of course, Poland’s had a dreadful time, but em, and of course, we were all decorate. This old place and the wallpaper had been on for ages and ages. And of course, we were all young, you see, we were twenty sevenish and so you know they would come in, “Can we help you?” So we’d have, you know, that was really quite fun and I’ve em I’ve [unclear] the other day at least. I like these little Victorian houses. They’re now selling for eight hundred thousand [chuckles] Of course, it was just round the corner from the, from the river.
GC: Yeah.
ID: They’re only, you know, they were very old, well they were Victorian. But, yes, you know, it, everything, everything is an experience isn’t it?
GC: Mmm.
ID: [unclear] Mustn’t make you. I can make him [unclear] because I find now Ken can’t hear very well. Consequently, you know you’re watching something, you know, you make a little casual remark which it doesn’t really matter if it’s answered or not and Ken just maybe, as I get, “Now, what is it now?” [chuckles] And the time, then I repeat some silly thing, “I don’t like the look of her hair,” or something, but I now have said it four times, but it really doesn’t matter. So I really, I know I natter an awful lot.
GC: I was, I was actually going to ask, is there anything else you can remember, from the war, that stands out in your memory?
ID: Well, well, as I say, only that bombing was eh I can remember. I can remember that. I don’t think, you see, we weren’t evacuated or anything like that. We were, well we were evacuated as I tell you with the em, I’m just trying to think really. Em [pause] of course, I mean, we moved house, my mother moved house . Everything was very, you know, a lot of the things that you treasured. I remember mother had a lovely lot of letters from her father, who used to write to the family every week. And, of course, you’d put those, and then perhaps you moved and they’re gone and you don’t, you don’t eh, you know, you don’t see them anymore, those kind of things. But, you see, we weren’t bombed out fortunately. And eh, and as I say, travelling wasn’t funny at all. It was very difficult and you had to wait a long time, but em, I can’t, I know one night we were very worried. Ken went to meet his cousin. His cousin would insist on going to a party and I think that was when the bomb, the eh, the docks were bomb, well not bombed, well they were bombed, but, you know, they had the fire things first didn’t they and eh you could see all this red in the sky and obviously she was, I think, she was in Dulwich, which was another place that had a lot of bombing and obviously, you know, we worried about things like that. And, as I say, fire watching wasn’t particularly pleasant really you know getting up in the middle of the night and, but I can’t say, you know, I, I [unclear] fortunately I never had many real, real experiences in anything.
GC: Well, well, in that case, I am going to say thank you very much.
ID: Well I hope it, you see, I knew, I don’t know anything about Bomber Command unfortunately. So and as I say em my em my WAAF days weren’t, weren’t, were not terribly interesting to anybody else I don’t think. You know, not as, because they weren’t, weren’t too much different from my ordinary life, if you know what I mean. You see, that’s the thing but em that’s, I think that’s all I can remember.
GC: Well, as I said, I will say thank you very much on behalf of the Archive. I’m gonna apologise for the background noise. There is a main road and a fair [?] next door to us. But thank you very much, it’s been a pleasure to spend the afternoon.
ID: Oh, that’s alright dear. You know, I don’t know if you can use it. It seems not that all that interesting to me, but em that’s as much, well, as I say, I think I can remember pretty clearly, you know, I think I’m lucky in that respect because some people are, well I think you do remember when you’re old don’t you. Well they say that you, you know, your long memory is better than your short memory. So I possibly couldn’t remember what I said two minutes ago. [chuckles]
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Iris Done
Creator
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Gemma Clapton
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-10
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ADoneI170710
Format
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01:11:24 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Description
An account of the resource
Upon leaving school until her marriage, Iris worked for London County Council. After her marriage she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She reported to Bridgenorth in June 1942 to be sworn in. After that, she went to Morecambe where she learned to drill and also had various injections. As she was already a shorthand typist, she didn’t have to complete any trade training and therefore, upon completion of initial training, she was posted to Fighter Command at RAF Bentley Priory, Stanmore, where she stayed for the duration of the war. She worked in the Command Accounts Department. She was envious of the plotters, but accepted her job as a necessity. Iris describes her experiences working in central London before enlistment and afterwards when she visited her home in the south of the capital. With so many senior officers on site, entertainment at RAF Bentley Priory was first class, such as an open air concert by Glenn Miller. On the lead up to D-Day, she witnessed Field Marshall Montgomery, General Eisenhower and Arthur Tedder walking around the grounds in private discussions. Iris was billeted with civilians. She looks back with fondness and enjoyed the comradeship the forces provided. Demob came shortly after the end of the war, and with it the realities of financial hardship. This made Iris aware that she had been very lucky to serve in relative comfort.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Tricia Marshall
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Middlesex
England--London
England--Shropshire
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1944
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
demobilisation
Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1890 - 1969)
entertainment
ground personnel
military living conditions
Montgomery, Bernard (1887 - 1976)
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Bridgnorth
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/805/10786/PDoneK1701.2.jpg
f112b7442be9600eea1c123449efb219
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/805/10786/ADoneK170608.1.mp3
0dd97d59101f15a2319a077ad7c46756
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
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Done, Ken
K Done
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Ken Done (Royal Air Force). He served in Air Sea Rescue.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-08
Rights
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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
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Done, K
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GC: First of all, I’d like to say thank you for agreeing to talk to us and, em, tell me a little bit about your life before the war, before you joined up.
KD: Mother and father were good, were very good parents and eh, at eleven I managed to obtain a scholarship and went to a marvellous school called Battersea Grammar School where there was, not only a marvellous set of masters, but also a Cadet Corpss. My father, having first served in the 1st Lifeguards of the Household Cavalry, was able to get me smart when I joined up into the Cadet Corps, which incidentally, when I left school, I ended up as a Company Sergeant Major. When [coughs] I finished my education and I eventually got a job, a permanent job, as a junior clerk in the Borough Treasurers’ Department of Chelsea Town Hall in London, before it became joined with the Royal [clears throat] Kensington. The point is that during the few months [coughs] before the actual opening of the War there was many things to do that I was given. For example, I was called in one day by the Borough Treasurer and told to take two cars, here’s an authority, go into any shop, anywhere, and buy blankets. Well I was eighteen at the time. This carried on until when I wanted to em join up I found that I was classed as reserved occupation, but, being in London during the Blitz, my anger was such that I wanted to get up in an aircraft and do something about it. Unfortunately, although I was exceedingly fit I was found to have poor colour sight which prevented me from going into aircrew. However I trained as a Wireless Operator and was posted to a camp, aerodrome, called Castle Camps right on the bottom of Cambridgeshire. I then at a one particular time, and I will not worry you how it happened, but I suddenly discovered that there was something called Air Sea Rescue and this attracted me considerably and consequently I managed to get a posting to Calshot one of the main depots of the Royal Air Force after it became joined with the Royal Flying Corps plus the Royal Naval Air Service and from there I was then crewed up onto my first boat which was known as a Hans and Dawson, a peculiar name but the local bus service was the Hans and Dawson Bus Company and this new type of craft looked as though it had got two decks, hence its nickname, and I joined and we were on orders to take up our position up at Grimsby. On the eh way there, because, being a short little lad, I’ve also been rather cocky, and as we steamed up the channel, I checked everything electrical. I even uncovered the mains em searchlight and people were just looking at me and eh making no comment and then it got dusk and suddenly there was a call for sparks. I thought “Oh, that’s me” and the skipper said “Dover Castle are calling you.” Now I was a trained, and quite good, as a Wireless Op, but I hadn’t worked very much with the lamp and I couldn’t read a darned thing. The skipper said “Give him T”, then came another one, and when it was ended he quietly said, “Give him R”, and then “Wellington Dock, Coxwain”, and I’m damned certain he knew where to go. However, I did recoup myself. There was, what we would call, a do and there was a large number of Air Sea Rescue boats, Motor Gunboats and Motor Torpedo boats and there was some exercise or fencing of, by trying to get the Luftwaffe up and be waiting for them and frequently we would stay at Dover for some, a month or more and we were frequently posted out to rendezvous just off of em [pause] I’m pausing. On the South Coast. But we also went in company with a smaller, faster type of boat, who always steamed off quickly. Because I had been in Station Headquarters at Castle Camps I was well aware of one time pads for coding. The one thing we were waiting for, of course, would be “Return to Base”. On this occasion, I had coded this before we left Dover and placed it in front of me. As soon as it came through, “Return to Base”, I was able to tell the Skipper immediately. It was the only time that anyone ever queried my work, but I pointed out that it was probably still decoding in. Right. We then got back to Dover before the Whaleback and much to my great pleasure, my crew were pulling the legs of the crew of the Whaleback, and one of them I heard say, “You wanna get yourself a decent Wireless Operator”, and I then knew that I had been accepted as a member of the crew. From that point we eventually went up to Grimsby. At this time, what was happening, is that the system was to have a duty boat standing by in case there was a call out and it was then realised by the people that matter that if the call out was [unclear] some thirty or forty miles out, it would take us some time to get there, normally in the dark, and what then happened later on as we came down south to Gorlestone near Yarmouth, is that boats were sent out on rendezvous to station themselves under the flightpaths of the bombers when they were going out and we would go out before then, being if they were in trouble we were always quicker on the pick up. From there, after time, we had D-Day. This was a terrible time for the Army and what they were doing on the shore, but we were concerned because we had been on rendezvous, told by the Skipper that this was D-Day, and then we were given a message, “Carry on”, and he said “Start up”, and we closed in round to the ring of the landing area, em and em the em this simple message “Carry on,” told us that the landing had been achieved. With the success of the Allied Armies carrying the War through France back towards Germany, obviously the ports along the north coast of France, Belgium etcetera, came into the Allies hands and my unit as a whole, was then posted over to Ostend. Now at Ostend we did quite a lot of work but fortunately very little necessity to pick anyone up. It may be a little unkind but some eh eh an example of service humour is that em we were billeted in the top floors of a hotel. One night about four men came home, climbing the stairs and being absolutely doubled over with laughter. They wouldn’t tell us what was happening, but suggested simply that we went to see the Black Cat Café and told us where it was. A day or two afterwards, I and three friends said “Let’s go and find this café,” and, as I have already said, I was rather cocky, I led. I pushed the door open and em I will just use the, say that it was the F word, to go out, which rather surprised me but he smiled and offered four seats and apparently the British Army soldiers had told him everything back to front. I will not tell you what was going on. He desc, I won’t tell you how he described the Belgian beer. I won’t tell you what he offered his two daughters for and when we left he gave me a nice smile and said, “Hello, hello, don’t come again.” After the War was over it then occurred that the main German Army had been fighting on the Continent but there was a large contingent of the German Army in Norway. There was a concern as to whether these, these section of the Briti, the German Army had not been in terrible fighting and whether they would surrender and in consequence they sent a section of the Army, either the SAS or the Commandos, over to Norway by air and they posted six boats over to the west coat, coast of Norway to cover their flight and we were in Norway for some nine months. Among other things, eh, what had happened in em, and this is for Bomber Command, a flight I believe of Blenheims had gone on a Christmas, either 1941 or 1942, to strafe Herdler Airfield, which was just a little trip up the field from Bergen and during the raid, two of the Blenheims had collided, dropped into the lake on the island. The German authorities made their inspections and decided to leave them there and, among other things, em the Allied em Graveyard Executive wanted the bodies to be recovered such as it was and we got together a gang of German POW’s and em the number of people of em the Navy or the Royal Air Force in Norway at that time was very small and it was arranged to give them a proper ceremonial burial. Because most of my crew had to do pallbearing, the only people officially behind was an elderly Flight Sergeant or Warrant Officer, followed by three people, including myself, as the main contingent and to our great pleasure and pride we were then followed by masses, literally masses, of the Norwegian people to show their gratitude for what we had done, or these men had done, for them and em the only other thing that stands in my mind is that our second coxwain was em because we were fly, going up and down the west coast, and only one Wireless Operator, I made arrangements with a local RAF Wireless Station to call them every day at midday to find if there were any further instructions for us. On this day, after taking down the correct messages, I received a personal message for Corporal Frank Standon saying that he was now the father of a son and that wife and ba, child were very fit and well. I showed this first to the Skipper and suggested that we wet his head, which the Skipper immediately agreed and we had, we had all got a tot of rum. He then handed this to Frank and then we all congratulated him. On our way back when we were very cold, we were going via Denmark and unfortunately [unclears] our centre engine went for a burton. We called into Ytteborg for a weekend and then staggered to Copenhagen whilst the other boats, the other five, steamed off home. When we got to Copenhagen, we then, we, the Skipper, sent messages asking for a new engine. Apparently this was put to one side for some time until in the end he was so disgusted he sent a message addressed to Air Ministry, to Bomber, to Fighter Command, to each Naval Officer in charge of any particular area, to em our own Headquarters and this took up a large amount, simply for the message to say “Please reply to my message dated so and so”. We got our new engine and away we went. We got through the Kiel Canal and somewhere off the Elb we’d run into a fog. You couldn’t see one end of the boat to the other, it was so thick. The Skipper asked and said “I want to pinpoint a bell buoy”, and he got fed up when people said “It’s on the starboard bow. Oh no it’s not it’s in the portside”, and he said “Oh, to hell with this, drop the hook.” He then said “Sparks, get on to Cooks [unclear] and get the German lifeboat out. We won the War. They might as well do some work for us.” Which I did. We waited. We waited, and finally, when the fog had lifted, I got a vessel flashing to me. Apparently they wouldn’t come close So I remembered some German from school and said, “Komm”. K O double M. To which they replied M I N E N. Minen. And there was a deadly hush in the Wheelhouse when I said “I’m sorry Skipper but we’ve landed in a minefield.” However, we got out of it, managed then to scramble home and consider putting our uniform off and civvy clothes on. Finish.
GC: Can I ask you about D-Day? What you actually remember of D-Day, please?
KD: Well [pause] I won’t say we were ashamed, but they’d made such an effort, and they’d made, all the carnage that went on, they did get a foothold. But what we were doing is to be ready, not necessarily aircraft or anybody and there was a, there was a shore, there was a Armada and dotted round were the rescue boats. So we were standing by all the time, but we didn’t, we weren’t called, so that my main feeling about D-Day itself was to hear “Thank God. Carry on.”
GC: How about em, training? What was the training regime like to, to
KD: The?
GC: The training regime? When you was learning your trade.
KD: Oh, em I was eh pushed up to Blackpool and had to start learning the Morse Code which was devilishly difficult. But then em once you had learnt that it was a question of continuously sending and receiving in order to get a simple [pause] signal, and I don’t mean the whole signal, I mean a letter, to be able to recognise it instantly without having to think. But em fortunately and em something else did happen to me at eh Castle Camps. I had been posted to Station Headquarters at the Signals and em again it must have been another idea at Air Ministry, to save time in training WAAF they sent some of them to various aerodromes to, and instructed the Signals Sections to teach them the code before they went up to do their full training and who was, who was posted, to teach them, [chuckles] was Ken. I had about six girls and em I realised that they were absolutely green. I even got the eh Flight Sergeant to come in so that I could explain to them what a Corporal was, what a Sergeant was, and things like this and em they always thought of it as a dot and a dash. But it’s not it’s a dit and a dah, because that’s how it sounds when it comes over. So I got them to sort me out with a em [pause] a key, a morse key, so that they could practice with it etcetera and some years after the war, Iris and I were down at em Bournemouth and we went to a Tea Dance and em I thought that Iris was a bit fool for wanting to go but em this woman, about our age, and her husband came up and she said, “You won’t remember me, but I was one of the girls,” she said, “And your training put us absolutely streets ahead of everybody else.” So eh I did a bit of good and eh [pause] I suppose in summing up, other friends of mine have said that [pause] instead of being in, instead of being seated on a, on a aerodrome, taking down Morse and sending messages, these were necessary but at the same time we were actually the only other section of the Air Force as a whole. I mean, you’ve got to have cooks, drivers etcetera, but we were active [emphasis] and also we were saving life instead of taking it, and it was quite satisfying.
GC: Can you remember the first time you went to sea? Did you have your sea legs?
KD: The first time, well I told you just now, how I’d em felt alright going up the channel, but when we got to Grimsby and eh it was horrible. I, I for some time, I eh had to sit on the eh quay with a bucket between me legs. Until one day when we were further south and came ashore at Gorlestone and was walking back to the billets, I thought to myself “There’s something different.” And I realised that I hadn’t been sick. So I’d got my sea legs. I could then go down the Engine Room and give them a hand down there and that seems strange, but the type of, and I can show you a photograph, the way they started up the engines, there was a big air intake, and in order to force it, you had a tennis, table tennis bat, with a hole in it, so whilst there were three of these on each engine, so I’d hold two of them for him whilst he [unclear] then he’d press the button. So, I, and they taught me how to splice ropes, knots and things like this and I, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But em [pause] I’m going to be personal. Do you go to church?
GC: No.
KD: Do you feel that you are a Christian?
GC: Yes
KD: Right. Now I go to church, not because I’m a goody, goody. I’m a stupid old fool. But I feel that I need help and it’s always helped me. But, I have said, I think, that I was always fit and I’d spend as much time as I could in the gym, the gymnasium and eh I then realised that the human body is one of the most glorious organisation that I’ve ever met. It really is fantastic and you have to believe that Christ was born among other things, but there’s his birth, Mary’s virginity, etcetera. I could, one thing when I was going, rehearsing, I was asking one of the curates that em it takes a thousand years or more and yet, what was the man’s name? Darwin, said you know about the way life existed and I said that according to the Bible, He made the world in seven, in six days, and rested. How can this come about? And he said, “It’s simple. A thousand years on His side is only a second in ours”. See what I mean? So I could accept this, then I could accept eventually. But what I found difficult, is another life, and a man had to die before he got there.
GC: Mmm.
KD: We were, out of Gorlestone and eh we hadn’t, we used to get a bit of noise because that might be rendezvous Z and this is rendezvous B and we were here and they’d do a pick up. Then the next day we’d be there and they’d have a pick up here and we got so fed up with this and eh we were on the rendezvous, it was a lovely day, and it was only a little bit loppy and we thought it was calm. The sun was shining, the distance was perfect [coughs] and I did the first watch and my oppo had his lunch and came up and I went up onto the Bridge to have a fag. Now we also had a receiver in the Wheelhouse on five hundred kc’s. The moment we set off I switched that on because that was the rescue five hundred and as clear as a bell I heard “Mayday, mayday, mayday.” And there was a button, among other things, emergency, and I thought “I’d love to push that!” I dived into the Wheelhouse and pushed it. Everybody jumped into everything, the engine started up, the Skipper “What’s on?” I said “A mayday call” and we could hear what control told him. He was a young American fighter pilot and he’d ran out, stayed out too long. And em as we listened, eh all boats were called Seagull, but they had numbers, and my number was three zero and eh control said, and call told him to, Victor on a particular line of flight and call Seagull three zero. I looked at the Skipper and raised my eyebrows, he nodded and I took it from there. I called him, “This is Seagull three zero,” and I talked to that bloke and em I wasn’t doing anything wrong but normally it’s “So and so, so and so, this is so and so,” and I’d say, “So and so, this is so and so.” But I threw that away and just talked to him as though he was on the ‘phone. And eh I said, “To begin with, we’re good at this. We’re well trained. We will find you. [emphasis] Nobody on this boat will want to go home until you are on board. We will find you [emphasis] and I sense that you can still do some things? If you check up, down, sideways, back and front and you are satisfied that you are alone. Do you need a seatbelt, because you are going to let, undo it later on?” Do you see what I mean? Then I said is eh, I had to be careful what I was saying, what might have been something very new in his cockpit, but I said “Look around. Is there anything else you can disconnect?” and so we went. And em consequently we were getting on alright. Then I said, “Hang on. Somebody is, there’s a lot of shouting.” I said, “We can see you. We can see you. I’m looking at you. Can you see us?” He said, “No.” I said, “Come on. I told you before we’d got our levers up against the stops. We are absolutely tearing. We must be leaving a wake at least a mile long. Look dead ahead and look for the wake.” He came straight back, “I can see you.” “Can you see the red and white squares?” “Yes.” And I said, “That’s us, buddy boy!” And you, you could, he was laughing. [pause] [sigh] Anyway he said, [sigh] “I’m coming down now boys. Look after me.” And I just finished up, it only took two or three minutes and walked on deck and the foredeck to say, cocky as usual, “I am Seagull three zero.” And I was so shocked. I don’t know what happened. It might have been a, what we would call, a Roman Candle. I just don’t know. And yet, here he was, on the stretcher in the sick bay and not a sign on him, and that, something, that if the, our bodies are so wonderful, then what controls it must be even more wonderful and I therefore cannot accept that it’s thrown away on a, rubbish dump and so I have accepted that there is an afterlife. Now, I’m not asking you, I’m saying, this is me. But even after all these years, did I do anything wrong. I don’t know. I just don’t know.
GC: Let’s, let’s find something happy. Tell me about Iris. How did you meet Iris?
KD: Well, em, [pause] in my day you had what you call matriculation which was em an examination. Do you want to switch that off? Em, which would be your first step toward going to University, or you could get school certificate. Now you had to do maths, the three maths, a language, em geom, em history, geography, etcetera, etcetera, and I could hold my own on everything except, I could never understand, I still can’t, instead of going to school at the beginning of a school year in September, I was pushed down there in Easter. [emphasis] I don’t know why. Now when we came to the examinations, I was still holding my own, but [emphasis] I hadn’t been doing English grammar, which, you needed grammar, I didn’t know what a noun was, I didn’t know what a em adjective was, so I couldn’t understand why, in French, they had to put. Do you see what I mean? And I failed. The whole lot. No. I got through the others, but I didn’t get, eh they kept me down for another year. But instead of being able to concentrate on the French, I had to still work hard because I might have boobed on the others. Do you see what I mean? So that em it eh, it irritated me somewhat but em when I left school em I felt, right, I’m gonna learn some of this French and I went to an evening class, one for gymnastics, one for French and when I went there I met a chap, a charming man, fellow. Iris knew their name because he lived not far from her and eh he wanted to learn to dance so I went with him for that. And eh elderly ladies started so we could do the waltz and eh he then wanted to go to the students’ dance. So I said “Alright, I’ll come with you,” and that’s where I met Iris. And eh I thought “Oh, she’s nice,” and I was a bit canny cos I thought, I’ll walk her home but I wanna [unclear] well yes. “Where do you live?” Oh, yeah. “Can I walk you home?” I thought that’s alright and em that’s how it started.
GC: Did you get married before the war, or?
KD: No. In the war.
GC: In the war?
KD: Nineteen forty two.
GC: And she was serving?
KD: Hmmm?
GC: She was serving?
KD: Yes.
GC: She was in the
KD: No. She wasn’t in the Service at the time but I was, and eh I didn’t really want to get married because, em for some reason, her parents had split up and the father had gone, and the mother was quite a controlling person, and em she was really against, as I said earlier, into em a factory or anything like this. And so she finally decided to go into the WAAF and em it was, yes, I had done my square bashing and learning the Morse Code at Blackpool, had a break of a week, then went down to Castle Camps to learn all about the wireless sets and eh she then says she’d got her papers and she would like to go in as a married woman, and I sent her, without thinking, I sent a telegram back simply saying “Yes.” So she had to go and tell my parents and organise things but em I had been going to, I’d been confirmed, and there was, in West Norwood, Gypsy Hill and eh Gyps, J Y P, Guild of Young People and as I walked her home there was a girl talking to some boys and apparently I knew her as Vera Ford and it was Iris’s cousin and eh the mother really was a, a so and so. My mother was good, but I look back on it now and she ruled the roost rather, and anyway I, I said to her em “Can I see you tomorrow?” So, well in those days you either carried a em umbrella or a Macintosh and so I went up, went in, met her mother and we went off, walked, over the common and we’d, the house was on that side, but instead of crossing the road down there and coming up this way, we still, on this side, until we were opposite and the traffic wasn’t so much. We were halfway across the road when suddenly the front door was flung open, her mother came storming out, flung open the gate and she was into the middle of the road. She nearly knocked me over by pushing me away, “Oh, Iris, Iris. What’s happened? What’s happened?” [background noise] Oh, yes. There was, and then at other times em I was suggesting something and she [background noise] turned round, in front of me, “Oh Iris. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” [background noise] And em em she belittled me quite a bit, but anyway, that’s it. But that was em in forty two. So that’s fifty eight, sixty eight, seventy five. [background noise].
GC: Wow!
KD: Well if you go in there, you see, we had a card from our friend, Elizabeth. [background noise]
GC: You’ve earnt it. You’ve earnt it. So you, you, you’ve done your service. Is there any incident or, can you remember the crew who you served with? Can you?
KD: The?
GC: Can you remember the crew that you served with? What they were like? As a crew?
KD: I, not all of them. There’s one bloke, he’s in these, our magazines, and he actually went on to the boats, immediately he went in as motorboat crew and, as I say, he was a coxwain, and he did a helluva lot of eh pick ups. Em, one for example they had a meeting, em only eh three or four months ago and there’s photographs of Frank, he’s still alive, talking to the Duke of York, and em after he’d finished talking, someone near him, Frank, said “I heard what you were saying to the Duke, but if you hadn’t ‘ve picked that crew up, said it was, I heard you say Stirling,” and eh, he said, “If you hadn’t picked him up I wouldn’t be here. My father was one of the people you picked up.” And that was just off the Hook of Holland. That was something. So that from an activity point of view, Frank is the person, really is, but em, as I say, I wanted to know how it actually happened. How we got there. Now, I think that’s about as much as I can go.
GC: That’s okay. So, is there anything else you would like to go down on the, on the, on the history? Is there anything else you can think of that would look or sound good?
KD: Em, [pause] I don’t think so.
GC: No. Are you happy?
KD: Can I show you some,
GC: Can I? I was just going to say thank you very much for talking to us this afternoon. It’s been an absolute pleasure and an honour and on behalf of the International Bomber Command I would like to say thank you very much.
KD: Well, can I just show you a
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 Ken Done
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gemma Clapton
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-08
Rights
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ADoneK170608, PDoneK1701
Format
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00:51:16 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Ken Done served as a wireless operator on Air Sea Rescue. Upon leaving Battersea Grammar School aged 14, he was employed at Chelsea Town Hall as a junior clerk. When the war started, he discovered he was in a reserved occupation and unable to enlist. However, suffering The Blitz was too much and after being rejected for aircrew because of colour blindness, he eventually enlisted as a wireless operator. He became aware of Air Sea Rescue and managed to arrange a posting to RAF Calshot, from where he was allocated to a crew. Postings to Grimsby and Gorleston-on-Sea followed. It was soon realised that rescues from land were taking too long to reach aircrew from ditched or shot down aircraft and the boats used to pre-position in the North Sea or Channel along the routes aircraft were expected to fly. During the D-Day Landings, the Air Sea Rescue boats provided support, and he was later stationed in Ostend and then Norway. Whilst there, the crews from the rescue boats were involved in the recovery and subsequent military funeral of two crews from Blenheim aircraft that had collided during an operation near Bergen earlier in the war. He also talks about trying to save a young American pilot, but unfortunately, they were unable to save his life. He talks about meeting his wife and getting married in 1942. His wife became a WAAF.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Tricia Marshall
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Lincolnshire
England--Hampshire
England--London
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Norway
Norway--Bergen
Belgium
Belgium--Ostend
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1944
1945
air sea rescue
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
ditching
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Calshot
Stirling
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/832/10823/PGardnerHS1701.1.jpg
f02b7da4e2822a666278417321f431bc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/832/10823/AGardnerHS171101.2.mp3
260ed726b523710ad64342a7d84b1015
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
Gardner, Harold Stanley
H S Gardner
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Harold Gardner (1923 - 2022, 1801381, 2606144 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 106 and 189 Squadrons.
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
2017-11-01
Rights
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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
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Gardner, HS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Hal Gardner. The interview is taking place at Mr Gardner’s home in Saltdean, Sussex on the 1st of May 2017. Hal, could you say a bit about where you were born and your early life?
[recording paused]
DM: I’ll just make a correction to the date we are recording. It’s the 1st of November 2017. Thank you. Ok Hal, so if you could talk a bit about your, where you were born and growing up.
HG: I was born in Brighton. I’m a Brightonian and my father got a house after we’d had a flat initially because my mother, we, I had a sister of course a bit younger than myself and we started living in Brighton at Bevendean. Initially I went to school at St John’s School in Brighton until I was about eleven and then I sat the Eleven Plus Examination. Didn’t quite make the Grammar School but I had to sit again and I was an in between person and they put me in to the Brighton Intermediate School close to St Peter’s Church. That was my starting back to school. A very good school. I learned quite a lot. Good masters, good school and I progressed up to about fourteen when suddenly when I was on holiday, my father was in the Brighton and Hove General Worthing Gas Company in those days said he wanted to get me in to the Gas Company. And I had a few tears. I said, but I was fourteen then I wanted to be in the bank. He said, ‘Well, I think this is going to be what I think for you.’ And he, what he basically, sent me right from Hampshire on a coach on my own to sit this examination in Brighton and which I passed with a lot of other guys and I think there was about twenty at the time. And I was taken as an apprentice on Brighton and Hove And Worthing Gas Company in 1937. I wasn’t happy in the circumstances because I didn’t want to be in the Gas Company. But however, I got on with it and we were taught the trade, suppliers of gas, of how to make pipes fitted. How to make metres fitted. All the things you would know and I progressed from them up ‘til when I was about seventeen going with a skilled fitter to learn the trade. At seventeen I was called suddenly for no reason. I still do not know the reason. I was called by the, Ray Hanson, technical manager and he said, in his office, he said, ‘Gardner,’ he says, ‘We’re going to put you in the showroom.’ Now if you think that was around about 1940 just about the war time I couldn’t understand why they picked me because there was about fifteen all doing the same trade. Why they wanted me to go in the showroom. Never answered that unless they thought perhaps I was smarter I don’t know. Anyway, I was put in this showroom at Church Street which is still there these days although it’s a café now. And I went there first and when I got there I was quite surprised because apart from me in the showroom there were other more senior men and that was for selling gas cookers, selling gas fires. It was a totally different thing than I ever thought about. Anyway, I progressed quite well in there and I liked it. And suddenly of course about that year 1940 which was, that was in, we had the Battle of Britain then if I remember and what happened then was the government abandoned the Air Defence Cadet Corps and brought in the Air Training Corps that year I think. So I knew I was getting that I was seventeen that I probably would want to be called up because I was in Brighton and could see all the Spitfires. And that was with a lot of other guys. We just wanted, we thought this is something we could do. Fly a Spitfire. And so I had two, a couple of months I think in the Air Cadets and then I volunteered for training in the Royal Air Force. Now, to fly in the Royal Air Force in those days you had to volunteer. You could not be called up. So, I mean we were all or the ones that also went along we were all excited. What we were all thinking, so many of the lads of my age then thought yeah, a Spitfire. I mean it’s still a wonderful aircraft. And so we, we, you know we were accepted on the Air Force as air crew on a PNB scheme which is a pilot, navigator, bomb aimer scheme and I think it was, let me see I was eighteen. I think about 1941 I was called up and went to St John’s Wood in London with a lot of other Air Cadets and there we had basic training. One of the first thing I noticed too was in their uniform, in their glengarry hats we had a white flash which denoted that we were aircrew and had volunteered. So, of course it gave us a bit of an uplift of that and we thought we were the cats whiskers you know. Anyway, so I went then and got basic training in London. Sent to ITW, Initial Training Wing in Newquay and learned all the basics of navigation. A bit about flying. A bit about all aspects of the Air Force and as we were going to be aircrew the ones that were going to be pilots or wanted to be pilots were sent to Sywell in Nottingham after we’d passed the exams in Newquay. And we all did about one trip I think in a Tiger Moth and from that very trip they then sent me back to Manchester. Heaton Park where there was hundreds of air crew. All of us waiting to be posted somewhere for flying. Either in Canada or in South Africa. Those were the two main things. I was given the chance and went to Canada. And we were sent to Glasgow and got on a ship there. That was Queen Elizabeth Two. No. When is, that can’t be the Queen Elizabeth. I think the Queen Mary. It was the biggest ship in those times and there was about six of us in the cabin. We thought we were great then because going across to Canada in that escorted by Spitfires I mean we were quite happy. And then we got to Canada just about Christmas. On December the 19th 1942 that would be. December ’42. We got to Canada but we started actually in Canada in to the New Year of ’43 so really started operating as a Cadet about, I think it was January ’43 in a place called Bowden near Calgary. I spent about three months there flying like with the other chaps. I could take off and land with a, with an instructor with me but I just couldn’t get the feel of the aircraft. I mean if you learned to drive you know and you’re on the ground and you want to stop, you want to do something and change you would stop but of course when you’re flying you’ve got to think of exactly what you were doing. It wasn’t me and I had to check with the chief flying instructor who said, ‘Look —’ He said, ‘Well, you’re not doing too bad.’ So I said, ‘What options have I got?’ He said, ‘Well, you got either navigator or bombardier.’ So I said, ‘I think I’ll take a navigator.’ Now, having said this I was still green. I really didn’t know what the syllabus was until I was posted to an Air Observer’s School in Edmonton, Canada. A very nice place run by the Canadians and met another, a lot of Englishmen and we were on a course for flying. Hadn’t been in there long when I fell, we were playing basketball and I fell and broke a wrist and that put me back and I couldn’t get back to that same course. So they put me on to a course of Australians and New Zealanders. I couldn’t have done better. They were a great bunch. I like the Australians and New Zealanders. Anyway, I I worked on that particular course with them until we’d done enough training and enough ground work and enough flying and then we had the exams and I did quite well. I had about eight, I’ve got my logbook, I did eighty percent on ground work and seventy three percent on flying. Now, why I say that is because when all those courses went, were finalised two got commissions in each course. As a parallel course with ours the Australians and the New Zealanders there was a Canadian course and everything, everybody got seventy percent and they got, they got commissioned. And I was upset in a way because I didn’t get it purely because on my course there were two Australian officers who were ground staff and had transferred to flying and their, their marks were below us. Below mine. However, because of the way the situation was I didn’t get one. We already got two commissioned so I was disappointed. Anyway, forget that. I got on with the job and it was a difficult job. One I’d never, I mean I didn’t have the schooling perhaps than a lot of others. I wasn’t Grammar School and I wasn’t university but I worked hard and it was, it was a wonderful position. It was demanding, interesting. And of course, I come back. I graduated as you can see me there. Directly I got to this country I was posted to Dumfries to fly Anson aircraft as a navigator in this country and get used to some of the weather conditions we would, I would expect in flying in this country. I had a week there and then after that I was posted to I think it was initial, I think it was an OTU, no. Not an OTU. Let me see. I can’t quite remember what that was. Anyway, it was a group where we met all other categories. We met pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners, wireless operators and we were all put in a big hangar style of place and we had to choose our own crews. Now, we were all amazed and I understand it went through for a long time this way. You know, we’re sitting around. We’re all looking and thinking how do we do this as pilots? And people went from one to the other. ‘Have you got a pilot?’ ‘Have you got a navigator?’ ‘Have you got a bomb aimer?’ Have you got this? Anyway, an Australian, strangely enough came to me. Not the one that I’d been training with and he said, ‘Would you, have you got a pilot?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Would you like to come with me?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ Quite happy because I’ve also got, I’ve also got an Australian wireless operator.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s great.’ Anyway, we picked up, we picked up a Scottish bombardier and we picked up a Welsh rear gunner and another man and we became a crew and that’s how it was done. The whole situation, all these dozens of aircrew got their categories, got their brevies etcetera and we had to make our own and it worked marvellous. Very few of the core, the crews that formulated themselves because I’ve spoken to obviously veterans over the years since and nearly everybody was satisfied. Occasionally an odd one had to be changed though for whatever reason. I don’t know. So there we were. We got through and we were then a crew. We were then posted to an Operational Training Unit and I think that was Bruntingthorpe in Leicester as a crew. And there we picked up, we started flying together on Wellingtons which is, which is a twin engine aircraft which was quite famous in those days. A Wellington was a very good aircraft. They were well constructed. We were quite happy and we were sent off from there. I’ve got them in the book how many, any flights we had flying around England in the dark. And let’s be certain of that. England was in the dark. Oh, you saw a few lights here and there but nothing like when you get up in an airport these days when you can’t see the airport for lights and when you get up there you can see the next place you’re going to almost. So that was up to me being a navigator. And of course, the other crew go through their motions and what they had to do. Those early days of course it was really a navigator and pilot had to work very closely. Anyway, after a certain number of trips our pilot was checked and we went on then to a four engine aircraft which was a Stirling because we had to then pick up an engineer. They gave us an engineer. We didn’t pick him ourselves. And he came to us as our skipper had to learn more about the four-engine aircraft and we all did our, I mean I as navigator and the rest of the crew went with him and we did so many hours then until he was proficient and the, and the engineer was proficient. And we were then sent on to what was called then an LFS. A Lanc Finishing School. And I think, I’m trying to think where that was. Lanc Finishing School. It’s probably in my diary. We can look at that later on. And there it was all to do with the pilot learning the Lancaster which of course we had heard about and of course, and as we know from now and we did after a while it was the best aircraft going at the time. But it was just one of those, it was another aircraft and we, we all did our turn in that and whatever we were doing as navigator. The others of course although they appeared to be solitary there was so much for them to do in their jobs when they, when we were on operations. It was a crew effort. So that, we ended Lanc Finishing School and then the first thing we, then when we were all ready we were posted to 106 Squadron, Metheringham. And that’s when I started my operations.
DM: So, can you remember roughly when that was?
HG: Yes.
DM: What year at least?
HG: Shall I get my logbook out?
[recording paused]
HG: 106.
DM: Right so —
HG: At Metheringham.
DM: So you arrived at Metheringham, February ’45.
HG: ’45, yeah.
DM: On 106 Squadron.
HG: That’s it. Yes.
DM: Ok. And what happened then?
HG: Well, it was a question of they were going through all of the things they needed to do before they sent you on operation. What we basically did was, initially was a radar cross country for me specifically I think, as navigator. And then we had formation flying in March. Then we had practice bombing in March. And then we had our first operation on the 5th of March ’45 to Bohlem. B O H L E M. Bohlem Oil Refinery in Germany. On the 6th of March, the next day, ’45 we went to Sassnitz, in the Baltic to attack shipping. On the 7th of March ’45 we were in Harburg. We went to Harburg which was south of Hamburg and that was for an oil refinery. And all those were night trips. All of them were night trips to start with.
DM: Do you have any memories of the first trip? Any impressions of how it felt and what your feelings were?
HG: Well, I think I was, let me start with the Bohlem. I had a problem when we started flying. I’d better go back to [pause] let’s start before we start flying. What happened in all squadrons there was, you were called to a briefing room probably about mid-day when all the crews were assembled in the briefing room. And then you got on the platform there would be a big board and there would be a map and there would be a curtain across it you see. And then the CO or whoever was going to give the briefing, and also the Met officer and the navigator, senior navigation officer would come on and then they’d pull the sheet apart and there would be the lines going to, the tracks going to the places we were going to bomb and either the experienced men would say, ‘Oh, that’s not bad.’ Or, ‘God,’ you know. This sort of action you know. And being new we just had to sit and watch. Now, in those briefing things on 106 Squadron if you’re going from one place to another and altering courses to get to this place in Germany or wherever we’re going it needed the tracks. The tracks between one place or another before you, there was a track here and a track there. Alteration course. Normally in, we understood that the navigator would have to draw it all out and work it all out. However, that’s, that particular squadron the senior officer, navigation officer did all the plot, all the plotting, the initial ones of where we were supposed to go and we all had the same. From my memory we all had the same navigation log to start with. So in other words we always, if we’d have all done it individually we’d have had similar answers but to me it was so obvious that if we got one person who was doing it and that was the senior man we all started on the basis line. So anyway, so we got our logs all ready and they started talking about the Met that was going this, that and the other and what possibly we might meet with. Certain parts of Germany with ack ack or fighters and all the other information that one would get. And then after that we would go back and have breakfast or whatever you would like to call it. Tea. We had something to eat. And then that would start in the afternoon about two and after we’d had something to eat we’d get out to the, and of course it would be dark. As you know it was dark because it was, it was February and March. We would then be taken out by, we’d get our parachute harness, our parachute. We’d take them with us and of course with the navigator he had a green bag and all our stuff was in the green bag. That’s the stuff we had to work the navigation out on. And we’d be taken out to the aircraft, wherever, in the dark and of course everything was dark and we would wait by the aircraft for a certain time and the pilot would say, ‘Let’s get in there.’ We’d get in and everybody would start. I think it was the port engine, directly we got in the port engine because that’s the other equipment in the aircraft especially for the navigator. You would start checking. Now that, we would then have a special time for getting or going ready for going around the runway. Getting around the rest of the aerodrome to the runway we were going to take off with and we’d all be waiting anything up to about fifteen aircraft all loaded with high explosives and other bombs etcetera with us. And we’d get around and I think we were probably something like about six or seven in front of us and what was happening on the runway that’s in use, the one we’re going on there would be a caravan and an officer. A lit up caravan and an officer there to let each aircraft go. He’d flash his green light. So we should go off one at a time. Now if I say we’d go off I’d better explain that when you got ready to take off what would happen is the engineer would open up the throttles against the brakes of the, the pilot would have his foot on the brakes and on the steering columns and then the, when he was given the ok the engineer would push, push the, all the throttles open and the pilot would take command then with, with his [pause] with his [pause] —
DM: Control.
HG: Controls.
DM: The steering wheel. Control.
HG: Controls. Yes.
DM: Yes.
HG: Anyway, what then? Then the navigator helps. We did our laps. We helped the pilot. What I used to do was to read the, on my where I was sitting I had an air speed indicator and I could read the airspeed off for him so he didn’t. He got all his attention on taking off and I’d read the airspeed going from say about sixty, sixty five, seventy, eighty, eighty five and ninety, ninety five and Roy my pilot said, he didn’t say, by the way I was called Stan in the Air Force. I’ll tell you that in a moment and he’d say, ‘Stan, it’s ok now.’ And we’d take off around about a hundred. A hundred miles per hour on the, on the air speed indicator. Now, you take off in the dark and from that time onwards you virtually don’t see anybody. You’re working on your, on your chart and also your log. Everything you’ve got down. You start off with, everybody starts on the same course but of course slightly different times because of taking off. And you’d climb to a certain premeditated height which probably from memory is around about eighteen thousand feet. We didn’t, we didn’t fly any lower than that from memory. I think we had been up to nearly twenty thousand. About eighteen thousand from my memory seems to be the operations that we did anyway. And then you would go through and of course what happens then each navigator is responsible apart from the initial stuff that we all had to start with. You then, you’re hitting winds and things and of course the aircraft gets off the course a bit. And what you, the navigator is doing all the time is checking. Checking the course by, what we had was a Gee box to get fixes. Now, I’ll explain the Gee box. Basically, it was, as far as I remember it was probably it was a round green, a green [pause]
DM: Screen.
HG: Screen. A green screen with two datum lines in white going across this and on the top, I think it was two on the top, or one at the top was a station, two at the bottom, they were British stations broadcasting. No, no figures on that. Nothing. Just the screen. As you know of course I mean we hadn’t seen screens before and there was no televisions or anything and they’re the sort of screens we get now but there were screens and these two datum lines and points were where the British stations were broadcasting. They would send their signals. Now, to get a fix on that quite from memory first of all you had to use a switch and then those, those things would vanish and then you would get two blips, I think from memory on, on the lines away from each other. You’d use another switch. Got the blips together like that. Push the switch and that gave you a fix. Still no numbers. Nothing on it. Just the figures. The movements of these little things on the screen. Then to get the fix you pushed another switch and you’d go on then to another datum point. We had a line going like that and then one there, one there, one there and another big one there, one there and the same on the bottom. But on part of that there would be another small thing marked and that small thing told the navigator because you knew what all those figures were going through there because otherwise the Germans would know them. If they put them through they’d have broadcast the job. So we had to know what these figures were. Well, once we got to the end of this scene we had about four figures and we had then to go to, not the plotting chart but another chart that was all over England and the continent with lines going all like that way and all around this way and that way. And you had to find the figures you’d worked out on this screen on that particular map which gave you then a latitude and longitude which you then transferred on to your plotting chart which gave you a fix. And that fix was relative to the track you were supposed to be making this certain, this try. And you might be lucky and right on it but generally speaking it was a little off that and you checked again five or ten minutes later. You had to keep on checking, working these things out all the time to see that what you’re, that what you’re getting by radio is matching what you’ve already drawn in. And occasionally of course winds change and you’d find suddenly while these fixes you’re given are more or less parallel with your track suddenly you see one go out and you know full well then you’ve got to change your wind. Anyway, so you saw that and then you went back on and got to go back all through to get another fix to see where that is. And from that fix you then had to work out the new wind. A wind direction. And I’m not quite certain now [laughs] I used, we had a Dalton computer and from memory we drew things on this plastic thing and, and moved the slide around. Things like that. I can’t really remember exactly how I did that but anyway we got, we then got another check on that, on that wind and on the course we were, on the course we were flying. We had to alter then to make good that original line which was the track. We had to alter course to that once we worked something else out and we’d give that to the pilot. I can’t remember saying, ‘Navigator to pilot,’ which was always the thing we should do. I think, I think we called each other Christian names basically. You know, it was Roy. I mean we were perfectly happy with that. And so we flew then and very rarely did we see, occasionally you saw if someone went down in flames. You might have have seen something but and you would note it in your log but we didn’t see much I must admit. I don’t think we had initially any air attacks. However, we did go out and get through a lot of flak. There was a lot of flak and when that happened all I could remember was that it used to come up, it used to come up slow and then when going past the aircraft you just can’t believe it. It’s gone like that. And so all the time you’re getting nearer to the target and you may have had, apart from the first track you were doing and keeping log on, your course on that. Then you would get another movement to alter course to get towards the target. Perhaps a short one or another short one just to get into the target. So there was quite a lot of alterations of courses which the navigator has to deal with with the pilot. And so the navigator is busy all the time which I was grateful. I must admit I’d never done navigation before and it was, it was difficult. It was. But it was interesting, it was because when you work these things out and they, and most of them that you worked out were pretty reasonably accurate you realise you’d done a good job. And all the trips I had with the, with my crew touch wood we didn’t get lost and it was all in the dark and we come back that way. When we reached the target my state of operations of course things had changed in the way the some of the bombings were taken. We had what was called a master bomber. Bomb aimer, and he would be a very good crew and he’d be flying lower than us and he’d have to direct the aircraft coming in on to certain flares that may be dropping from other aircraft. ‘Bomb on the green flares,’ or something like that. Or other factors came into that which he’d give instructions to the pilot as to what they should do and what they shouldn’t do. And then sometimes at the end he may have, may say to you, ‘Main stream finish. Stop bombing and return home.’ Or something like this and then you, you’d find all your tracks going and the tracks coming back weren’t the same. You had to go a different way so you couldn’t, well I wouldn’t say you couldn’t, you couldn’t cheat anyway with navigation. You’ve got to do each one as you come. And then you get back after an operation and there again we were lucky, of course. One or two didn’t come back but when we got back to the aerodrome, also when you think that we’re it’s an aerodrome in a field in Lincolnshire and all these others coming back. We get back and find if we were, if we were perhaps about on time we’d give instructions to the pilot. You get the instructions to land. On the other hand if we were perhaps a bit late and perhaps you were a new crew we’d be given instruction from the, the control tower. I think our aircraft was M for Mabel. Mabel. I think we had some other name for it. Anyway, you would fly Angels 9 and so we had to keep up at nine thousand feet going around in circle to there and we were given a number until our number was called so we would go in and land. That’s how they got rid of so many aircraft coming. They couldn’t all come in at one time. And that was the end of an operation and from then onwards obviously we were picked up in the aerodrome and taken to debriefing with intelligence officers. And I can always remember that because we’d get a drink of coffee or whatever it was and cigarettes. Well, of course all the boys go. I didn’t smoke. Someone else. I took them for somebody else. No. I never smoked. I didn’t like smoking. I never did. That was great. And so that was the end of one operation. So we’ll have a breather?
DM: So up ‘til now I think I’m right in saying your operations had been at night but you then started to do some daylight raids. What was the first one of those?
HG: Well, the first one I’ve got in there is the Essen raid which was an extremely big raid. We did, we didn’t really know that until we got there because I’ve got it here marked one thousand. But as we’ve seen from the, there was, there was actually one thousand and seventy nine aircraft which was the biggest one, a thousand bomber raids in the war. But the point was that there had been thousand bomber raids way back in ’62. This was the biggest one.
DM: ’42. Back in ’42.
HG: ’42. Yes. What did I say?
DM: ’62.
HG: Yeah. ’42. There had been thousand but then they weren’t using necessarily bomber squadrons. They were using OTUs, Operational Training Units to make them up. When Bomber Harris decided he’d have a thousand bomber raid he had to, had to scrape the aircraft from all over the country. But these other, this last one of course there were seven hundred and fifty Lancasters, two ninety three Halifaxes and thirty six Mosquitoes of all bomber groups. This was the largest number of aircraft sent to a target so far in the war. Three Lancasters were lost. We lost three on that raid. I remember in particular I think one of our squadron got, he didn’t get shot down, I think that’s when I saw one from there, the gunner, the rear gunner a big cookie which was a tremendous big explosive bomb dropped from above and knocked off. I think knocked off the tail of one of the other squadrons. That’s how one of them was lost that way. It was not, it wasn’t shot down by the Germans. But it does say there was three gone. I don’t know what the other reasons were. Four thousand six hundred and sixty one tonnes of bombs were dropped. The accurate, was accurate and this [grey blue] virtually paralysed Essen until the American troops entered the city sometime later. Essen’s recording system produced no proper reports but eight hundred and ninety seven people were said to have been killed which is not too happy for them but there we are. That was war. I know. So that was the biggest daylight and we did have a daylight again close to that to Dortmund the next day. That was another daylight but I’ve got nothing, I can’t remember anything about that one except it's in the log. Five hours thirty. And then we did go to the, 27th of March, getting to the end of March went to Farge marshalling yards. I can’t remember much. I can’t remember that one at all. So that then I think [pause – pages turning] and then we did have one very last night flight again. Nearly nine hours. Eight forty five and we went to Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. And I did see a note here we were diverted Harwell. I think that one when we came back we got diverted when we come back to England because I remember we were coming back in daylight in the end and I remember standing up and had a look back and all the, all the Lancs were coming all at different [laughs] behind us. Anyway, as far as I can remember then and then we left. Of course, we left, we left Coningsby, well thinking about it we left via [pause] we left Metheringham shortly afterwards.
DM: Were you told why you were leaving?
HG: No.
DM: You were told to go.
HG: And that’s what staggers me. All I can think of quite simply only since not then. Since other things have cropped up through life that at that particular time we did know about there was going to be a Tiger Squadron because they were going to attack Japan and I understand 106 was the squadron I found out afterwards was one squadron they wanted to go to Japan. Now, having said that because we had two Australians and I can’t remember whether they said anything. They may have said well they didn’t want, they didn’t want to go. At least to volunteer. This was going to be volunteer stuff and I think they wanted to get back to Australia and I can only think that was the one reason for to just send us off at the very end to just do one raid with a squadron we knew nothing about. I digress quickly here because only last week a public relations lady that deals with us veterans said an Australian wanted to phone me because I was on 189 Squadron and he wanted to know something about the squadron. And I said, ‘Well, yes. I was on it for one month and I can’t remember. I can only just remember that raid.’ And I mean we were there almost, and I mean one month was nothing. I couldn’t remember much about that.
DM: So you were sent to Bardney, changed a squadron, did one raid.
HG: Oh, yeah one thing, yes. I did one. When we were coming from Bardney I still remember my Australian pilot, he’d been commissioned. He was, he was a flying officer now and I remember him he going on all the courses and he had all our reports with him and he said I’d been recommended for a commission then. So I knew full well really that I should have had it. Personally it was only one of these things, unfortunate things, not because I didn’t deserve it because that’s how the system worked. There was two officers already in the course and they wouldn’t give any more. That’s how, you know that’s, so that was, I wasn’t very happy. And someone else, I saw another chap who was on the course originally said and I met him another somewhere along the line flying somewhere because of course between these sort of bombing raids of course we used to do trips. I’d take a squadron leader to somewhere. To another, you know nothing with my crew. He wanted a navigator and I’d do that for him and take him somewhere where he wanted. And so it’s all sorts of other things you know. Different things happened.
DM: Earlier on you said that you were called Stan.
HG: Yeah.
DM: When you were in the air. Why was that?
HG: Well, I go back to what we talked when I said I didn’t like my name Harold [laughs] I didn’t like it then and so I told the crew, you know, ‘I’m Stan.’ And so that’s how I, that’s right ‘til the end of the war. And so that was that. I don’t know what my mum thought about. I don’t think she worried very much. My father was in the First World War. He got in in 1914 and he got away with that but he died quite young. He had a, he wasn’t, he got shot in his finger I think but he other troubles. He died when he was about fifty nine I think. I’m sorry about that because I’d have liked him to have seen that I got through because he was still alive when I got back and I always remember he never asked me anything much [laughs] I don’t know why. At least I can’t remember if they asked me anything. I wasn’t such a jawbag then. I didn’t say so very much. Anyway, I just remember I came home to my mother and my sister and that was it, you know.
DM: So the war ended.
HG: Yes.
DM: You didn’t go to Japan because —
HG: No.
DM: I don’t think anybody did in the end.
HG: No. They didn’t. No. That was all gone.
DM: You didn’t go to India or anything like that.
HG: No. I didn’t.
DM: No.
HG: No. I —
DM: Did you make any, what did you do in the immediate aftermath of the war before you were demobbed? Can you remember?
HG: I don’t think there was anything in here. Wait a minute.
DM: Pause that a minute.
[recording paused]
DM: As a navigator on a Lancaster you were in your cubicle so you hadn’t got a view of what was going on outside. That’s, that’s right, isn’t it?
That’s right. You wouldn’t call it a cubicle. I’ll show you in a moment.
DM: Yeah.
On the wall I’ve got in the hall.
DM: Right. But anyway you couldn’t see —
HG: No. I couldn’t.
DM: What was going on.
HG: I was, I was, I was facing that way to the port engine with, well I’ve got my legs to here.
DM: Right. So looking out over the left hand side basically.
HG: Yeah. Well, my face was that way because all the stuff was in front of me. I’ll show you. I’ll show it to you in the hall. Yeah. Carry on.
DM: So did you ever get to sort of pop up in to the astrodome or or have a look out through the cockpit and see what was going on?
HG: I didn’t go up on the astrodome. I did go into the cockpit occasionally just to have a look around and got back quick. I think it was, I think it was over Essen when I looked out there because I looked down and we were bombing Essen through cloud. We had what they called Oboe which was I think the markers, I don’t know what, I think it was called Oboe and we had to bomb through cloud. All I could see down in Essen and I can always remember that. Looked down and it well it would have been eighteen thousand twenty thousand feet. Whatever. And it was just one, one mass of smoke. Couldn’t see Essen. I don’t know whether it was covered in anyway tremendous mile of well obviously it was you know we were, bombed in there. It was, that’s all I remember. Other times when we were flying friendly stuff and we had to go for another aerodrome to drop something or take somebody I can often remember going up the front with the pilot you know. We could set them on course and give them the course and know exactly what that was. Well obviously, I could know what we were going to do given the first course and go back and check on the next course if I wanted to stay up there with him and have a look around. We [laughs] I can always remember too the bomb aimer going up to the front there, having an argument, and he was Scottish with Roy. They saw a plane. They was just flying in England and he saw it and they were arguing whether it was above us or below us. Little things like that, you know. Crew stuff like that. And also we come back from, we were flying over England once going from east to west and I registered three hundred miles an hour which was, a Lanc did about a hundred fifty. We did. And in those days three hundred miles an hour was like a, almost like a Spitfire. But it was quite good. I remember that. And also we came back from coming back in the dark somewhere again on an ordinary trip and we had to do in Lancasters it was all part of the training for the pilot and his crew and everything else. You had to do certain things. Fly here. Fly there. And coming back I remembered we lost an engine over England. We lost an engine. We would come back on three engines but really nothing, no problem there because a Lanc could fly on one or two I think. They were quite good. And you see I have to look, I look back because I’ve met so many veterans and I know the sort of number of ops they’ve done and I know full well John Nichol who was after the war an officer used to fly I forget what they [pause] Tornadoes, something like that. When we bombed Iraq, you know. Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein and he called, he called the people who bombed before ’44, that was when D-Day occurred those that bombed after that were, what did he call them now? Tail End Charlies. Now, that was the term, terminology the, I think the fighters used that. The chap that used to have with fighters going into, more or less going into action they’d have a chap flying all into the back of them like this. Connected you know. And he was a Tail End Charlie to just protect their back to see what was coming along. There are so many, so many things you know that that happened and you hear of all sorts of things. And I know full well that that, I mean we came, I mean in that it took me all that time to get on operations and for the rest of the crew and it all really started because of failing as a pilot. I wasted half a dozen months in Canada. Well, not to say wasted like. Canada was a nice place. I wasted six months there trying to be a pilot and never did and so if I’d have got gone straight to a navigator I would much on squadron fire quicker and I might not be here. There’s an, there’s an awful luck I feel about it. Even so, even that’s one at Essen. We still lose. Apparently, I’ve got something even from the times I was flying from from roughly from January whatever it is up to when we ever finished flying we still lost, Bomber Command still lost about seven hundred aircraft. All of the other squadrons and so many other squadrons we were still, still lost a lot of guys. So we, you know, I think all of us at my stage of the game think we are really lucky but the other guys, some of the ones I’ve been we met. I mean they all know full well, I know full well first of all they were good pilots or crews, they were good crews. The training we had was good. There’s no doubt about it. The training we had was good. I mean to teach me navigation which I only went to an ordinary school wasn’t easy but it had to be the fact you wanted to do it. You had to do. And so to that end Bomber Command and ever since then you know I’ve been with veterans who have done a lot more and there’s no question there’s any difference between because I didn’t do as much. It’s not my fault. I had a longer time. No. It would have been more difficult. Put it that way.
DM: So before you came out you did some non-flying things.
HG: Yes.
DM: I think. What did you do?
HG: Well, there were basically, they were filling in time I think. Well, waiting for the Australians to go home and we look at them. Let me see. 18 Squadron, Bardney. That’s the funny thing. Twice I’ve got that for Fulbeck. Each one after the, after the last bombing raid in the war at night time. Six and a half hours. It wasn’t very far to Norway. Fighter affiliation. High level bombing. We used to do high level bombing. There was a place in, somewhere near the east coast where we used to take the aircraft, all of us and used to do practice bombs. And I always remember too one of those practice bombs we, our bomb aimer of course he, and by the way let’s get back. I’ve never mentioned the bomb aimer because he’d got his own particular job. However, in that squadron they did, we did have the bomb aimer sit with the navigator at times because the screen I told you originally because of those things up above the Germans used to put more and more of them. So he’d sit with me and make certain what was happening. If there was any others. And of course, we had also, I haven’t mentioned that, perhaps I should have done its come to me now and I’ll show you on the passage in a minute. Other side there was another screen. We had, underneath the aircraft we’d got a bulge and that was I forget the equipment there but that was giving us a picture in my, where I was operating from showed the contours of the land. In other words when you, if you went over Brighton you’d see the sea line and that sort going around to over to Dover and that sort of thing. It gave a picture and we could, I can’t remember how we did that we could get a fix off that to get a put on our charts. I can’t quite remember exactly that one. That’s another thing you know. And of course, the high level bombing. Well, that’s this. They’re filling up time here. Look at this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven or eight there and I mean they sent the Australians home. Map reading. I’d done a lot of map reading. I mean we’d been doing high level bombing. Bassingham. That was another one. Only one hour forty. Just trips to waste time I think. Air to sea firing which we, oh yes. I can remember that. And we went over the North Sea and of course all this has to be combined with other, other squadrons who were close by and but of course you were given times of course for this and I always remember air to sea firing. Well, I don’t think my gunners ever had to fire in anger from memory. But when we were in this air to sea firing they were allowed to go. We had to attack something in the North Sea that was floating. I can’t remember. They all had, the rear gunner had a go and the mid-upper had to have a go. It was almost laughable because we killed ourselves laughing because the pilots, from memory I think even he said he offered them, I think even in those days five pound or something and no one missed them laughs] Formation flying. Yeah. Well, one hour five minutes on the 7th of April. January, February, March, April, May. Now, I’ve got something I might just mention about —
DM: So, before you left the Royal Air Force —
HG: Yes.
DM: I think you were sent to Cardington.
HG: That’s right. Yes.
DM: What did you do there?
HG: Well, I was put in charge of, apparently a lot of recruits were put there. Aircrew recruits and all wanted of course to fly and I had roughly about I think twenty or thirty in one, one block of the place there at Cardington and I had to look after them. Its strange there because one of the young men his, he was there and I think my wife knew him strangely enough but he was only just trying to join the Air Force and it was a lost cause really. I don’t think he, because I, well I did know about him. The next time I saw him he was playing for Brighton Football Club. And so I was just, it was what was it really? It was just something for me to do. And that’s like when we, I said my gunner and my bomb aimer went to, I think East Africa to learn to drive. They were giving us all odd jobs. I can’t possibly because they, they couldn’t get all of us demobbed there were so many of us. I mean Army, Navy, Air Force and I think they just pushed us around a bit until they had a chance to, to get us on to some place and get a demob suit and send us off. I wish there was a stalling arrangement by the government because of the number they wanted to get rid of. So, so it was, it was quite simple and I mean I could travel home from there and I quite enjoyed doing a job like that. I think I’d probably got a few raspberries from some of the younger ones. It was just a time waster really. I did, I mean I know it was Air Force and I was, obviously I wanted to get out of it now. I didn’t want to because these young chaps wanted to fly of course. What happened to them I don’t know. It was just a question again of something to pass. Being warrant officer, you know to look after them. See if they behaved themselves, I suppose.
DM: And when did you actually leave the Air Force? What date?
HG: Well —
DM: Effectively. So —
HG: That I don’t know. I would say it was, wait a minute [pause] I would say it was, yeah effectively discharged on the 25th of November 1946.
DM: Right.
HG: That would be it. The other one is, is when I got enlisted in the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1949 or whatever it was.
DM: What did you do after you left the Air Force?
HG: Well, I went straight back to my business. British, no it wasn’t British Gas. It was still Brighton, no. let me see. Let me try and think. I think it was —
DM: I think it was ’48 when it was nationalised.
HG: Yeah. So it would still be at Brighton And Hove General Gas Company and I went back and from memory I went back straight into the showroom. They put me straight back in the showroom. I’m just trying, I’m still trying to remember that. I can’t believe anything else other than show. I certainly, I can’t remember anything else other than the showroom. Yes. Yeah. I’m sure I went straight back into the showroom trying to get used to the equipment and all the things that happened even though I was only a few years away. See how the gas cooking and fires etcetera had progressed and, and shortly after that and I don’t know how many months it was the Gas Company advertised they wanted representatives to go in to meet people. To go around to premises to get gas. And I got out of the showroom then and I applied for that and I got as a representative. At the same time funnily enough there was several others, another two Air Force chaps I think both were ground staff chaps went the same, did the same thing and we became representatives from British Gas and were given an area to introduce gas to people and see builders. See what we could do with them. And I started that and I went on for a long long time as an ordinary representative which I enjoyed. In those early days of course we had to come, I had to come out as far as this place. It wasn’t as built up. Saltdean wasn’t as built up as it is now and in fact myself and one of the senior officers in British Gas, an older man than me we managed, there wasn’t much gas in this area and we managed to get there was supply right over the side and we had to get it right down the middle of Saltdean and once we started that and I was doing a lot with customers, builders to selling gas because what was happening in the world or in Britain was everything was going to be electric. They wanted all everything was going to be electric. They didn’t win. The gas took over and then we had oil coming in which we had to fight them to get and they had these old boilers to start with and we then we managed to get over the oil business because people had this oil in tanks in their gardens and that became problems and they were dirty things and and we were on the up. Gas was on the up. On the up. What was I saying then? It was, it was getting a hold. The representatives and all of us were, we weren’t all aircrew. One or two were and others were one or two Army and that sort of thing and we were doing our best to sell. We did a good job and we got a hold on and the gas built up from them days when we started that and then I used to come out here. And we used to have to go by bus in those days. We had to get by bus all smartly dressed. Smart dress. And if you wanted to get back in the office you had to find a phone box you see and walk to it [laughs] and put your four pence in. But then it was becoming good then. I become a senior in that department and then afterwards I wanted to get on better so I transferred to our commercial department which gave me instead of domestic houses I was dealing with places like hotels and police stations and all the big commercial buildings etcetera and also for restaurants and cafés. All the stuff where we were getting more money in of course. And I had that for some time and of course by that time we were given cars, or at least we bought cars and they’d paid us money for them. And then I wanted to get on further than that. I saw what I was doing as a commercial representative and then I applied with all the other commercial reps, some were Air Force, some were whatever they were. All were similar ages and we all wanted this job. I wanted to be, I wanted to be a management and I applied for management and I become an assistant manager. I always remember the, I had an appointment in London and there was several other guys there. I didn’t know them other than they were Londoners and we had to have an interview and one chap came out. He wanted me to talk about whatever they wanted me to talk about. I can’t remember that. And I said, and he said, ‘I’m giving up.’ I thought, giving up? I’m not giving up. So I went in to this when I had my interview. I can’t remember what it was but I had to talk about something and, and it also reminded me because when I got my commission as a PO, pilot officer and I think that was when after the war I had to address a lot of other officers and I had to stand on the front and talk about something or other. So so I suppose that’s when my talking started. In the business of gas and I did alright. I got the, I was an assistant, assistant industrial commercial sales manager and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that right to the end and I retired in this place.
DM: Looking back did you enjoy your days in Bomber Command?
HG: Yes. Now, I sometimes mention that often with people I enjoy the navigator. I said, no that’s the wrong thing. Let’s be honest I was bloody frightened at times. I mean, no. Let’s put it this way I liked it because I was involved. I was doing something. I could, I could not have been a gunner but I couldn’t have sat there in my young days just sitting there and it was difficult for them. Especially for nine hours you’re sitting there watching the dark all the time. Very difficult. I had to work. Great. I liked and I still like working. I still, I’m now in my age now that, well I do a lot of work. I do have help but I still, touch wood I can still walk. I press myself. I think I’ve done that right all the time. I’m not wanting to be, I don’t think I’ve ever been lazy. Put it this way. And so to that end I’ve been lucky but yeah navigator, well any aircrew there was a worry you know. The times when everybody was silent because they were worrying about this and that and I mean I was silent because it was my, me doing of course navigating and touch wood I did all right. I was assessed afterwards as average. Now that’s great because one has to think that all there were some great aircrew. I know that some of the flights they were great and some of the navigators were great but of course the pilots were even so and they were extremely good, extremely good individuals of course. I couldn’t match with them. But there were so many of us were average and did average things except and went a lot on bombs and of course lost a lot of lives and all of us it was dangerous. But when you were doing that you hear things but you’ve got you’ve got a mind on what you’re doing here. So it was great to be involved and working. Now, you know it wasn’t enjoyable but it was worthwhile.
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 Harold Stanley Gardner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-01
Rights
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AGardnerHS171101, PGardnerHS1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:03:36 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Gardner was a navigator on 106 Squadron based at RAF Metheringham during the final months of World War 2. Known throughout his RAF career as Stan, he was born in Brighton. In 1937 when 14-years-old, his father arranged employment for him with the Brighton Gas Company. Enthralled watching Spitfires flying over the South Coast, Stan volunteered for pilot, navigator, bomb aimer training in 1941 with the RAF. After initial training he was deployed to Canada for pilot training. Although advancing on the course to take-off and landing solo, Stan was uncomfortable in the pilot role and he requested a move to navigator training. After graduating, he returned to the UK and following progression though Operational Training Unit and Lancaster Finishing School, Stan was posted to 106 Squadron in February 1945, with his first operation on the 5th March. He provides a detailed account of the procedure's navigators followed to ensure the aircraft remained on course, including constantly plotting their position and corrections from varying winds. Following the end of hostilities, Stan found himself posted to RAF Cardington in charge of aircrew recruits before being demobilised in 1946, when he returned to his career in the gas industry.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1942-12-19
1945-03-05
1945-03-07
1945-03-27
1946-11-25
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Alberta--Calgary
England--Bedfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Brighton
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
106 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
demobilisation
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
military service conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Cardington
RAF Metheringham
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/854/10859/AHandleyE-BushD171012.2.mp3
b71ce9edeabc2babe3b741dbd3632cf7
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
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Handley, Ivor
Ivor T Handley
I T Handley
Tommy Handley
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Eileen Handley and her twin brother Dennis Bush about Ivor 'Tommy' Handley (2205484 Royal Air Force), and a photograph and documents. Ivor Handley served on 626 Squadron at RAF Wickenby. His crew were lost on a post war operation to return troops from Italy. <br /><br /><span>Additional information about his crew is available via the </span><a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/103959/" title="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/madgett-hr/ ">IBCC Losses Database</a><span>.</span><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Eileen Handley and Denis Bush and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
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
2017-09-24
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
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Handley, IT
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CH: This interview is being recorded for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Cathie Hewitt and the interviewees are Eileen Handley and Dennis Bush. Twin brother and sister. The interview is taking place at Eileen Handley’s home [buzz] Waddington on the 12th of October 2017. Also present are Elaine Brackenbury and Denise [Lorrey] Thank you very much Eileen and Dennis for agreeing to be interviewed. Perhaps you could, one of you could start off and give a little information of your background.
EH: Am I being interviewed?
CH: You are.
EH: Well, we were born in Waddington. We were born at Quakers Chapel which is in the centre of the village and then we moved down. I do believe the cottage wasn’t big enough because we were twins so mum and dad were given a council house and we moved down and lived down Mere Road in the council houses and had a very happy childhood. And we both grew up with no problems really I don’t think. And then we both left home didn’t we love when we were in our teens. Den went and did his National Service and I went and did my nurse training in Lancashire but we’ve always kept in touch with Waddington through our lives. And then after ten years of marriage from my own personal point of view I always wanted to come back to Lincolnshire and Waddo and we managed to come back when we’d been married just ten years. So we moved back on our tenth anniversary and we’ve been happy ever since.
CH: Can I just go back a little bit to when you were both children?
EH: Yeah.
CH: Tell me a little about your parents. What they did and growing up in the village.
EH: Yeah. My mum was a housewife wasn’t she, Den?
DB: Housewife. Yeah.
EH: A housewife and a good cook and a good mum and wife and everything as they were in them days and still are.
Other: Didn’t your dad work in the fields?
EH: Yeah. Dad —
DB: Dad was a farmworker.
EH: Farmworker.
Other: And then your dad passed away didn’t he in 1939.
DB: He passed away when we were nine year old.
Other: And your mum got remarried.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And it goes from there really doesn’t it?
EH: Yeah. Came down Mere Road.
Other: The war broke out then, didn’t it?
EH: Yeah.
CH: Where were you when war broke out?
EH: We lived down Mere Road. Number 9. We were still at school weren’t we and we had a quite —
DH: Yeah.
EH: A quiet upbringing but lots and lots of local friends.
CH: How about you Dennis?
DB: Yeah. Quite an eventful childhood really.
CH: Yeah.
DB: There was quite a lot of kiddies in the, in the row of council houses. And we kept ourselves really separate from —
EH: And we played down there didn’t we altogether. Good friendship.
DB: I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.
Other: She said all those children, you all played together.
EH: Yeah.
Other: With the children out of the road.
DB: Yes.
EH: We were all good friends.
DB: Yeah. Life changed when war was declared. I can remember standing outside the house one, and I think it was mother shouted out the window, ‘They’ve declared war.’
EH: Yeah.
DB: But life changed then. People started moving into the married quarters. There was only one row of married quarters I think in those days and builders and different personnel moving on to the camp. I can remember the Irish navies starting to build the runways and they used to attract us kids at night time because they used to stand in big groups playing pitch and toss.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And later on the Leicestershire Regiment, they moved into the married quarters that were there and they used to get a gang of us boys and they used to train us in military training. Rifle drill. Homemade rifles with bits of wood and yeah we had a good life really.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes. Things developed later. We had paper rounds. I used to take papers especially on a Sunday morning on to the camp. There was gun emplacements. I used to go there and the soldiers manning the guns used to give us slab cakes and say, ‘Take them home to your mother.’
EH: You were lucky.
DB: Yeah.
EH: I used to go down the Station Road delivering papers and walk back up the hill.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Pushing me bike.
Other: You were lucky you had a bike.
EH: Yeah.
Other: When did the evacuees come to live with you?
EH: Den maybe remember more than me.
DB: Oh, I can’t remember. 1941. I can’t remember. About 1942 I would think. I can’t remember. You see we were only what? Eleven and twelve year old at that time. Didn’t take much notice of dates.
Other: No. But you remember what they were called didn’t you?
DB: Oh yeah. We, we had evacuees from Leeds.
EH: Leeds. Yeah.
DB: And they came and tried to take over the school [laughs] Used to try and make us play rugby which didn’t go down very well.
EH: Was there a lot of evacuees, Den?
DB: Yes. All over the village.
EH: Yeah. I can’t remember that. I know my mum had three or four.
DB: Three or four. The Millers. They came from Primrose Hill School in Leeds. And the eldest one was Eric Miller I think his name was. I can’t remember the girl’s name.
EH: No. I can’t.
DB: But it was a problem for mother because they were [pause] not wishing to decry them but they were from a slum area I think in Leeds.
EH: Yeah. They weren’t [pause] they were —
DB: They were unclean.
EH: They were unclean in comparison to what we were used to.
Other: They had nits.
EH: Nits in their hair. And they had beautiful long ringlets the two girls. I can’t remember their names and my mum cut them all short and I can see her now in the kitchen with a saucer of paraffin and perfume. Rubbing it in their hair to get rid of these nits.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Can you?
DB: Yeah.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Spent hours just with a nit comb.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Combing their hair. Yeah.
Other: Did they actually live with you?
DB: Yeah.
EH: And I was petrified that I’d get these nits.
Other: An extra four people in the house then.
EH: Yeah. I don’t know where they all slept.
DB: For some reason they didn’t stay long. I don’t know why.
EH: I don’t know why they didn’t stay long.
DB: I think their parents must have come.
EH: I can vaguely remember the parents arriving.
DB: Can you?
EH: Yeah. So maybe it was an amicable agreement that they wanted them home. I’m not sure but—
Other: I think a lot of evacuees went home fairly soon.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Because they couldn’t.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Live without them.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes. I had a paper round and used to go on to the camp laden with Sunday papers. Big. Heavy as I could carry.
EH: I had a paper round as well love, didn’t I?
DB: Yeah. I worked for Mr Saxby in those days.
EH: No. I didn’t work for her.
DB: And the highlight of the Sunday morning then was to set up stall in the officer’s mess kitchen and then have a nice breakfast.
EH: Yeah. I bet it was.
DB: Yeah. Aye.
CH: What do you remember about the goings on RAF Waddington when you were that age?
EH: Not a lot.
DB: Well, as a group of kids we used to assemble at the bottom of Mere Road.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And look over the, well there was no hedge. You could walk on to the airfield if you wanted to.
EH: Boys and girls we all played together. And there was a, they were building the new gymnasium, weren’t they? Was it a gymnasium. And they had the seesaw.
DB: And they built the gym where, where the new houses are now.
EH: Yeah. And we used to go down and play on the seesaw, you know.
DB: I can’t remember that.
EH: All the RAF people accommodated us.
DB: We used to go to the bottom of Mere Road looking over the airfield.
EH: Yes.
DB: And count the planes taking off on bombing raids.
EH: And wave to them.
DB: And then the next morning when they were all coming in we could hear them coming in. We’d dash down there and see who was coming in and who was missing.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Spent hours down there waving them off.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Early evenings before bedtime.
DB: Yeah.
EH: That doesn’t seem long ago Den, does it?
DB: No. It only seems like yesterday really.
EH: Yeah.
DB: When you look back.
CH: Do you remember what type of aircraft they were?
DB: Yeah. They were Lancasters.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I can remember the old Hampdens when the war first started and they used to take off over the back of mum’s house.
EH: Yeah.
DB: That’s before the runways were built. Hampdens. Yeah. The disturbing feature about it was when planes crashed close by with [pause], there was one in particular at the corner of the Grantham, Mere Road.
EH: Yeah, there was —
DB: Grantham Road Mere Road Junction. Next to the radio shop. And that was —
EH: Where the doctor’s surgery is now.
DB: Yes. That was a bad crash.
EH: But we were all such good pals together, weren’t we?
DB: Yeah.
Other: Can you remember what it was like the day after the church had been bombed in the village?
DB: Yeah.
EH: Very sad.
DB: Yeah. We were taken.
EH: Very sombre. Very.
CH: What do you remember about that episode? About the church being bombed. Can you tell me the sequence of that?
DB: I can remember walking out to the roadway in the morning and —
EH: Seeing the —
DB: The first thing that took your sight as you looked towards the village was the church tower and it was gone.
EH: And the bell stood right on top of all the rubble. The church bell.
DB: Yeah. Later on we went down to the village to see what the effect was and there was rubbish all over the streets and buildings. Old cottages demolished and —
EH: And all, you know a lot of the neighbouring country lanes, village lanes with all the thatched roofed cottages were no longer there were they?
DB: Yeah.
EH: The rooves and that. And everybody helped one another.
CH: So when the bombing happened were you in a shelter?
DB: No. We were in bed.
EH: We were under the table. Well, we —
DB: Well, we were under, under the table. We didn’t go to the shelter.
EH: Yeah. We had a big dining table under the window and if the sirens went we got under the table and stayed there until the all clear.
DB: Yeah.
CH: So you heard the explosions did you?
DB: Well, I can’t –
EH: I can’t remember.
DB: I can’t remember the explosion.
EH: No.
DB: But we must have done.
EH: Yeah. We must have done. Must have been dozing under the table.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And there was one lady. One twenty one year old. My mum’s —
DB: Next door neighbour’s daughter.
EH: Next door neighbour’s daughter was killed.
DB: She was killed. She was sleeping at her grandmother’s house.
EH: With her grandma.
DB: In the village.
EH: She went to sleep with her grandma because grandma was poorly and she, and her grandma stayed downstairs because she was poorly and Eva went upstairs and she was the one that was killed. The only one.
DB: And that was a stone off the church.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Flew over and dropped through the roof of this cottage.
EH: Yeah. And she was the maid of the Reverend.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And lived in the Rectory and this particular evening she didn’t sleep at the Rectory. She went to her grandma’s. It’s just —
Other: One of those things.
EH: Yeah. And her parents lived next door to our mum and —
Other: It destroyed your school as well, didn’t it?
DB: Yes.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Well, it destroyed the school. We had to move to Bracebridge Heath.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Unfortunately. I never liked school. There was no score.
EH: Yeah.
Other: That’s where I get it from.
EH: I weren’t that brilliant.
CH: It was quite a journey you had to make then.
EH: To Bracebridge Heath.
DB: Yes. Yes.
EH: There was a school bus.
CH: Oh.
DB: We had. Yes. They had a school bus.
EH: And our headmaster was Mr Critchley was it?
DB: In the village.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CH: What else can you remember from the war time living in the village?
EH: Living in the village? As I say we were all good friends together and we had an old Village Hall on the hilltop. There’s two cottages there now. If you go down Tinkers Lane on to the hilltop on the right hand side there’s two nice stone cottages. That used to be the old Village Hall and we had lovely concert parties through the war.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And singalongs.
DB: War Weapons Week.
EH: Yeah. And lots and lots of, we used to go to Chapel and go to the village shop to spend our Saturday penny. If we, if we were lucky it was a sixpence. Can you remember Den?
DB: Yeah.
Other: What did you buy?
EH: Sweeties.
DB: Yes. We had black —
EH: Sweeties. And it was called Mrs Black’s Shop.
DB: Yes.
EH: And it’s called now Black’s Close because they built a lot of houses on the farmland. They were farmers and she had the shop. The sweetie shop. It was lovely.
DB: I can’t really think of much more.
EH: It was just camaraderie but as, as there was twenty odd houses down Mere Road, council houses and they all had children didn’t they Den?
DB: Yeah.
EH: There weren’t many that didn’t have. We all went to the same school and we all played together. There wasn’t the amount of traffic so you were quite safe to play in the road. Whip and top, and marbles and football and skipping. All the old fashioned —
DB: I can remember the VE Night. Victory. We had a bonfire at the, in the field where previously that aircraft had crashed.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Had a village bonfire.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And later that night. I think it was later that same evening or was it the evening after? I’m not quite sure but they had a Victory Dance in one of the hangars on the camp and we went down there.
EH: Oh, I can’t remember that. I might have been —
DB: Yeah. And as far as I can remember the hangars were all draped with flags. Air Force flags. You know the —
EH: Different squadrons.
DB: Yes.
Other: Was it for the whole village?
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, there were a lot of village folk invited to it. Yes.
EH: It was a nice —
DB: It was a nice celebration.
EH: A nice community life. It was lovely. I can never ever remember not having lots of friends you know. Not, some of them weren’t close friends but you always got on together. It was lovely. It was a lovely community spirit.
CH: Dennis, can I ask you how old were you when the war ended?
EH: World war ended —
DB: Nineteen forty —
EH: Seven? Six?
DB: Seven. I left school —
EH: Yeah.
DB: At fourteen. Fourteen or fifteen. Fourteen, I think.
EH: Well, I met Tommy in nineteen forty —
CH: Let’s ask Dennis, what did you, were you working then? When you left school, Dennis.
DB: When I left school at fourteen I went to work at Lincoln Co-op. Errand boy at first and then shop assistant.
CH: And where was that?
DB: High Street in Lincoln.
CH: How long did you stay there for?
DB: Til I was eighteen and I joined the Air Force as National Serviceman.
CH: When you came back from your National Service what did you do then?
DB: I joined the Railway Company at Lincoln Station. Became a signalman and stayed there forty, well stayed on the railway in Nottingham and various, Derby and places. Forty odd years. Forty five years I think.
CH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And he went just like that.
DB: Yeah.
CH: And what about you, Eileen?
EH: I didn’t.
CH: When the war ended you were fourteen.
EH: Yeah. We, I left school on the Friday as we all did and I started work on the Monday at British Home Stores for a short space of time and then I found a better job at Marks and Spencer’s and I stayed there and left there to go and do my nurse training.
Other: You worked at St John’s.
EH: Yeah. Yeah. I left there and went to work at St John’s to begin with. And then I met my husband and he’d got a home station. He was in Bomber Command at Waddington.
CH: How did you meet him?
EH: Well, he flew from Wickenby and then he came to Waddington after the war. Well, he flew from Wickenby and lost his crew just after the war on the 7th of August as war finished on the 5th didn’t it? They went to bring some prisoners of war home from Italy. The crew. And Tommy being a rear gunner and the mid-upper gunner didn’t go with them and they flew in to the Pyrenees on the way there thankfully and they were all killed. So they’d no prisoners. And then Tommy got moved from Wickenby. That was in the August and he came to Waddington in the February and I met him at the village dance on Valentine’s Day 1946 or seven, I can’t remember. I was, and we, and we never never parted. We stayed together from there.
CH: How old were you?
EH: I told him I was seventeen and I weren’t quite sixteen. So I had to be honest after a while when it got a bit more serious. He forgive me [laughs]
CH: So was he then based at Waddington?
EH: He was, he was only at Waddington for a short space of time and then he decided he didn’t want to fly any more with a new skipper because he’d flown all through the war with the same crew. And he got the opportunity and he volunteered to go down to London to the Science Museum on gunnery display work and he stayed there a year. It was a year’s contract and he used to come back to Waddington every two, second weekend and stay with my mum and dad and then go back to London you know after the weekend. And then he got a home station after that to RAF Padgate and did drill instructing. And I wasn’t very happy doing my Psychiatric nursing although I did my first year and he said, ‘Come to Bolton and we can be near together.’ So I went. I met a lady, a good friend at Bracebridge Heath called Edith and she came to Lancashire with me because we were both in the same frame of mind and we stayed friends all our lives. And she died four years ago. Lived at Spilsby. Had three boys.
Other: When you moved to Lancashire you went to do your Psychiatric training there didn’t you?
EH: No. No.
Other: And they put you on General instead.
EH: Yeah. Well, we thought we’d applied for Psychiatric but it was General so we stayed there and we were so happy. And all my nursing career has been happy.
CH: How old were you when you got married?
EH: Twenty two. Nearly twenty three. 1951.
CH: Where were you living at the time?
EH: In the nurses home at Bolton. You weren’t allowed to live out. Did you know this? You weren’t allowed to live out as a student nurse in my day. It was only after you qualified that you could live at home or get a flat. And we, we qualified. Did our finals in the October of 1951 and we arranged our wedding day for the 3rd of November 1951. I always promised my mum I’d sit my finals but I didn’t say I’d wait for the results [laughs] So we got married while we were waiting for the results and thankfully I was successful. And we lived in Lancashire as I say for ten years and then moved back to Waddo. Here. Nineteen fifty —
Other: 1960.
EH: ’61.
Other: ’61.
EH: The 3rd of November. You were five.
Other: Not quite.
EH: Not quite. And Ian was nine.
DB: A lot of water gone under the bridge, hasn’t it?
EH: Yeah. I tell you why the final reason we came to Lincolnshire. Tommy had come out of the Forces and he was working in an insurance business. And in nineteen the late ‘40s the cotton mills, the coal mines they were all coming out on short time and he came home one night and he said, ‘It’s now or never sweetheart.’ ‘What do you mean?’ he said, ‘I know you’ve always, would have liked to have gone back to Lincoln’. I did. After Elaine was born I wanted to be back here. Funny isn’t it? And he said, ‘It’s now or never. We’ll go and move. We’ll put the house on the market and we’ll move because there will be no job for me in insurance if there’s no work for people. They’ll not pay their insurance.’ And we never regretted it.
CH: What job did he do?
EH: What? What here?
CH: Once you moved back here.
EH: Oh, he just went down the camp and got a job on the electrical department on the runways and he stayed there until he retired. And we were never more contented. And you worked at British Rail a long time and Tommy worked for the Department of Environment.
DB: Yeah. I went —
EH: Eh?
DB: I went from porter at Lincoln Central.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I wasn’t there a few weeks when I applied for a signalman’s post. I came to Waddington.
EH: Yeah. I can remember you being at Harmston.
DB: Aye. Then I went to Harmston. Bracebridge. Then I moved. Met my wife, moved to Nottingham and did all sorts on signalman. Was made redundant there. Went in the marshalling yard.
EH: Did you?
DB: Yeah. And then I eventually went back to a signal box and then got promotion to supervising station manager.
CH: Where did you meet your wife, Dennis?
EH: Skeg.
DB: Skegness.
EH: Skegness.
DB: After we came out —
EH: At the Ship Hotel.
DB: Pardon?
EH: Was it at the Ship Hotel?
DB: No. No. No. It was the posh car.
EH: Eh?
DB: My friend who lived in the village and I bought old cars. I had an old Austin 7. This was after I got demobbed. He bought an old Austin 7 and we used to, on a Sunday evening we used to go over to Skegness.
EH: I can remember.
DB: Well, a Sunday afternoon and stayed for the evening. And walking across the car park one evening I saw my wife and her friend with her brother and his brother’s wife, her brother’s wife and had a little bit of chit chat and met them later on in the evening and that was it.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I came home that night. She was on holiday. I plucked up courage and wrote to her and asked her if I could go over to Nottingham to meet her and that’s —
EH: Plucked up courage [laughs]
DB: How things developed.
EH: And you had a good life together love.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
CH: How old were you when you got married?
DB: Twenty two I think.
EH: You were married the year after me and Tommy.
DB: Yeah. A few months after you and Tommy.
EH: Yeah. I was early pregnant.
DB: I met her. I met her in Nottingham in November and we were married the next March.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Really?
DB: I met her just before your wedding.
EH: We got, we got married in November love and you got married in the Easter.
DB: March.
EH: In the March.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Yeah. And we came home from Lancashire for your wedding and I just, just early pregnant.
CH: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CH: It seems like both of you have been drawn back to Waddington all the time.
DB: It’s funny.
EH: It’s been a nice village.
DB: I think mum lived here all the time so —
EH: What love?
DB: Even though I lived in Nottingham from ’53 I think it was when I moved to Nottingham and we still came home as regular as we could. Yeah.
EH: Yeah. We’ve always come home.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Always used to spend a fortnight in the summer. September we always came home when we were married. And George, our step dad he used to come and meet me off the bus and helped me to carry the children down. Yeah. Good old days.
DB: Yeah.
CH: Eileen, what do you remember about Tommy’s service in the war?
EH: Service in the war? Well, I didn’t really know him, love. I didn’t meet him while he was still flying at Wickenby. I met him when he came to Waddington and he’d just lost the crew and he was a very very traumatised young twenty eight year old. Very very sad.
CH: Did you say he was a bomb aimer?
EH: No. He was a rear gunner.
CH: A rear gunner. Did he talk much about the war?
EH: He did to my son, our son. Yeah. No, he didn’t used to talk a lot about the war. He never forgot the crew. They were a family. The crew’s photograph is on the wall over the sideboard. Never took it down. And we still keep in touch with the, there was only one of the crew married and they had only been married a very short few months when her husband was killed. And we got in touch with her in later years and we still keep in touch, Cath and I don’t we?
Other: Yeah. You do.
CH: So he’d flown with the same crew then all through the war.
EH: All through the war and he never settled when he came to Waddington. That’s why he went to, to do gunnery display work. He enjoyed it in London. He said it was a fantastic career.
Other: When he was at the Science Museum.
EH: Yeah.
Other: He had to go into a locked room didn’t he?
EH: Yeah.
Other: And somebody came to see it. He had to open the door for them.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Who was it?
EH: Was it Anthony Eden? Eh?
Other: Yeah.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And I don’t know what was in this room. It was some German equipment that had been captured.
EH: And Anthony Eden said to him, ‘How did we win the war?’ He said, ‘Because their gunnery is far superior to what we’ve ever had.’ He reminisced occasionally but —
Other: He didn’t tell very much.
EH: Eh?
Other: He didn’t tell you very much.
EH: No. He didn’t.
Other: But I do remember that.
EH: I think he did to Ian occasionally. Ian will come out with snippets every so often. ‘My dad told me this.’ To be quite honest ducky, I’ll be honest with you now we were always busy at work, you know. We didn’t, we worked forty eight hour week didn’t we Den?
DB: Yeah.
EH: With overtime. I mean our hourly weekly work was forty eight hours. And then we’d work overtime to earn a bit extra. Especially Tommy and the men. So you didn’t have time for a lot of reminiscing.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Did you?
DB: No. It’s strange. There was a lot happened that you just can’t remember.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
Other: Your auntie and uncle lived in one of the cottages.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Down Church Lane, didn’t they?
EH: Yeah.
Other: That was bombed.
EH: Yeah. She went, they went to, they came to live with mum and dad actually for a short space of time after they were bombed out. And then they got a council house at Washingborough, didn’t they?
DB: No. They went in a cottage at Washingborough.
EH: You what, love?
DB: They went in a little cottage in Washingborough.
EH: Yeah. And then they got [pause] yeah they did. They’ve been passed away a long time haven’t they?
DB: Yes.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And you used to play with their boys didn’t you?
EH: Yeah. Harry and John. They’re all dead now. Makes us feel very fortunate, Den.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Eh?
DB: Yeah. Yeah. I told Denise I’m not getting old.
EH: Eh?
DB: I told Denise I’m not getting old.
EH: I know. You try not to. Have we been of any help?
CH: Very much. Could I just take you back again to the wartime and any other recollections you have of what happened on the station at Waddington?
DB: Well, often there was air raids and you knew things were happening on the camp but you never got —
EH: It was —
DB: Immediate information that there were occasions when there were WAAFs and airmen killed in an air raid shelter but we never got information about that sort of thing.
EH: No. It was very very quiet. It was very very what’s the word I’m after?
DB: Although we lived in in the boundaries of the camp.
EH: We didn’t know what was —
DB: The council houses were in the boundaries. We had to go through a guarded barrier to get home in the evening and that sort of thing.
EH: We weren’t allowed on ad lib, you know.
DB: So —
EH: Like two communities really, weren’t it?
DB: Yeah. News from, bearing in mind we were only kids, teenagers we didn’t get a lot of news off the camp. The only things I remember was when I was on my paper round and and when the early in the war when the Royal Engineers or Leicestershire Regiment I think it was used to drill us with their home made guns. So first hand information of what was happening in the war and that we didn’t really get to know that at all.
CH: It must have been very noisy.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Made a lot of noise but —
EH: It was part of —
DB: You lived with it. It was like part of living —
EH: It was part of daily living. We didn’t notice it.
DB: Yeah. You lived with it.
Other: A bit like now.
EH: Eh?
Other: A bit like now.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. You’re so close to it you don’t take notice of it do you?
[recording paused]
CH: Ok.
DB: Yeah. There was one occasion and for some reason or other I think it was a Saturday morning because we weren’t at school and there was a low flying German plane flew over by George’s Café firing its guns. Now, who it was firing at I’ve no idea but that was a scary moment. I mean as far as I can remember I was in mother’s garden and George’s Café was what —?
EH: George’s Café.
DB: Five minutes’ walk down the road, wasn’t it?
EH: Yeah, it’s just on the right hand side down Mere Road before you get to the barrier where you have to —
Other: Go through on to camp.
EH: Go through on to camp. Used to be George’s Café.
DB: I can also remember a Wellington bomber crashing on the sewerage farm on the High Dyke. Can you remember that?
EH: I can. Vaguely.
DB: Yeah. But like I was saying before we got no information of that sort of thing. Nothing appeared in the newspapers or anything like that about crashes. You just took notice of them at the time and as as kids after the crashes were cleared up we used to go and search for pieces of the glass. What did they call the glass?
Other: Perspex.
DB: Perspex.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And make rings out of them. Yeah.
CH: When the planes crashed did the people from the station come quite quickly to clear away?
EH: I can’t remember.
DB: I can’t remember. When the crash was tucked away it was quite horrendous. Machine gun bullets going off and all sorts in the fire. Yeah. And strange as it may seem the one that crashed near the Wheatsheaf at Waddington that was the site where they had the Victory Bonfire. Yeah.
EH: Yeah. It’s a long time ago love.
DB: Yeah, it is. You see. We didn’t take a lot of notice as teenagers. We were searching for —
EH: You were searching for love life and good fun. We did have a good teenage life though.
DB: And we spent a lot of time in the village after the Blitz. After the bomb. And it was a landmine that dropped on the church actually.
EH: Yeah.
DB: One on the church. One in the vicarage grounds.
EH: Yeah.
DB: You spend a lot of time in the bombed cottages and that as kids would you know.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: We used to, well simple pleasures of life your life in them days you know. We’d go tad poling in the village pond. Can you remember? [laughs] And things like that you know. Innocent. Just innocent camaraderie with your mates. Somebody would go to Black’s shop and buy some goodies and hopefully you’d get one when they come back. Yeah.
Other: Did you have pigs down the garden during the war as well?
EH: You what love?
Other: Did you have your pigs down in the garden?
DB: No.
Other: During the war.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Chickens.
EH: Chickens.
DB: We didn’t have pigs until I came out the Air Force.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Nineteen forty —
EH: We always had chickens, didn’t we?
DB: 1949.
EH: Yeah. I hope we’ve been of some use.
CH: You were talking about chickens. Do you remember the sort of food that you were eating?
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. We never really went short of a lot of food.
EH: Potato peeling.
DB: Mum was always.
Other: That was the chickens.
EH: Yeah.
DB: We had a big garden. She always had plenty of chickens up the garden and you know if we had no Sunday dinner she’d send dad up the garden to kill a chicken and that sort of thing.
Other: You always used to tell me that you ate quite well because you were living in a village. In a rural area with plenty.
EH: We never went hungry.
DB: No. We never went hungry. Like I say when I delivered papers —
EH: I was just going to say that too.
DB: To the gun emplacement on the camp that the soldiers used to provide me with slabs of cake. ‘Take those home to your mother.’ You know. And they’d last us a week or more.
EH: And we used to deliver papers. I often think about this. In the early morning my mother always had a lovely breakfast ready for us before we went to school. And it must have cost her more money to cook that breakfast than what we got for delivering papers.
DB: Yeah. I can’t remember much about that.
EH: Yeah.
DB: But —
CH: What did she cook you?
EH: All kinds of things. A fried breakfast. A bit of sausage. A bit of bacon buttie, you know. A boiled egg, scrambled eggs. You see we always had our chickens so we had —
DB: Yeah.
EH: Our own eggs.
DB: We were brought up on eggs I think.
EH: Yeah. You know.
DB: None. Now none of my kids eat them.
EH: Do they not?
DB: No. No.
EH: I need some eggs before you go away.
Other: Go on holiday. Right.
CH: So you said your father died when you were nine.
DB: Yeah.
CH: And so how long was your mother on her own for?
EH: Only a year.
DB: A year. She —
Other: Needs must.
DB: She married the lodger.
EH: My dad was, my stepdad was a lodger. He was a Newcastle gentleman.
DB: Yeah. He worked on the camp.
EH: He worked —
DB: Building the hangars and then he joined the, he was a warden on the camp. I don’t know what the organisation was called. He was at the wireless station up beyond the camp on Waddington Heath.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Wasn’t he?
EH: Yeah. We have a stepbrother. He lives in Doncaster. We’re very close. We’ve never had any —
DB: No.
EH: Any family hiccups. Stepbrothers, or twin brothers they were both as adorable, you know. No differences in opinions of any of them.
Other: You had to get by didn’t you because there was no money in the house.
DB: No.
Other: Was there mum?
EH: No.
DB: I can’t think of anything else really.
EH: I can remember once going to Mrs Black’s shop with a sixpence on a Saturday and I lost it in the snow and I can never remember finding that tanner and I didn’t get any sweeties. My dad hadn’t got any more pennies. Yes. Things like that you know that you think oh you’d give them another tanner today [laughs] It wouldn’t be a tanner would it? [laughs]
Other: No.
EH: Is that a mark on the carpet?
Other: No. No. It’s not.
[recording paused]
EH: Can you —
CH: Ok.
Other: I can remember because —
EH: Yeah.
Other: When we came back off holiday we bought dad a video of the Eagle’s Nest.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Because we’d been up.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And he told me that he’d been over there.
EH: Yeah.
Other: On a bombing raid to bomb it but unfortunately it was too cloudy.
EH: Yeah. I can remember that.
Other: So he had to, well he was going to bomb Eagle’s Nest.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Which was Hitler’s secret.
EH: Yeah. Yeah. I can remember that.
Other: Yeah.
EH: Yeah. I can remember now you’ve talked —
Other: So, it didn’t get bombed. Not that night anyway.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Yeah. But that’s the only thing he ever really did tell me.
EH: A lot of them didn’t talk about it did they?
DB: No.
DB: That’s I would say. We didn’t really get a lot of news from the camp.
EH: No.
DB: What was going off in the war. You, you’d just listen to the radio and think well that —
EH: Yeah.
DB: That’s where they were going last night when they took off.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And that sort of thing.
EH: It was top secret really.
DB: But —
EH: Can I not get anyone a drink?
DB: No. I’m alright duck, thanks.
CH: Ok. What we’ll do is we’ll end the interview there, Eileen.
EH: Yeah.
CH: And Dennis. Thank you so much for talking. It’s been fascinating listening to your stories and thank you very much.
EH: You’re welcome.
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
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Interview with Eileen Handley and Dennis Bush
Creator
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Cathie Hewitt
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-10-12
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AHandleyE-BushD171012
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Pending review
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Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Format
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00:49:30 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Twins, Eileen and Dennis, were born in Waddington in 1929. They give a detailed account of their experiences living adjacent to RAF Waddington throughout the Second World War. Summer evenings were spent waving to aircraft departing on operations, then going back in the morning to count how many had returned. Evacuees arrived from Leeds and three were billeted with Eileen and Dennis, but it wasn’t long before their parents came to take them home. Dennis delivered newspapers to the camp and would be rewarded by cakes which he was told to take home to his mother. Several aircraft crashes were witnessed. The sombre mood of the village is described after the church was bombed, which resulted in the death of a twenty-one-year-old resident. Their school was also destroyed, resulting in transporting each day to nearby villages. VE night was celebrated with a bonfire on the site of one of the aircraft crashes, which was followed by a dance in one of the aircraft hangars. Dennis joined the RAF in 1947 for his National Service, and upon discharge, became a signalman. Eileen initially worked as a shop assistant before undertaking a career in nursing. She met and married an ex-Lancaster rear gunner, who was posted to RAF Waddington after the war.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1941-05-09
bombing
crash
evacuation
home front
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/544/11121/AHookerFJ170826.2.mp3
34e7b8ab3c905449d0e448d8867cb8ed
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
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Hooker, Fred
Fred J Hooker
F J Hooker
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hooker, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. Two oral history interviews with Sergeant Fred Hooker (b. 1924, 1850487 Royal Air Force) and his scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 102 Squadron and became a prisoner of war on 12 September 1944.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2016-05-25
2017-08-26
Rights
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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.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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TO: Ok. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, whatever the case may be. This interview is being recorded for the International Bomber Command Centre. The gentleman I’m speaking to is Mr Fred Hooker and my name is Thomas Ozel and we are recording this interview on the 26th of August 2017.
FH: Yeah.
TO: Can you tell me a bit about where you grew up and where you were born?
FH: Yes. That’s about four miles away from where we are now in a village called Hartley Wintney back in 1924. Did all my schooling in the same village and I joined the Service from the actual village which I [pause] getting stuck now. I joined the Air Training Corps when that was first formed in 1941 and that was the, really the start of my liking to, in wanting to join the RAF and join the bomber crews because we used to go to RAF Odiham for different lectures and that in the Air Training Corps. And while we were there we were often had flights in various aircraft having the written permission from the parents to fly and my first aircraft was a Tiger Moth that I flew in. And on another occasion I went up in a Blenheim aircraft sitting in a gun turret. Of course, the gun turret was made safe, or the guns were made safe and from there it got me bugged and I wanted to join the Air Force. Not only that around the same time one afternoon in the garden I was actually digging a shelter for the bombers and there was a whole load of aircraft coming down across the sky from the Reading area and it turned out to be the first attack, thousand aircraft raid on Cologne. They come over the village and I stood there along with other neighbours watching these aircraft. I could see the gun turrets moving, the guns moving, the chaps waving to us as they were flying over and that really gave me the bug to join the RAF and hopefully become a member of a bomber crew which eventually I did and joining up in the actual Air Force on the 29th of March 1943. And I had to report to Lords Cricket Ground for my, well I joined the Service and where I had all the inoculations etcetera. I think there was about a fortnight I was in London after which I was posted to a place called Bridgnorth in Shropshire as I was under training as a wireless operator/air gunner at the time and fortunately during the training I enjoyed Bridgnorth. All the square bashing, PTs, never so fit in my life as I was then. And as I say I was posted to Bridgnorth. Done that and then from there I went to RAF Yatesbury for wireless training in Wiltshire which I thoroughly enjoyed. With regards the Morse Code I’d done some in the Air Training Corps and I improved my reading and sending of the messages but unfortunately when it got around to technical details I’m afraid Freddie came unstuck ‘cause we used to have tests every so often to make sure that we could carry on in the course. But as I say I failed one test and I remustered to a straight air gunner. That was, I had to go to Sheerness for the remustering and there I met some other chaps that had been on a pilot’s course and a bomb aimer’s course and become very friendly with them. In actual fact the Les, Les Duncan from Sunderland, we palled up very well very quickly and in actual fact in the end he became our tail gunner on the crew that I was flying with. Which was quite exciting because we were inseparable in those days. We’d both done another course of physical training etcetera in Bridlington, Yorkshire along the sea front. There was no, no parade grounds or anything so it was all done along on the promenade which was a bit drafty at times as we were there in the winter months. But anyhow we, from there we were posted to Number 7 AGS in Stormy Down, South Wales. And of course, we didn’t know until we both arrived there that we was going to meet again because the various chaps went to various units of the gunnery. Different Gunnery Schools. But fortunate for me Harry and Les came to the same Gunnery School and we got on marvellous and although we weren’t actually in the same classrooms for our lectures etcetera we became good friends. And when it come around to we had to start using guns to fire which was quite exciting really thinking we was going to go straight into the aircraft and use Browning. 303 Browning guns. Instead of that we went on twelve bore shooting at clay pigeons as the start of our firing which, that led to flying in an Anson after that with camera guns which to me was quite exciting. I always fancied cameras but never really got around to studying photography to that extent. But we had taken the photographs of the, no the Faery Battle, sorry. The Faery Battle aircraft used to attack us and we used to, that was towing a drogue which we used to have to fire at. And from there from the films taken they could estimate whether we hit the target or not which was pretty good at times. I must say it myself I was, quite enjoyed that. And then we moved on to firing 303 guns which was mounted into, this was on the Avro Anson we were flying in those days which had a turret fitted not normally used on an Anson. Just for training purposes and we finally passed out at, well I say Stormy Down actually we’d been diverted or posted to a satellite of Stormy Down. A place called Rhoose which now I understand is Cardiff airport. Some difference. But from there we was transferred or posted I should say to Moreton in the Marsh, Gloucestershire. Of course, we went from home to Reading Station on the local bus and sitting on the station I met another chap. We had our greatcoats on because it was pretty fresh and talking to this gentleman there, he was a warrant officer, I discovered that he was going to Moreton in the Marsh as a pilot to crew up the same as I was. So we had a nice long chat on the platform and we sat together in the, going down in the train, got to know each other, about each other’s family etcetera and I eventually crewed up with him as his mid-upper gunner. Of course in Moreton in the Marsh we were trained on, no, crewed up on a Wellington bomber but once again we were put to a satellite station called Enstone which, which was quite enjoyable. And Les and Harry they both in the same group we all went to Enstone which was just what we wanted because Les and I had made up our minds that if possible we’d fly together. And while we were there we had do dinghy training and believe it or not that was in Blenheim Palace grounds. The grounds of Blenheim Palace. There was an Avro Anson parked in the middle of the lake which was great fun because some of us, though fortunately I could swim but some of the crew couldn’t swim at the time. But we had a row out in a little boat to the aircraft and sit in the positions as though we were doing a crash landing in the sea and had the instruction. And as we hit the water we heard a noise in the aircraft. That was the time we were sitting in the aircraft and of course that was the time we had to open the dinghy, get the dinghy out, open it up, blow it up and sit in the dinghy. That went on for a couple of days but after that we passed out as a full crew. We had Phil the bomb, sorry Phil the pilot came from the Salisbury area. Jock the navigator he was from Aberdeen, Taffy the bomb aimer from Wales and Les, my old mate he came from Sunderland and of course, myself from Hartley Wintney. And we got on quite well together as a crew and eventually we passed out having done various cross-country flights firing at different targets in selected areas in the North Sea and I suppose it would be the Irish Sea as well. But from there we went on to Halifax bombers in 6 Group which, transferred to 6 Group thinking we were going to remain in 4 Group but no. It was a Canadian unit we went to at Dishforth and there a flight engineer joined the crew which, he was a chap from Romford in Essex. Old Charlie. Charlie [Warderman.] He was about the oldest member of the crew in actual fact. He was an old London bus driver. From there we became good friends and made up the crew but unfortunately, we lost our wireless operator while we was at Dishforth. He got in to trouble with the police. Never heard proper details about that but anyway we were joined by a French Canadian chap from Montreal as a wireless operator and of course as we introduced ourselves all the way around to him and he told us about his Service life which apparently he’d been, already been on operations flying as a wireless operator air gunner on Marauders from Blackbushe. So I kept quiet and let him carry on talking about Blackbushe and that. I asked him about different pubs in Hartley Wintney and he discovered that I’d come from Hartley Wintney and we had a quite nice old chat from that. But we’d done all the similar things we’d done at the OTU when we were at Dishforth and we finally got transferred or posted should I say to 102 Squadron. But prior to that we were actually told we were going on leave for a fortnight and being, joining a squadron in South Africa [knocking noise in background] But that all fell by the wayside, what that noise was I don’t know but here we go. We eventually got to RAF Pocklington, Yorkshire, 102 Squadron and the sight that greeted us as we turned in to the entrance of the aerodrome was a Halifax bomber sitting in the field where it had failed to take off which rather, you know put funny feelings in our stomachs seeing a crashed aircraft, you know. But we got over that and we finally started our bombing and that was 18th of August 1944. And we’d done our first bombing raid on the 3rd of September and the target was Venlo Airfield in Holland which was all new to us. The actual being informed of what they expected of the crews and telling us, warning the gunners to keep a good eye open the whole time from the time when we took off ‘til we came back but we didn’t encounter any aircraft, or any enemy aircraft at the time and the bombing trip went well. We had a small amount of flak but we didn’t take a lot of notice of it. But unfortunately, when we came back, flying over the North Sea we were diverted and we had to land at a ‘drome in Cambridgeshire which I never really knew the name of strange as it may seem. But we were there, we had to stay there a week before the weather was changed and we could land back at Pocklington and while we were there I witnessed an American pilot shooting the ‘drome up because he had finished his tour of ops in a Lightning aircraft and he shot the place up twice and on the third trip he was flying over and he went under some cables and caught the fins of the aircraft and he shot up in the air, baled out and the aircraft crashed. But we did, as I say finally get back to Pocklington but prior to that while we were there the night we landed we were interrogated. After two unsuccessful attempts at landing and the third one the pilot took, took a chance and went in because low on petrol. Short of petrol. And we had a nice meal but I didn’t enjoy mine so much as the others because on medical instructions I had I was flying without dentures and we had a nice partridge and I couldn’t gnaw the bones like the other lads. It was quite a laugh really. Anyway, finally we got back to our own ‘drome and that was on the 11th of September. On the 12th, the morning of the 12th we were on orders for a briefing, I think it was about 10.30 in the morning and to go on another bombing raid. This was quite an extensive [pause] what’s the word? Briefing. That’s the word. Briefing on the target and the amount of aircraft that was going to be flying that day I think was about two hundred every so, every half hour on to the target. And it turned out to be the Ruhr. Gelsenkirchen. And of course, from the old memories of the crews that were on the squadron a big ‘Aaaargh,’ went up and we realised that they’d been there before and it wasn’t a very happy place to be. So of course, warned again by the gunnery officer after the briefing what he expected of all the gunners, you know to keep a sharp lookout. Watching out all the time, not just for the enemy aircraft that may attack but making sure there was nothing above us or that the other aircraft weren’t getting too close which we’d got used to doing. Anyhow, the, as we were going over the North Sea near the, getting near the border of Germany we, I could see smoke in the distance as we got closer and closer and realised it was the target area that we were approaching. And flying in formation we were the, one began to feel, you know wondered what was happening. I know I did. And still keeping an eye open watching what we had to look out for and the ack ack was firing away and the only way I can really describe it myself the firing of the German guns was in the modern day fireworks. You know the, with modern day fireworks they explode in the air all different colours. Varying coloured lights and that. Masses of them and imagine that was the shells bursting around us and believe me it was, well put it bluntly hell. And we, we carried on. We dropped our bombs and after there was the Pathfinders on the, guiding the bomb, the bomb aimers in and we saw two aircraft go down while we were on the bombing run and one, the Pathfinder we heard him say, ‘Take over number 2. Take over number 2. I’m going in. I’m going in.’ That’s the last we heard of that. But the, to see these other planes at the side of us going down it was a bit unnerving but you just got on with your job and it seemed to disappear from your mind you know because you’re thinking about yourself and guarding yourself. But anyhow we eventually got through the target and the navigator gave, flew on the new course to fly to come home which we did and we gradually got away from the flak and eventually landed back at Pocklington. [banging noises] It may be the workmen outside. I don’t know.
TO: [unclear]
FH: Anyhow, we got out the aircraft. The ground crew were waiting for us. Welcoming us back. Of course, we looked around the aircraft and it was just covered in holes and we thought we were rather lucky getting back. When Taffy got right under the nose of the aircraft, looked up there was shells gone up right through where he had been laying with his legs open. Straight up through the centre, between his legs and out the top and he just more or less fell to the ground with his hands closed and I think he said a prayer same as we all did thinking we were damned lucky to be back home. And the old aircraft had a load of holes in. Since then we wondered how we did manage to get back. But anyhow the following day oh we had a nice time. We had rum when we got in for debriefing and we all debriefed as a crew, then individually by the, like with our case Les and I, had the gunnery officer. We went to bed that night and the next morning looking on orders we was on orders again for another raid. Of course, we’d been trained for this so we, we knew what to expect, you know. That’s why we were sent to a squadron. To do these bombing raids. Anyhow, same procedure as normal and after the briefing of course you weren’t, you made no contact with anybody outside on the ‘drome. You kept to yourselves so that no, anybody around the place to get the information to send off to the enemy, you know. Everything was all secret which we got used to after a couple of trips or a couple of briefings. This time the target was Munster in Germany. Crossing across the North Sea was ok. Normal flying except that when the navigator asked the pilot to climb to nineteen thousand feet which was the bombing height that day we found he couldn’t get the height. Only eighteen five hundred feet high. A discussion took place between the crew and we decided that you know we could carry on without. Didn’t want to turn back so we carried on to the bomb site and as we approached we had a bit of flak. And on the bombing run Taffy was giving an order to Phil to, you know, ‘Steady. Steady. Left. Left. Right. Right.’ Anyway, all of a sudden I discovered I was sitting in fresh air. It made me smile a bit at the time but I thought how has this come about? And as I had come to my guns were trailing over the tail turret and the ammunition was being pulled out all along the fuselage. Thinking to myself well it’s no good sitting here. Can’t. No good without guns. I’ll go up front with the pilot which I did or attempted to do. Disconnected oxygen etcetera to go up the front and the aircraft was one mass of flames. So at the same time I saw somebody disappear through the hatch, front hatch so I picked up my parachute. It was burning and I guess through the lack of oxygen these things were happening but I just dropped the parachute back down thinking well that’s no use to me. And all this happened in a matter of seconds I guess but it seemed ages but I’m sure Charlie at the front, he was the flight engineer he come, seemed to be running back to me over the spar. He picked up the ‘chute. I remember him doing it. I can see him now as I’m talking putting his arm across the flames on the ‘chute, clipping it on and somehow he got me over the spar in to the front of the aircraft into the cockpit where the exit was and the last thing I saw before he pushed me out was my pilot Phil sitting there with the stick back into his stomach. Very white. I can remember that and I can see him now. And Charlie pushed me out and I came to proper then coming down in the fresh air and while I was coming down I could hear psst psst psst and I assumed it was bullets being fired from the ground by the troops that I could see as I was coming down, surrounding me. And a Spitfire circled around as well while I was coming down. Didn’t see any other ‘chutes and I just hoped and prayed that everybody was out but I did see the plane which I assumed was our plane making a perfect belly landing away in the distance just one mass of flames. Of course, that disappeared out of sight and this Spitfire was circling and he must have been within five hundred feet of the ground and he dipped his wings and then shot away up in the air enough to say, ‘I’m on the way home.’ And that’s when I really first felt lonely. Just for a split second and then I was on the ground. And of course, I could see as I was landing that there was civilians and troops running in to this field that I was about to land in which I discovered, well in my opinion was a field of sugar beet and of course landed a bit heavy not having a full ‘chute. Anyway, I disconnected it and I had no chance of escape. It was 6.30 in the evening. I stood doing the hands up and a couple of German soldiers were within what fifty yards of me by that time and they gave me a search all over, make sure I’d got no firearms etcetera. And from there we marched across a field which was as I say was a bit of rough walking because it was some kind of root crop. I said it was sugar beet but anyway I’m carrying my open parachute and the guard put his foot on some barbed wire at the end of the field and I had to crawl underneath this wire which was not the easiest of tasks being open parachute carrying. They put me in to a coach there where I was strip searched and the parachute and flying jacket suit were taken from me and thrown into the back of a coach. While that was going on Charlie arrived with his. He’d been picked up, and also Taffy and they went through the same treatment as I did. But shaking hand with Charlie as he got in and you know didn’t speak at all. Just shaking hands we got hit across the wrist with the butt of a rifle which was a little bit painful. Same as the kick I had as we got through the barbed wire. I stopped like an English gentleman as I say to allow them to get through because I didn’t know where I had to go and he, the jackboot went right in my rear which I felt for several days afterwards. So anyhow finally we got put into some Army barracks where we were [paused] we’d been walking along this canal bank and were being beaten up by the civilians with broom handles and forks and if it hadn’t been for the guards protecting us and tempting to fire at the civilians I don’t think I’d would be here now. But anyhow, we finally arrived in this Army barracks where we stood in a big hall. A kind of a dining hall place or assembly hall and after we were standing there I was on the right, Taffy in the middle and Charlie was on the left and we, all of a sudden a door opened directly in front of us. Taffy started falling so we instantly grabbed him to stop him falling on the ground and the chap in the doorway says, ‘It’s alright Taffy. The war’s over for you.’ And he disappeared. Of course, we couldn’t talk to each other and we didn’t find out until we got into the actual camp, Luft 7 in Poland what it was all about. And it turned out that in 1938 this chap was working with Taffy in South Wales and he’d left there to go to Cambridge to improve himself and I guess he went back to Germany. But from that there we were put into a cell for in Munster for three nights. Three of us in one cell. And from there we had to go to Dulag Luft, the Interrogation Centre which was a bit [pause] a bit much at times but anyway we were in separate cells there for the first time and that was quite a lonely spot then. But anyhow as soon as I, we’d been warned at briefing not to take any notice of any voices or anything we heard when we were in the cells and I hadn’t been in there five minutes before a Yankee voice come I could hear. He said, ‘Are you a limey?’ I didn’t answer. He said, ‘Where did you catch it?’ I kept quiet. Didn’t answer at all and apparently, he said he had a gangrenous foot but I just didn’t answer and I just sat on the old bench that was there. But eventually after about a week I was called for and was taken, marched out from the cell along the corridor down the flight of steps, outside in to the, well, we were passing a parade ground. Then I had to go down some old steps in the building and this had doors all the way along either side of the building and the doors was open. I was told to stand there or indicated to stand there where I stood for forty five minutes actually with a pistol in front of me. There was two officers, I assumed they were officers of the German force and one, one was asking questions. Where we come from, what my trade was and all the rest of it. Still just answered number, rank and name and he kept fiddling with his pistol. The safety catch went on and off and I got like that I remember saying to myself, ‘Why don’t you pull the trigger? Get me out of it.’ I said, ‘Nobody knows whether I’m alive or dead so why don’t you do it?’ Anyhow, after forty five minutes he says, ‘I can let you go back to your cell now, Sergeant Hooker.’ He said, ‘You’re too young to die yet.’ Went back and I sat, I remember sitting on that bench, wooden bench, collapsed out to be honest. And anyhow the following morning I was called again. I thought oh no. Not again. This time went the other way. Went into an office. ‘Sit down, sergeant.’ ‘No. I prefer to stand.’ ‘Oh, have a cigarette.’ ‘No. I don’t smoke.’ Although I could have done at the time you know. I did used to smoke a bit but we never, we were warned against it. Not to smoke, you know or to take a cigarette but I could have given anything to have one. But anyhow after a while he started asking questions again and then he went on the phone. I remember this clearly. Went on the phone and presently a chap came through the door with a book. Put it on the desk in front of the officer and there he started turning these pages over and every page he turned over he mentioned a name of the RAF stations that I’d been at. Right from the time I joined up in the Lords Cricket Ground back to where I was born. It was amazing. Whether it told on my face or not I don’t know but once again he said, ‘You see Sergeant Hooker,’ he says, ‘We know all about you so what’s the point in shooting you.’ Still didn’t say anything. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘By the way Wing Commander Wilson is on our list. He’ll be the next one. We’ll get him. We knew he was supposed to lead the attack today,’ he said. ‘When you attacked.’ He said, ‘But he was standing at the end of the runway when you took off wasn’t he? Saluting the aircraft.’ It shook me something shocking that did. Knowing that. And that is actually what happened. Wing Commander Wilson’s plane went u/s on the way around to take off. And he said, ‘So, there we are.’ He said, ‘You go back to your cell.’ He says, ‘And in a few days’ time you’ll be sent to the prison camp.’ And I went back to my cell and sat there on this old wooden bench which we used to sleep on as well and I couldn’t take it in. That he knew all about us because my own crew didn’t even know where I was born apart from the fact that they knew I lived in Hartley Wintney. But I was actually born in a little hamlet a few miles away from there and he actually knew this. Anyhow, a couple or three days after we were called out again and there was Charlie and the bomb aimer over there and the navigator and the Canadian W/Op. They were there as well so we hadn’t been in touch with them at all. And there were several other men, two chaps we started talking to or Charlie and I did. A flight engineer Sergeant [Mead] and a Sergeant [Beech] from Kent. Anyway, we became very good pals then once we got into the prison camp which was in a place called Bankau in Poland. Took several days I believe if I remember right getting there but once we was there we, we was put in to what we called dog kennels. These garden sheds. And there were seven in the one I arrived in. We were only there for a short while. I can’t remember exact dates but from there we were put into proper huts and there was, that was divided off into small rooms and there was eight of us in a room in four double bunks. We became very friendly altogether and for exercise like all the rest of the lads we used to walk around the perimeter track day after day just to keep a bit of fitness together. The food was a bit rough and in very short supply as it had been during the whole time I’d been in the Interrogation Centre. But there we are. We got through. We had a bit of German cheese and their soup which was, well we called it whispering grass. That’s what it looked like. Bits of grass boiled up. Sometimes there was skinned potatoes boiled up. But the bread I got used to in the end. Eating their dark bread which was horrible to start with. The one thing in passing towards the end of the time we were in Luft 7 we were issued with bread that had been baked in 1937 for the Spanish Civil War. It was on the wrappers of the bread. Like we get our bread nowadays in wrappers. It was just like that. It was some of the finest bread I’ve ever eaten. It really was. Of course, during that time in Luft 7, through the Red Cross I had a set of dentures made because I was flying without mine. And there again they didn’t cost me anything apart from we were allowed to give the dentist a tablet of soap for hygiene purposes which I did and they were a lovely set of teeth. I had them on for a number of years after. After the war. Anyhow, from there of course, the Christmas ’45, sorry ’44 we heard that we were about to be moved from one camp to another. And over the Christmas period there the Yankee aircraft we could hear up in the sky we actually could see them. They were flying quite regular. But on the 17th of January we were informed because we used to have a parade every twice a day for number count, make sure no one had escaped, etcetera. We were informed that we’d be leaving the camp later that day to a destination which the Germans couldn’t tell us. Anyhow, we stood out in the snow and cold with what personal items we had in a Red Cross case which we’d been given in [pause] not in the Interrogation Centre, a transit camp which we went to after we’d been interrogated and that had new clothing, underwear, pullovers, towels, shaving gear which was very acceptable because I hadn’t had a shave or wash for over two weeks. And but from there as I say we were on the parade ground for a number of hours on the 17th then sent back to our billets. On the 19th we were to call again 3 o’clock in the morning on parade. Everybody woke up. Snowing. Breathing very cold. We eventually moved off. I think it was about 8 o’clock if I remember right. Over twelve hundred of us. There were sixteen hundred of us in the camp. Anyhow, there was way over twelve hundred and we, the marching didn’t much. It got into a walk and we stopped a few hours afterwards and put up into a farm building for the night. Then we walked again the following morning for a short while. And then we stopped outside a brick yard, a disused brick yard and we spent the day there. Some were lucky enough to be under cover. Others were in the open. Resting. We were told we were staying there for the day or for the night I should say and early evening we were called out again. We were on the move. The word went around. There were about, so we hesitated whether we’d get out or whether we’d stay there hoping we could get away with staying there and perhaps make contact with the Russians as they were making their push. As we were about to move we saw a pile of pallets. The four of us. There was Charlie, myself and Frank and Tommy. So nobody spoke. We all seemed to go to these pallets and start moving them, a big pile of them and we laid behind. Thought now we’re safe. Nobody will see us here. And we just moved them back in position probably and we were spotted, it turned out by a dog seen the pallets move. A dog. A German guard was checking everybody was out. Anyhow, he controlled the dog. It didn’t attack anybody and we, he ordered us out and in that time he pushed us up near the front of the queue that was forming to make the night march as it turned out. Well, that night it was really snowing and being in front of the queue, or almost in the front we were in sight of the German guards and the chief officer of the camp and the interrogator, not the interrogator, interpreter I should say of the camp and we was walking through snow up to our waists. So we were literally sort of digging ourselves through. And this went on all night. We left there at 8 o’clock at night. The march started and during the night we were informed that if we didn’t get across the River Oder by 8 o’clock in the morning we’d be left to the mercy of the Russians because they were getting so close. For some unknown reason we got over the river, over the bridge which had big holes drilled in them ready for being exploded. You know, exploding. And during the night, I can’t quite remember if it was before that incident or after we found ourselves, the four of us sitting on our cases. We had these Red Cross cases which we had fixed on a piece of an old broken ladder we found in the brickyard and used it as a sled to pull these cases along, you know. We had our towels and a little bit of personal stuff, clothing left. Most of it we was wearing to keep us warm. But we suddenly discovered we were all four of us sitting on this case. Nobody else in sight. I can’t remember who spoke, or if anybody spoke first but we eventually got up and we linked arms as we had been before helping each other along trying to keep each other up. Standing up. And of course the snow was flat and icy where all the lads had gone before us but we eventually did catch up with the group, on the tail end of it but after we’d got over the river, when did I say when it was? About 8 o’clock in the morning. Tired out of course but a short while afterwards we heard the explosions of the bridge being blown up. And that night or that morning we waited outside a farmhouse for like about an hour while the farmer finished milking his cows. You could see them in the stalls. And they turned them out into the snowy field and all of a sudden there was a mad rush and everybody was rushing inside so they could lay down and have a rest. Well, the four of us we spotted the old [unclear] where they used to milk the cows. The stalls. The cow stalls. Just room for four of us to lay down. Well, there was, the cows had been in there all night and we had a good old job trying to clean them out using our boots to move the droppings. We got a bit of straw or hay and managed to lay down on it but it wasn’t very thick. It was very hard and cold but that’s how we spent our night or the rest of the day I should say. But again, we’d no food and this went on for a number of days. I can’t quite remember how many there was. The memory is going a bit. But we were sleeping in cow farms, cow stalls, open barns. Sometimes the barns had hay in. I know in one instance we were sleeping on some hay that was in a barn down the bottom. Others had climbed up on top of the rig. But in the morning we couldn’t find our shoes and where the hay had moved, people moving about at night going to loo etcetera but we did finally find them. But another instance we got to, we were about to move again from the farm and had a short march that day and got to another farmhouse. And this was in the evening time and I could see, or four of us could see shadows moving about in the distance in this farmyard and I went to investigate because we had a feeling. We could see the shadow of a house in the darkness. Over the line, I took a couple of mugs with me to get a drink of water for the four of us and when I got there I was ushered inside and told, you know, told not to speak. It was in broken English. It was some Polish people and there were two of the lads, Polish lads who were on march they’d come up and found out there were Polish people in the house and two of them were going to stop there and hide and they had the floorboards up and they were going to hide in to, underneath the floorboards when our lot moved off. And I was warned you know not to say anything other otherwise you know, you’d be finished. I eventually got back with this water and they wanted to know where I had been and all the rest of it but thankfully we were eventually told we were going on a, the end of the march was over and we were being transported by train.
TO: Sorry. Can I just ask what is that noise?
Other: That’s the fridge.
TO: Ok. I just wondered.
FH: Are you alright?
TO: I was just wondering what the noise was that was all.
FH: Hmmn?
TO: Just wondering what the noise was. That was all. Sorry. Carry on.
FH: Yeah. We, we were informed we were going to be travelling by train for a while but we had another small march. But once we got on the train or on the train there was trucks, goods trucks and there was sixty five of us in one truck which in normal circumstances would have been a bit crowded to say the least. But it wasn’t long before people wanted to relieve themselves. Of course, we couldn’t open the door. That was locked from the outside. There was a crack in the door and various chaps stood at the door trying to relieve themselves but in the end a corner was used to, they wanted to do number twos as they call it. And eventually no. It was, I don’t know how to describe it. The stench was terrific. Everybody was wanting to relieve themselves and using the corner and of course that meant chaps were getting closer and closer together because during the, a couple of days before we got on the train we’d been at a farmhouse and somebody found a tub of what they said was molasses. Of course, everyone being hungry and thirsty put their mugs in and had some of this molasses but it was what they called farm molasses and of course Canadians used to love molasses. Similar to treacle in our case, you know. But this turned out to be farm molasses which they used to use to make sileage for the cattle. Dysentery set in with nearly everyone on the train and believe me it was no, no holiday sitting in that train. We did finally stop and then we were allowed out of the trucks and some of us got out. I think most people got out but a lot of us couldn’t get back in on our own. It was on a slope and it wasn’t on the, it was out in the country so there was no platform and we went down the slope and done what we had to and got back up the slope to get in and the Germans were actually helping us into the trucks. The guards. And some of our own chaps who were a bit fitter helped each other up. Anyhow, we finally got to the destination which was Luckenwalde and there we had a short walk to the camp and crowds of people were, or a crowd of chaps were getting near the gate anxious to see who we were and what. What we were. And it turned out it was an Army camp that we were arriving at. Stalag 3A. And again, we had to stand outside, be photographed again for identity cards. We eventually got into this camp. Into huts. There were no bunks and just the open hut and I think it was just over two hundred to a hut. And we were fortunate. Fortunate to find a place near the side of the hut where we could lean against. There was no, you couldn’t really lay down there was so many. The crowd was so, you know intense and so close together. But anyway, that went on for a while and it was there that I discovered two lads. One from Aldershot, and one from Blackwater and the third one from Basingstoke. And the lad from Basingstoke unfortunately was taken to hospital one night and he passed away with a gangrene stomach. And the following morning or the morning after the padre come around asking if anybody knew him that was in the area where he was resting and sleeping, this chap. He’d been taken out of the room. But I imagine that he was in the same Air Training Corps as I was in Basingstoke so I was allowed to join the party for the funeral which part of the way I carried a imitation or homemade paper wreath with paper flowers on. And halfway along outside the camp, it was quite a walk we changed over bearers and I helped carry the lad to the cemetery which all were under oath not try to escape, you know on that particular occasion which we all agreed to, you know the padre and everything. Anyhow, finally on the 22nd of April [pause] Yes, the 23rd of April we woke up and then, no. That must have been about the 22nd we discovered that the German guards had gone and a senior, I think it was a Norwegian officer had been put in charge of the camp and he gave the instruction no one to leave as the Russians were very close. And on the 23rd these Russian tanks arrived and it was a sight I’ll never forget. They, these tanks went straight down the main road I suppose you’d call it of the camp, the barbed wire either side knocking it down. Everybody was cheering I remember and they turned around, the tanks did and come back up and with the tanks, on some of the tanks were Russian prisoners. They were you know a compound further down sitting on the tanks and some were walking and it was said that they were continuing with the troops to Berlin. They were in a sad state I must admit. And the next thing another follow up troops as they moved off further on the second wave of Russian troops come which had women in them, amongst them as well and we were treated just like prisoners as well by them. Short of food. Not allowed out. But some did venture out I agree. On one occasion, one day there we were, several of us walked down to the Russian compound where they’d killed a cow. We tried to get some of this meat to cook up but didn’t get much luck. They gave us a bit of a tripe which we couldn’t do anything with. It was horrible really. But anyhow, eventually word went around that American trucks were arriving. Everybody was quite pleased and excited looking for them. When they did arrive we rushed to them. I know I did to get on one of the trucks. They were going to take us back to the American lines which turned out to be about eighteen kilometres away. But waiting there in the trucks then some of the guards got very close and ordered everybody off the trucks. ‘You’re our prisoners. You’re going home. We’ll send you home through Odessa,’ they were saying. Anyhow, we got turned off the trucks, put back in the camp and the word went around they’d come again in the morning, the Americans because they didn’t want to make bad friends or cause trouble with the Russians. So they said they’d return again in the morning which they did and again I was one of the lucky ones to get on the trucks. This time I’d somehow or other, I don’t know how I’d lost, lost contact with Charlie and the two new mates, Frank and Tommy. But anyhow again we got turned off the trucks with the Russians firing at us. So the message went around anybody fit enough to walk eighteen kilometres the Yanks would wait there for twenty four hours waiting for us. I joined up with three other chaps who was in the, got off the same lorry. We went into the woods that was close by heading in the direction that we were informed that, we were being fired on then by the Russians as we were trying to escape I suppose you’d call it. But we weren’t the only ones. There was a load of others as well but we was dodging in between the trees. But eventually the firing stopped and we carried on and met up with four or five other. And in the end there was a group of ten of us that after some chatter amongst ourselves five of them decided to return to camp but we decided, you know we started and we’d finish. And that night, well during the day I don’t know how far we’d covered I’m sure but we were very tired and hungry we come across this little village and we could smell new bread being baked and of course that made us worse. Made us feel hungry and we sorted out some and spoke to some Russian guards and took a chance that we’d speak with them and they indicated, or we made them understand who we were after a while. Ex-prisoners of war, English and they cottoned on to who we were. They took us into a house and ordered us to sit down and they disappeared. Well, it was only a matter of ten minutes I guess and they came back with four or five jars of bottled meat and a big bucket of milk and indicated to us to eat and drink and then to lay down and sleep. So we really got tucked in to this bottled meat. It was good. And the milk. So we finally said well we’ll stop there and we slept through the night. And then the following morning we thought well we’d better say thank you to these Russians but we didn’t know where they were but we went outside and eventually we saw these chaps coming back to us pushing bicycles. We thought are they the same men or aren’t they and it turned out they were and they’d got bicycles for us to ride instead of having to walk because we were informed we were going to America. And there was four bicycles so we shared one. Gave one a lift so far and then changed over you know. Five of us on four bikes. Then eventually we got to [unclear] where the German, a load of German civilians and we were trying to get through to the bridge and couldn’t get through. But eventually we made contact with the Russians that were guarding the bridge which was the entrance for the Germans to get across into the Yankee zone but they weren’t allowing that. There was quite a few men their side. But eventually we got in contact with them and told them we wanted to get over and, ‘No. No. No.’ Then they indicated they realised who we were and I pointed to my bike, flat tyre, no good. So they took this bike away from me and more or less snatching it away from me give it to a German lady and snatched her bike away from her and told us, indicated for us to go across the bridge. Which we did and it was long, not long after we got over the bridge we turned. I remember turning left and going along this road. We heard grenades going off. We thought have we done right? They’re still fighting. Anyhow, suddenly three or four Yanks came out from the woods away in front of us, a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards in front of us. They looked and we put our hands up and we called out, ‘English. English.’ Anyhow, we gradually met up and from there they, we threw our bikes on the grass and they got transport for us and took us to their headquarters where we was given some food and drink, cigarettes. And then we moved on from there to a place called [Halle]. I think it is. Anyhow, there again we were given some more cigarettes, more food and it was there that there were some other lads, some Army lads who had been prisoners and had got that far and of course my feet was terrible with blisters. So one of these lads seen me hobbling. He asked what was wrong and I said, ‘Oh, blisters.’ He said, ‘I’m a medical man,’ he says, ‘From the Medical Corps.’ He says, ‘I’ll have a look at them.’ Anyhow, he looked and he disappeared somewhere. He’d been there several days apparently but he came back and I think he must have pricked one of the blisters and it was all running out you know. And then he put a padding on it which was a little bit uncomfortable to start with but after a while it made it easier for me to walk. So I thanked him and then we didn’t see him again. We got, I got moved on to Belgium to an Army, a British Army camp where we had a good shower and a wash, a shave, tidied up again. And from there they gave us some what they called [Banff[ money. It was money that was issued to the occupying forces during the war and we bought a couple of little gifts in the evening. The following day we were told, we had breakfast there of course amongst the troops and we were told that our names would be called out and we’d have to go to a certain point they indicated to us. An assembling area where we’d be flown back to England. Well, waited all the morning. Nothing happened. And we had lunch or I had lunch and I realised I was the only RAF chap there. So waited and waited and mid-afternoon I heard the name, ‘Sergeant Hooker, RAF.’ So I hurried to the assembly point and met up with a crew of a Dakota and they said, ‘Well, you’re on our flight,’ and there was a load of Army chaps there as well so we all got aboard and I discovered sitting in the aircraft a contingent of RAF chaps. Anyway, we took off. I was very pleased you know to be taken flying again and I just got settled in my seat you know and thinking that the White Cliffs are over there and I see a chap coming down from the cockpit, one of the crew members. And he’d been sent down by the pilot asking if I would like to go and fly home in the cockpit along with them which I grabbed the opportunity and I sat up there coming over the English Channel could gradually see the White Cliffs getting nearer and nearer. And the pilot was asking where I lived and said that he was landing at Dunsfold near Guildford. I said, ‘Oh well, that’s not too far from home.’ I said, ‘In fact, I’ve got relations in Guildford.’ Anyhow we got there and we landed and the first chap oh I sat back in the fuselage of course for landing and the first chap I met when the door opened being the first one off the aircraft was a Salvation Army officer who welcomed me home. Shook hands. Then the next chap in the line was a senior RAF officer who, you know shook hands. Again, welcoming me home. Then there was the Army chap. Anyway, we finally got into the hangar in Dunsfold. We had a short interrogation there. Wanted to know when I was shot down and about the crew and if they were all alive. Eventually we were transported that night into Guildford Railway Station and going on the platform thinking it was empty there was a load of women and of course there were a lot of other RAF chaps with me this time. You know they’d landed earlier and that. I forget how many there was but anyhow we were sent there or driven there by transport to go catch a train to Cosford, near Wolverhampton. So, I said, ‘Well, why can’t I go home?’ I said, ‘I’d be home in no time.’ ‘No. You’ve got to go to Cosford and get re-kitted and that. Well, these woman as we, the group walked on the platform a woman grabbed us and this particular woman had grabbed me or took hold of my arm and we walked away from the others. She said, ‘We’re all here to take information from you.’ She said, ‘So we can contact your parents or relatives to let them know that you’re home safe.’ I said, ‘Well, I had sent a telegram to them.’ ‘Yes, but we’ll, we’ll let them know exactly what’s happening and how you are.’ So I told them everything. I said, ‘Well, I’m not on the phone at home,’ I says. ‘My parents haven’t got a telephone.’ ‘Don’t worry. We’ll ring the local police station.’ Which she said they would do and get the police to go to the house and tell mum that we was on the way home, or on the way to Cosford like, you know. Which apparently happened it turned out. After I’d got home they told me all about it. But while we were there there was a big shout. One of the girls quite close to us yelled out loud and disappeared. And it went quiet, everybody went quiet, saw this girl running and she’d spotted her brother entering the platform and after a while everybody cheered and that kind of thing, you know but it was a very moving moment actually. Anyhow, he was allowed to go straight home. We went up to Cosford on the train. Got there in RAF Cosford and could have a wash and shower and all that kind of thing and laid out on the bed was the old RAF blue uniform. Hospital uniforms. Clean pyjamas. Nice white sheets in the bed and we enjoyed our nice night’s sleep. Then and during the day we, the following morning we had breakfast and had a proper interrogation of what had taken place from the time we’d left the ‘drome until we got back to where we were then and asking about the deaths of the different ones you know, the pilot and the tail gunner. Anyway, we finally got rekitted, smartened up and I travelled down to Reading by train with a lot of London boys and we were allowed to travel that night providing we could get home. Well, I looked at the timetables and things and thought well I can get to Reading and catch the last bus as I thought but anyway it was, unfortunately the last bus had gone when I got there. Very quiet of course. This was midnight and I eventually plucked up courage and rang a farmer that I knew in the village not knowing whether they had petrol for cars or anything like that. Anyway, the son answered the phone and I was a bit choked up and he couldn’t understand what I was saying for a while and he said, ‘Did you say Freddie?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And he, I can remember him saying, ‘Calm down, Fred. Calm down.’ He said, ‘Wait a minute.’ And then he said, ‘Are you alright?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘What are you doing? Where are you?’ And I explained I was just coming home from a POW camp and this was my first visit home and I was stuck in Reading. And he said, ‘Well, alright.’ He says, ‘You stay where you are,’ he says. I remember this as plain as life. ‘You stay where you are.’ He says, ‘I’ll have a word with dad. Wake him up.’ Anyhow, it turned out that they had petrol enough and David was allowed to, excuse me come in to Reading and pick me up which was quite a moving, a moving moment when he did arrive and we drove back across what we call Hazeley Heath and made me think of the times when I used to go on leave and walk from Reading to Hartley Wintney but this time it was, I felt I wasn’t fit enough and I’d a full pack and everything. But anyhow, as we turned in our local road and thinking it was all going to be in darkness I could see lights in our living room and in the kitchen and as David pulled up outside the house there was mother and father at the gate waiting for me. And I was at last home and met up with the family who was there. There is only one thing I regret because when I, while I was in the camp I cut the tops of my flying boots off so they were ordinary shoes and I used the silk to make a silk scarf but while doing, one of the flying boots, the leg part of them was covered in shrapnel. Bits of metal and I filled a matchbox full of these and had carried them all the way through and everything and they was in my hands while I was waiting at Reading Station. I found them in the matchbox but I never saw them again because when we’d been hit I mean I wasn’t injured in any way but my left toecap of this shoe, flying boot had a split from one side to the other and it didn’t even touch my sock. Just the shoe and I’d saved them. When I got new kit in Cosford I put them in my kitbag and brought them with me. But that I’m afraid was my life in the Service. Apart from the fact that I did stay on for a while and joined the Motor Transport Department. Did my training up at [Wittering] just outside Blackpool. And eventually I went back to France to a Repair and Salvage Unit travelling over France recovering broken down vehicles. That I say is my memories of service life but I often regret not staying in. There we are. That’s another tale. Thanks.
Thank you so much.
[recording paused]
FH: Right.
TO: So when you were growing up were you interested in aircraft?
FH: Not until I got involved with the Air Training Corps when that first came about in 1941. Yeah. That’s the only interest I had before. When I was a young lad at [pause] what age would I have been? I’d have been about eight years of age my sister worked as a housemaid in a private house and an aircraft, a private house and private aircraft used to land there. A chap by the name of Fielding and it was in the field next door actually to where Lord Alanbrooke finally arrived at and lived. A house called Ferney Close. And I always remember it was a red aircraft and my sister used to come home on her day off she used to tell us about this. Usually flying around the area then it would disappear for parts of sight and it would land in this field and they were allowed out to see it after it landed. Otherwise, no. It was the joining the Air Training Corps and seeing these aircraft we mentioned earlier coming over on the first, what turned out to be the first thousand aircraft raid on Cologne that got me really in to flying. Yeah.
TO: And when you, in the 1930s do you remember anyone being afraid of Hitler?
FH: Being afraid of Hitler?
TO: Yes.
FH: Let me think [pause] Not until, well ’38 I suppose, ’39 time. I can’t remember anything before that. Not really. No. No. I don’t think so. Can’t give much of an answer there.
TO: And do you remember the day the war started?
FH: Yes. I was standing in our living room in what is now Priory Lane, Phoenix Green and I was standing near, between the window and the living room door and father had ordered us to keep quiet. There was three or four of us children there at the time and he put the, had the wireless on and he says, ‘This means we will have to go without things for a while.’ I remember him saying that. But I can remember the Prime Minister saying, ‘We are now at war with Germany.’ Now, was he, what was his name?
TO: Chamberlain.
FH: Sorry?
TO: Chamberlain.
FH: Chamberlain. Because he lived quite local over at Heckfield, a few miles from home and his sisters lived in Odiham if I remember right but not that I ever knew him or met him you know. But I hear his voice now in my head saying, ‘We are now at war with Germany.’ Yeah.
TO: And what do you think of his policy of appeasing Hitler?
FH: Come again?
TO: What do you think of Chamberlain making the agreement with Hitler in 1938?
FH: I don’t know. I’ve never really thought on that really. But thinking back I don’t think it should have taken place. No. But I can’t really give much of an answer to that one.
TO: And do you — sorry, were you going to say something?
FH: No.
TO: Do you remember the preparations people were making for war?
FH: Oh yes. Digging. Digging big holes in the garden. Filling it with corrugated iron walls on the inside of the big hole with steps leading down to it. That’s what I was doing myself in our own garden on the day the thousand pound, [laughs] thousand pound [laughs] the thousand plane bomber raid was to take place. Some people had done it much earlier of course. And then there was you could purchase the Anderson shelters and there was another one.
TO: Morrison.
FH: Morrison. That’s right. Yeah. I know while I was on leave once I went down to my sister in Folkestone and we had to get in this, this shelter that was in her living room in the corner under the table. The table was over the top of it. And because there was a bombing raid on I’ve never been so scared in my life sitting in there because if a bomb had come down I think you would have just been buried, you know. I could never quite work out the reason for such places like that. I can understand the huge, larger underground shelters that they had but for the individual having one in the house I couldn’t quite see that but there we go. That was about it I think.
TO: Were there any air raids where you lived?
FH: Yes. There was one. Now, this would have been when? They weren’t that, it wasn’t an actual raid on the village or area but a bomb was dropped and landed in a field right on the outskirts of the village which I actually saw leave the Dornier aircraft while I was working as a gardening boy. This would have been in what? 1942, I guess. I was working at Winchfield House owned by a Colonel Cherington and this lone aircraft kept flying over in daylight one afternoon and we saw the actual bomb doors open and see the bomb leave the aircraft and it landed in a field close to what we called Mount Pleasant in Hartley Wintney. And no one was injured or anything but we did, I did view the crater later in the evening and there was a few windows, I believe broken but no casualties and that’s about the only one I can remember local. Although when I was at home at the time I don’t know but I understand there was a few found or that had been dropped along the, near the railway line at a place we called Elvetham. A couple or three miles from here but I don’t know any details on that one.
TO: And once you’d joined the Air Force what kind of rations did you have?
FH: Rations? While in the Service do you mean?
TO: Yes. In the Service in general.
FH: Well, I think we used to have a sweet ration. I don’t think cigarettes were rationed. I can’t remember that. But food of course. I mean, we had them supplied to us. You know, from the mess. Although in Civvy Street there was the usual rationing going on but once I was in the Service that didn’t affect us except that when we went on leave we were given a ration card with little coupons on that the shopkeeper used to have to tear off. Was it two ounces of tea a week? An ounce of cheese or a couple of ounces of butter. I forget the exact amount. A very small amount but of course that helped, assisted mother with feeding me when I was on leave. That kind of thing. Yeah. That’s about it I think. Yeah.
TO: And when you were volunteered for the Air Force what was the process for becoming air crew?
FH: Well, first of all I applied I don’t know whether it was to Oxford or where it was but I had to go, travel to Oxford. I had the reply after writing and I had to travel to Oxford for an interview and an assessment test. And that was, I’d done my first one in 1941 but unfortunately I failed that and very disappointed. I came home again but in 1942 [pause] yeah late ‘42 I reapplied and got through it ok. I was quite chuffed. Most of the local people I spoke to said, ‘You haven’t got a chance on earth. You’ve got to have a proper education. College or university education.’ I said, ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘But I’m going to have a damned good try.’ Which I did and I studied hard in the Air Training Corps. We had various lectures from people from the RAF Odiham and we used to visit, excuse me, visit RAF Odiham for lectures as a group in the ATC. And that is where I gained a lot of information that was needed with regards discipline. We were shown all a number of different forms which we learned numbers of because the Service life was all numbers on forms and as I say that’s where I really got the liking to and wanting to join the Air Force. Yeah.
TO: And what medical tests did you have to do?
FH: Well, we had the general medicals and well they checked you for everything in those days, you know, wanting to know the illnesses one had had but, and a load of injections of course. Things I’d never had before apart from having been vaccinated as a kiddie but they just took it in your stride you know. They asked questions and you answered them as best they could regarding your medical health which in those days I was quite fit, you know. Just have the normal measles and mumps when I was a kiddie. That’s all. Nothing serious. Yeah.
TO: And did you hear about events in the war like America becoming involved?
FH: Yeah. We heard this on the radio, you know. All the time he was at home dad always had the 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock news on the radio and nobody dare speak in those days while the news was on. If you did you got a clip around the ear because he was interested in what was going on, you know. He himself had only been in the Army a short while during the previous war, the First World War. He was just a short chappie. He was refused on height for a long time but he was for a few, a couple of years I think it was in what they called the [unclear] depot near Southampton but the guards knew it was quiet 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock at night and he mentioned about the Yanks being late coming in to the war I remember. ‘Just like they were last time,’ he said. But otherwise, no. And of course, we heard early on of the so many aircraft didn’t return from a raid. That kind of thing on the news and it didn’t cross my mind when I got interested in planes that it might happen to me. Just one of those things. Yeah.
TO: And what did you do for entertainment in the RAF?
FH: Oh, that would be telling wouldn’t it? The [pause] well I don’t know. Just carried on normally. We used to go out for a drink sometimes or spend the evenings in the NAAFI along with friends and I’ve known when we’ve gone out for a stroll around the camp you know in the local villages. But otherwise, we spent a lot of time doing the old, [unclear] we called it in those days. Cleaning the brass and the webbing and actually we didn’t get a lot of spare time. Not in our case. No. We were always studying in the evenings. Checking what we’d been through during the daytime you know. Sometimes you’d get assistance from a mate. Another time he wouldn’t speak to you. But normally the friendship in the Services was terrific. Something I did miss when I finally left. Yeah. The comradeship. Yeah.
TO: How would you describe morale in the Air Force?
FH: Good. Very good. Yes. I think so. From my experience it was very good and there’s no other word for it. The comradeship and the morale was good. You missed that kind of thing when you come into Civvy Street.
TO: Were there ever any problems with teasing or bullying?
FH: With bullying?
TO: In the Air Force.
FH: Never come across it myself. No. I must admit it was if one was in trouble or say in trouble perhaps couldn’t afford to, had spent the money and couldn’t afford to have a cup of tea or a pint of beer in the NAAFI one of your mates would always buy you one you know. It was the same when we was on the Conversion Unit. It was a Canadian unit as I mentioned earlier. We used to join them in the gambling sessions sometimes. I think they called it Sevens. Throwing the old dice. Well, many a time I’ve been broke from about an hour, an hour and a half after being paid same as Les and we always found somebody to give you a drink or a cup of coffee and loan you a quid if you wanted one. You’d always be paid back. The comradeship was terrific. Yeah.
TO: Did you ever visit the cinemas together?
FH: I think we used to go to a cinema occasionally. Yeah. I can’t say what. We used to have one on a camp, on the camp where you could go but what the films were now I don’t know. No.
TO: And what did you think of Churchill?
FH: It’s a job for me to describe that. At times he was, I mean he got us through the war from that angle but I don’t know. I daren’t say what I really think I don’t think. Not towards the end. I mean he didn’t have much, didn’t have much to say about Bomber Command boys after the order to really as far as I’m concerned came from him in the first place for these bombing raids etcetera. Red Arrows going over.
TO: Oh yeah. There we go. There we are.
FH: Sorry about that.
TO: No. No.
FH: A perfect time to do a fly past.
TO: They’re doing a fly past for Odiham Aerodrome.
Other: No. That was Thursday.
TO: Oh, was that Thursday.
FH: Oh, there they go. There there go.
TO: Yes. [pause] marvellous.
FH: Couldn’t ask for any better interruption.
TO: There they go again.
FH: There they go.
Other: [unclear]
FH: Wonderful.
TO: Wonderful.
FH: That reminds me seeing those go by the window now the last day or supposed to have been the last hour the Vulcan flying. That comes just a few feet, well a few hundred feet I suppose it was above our road and come straight down the road. It was a beautiful sight. But anyhow that’s beside the point.
TO: Ok. So would it be ok if we put [unclear] for us so they don’t crease. Sorry. Just that is creased. And what did you think of Arthur Harris?
FH: Bomber. Yes. Well, he carried out instructions didn’t he from the higher ups and like the rest of us in the Service he was carrying out orders as far as I’m concerned. And that’s, that’s it. He was a good leader as far as I’m concerned. Yeah. But otherwise, never met him of course. No. I can’t say much more.
TO: And what was your opinion of Halifaxes?
FH: To me they were the finest aircraft ever made. I enjoyed every trip I took in them and to compare it with the Lancaster well it’s a job to because I only went into a Lancaster aircraft once and that was only about eighteen months ago when I visited the flight station at Coningsby. We were allowed, I was allowed to climb in there and go over the Halifax, the Lancaster and I still think the Halifax was a nicer aircraft. Yeah. It’s one of those things. They’d both done a good job. One may have carried a heavier bomber load, bomb loads but in the war effort I think they were both the same. Yeah.
TO: Were you aboard a Mark 3 Halifax?
FH: Yeah. We operated on the Mark 3 from the squadron. Yeah. It’s [pause], I’m not sure what Mark it was. Whether it was a Mark 3 at Conversion Unit or not I wouldn’t be too sure on that one. The old memory fades sometimes.
TO: And what were conditions like in the mid-upper turret?
FH: Very cramped as far as that goes but then you didn’t want to move about. You were sitting there and your turret moved with you and you looked, gazed and looked all around. Up, down all around. It was, it was a lovely flying position I think for seeing things as well, you know. Yeah. Beautiful. Boulton Paul turret. Yes. Many days ago now but I did manage to get into a Halifax. It would have been last year I think it was. We went up to RAF Elvington in Yorkshire and I was allowed to climb aboard there which I had to have a little assistance getting in but it was, well it brought back a load of memories to me. Good and bad. And I was only disappointed that Elizabeth couldn’t, wasn’t allowed into the aircraft there although she didn’t climb aboard the Lancaster as did our friends. But my friend, Chris, from Worksop, he helped me in and out of the aircraft same as he did with the Dakota but the Halifax it’s a shame they didn’t save one so it could have joined the what was the Memorial Flight. Why they never come back I don’t know. Except they are rebuilding one in Canada which I sometimes get little whippets of news from but I haven’t had one lately. No. Lovely aircraft.
TO: And did you ever know of any cases of people who refused to go on bombing raids?
FH: No. I heard that some people did and then they were classed as LMF in initials. Lack of moral fibre. And I think it was disgusting for those chaps to be labelled with such a thing because believe me I’d only done three trips and as I mentioned earlier the one in the Ruhr it was hell let loose. So, I can’t, I don’t wonder of some chaps not having the nerve to go again but being labelled LMF I think was wrong. Yeah. But I knew, never knew of anyone.
TO: When you were aboard the Halifax how did it compare to being aboard the Wellington?
FH: Well, quite a different experience in a way because with the [pause] when I was flying in the Wellington on training when we were crewing up mainly my position was looking out of the astrodome unless it was my turn to do the firing exercise. Then Les and I would change over and I’d sit in the tail turret to do the, carry out the firing exercise. But the experience of looking around and searching the sky which I practised in the astrodome was about the same except it was a much smaller area to look around. The Wellington I think could take a lot more punishment than the Halifax I think in as much that, how it was constructed. The framework being criss-crossed or whatever the wording is because I was flying in the Wellington once I was in the astrodome and actually saw the wings literally flap up and down which any other aircraft I think they’d have snapped off at the time. There was a, we had a Polish screened pilot instructing our pilot on the Wellington and he told him to dive down over base. We was over Reading at the time and he said, ‘When I say dive I mean dive.’ But Phil just did a gentle dive and he just took over the dual aircraft control and whoof. I was just in the astrodome dumbfounded. Mouth wide open. But we didn’t see him afterwards after the pilot reported him while we was debriefed. Yeah. Because that is one thing the pilot if possible excepting emergencies of course has to warn to the crew, or has to warn the crew on if he’s going in to a steep dive. Yeah. That’s about it I think.
TO: What was the process for moving the turret about?
FH: What was?
TO: The process for rotating the turret?
FH: The purpose.
TO: The process.
FH: Process. Oh, you’ve nearly got me beat now. Nearly forget it’s so long ago since I’d done it. It was a, we had a handle there, you know and port to starboard. Dip or raise on the handle. I’m trying to I remember if it was just a single. I can’t remember now. It was a single handle I think. You’d go port to starboard. The normal position for take-off and that kind of thing would be facing tailward. The turret would be, you know. Yeah.
TO: And what was the process for take-off?
FH: Well, everybody would be checking before we took off and check all particular instruments you know. The positions. We’d ensure the guns were loaded and the safety catch was on and that it worked of course but you always would be in a safe position on take-off. And at times I believe we used to, I used to have to sit in the fuselage for take-off. I can’t quite remember whether that was the actual rule. I’ve got a feeling it was during the training and once we was airborne you’d climb aboard and when you was on ops of course as soon as you got airborne you put your safety catch off and start the business of rotating. Searching the sky.
TO: And when you were on a raid could you see anything beneath you?
FH: Oh yes. For instance, our first raid was the airfield, an airfield in Holland and actually saw the bombs dropping. You know, landing on the airfield, yes. But when we were at Gelsenkirchen of course it was so, the area was full of smoke from the fires and the exploding of the bombs. We were actually bombing, in our case a red target which the Pathfinders indicated to the bomb aimer to bomb on and so we didn’t really see the bombs hanging there except that some times you’d be next to, pardon me, next to a puff of smoke. But it was so dense you just, your bombs exploding joining all the rest of the chaos that was going on. Yeah, then we were going to the Munster raid. Well, I don’t know because we were hit. I say we were hit. I don’t know even to this day whether we were hit from a bomb above us, whether it was ack ack or what the reason was but we were hit, you know. And whether the bombs had been gone I don’t know. So it was all, all very blank that side of things was. How long as I said before I was knocked out I don’t know. I shouldn’t think not long. Being in fresh air. I don’t know. Yeah. That’s about it I think.
TO: Could you actually hear the explosions of the flak?
FH: I can’t recall that one. No. No. I saw plenty of it. Yeah. Yes, it’s so one got hit and he started diving in flames but no I can’t recall whether I heard them or not. Saw the puffs of smoke all around us. Oh. Yeah. Glad to get out of that anyway. But hearing them I don’t know. I can’t, can’t say.
TO: Could you ever see fires beneath you? Could you ever see fires on the ground?
FH: On the ground? [pause] No. Well, when we were going into the Ruhr the second trip I mean there was a mass of smoke. The whole area was. So we didn’t actually see the flames there. I don’t [pause] On the first one I don’t remember seeing fires at the airfield no. We saw the explosions but no we didn’t actually see a fire start. No. Definitely not and probably did because we were carrying incendiary bombs. Yeah.
TO: And what about searchlights?
FH: No. We did all daylight raids ours was so they didn’t —
TO: Ok.
FH: They didn’t play havoc with us but I believe they did with some chaps. Yeah.
TO: And did you ever see enemy fighters?
FH: Didn’t see one enemy fighter. Not on, not while we were on bomber trips. No. No. The first one I saw was in Farnham funnily enough before I joined the Air Force. One that had been shot down or something and was on show in Farnham but otherwise, no.
TO: And did you hear about the bombing of Hamburg in 1943?
FH: Well, yes, we heard of the different raids taking place but I couldn’t, couldn’t relate any actual details. No. No. It’s you used to listen to the news you know about so many of our aircraft missing. The target was Hamburg or wherever it was we’d hear on the news you know. But you didn’t feel as though you was taking a risk. You didn’t think of that happening to you and being shot down until it happened.
TO: When you saw the planes for the Cologne raid were you aware, did you learn later it was the first thousand bomb raid?
FH: Yeah. Yeah. We learned later on it was. Yeah. Yeah. But it was a sight which stays with me. Where I was in our back garden with a spade in my hand digging and the neighbours was in their gardens and all of sudden this noise approached from what we called the Reading area over to us and they seemed to be turned right about our heads and heading towards Southampton. And plane after plane after plane. I can’t tell you how long it took for them to all go by but there were the boys with their waving their guns and looking because they weren’t very high. I couldn’t tell you the exact height but they could certainly know and they would see people on the ground and waving and they were waving. Moving the guns up and down to the people below. It was a wonderful sight but I can’t remember how many returned the following day. I don’t know. But it was a wonderful, wonderful sight. Yeah. There we go.
TO: When you were in the POW camps did you ever hear about the raid on Dresden?
FH: We had, someone had a wireless in the camp and we used to get snippets of news sent around to us by a group of chaps who was, nobody, well we didn’t, nobody in our hut knew where the wireless came from except I was told once a chap had a crystal set made into a set of false teeth. How true that was I do not know. But we used to get the little newsflashes most days. And someone would stand just casually at the door of the hut when the man came. A different one each day bringing around the news, you know that he’d heard on the wireless because the guard used to walk around the camp as well so if anybody was about nothing was spoken of, you know. Just casual everyday conversations like, you know. And on several occasions heard little bits of news while we was on the march. So whoever he was, whatever he was he did deserve something in recognition of what he’d done and kept the morale up of, of the lads in the camp. Yeah.
TO: And what was your opinion of the Browning guns you were using?
FH: Of course, I didn’t fire them in anger but they were, the four were synchronised together to fire together. Of course they were so synchronised if I was facing tailwards or frontwards over the wings the bullets wouldn’t hit them. They were so synchronised that you missed the tail turret or the tailplane, you know. Good thing. But no I think they were good. In fact, I think towards the end of the war they went to a .5 millimetre but ours were 303s. Four of them. Yeah.
TO: And what’s your best memory from your time in the RAF?
FH: My best memory? Now, that makes me think doesn’t it? Best memory. I suppose was when I flew back in to Dunsfold. Yeah. And the worst memory was there at the same time when they told me I had to go to Cosford instead of going straight home. So, it all turned out right, ok. Yeah.
TO: Do you think there is anything Bomber Command could have done to reduce its losses?
FH: Well, I don’t know. I mean to send a thousand I know it only, I think it only happened about twice, a thousand planes raid but I mean averages. Men had to be shot down or failed to return for some reason but I mean, I think it was in our case I think there was about two hundred planes on the target every half hour, you know. Which I would have thought was sufficient because the more there are there the more chance you’ve got, or the more the Germans had I think of hitting us and of course another thing with regards ourselves we were informed that if an aircraft, which in our case we were lower than we should have been when we were dropping our bombs the gunners on the ground picked out single aircraft out and put a box barrage up so, all around us so whichever way you turned up, down, sideways you were bound to get something. And it’s possible that’s what happened with us.
TO: Were you ever, when you were a prisoner were you ever worried that the, that the Germans might start killing captured airmen?
FH: Killing?
TO: Captured airmen.
FH: Well, we did hear of a case actually in our camp. I can’t say that I witnessed it but I have got a photograph of where it had taken place in my collection of photographs that was actually when the chap found this camera in the offices after the Germans left and the offices were ransacked for different ones to see what they could find as souvenirs. This one chap from London found a camera and he notified us that the, one of the films had been taken and he was going to include it on there whatever it was and it turned out to be where these two chaps were being shot. Yeah. Attempting to break out.
TO: Had you been taught the procedure for baling out during training?
FH: As far as I’m concerned the only training I had was in the Air Training Corps. We was over at Odiham and we was in a hangar one day. We’d been, been to a classroom and we’d been taught about parachuting. How they were folded and all the rest of it. And we were taken to one of the hangars and in one corner of the hangar there was one a platform right up in the ceiling and there was a rope hanging down and a ladder going up the side of the wall and we used to, they instructed us to, the corporal there, we climbed up the ladder. They’d feed a harness on us and explained that we’d be dropping at the same rate as though we were coming down in an actual parachute. It was geared towards a certain speed and we were told we’d got to hit the ground, to be in a ball and to roll over on our shoulder as we hit the ground. They had a mattress down for us to land on, you know. Not the concrete. And we’d done the rolls in PT and that kind of thing but the actual training from an aircraft? No. I can’t remember anything taking place. No. Except being told not to pull the ripcord while you were still in the aircraft which happened sometimes.
TO: What do you think was the most important battle of the war?
FH: I’ve no idea. I wouldn’t like to comment on that. No. They say the Battle of Britain some people but I don’t know. Without the help of the other Services no one Service could have won the war on its own. It was a joint effort as far as I’m concerned.
TO: When you began operations and were in 102 Squadron did people ever talk about comrades they’d lost?
FH: About?
TO: About friends they’d lost on raids.
FH: No. The simple reason we weren’t on the squadron long enough. We arrived there on the 18th of August ’44 and as we moved into our billets there were several airmen picking up the uniforms and belongings of another crew that had failed to return the previous night. And we thought that was quite a good omen. Or a bad one. Yeah. We just settled into the billet and we were there from the 18th to the 3rd of September which isn’t long really. And then as I said before on the 3rd of September we had to land away from base and when we come back we was on ops the next day to Gelsenkirchen and the next day on the fatal op so we didn’t really know anybody else on the squadron. Which is a shame really because we, we spoke to our own gunnery officer, I forget his name now but no, we didn’t know anything about other chaps.
TO: And did you remember hearing about the Dambuster raid?
FH: Yes. Vaguely. We heard about it but I can’t tell you quite where or when it was off hand. No. No, I can’t give you a date or where it was I heard it.
TO: What did you think?
FH: I’m bad on dates.
TO: Ok.
FH: Remembering dates.
TO: Do you remember what you thought when you heard it though?
FH: Oh, we thought it was quite a unique invention really because it was something entirely new as far as we was concerned and it had done its job. And we were rather surprised it was never used again but there you go. Yeah. You see various parts of it are supposed to have been part of a bouncing bomb in different places I’ve visited since the war but that’s about all.
TO: And what was everyday life like in Luft 7?
FH: In the camp? Well, it was just the same old routine. Up in the morning. Make a hot drink whenever possible. We used to make these home made what we called blowers with a bit of metal, with a tin with water in and turn and make the fan underneath the flames of odd bits of wood or cardboard. Then we used to go for, oh in the, pardon me the usual parade which was messed about with sometimes. They used to be counting the prisoners every day or twice a day and we’d line up on the parade ground and often somebody would decide to play up and move about in the parade while they were being counted and then they’d have the wrong number. Spent hours sometimes on the parade ground waiting for the Germans to say, ‘Alright go back to your billets.’ Which we used to do to play cards. Sometimes there was somebody would give a lecture or a talk on what their job was pre-war. And there would be the vicar, he was an Army chap funnily enough gave a, always took a church service on a Sunday. And one that he was second in command to [pause] the pilot officer, an Australian chap, of the camp, he was a Methodist minister and he used to give a Sunday service on a Sunday which I used to go to very often. And strange as it may seem I met up with his navigator back in 2015 at my first reunion and I met again where are we now? Last year. ’16. No. This year, sorry in Gloucestershire. I met with him again down there. Not that I knew him then but we got to know each other through the man that organised the reunions. Yeah.
TO: And can you remember what your room was like?
FH: What? In the prison camp you mean?
TO: Yeah.
FH: Yeah, it was a normal size. Well, like the English military huts divided in small rooms. It had one, what type of stove they called it? The round stove with the chimney going out through the roof which was never used because you couldn’t get the fuel for it. But there were four double bunks so each room after we left the garden sheds or dog kennels as we called them was eight. Eight to a room. Yeah. And we, you know sort of palled up in there and become good friends but unfortunately the only one I kept, could make contact with after the war was Charlie but he passed away in ’68. But the rooms were quite nice from that angle. Had a small table in and a bench seat to sit on. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And what did you do to pass the time?
FH: Play cards. Chat about home life. Different places we, you know different ones come from. That kind of thing. We used to do quite a bit of walking around the perimeter track when the weather was suitable to keep exercising. Try to keep fit. Yeah.
TO: And what rations did the Germans give you?
FH: Very very little but I don’t think I can actually quote the one you, sometimes we’d get a slice of bread or a bowl of so-called soup which as I mentioned earlier I believe sometimes consisted of what looked like grass boiled up. Sometimes it would be potato skins where they’d been scraped and boiled up. Occasionally we’d get a jacket potato or a whole potato. I wouldn’t say a jacket potato. Oh, sometimes you’d get cheese or so-called cheese. It was about the size of a fishcake and you’d bite into it. It was like chewing gum and you could pull it out. Right out. It was horrible stuff. I don’t think everyone ate those. No. That was terrible stuff that was. But no, the rationing, the food could have been a lot lot better. No. that was one thing we did suffer.
TO: And did you ever get letters from Britain?
FH: I didn’t receive one. I sent several. The first one was at the transit camp after we’d been there and had a wash and which was a good one we were given a Red Cross letter and a Red Cross Card and it’s a period that said you would send one to your parents or wife whichever the case may be. And the other one you would send to the Irvin Parachute Company and notify them that you’d saved your life with one of their ‘chutes which I’d done. I sent one to mother and father of course but I never had a reply whatsoever. No. We sent several others but after the war they were a number of them were returned that mother and the girlfriend had sent. They were returned to me at home but not when we were a prisoner of war.
TO: Could you tell me that story again please of the, your friend on the train who managed to get hold of the Luger?
FH: Oh yeah. We’d travelling from Munster to the interrogation centre with the two guards. There were only the three of us. We hadn’t met up with the other two of our crew that survived but Taffy, the bomb aimer Charlie, myself was on the move. Charlie sat by the side of the, one of the guards. I sat next to him. Taf was on the other side of the carriage along with another guard and we’d been travelling for quite a while and they seemed to doze off. Of course, we didn’t speak because having been warned to be wary of such things you know in case something was said they picked up on. I saw Charlie who was looking sideways at the side of his, I saw Charlie, saw his hands down near the guard and the next time he had his luger in his hand and he opened it up. Just shook his head. And there was no bullets in it. I was shaking. I don’t mind admitting it. I was absolutely shaking because I was only a young kiddie I was. Charlie was about eleven years older. And eventually he put it back in the holster. Just carried on. The train journey went on. Of course, we couldn’t say anything to each other about it. And unfortunately, Charlie never mentioned a word about it afterwards. What his intentions were if there had been bullets in there whether [pause] I don’t know. But later on on that journey we were stopped at a station and we were on the one line and on the line to the left of us a train pulled in and there was all the German personnel covered in blood and bandages all over on one of their hospital trains. So one of the guards pulled the blind down in our carriage and the door was locked and they indicated to us that if they didn’t, if they hadn’t rolled the blinds down they would attack us and they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I realised, I did at the time well they had no bullets in their guns. But anyhow in the end there was quite a noise on the platform and in the end it seemed to quieten down with the civilians and we were let out and we had to run across the platform into a, well a kind of a waiting room and we were shoved into this room. The door slammed shut on us the three of us and I don’t know how long we were in there but quite a while and then the train, we heard the train start up and we were then, the door was opened. They looked around the door backwards and forwards and one guard had gone out and opened the carriage door and we were rushed in there. The door was shut shut and off the train went but there were a few people still on the platform but of course the train was on the move. They couldn’t do anything about it. We were safe for a bit longer. Yeah. Funny experience it was.
TO: Did you, well you already knew Normandy had happened by the time you were captured but did you think the war would soon be over when you were captured?
FH: Yeah. I think we, if we speak the truth we had a feeling you know we were getting to the end of it. Yeah, because the bombing was what’s the word? Quite, well the trips were quite regular and in numbers. Quite a high number of bombers coming out every day and the casualties you’d hear on the wireless we didn’t think we’d be there too long but we had no idea really. Wondering at the same time whether it was going to be years or months you know. Yeah.
TO: Did the mood of the guards change as the war turned against Germany?
FH: Hmmn?
TO: As the war, as it became, as the war went on did the mood of the guards change in how they treated you?
FH: To a certain extent yes because the very first night we were put in the cells at Munster and we were there for three, three days and on the day before we were sent to the Interrogation Centre one of the guards came in with our coffee so called and he stood chatting. He spoke English. He said we, ‘We should not be fighting each other. We should be fighting the Russians together.’ And we didn’t make much comment because I mean we still didn’t know whether it was a put up job you know being weary for our own sakes. But no, in the actual camp there was an Irish, well we called him Paddy, he was a German guard but when we was on the march he actually had civilian clothes underneath his Army uniform so that if they dispersed because he could get rid of his uniform and become a civilian or a prisoner of war, you know. Or, you know join our ranks. But what happened to him in the end I don’t know but, yeah because he was alongside us for quite a while but of course in different speeds, you know walking, ambling along you know. They were as bad as us. The guards, because they had to keep going you know and they didn’t really want to. No. [pause] Yeah. That’s about it.
TO: How did the guards behave in Luft 7?
FH: Well, they was reasonable really. I mean they were doing a job that they were paid for the same as we had been. But no, the higher ups they were a bit more severe you know. The old sergeant, and I forget his name but they were very firm. They wouldn’t stand any nonsense you know. But the ones who was patrolling the camp, ok you didn’t tell them anything and, but they were quite friendly in a sense. Inclined to speak to you or, in their broken English, you know. But they were doing a job they had to do. Yeah.
TO: And did you ever get Red Cross parcels?
FH: Yeah. We had a few. More Americans than English which I think once we had one each. They weren’t very regular the whole time I was a prisoner of war. Often one partial where they would be shared between perhaps four or six chaps and then at one stage it was one box per room which was eight men. And it would consist of what do you call it? Chocolate. Very hard thick chocolate. Some butter or margarine stuff. Tinned milk. A bit of tinned meat. What else was in them? Oh, prunes and sultanas. That type of thing boxed up. And cigarettes. There was always about two hundred cigarettes in each parcel which to some people you know was food to them you know. In fact, I used to have the odd occasional cigarette but it was while I was a POW that I started smoking in earnest if you’d like to put it that way because there was always plenty of cigarettes. Some chaps used to trade their food for cigarettes but I didn’t get to that. I often bought food, bartered food you know for cigarettes you know but unfortunately, I didn’t give up smoking when I came home. I carried on until 1995. But yes the food parcel was good. It was good food. The English parcels were slightly different but unfortunately, we didn’t get many of them. Either of them. And didn’t get any at all after we left Luft 7. No.
TO: And what were the weather conditions like during the Long March?
FH: Weather. Way below twenty degrees. And as I mentioned a number of night marches you could call them and the snow and blizzards we apparently marched around so they tell us Breslau, Breslau a couple of times around the autobahn and it was just a complete blizzard the whole time. They had no idea where they were taking us to. The Germans hadn’t. And well now when I see a little bit of snow I shiver. I really hate the stuff. I’ve seen enough of it in my life. Yeah. But of course, we was walking in our boots. These fine shoes we had on. Yeah. We used to have a, we took them off at night but in the morning they were still frozen. Just walked in frozen shoes and that. But I went to the Medical Centre on one occasion with my toes and they said it’s a touch of frost bite but whether it was I don’t know but I’m still to this day suffering with my toes at night. They seem to get warm and sometimes go numb my two big toes. But there we are. We’re still here. Still telling the tale.
TO: Did anyone get, did anyone get hyperthermia?
FH: Well, I can’t honestly say about that, no. No. I can’t really answer that one.
TO: And were there any prisoners who were unable to go on when they got ill?
FH: Oh yeah. During the march, well those that were sick when the march started they were left behind or taken to a Medical Centre. But on the march they had a horse and waggon where they, anybody took queer was put into this horse and waggon you know and carried on on the march but what happened to them in the end I don’t know because there were so many that didn’t arrive in the camp at the end. Luckenwalde. Either gave themselves up or jumped in the river as we crossed over. Through the holes. Things like that. It happened I’m afraid. Yeah.
TO: Were you ever worried that Allied bombers would attack you?
FH: Well, we were concerned put it that way but I don’t think we ever encountered any.
TO: And did you ever wish that the Germans had left you in Luft 7 for the Russians to take?
FH: Well, we did actually. Our little group. Because it really took it out of us on the march. We lost a lot of weight. And of course, the only snag was the Russians, our RAF uniforms were very similar to some of the Germans uniforms in colour and the fear was that they would shoot on sight. Ask questions after, you know. So that was one of the reasons that there was nothing on the march but I think perhaps we might have been better off if we had stayed where we were. But on the other hand those that were like myself I said earlier we’d been after the Germans moved out and the Yanks arrived with their vehicles and they stopped the Yanks taking us out. They said they were evacuating us via Odessa. And the things I heard afterwards a lot of those chaps did go that way and were never heard of since. But how true we don’t know but it was a long way around or would have been, you know. Yeah.
TO: What else can you say about the morning that you were liberated?
FH: Well, I mean it was all hand waving and trying to contact, get in touch with the Russians because they were on the move with the tanks, you know and there were troops following by foot you know. But word was going around stay where you were you know because the Russians weren’t going to stop with their tanks. They was on the move you know. But yeah, it was joyous I suppose for a while. But when we realised that they was basically holding us as prisoners it changed. The mood changed completely because we was a number of days with them when the food was worse than what it was with the Germans, you know. So that was one of the reasons why we had, the others with me to leave the camp and get near the Yanks if we could you know. To get food and help because we, when I come home I was just under seven stone and in fact I was putting weight on so much I went to the doctor and queried, you know. But they sort of explained that it would be a thing to do but not to overdo the eating but it all worked out in the end you know.
TO: And how did you feel when you heard that Germany had surrendered?
FH: Well, we were quite pleased naturally and of course that’s when we thought we were on our way home but that was on the, was it the 8th of May wasn’t it? Yeah. I’d just had my twenty first birthday on the 3rd of May and that is when some of the chaps well we were actually, no I beg your pardon we were actually on the trying to contact the Yanks because they’d arrived at our camp on the 23rd and the war was still on when we, when we heard [pause] Sorry when we were on the march, on the move to get in touch with the Yanks is when we heard that the war was over. Yeah. And because when we heard these hand grenades going off in the lake after we got over the bridge, the River Elbe we thought there was some in-fighting going on you know. But it turned out that these Yanks were passing time away because they were bored and they was killing, blowing up all the fish in the lake. Yeah.
TO: And when did you get your first proper meal after leaving the POW camp?
FH: Well, we had food from the Yanks but I suppose if I remember right the first real meal was at the Army camp in Brussels right before I was flown back home. I was there basically a couple of days. Yeah. We had plenty of cigarettes given to us on the route but you know we weren’t really interested in those in a way we had so many of them. Yeah. I know we sat down to the meal in the Army barracks. Yeah. Amazing.
TO: This is just going back slightly but can you tell me how you actually felt during the bombing raids?
FH: What?
TO: Just —
FH: Us bombing them do you mean?
TO: No. When you, when you were above in the turrets.
FH: Yeah.
TO: You were on the raid.
FH: Yeah.
TO: What were your general feelings?
FH: Well, I must admit I didn’t think about getting shot down. It’s a, it was a strange feeling. You knew that chaps were being shot down. The planes not returning. Every day you heard it on the news you know but when you was actually doing it at least I didn’t think of being shot down. Not until I was sitting in the turret without any guns. Well, the first day I mean it was nearly a normal run. There was a few ack acks but over the Ruhr that was a different kettle of fish altogether. That was, well hell let loose is my opinion. As I said the only way, the best way I can describe it is today’s fireworks when they’re all in full swing and a load of them going off in the sky all different colours and that. Imagine that those were shells exploding and an aeroplane flying in between them and that’s as near as I can get for that. They weren’t coloured of course. They were just puffs of smoke you could see you know exploding all around you. Yeah.
TO: And how did you feel about the bombing campaign itself?
FH: Well, I suppose we thought it had to go ahead to win the war, you know. I mean I joined up to fly and that meant you’d be on bombing raids, you know. But you didn’t think, or I didn’t think personally that I was bombing people. I was bombing targets. I mean until we were walking along this canal in Munster after we’d been shot down and we had these two guards with us and on our left was a row of houses all burning. It would be about a hundred yards from where we were on the canal bank and they were running towards us when they realised there was English people being walking along this towpath. I mean that is when I realised or I realised I don’t know about the others that we may have killed people. When we saw the row of houses being burned and you know and they were running after us with pitch forks and broom handles which some of them got through and hit us across the back which well we’ll say no more. And we were pleased to get off that canal that night. Off that tow path. Yeah. That’s it.
TO: And how do you feel about the way Bomber Command was treated after the war?
FH: Terrible. They weren’t recognised at all for the work they’d done in my opinion and it took, took the authorities a long time to realise that, this is why I didn’t speak much about Churchill and I think we’ll leave it at that because he was the one who was leading the war. He was the one that followed instructions who made and gave instructions to the powers that be to do this and do that but he didn’t speak of us after the war when so many people was talking about Dresden. But what about Coventry and places like ours. Southampton and London. Yeah. There we go. But as far as I was concerned we were bombing military targets you know and it never entered our heads that we were killing people. No.
TO: Why do you think Bomber Command was treated that way?
FH: I’ve no idea except that [pause] I suppose they spoke about [unclear] so much that well they gathered it was wrong to do it. I think so but I don’t know. I think Bomber Command was treated very badly or the personnel were. That so many thousands gave their lives for and then not being recognised for what they’d done. Terrible. So that’s only one individual’s opinion. Yeah.
TO: And how do you feel about the Memorial in Green Park and Lincoln?
FH: I like that. I think it’s something well worth supporting and I admire the people that thought of it and that were running the whole scheme. And I hope and pray that I can get back there again and just place a poppy against my good friend Les and Phil’s name on the monument one day. Whether that would be possible I don’t know but what we saw of it on that opening day it’s a terrific place. Well worth the money being spent. Yeah.
TO: How did you feel when you heard about the Holocaust?
FH: Well, how can I word it? The shock to think anybody could literally do it. I mean ok soldiers were being killed in battle and that kind of thing on both sides but their whole lot of them just being put in a chamber. Oh. It don’t bear thinking about. And on our march we passed very close not knowing it at the time to Auschwitz. Of course, we knew nothing of it until after the war. You know, it made us, well made me think, well, you know we’re so close to where it happened you know. But there we go.
TO: How do you feel about Germany today?
FH: Germany?
TO: Today. How do you feel?
FH: Well, I think Mrs Merkel or whatever her name is is a funny woman but on the whole the Germans and I mean we’re doing the right thing to get together and that. When we first moved over here in this area from Hartley Wintney to Church Crookham in the bungalow just a few doors away from here our neighbour was a German POW over here and we used to have chats about it. We got on well together and I mean that is the only thing that’s going to stop another war I think. I mean we’re so intermixed now I think they were after the last war as far as the First World War but they’ve intermixed other countries have. More now over the last decade or so that I mean it nearly goes against the war. If it didn’t, well it would be a different kind of war and your air gunners wouldn’t be needed for one thing. But no I think it’s a good thing that we are getting together. Yeah. No, I mean we carried out our instructions. The Germans carried out their instructions. The troops. Airmen. So there we are.
TO: Did you, I probably should have asked this one before but did you feel any animosity towards Germany during the war?
FH: Well, I don’t know. I mean, we realised that the authorities had declared war against each other and that we had to do our [unclear] memories of England to bring an end to it in some form or other. And that’s, I chose to join the Air Force. Yeah. But I really think so many of us were so young we didn’t realise what we were letting ourselves in for, you know. But no regrets. No. We helped to bring peace to the world again. Although it makes you wonder whether if it was ever worth it with all the loss of life. There we go.
TO: And what do you think of films that have been made about the war?
FH: I’ve watched one or two but you cannot in my opinion [pause] now, what’s the word?
TO: Recapture.
FH: Yeah, the actual fighting and bombing I mean. You can’t recall in actual words. Now some have been sort of highlighting the humour and that put in them but no. I don’t. I don’t think, well they can’t capture the actual meaning of the battle. No.
TO: And what have you done since the war then?
FH: Not a lot. No. I’ve had numerous jobs but mainly shop work and selling which I enjoyed which I was doing before the war. I had one spell of lorry driving which I’d done for a major [unclear] in Hartney Wintney. And from there I travelled all over Scotland, Wales and England of course delivering shrubs. We worked for a wholesale. It was a Dutch firm actually operating out of Bagshot, just outside of Bagshot. He used to grow all types of shrubs and trees and we used to transform to various nurseries. Yeah. Quite interesting. He got me about a third of the country. But I was a member of Toc H which was formed after the First World War. And what else? Oh, when I retired yeah, sorry about that.
TO: That’s alright.
FH: When I retired and moved over here I joined the, I worked voluntary for a Day Centre for eleven years. Yeah. But otherwise just normal. I didn’t really have a trade. That’s why it is I’m not rich but I’m happy and I always have been and will remain so I hope. We moved into this flat what almost eighteen months ago now. Yeah. A brand new flat and we’re happy and cosy. Contented. Yeah.
TO: Have you ever been back to Germany at all?
FH: Unfortunately, no. I would love even to this day to be able to go back to Germany and visit the graves of my two friends. Yeah. But as I say not being a millionaire it’s always been against me but never mind. I always think of them. And although I do attend the local Memorial Service in the village where I was born and joined the Air Force throng on the 11th of November but if I can’t get there through bad weather I don’t have to go there to remember them. It’s the same with my brother that I lost. They’re in there all the time. Yeah. Never mind. Who knows what will happen in the future? Nobody does. No.
TO: Anything else you want to add at all about your experiences at all? Any stories that you didn’t mention before?
FH: No. Where are we? No. I don’t think so. I think it’s really been well covered. I will probably dream away tonight although I didn’t last time.
Other: No, it’s —
FH: But often when I’ve been to [unclear] not exactly nightmares but I kick my feet about and but I think I got over that one. We’ll let you know in the morning. No.
TO: Just one last question now to finish off there. What’s your thoughts on Britain’s involvement in events in the Middle East?
FH: What? The present day like you mean? Yeah. Well, personally I mean we do poke our noses in things quite a bit but on the other hand I feel that perhaps we missed out when the trouble in Syria started. We should have gone there and sorted them out there and then and prevented a lot of this that’s going on today. That’s my opinion for what it’s worth. But no, it’s [pause] I don’t know, the world’s got to get together somehow but how it’s going to happen I don’t know. If ever it will. There has always been wars. There’s always a weaker member. We learned that at school didn’t we? But I’m quite pleased that a lot of the schools I believe in England now are talking about the Second World War and what went on and that kind of thing. I mean for instance my granddaughter she’s a schoolteacher at Lee on Solent. No.
Other: Bexhill. Bexhill.
FH: Bexhill in Sussex and she’s got one of my books. Oh, she’s got this one. I think she’s got the one I showed you earlier, the first one. And on Armistice Days she brings that out and puts it on her desk. She talks to the class about it and tells them what her grandfather had done and she’s done that now for, well ever since 2009/10. But now she’s just given birth to her first child, my great grandchild. The photo is behind you. And so whether she’ll be back there in time for this year I don’t know. But she has done her part as a teacher to inform. And a number of the local schools have had photographs of my war years but that’s about all I think. Yeah. Thanks.
TO: Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
FH: Thank you. Thank you for coming so far to speak to me and hopefully it’s not been a waste of time.
TO: It’s been an amazing way to spend my time. Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Fred Hooker. Two
Creator
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Tom Ozel
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-26
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AHookerFJ170826
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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03:02:20 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Hooker was a mid-upper gunner on 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington, where he flew three operations before being shot down. Born in Hartley Wintney in 1924, Fred’s first experience of the RAF was visiting RAF Odiham as a member of the Air Training Corps where he flew in a Tiger Moth and Blenheim. Enlisting in March 1943, Fred‘s initial training was at Lord’s Cricket Ground. Gunnery training was undertaken at RAF Stormy Down where he was introduced to clay pigeon shooting before being flown in Anson aircraft and firing at drones with a camera gun and eventually using ammunition. After qualification, he crewed up at RAF Moreton-in-Marsh before converting to Halifaxes at RAF Dishforth. In August 1944, his crew was posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where Fred recalls witnessing a Halifax fail to take off as they arrived. Upon return from their first operation, they were diverted due to bad weather and remained at the diversion airfield for several days so Fred was relieved when they returned as he'd left his dentures at Pocklington. During their third operation, the aircraft failed to reach the briefed height but the crew decided to continue and were hit by either enemy anti-aircraft fire or a bomb dropped from above. Fred was in his position in the rear turret when he suddenly found himself sitting in open air as his turret had been blown away. When he reached for his parachute it was on fire and the rest of the plane was just a mass of flame. He saw the engineer rush to him and put out the flames on the parachute before guiding him to the escape hatch and pushing him out. As he descended a Spitfire was circling and the pilot dipped the wings before departing. Fred describes being captured immediately after abandoning the aircraft and the interrogation that followed. He was transferred to Stalag Luft 7, and the Red Cross supplied him with another set of dentures. Fred provides a graphic account of the conditions during the long march and the overcrowding in Stalag 3A. Upon waking up on the 23rd of April 1945, they discovered the German guards had disappeared. Russian troops arrived later and continued to treat them like prisoners but Fred's group managed to escape and join the nearby Americans. After being transported to Belgium, he was flown home and landed near Guilford. Despite being frustratingly close to home, Fred was taken to RAF Cosford for debriefing. After the war, Fred retrained and spent time travelling across France salvaging abandoned vehicles.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Gloucestershire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Tychowo
Wales--Bridgend
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943-03-29
1944-08-18
102 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bale out
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
prisoner of war
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Dishforth
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Pocklington
RAF Stormy Down
recruitment
shot down
Spitfire
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/895/11135/AIndgeRC180131.1.mp3
0f432d9f2b49c42322b8456882eab8c6
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
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Indge, Ronald
Ronald Charles Indge
R C Indge
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ron Indge (b. 1924, 2203016 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 578 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-31
Rights
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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
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Indge, RC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview with Ron Indge. My name is Dan Ellin. The interview is for the International Bomber Command Centre. It is the 31st of January 2018 and we are in Mr Indge’s home in Woodhall Spa. So, Mr Indge could you start by telling us a little bit about where you were born and your early life, please?
RI: Yes. Well, well, I was born in Worksop and my early life was spent very happily I believe. A small family. My father had a business and life was very good to be very honest. I became very active in sports, particularly tennis and I met all sorts of people that all bore relevance later in life into the RAF. I perhaps ought to start by the end of the school time was Grammar School and I was in a mixed form in a Grammar School in Worksop. There were three forms in every, there was a male, female and a mixed form. I was lucky enough to be in the mixed form. And I think in 1939 which is when I left the school, the grammar school employment was very, very difficult to find or at the least employment I was looking for and, however I’ll now refer to a book that was written by a friend of mine. This chapter is called, “Early life.” It gives you the date of birth, and it reads as follows. “There was no work available. He wanted to work in a solicitor’s office or something similar. After he had not found work after two or three weeks his father found him a job as an apprentice joiner. He became a bound apprentice. The only way he could escape the apprenticeship was by becoming a sub mariner or by flying.” You could only break, that was a static thing. “Ron’s friend — ” now, I had a friend who, we used to tennis together most nights when it was suitable. He decided to volunteer for the Royal Air Force so I went with him to Sheffield on a Saturday and we both joined up at the same time. Neither of our parents knew until the Monday what we had done. “Ron was seventeen and three quarters years old at the time and felt some guilt but it was going to become more important as it got later. Ron says he joined,’ I think this is on one of the one in your, anyway, “Ron says that he joined the RAF for the glamour.”
DE: Right.
RI: Which I’m sure you’ve already got on one of your —
DE: A lot of people did. Yeah.
RI: I think that. Yeah. An important thing in early life which affected my life particularly was it was decided that I should learn to play a musical instrument. This was my parents. After, after a year of piano lessons my father decided that enough was enough and a waste of time and money so that was the standing. However, going up Gateford Road in Worksop which you know there was a furniture shop called Baldry’s , and in the window was a piano accordion and up there I saw this and it was fourteen pounds. What on earth made me so keen it was so I went in and a had twelve pounds in the bank at that stage. In the Yorkshire Penny Bank as it was then. And I withdrew the twelve quid. I went up and I got Arthur Baldry who owned the store and had a long talk to him and in the finish he agreed to sell me the thing for twelve quid. So that was how, that’s how the piano accordion business started. I got a fella to come and give me a few lessons to start with and it was sort of a, I don’t know I think to be one of my grandchildren is in the musical industry but I think to be in the music you’ve got to be keen anyway. I think it’s got to be. So it became for me and there are letters here which I’ll let you see that relates. I’d better not show you right now but I will. There is a letter that relates to one of the concert parties I was in anyway. But I’ll show you that that’s a letter of thanks as regards that. The thing’s falling to pieces. Right. That more or less covers the entrance in to the RAF and and to why I went and —
DE: So was, was —
RI: One can only imagine what my parents and my employer at the time thought when they found I’d volunteered to fly.
DE: Yeah. Was it, was it deferred entrance or did you go in straight away?
RI: That was a deferred entrance. Yes. I went into the ATC. Just for a few months.
DE: Right.
RI: And then of course we all went to an Aircrew Receiving Centre in London. That’s where we all joined in the eventuality.
DE: What was that like?
RI: Well, it was, it was good really because we used to eat in the London Zoo. They marched us from about 6 o’clock in the morning out of the billets and they were massive blocks of flats we were in. What they would be like now I’m not quite sure but they were beautiful places and I don’t know where all the people had been moved from but the Aircrew Receiving Centre was full of people of course. And London was being bombed at the time but however as I said we used to march to the, what was the old London Zoo and still is and we ate in their restaurant. They catered for us down there. There’s, I’ve got quite a lot of details about the Halifax which —
DE: Can we, yeah, can we talk a little more about reception and training before we move on to, to Halifaxes?
RI: Well, yes but I think probably that’s very commonplace for, that was, the training was universal really, was it not? And —
DE: Where did you train?
RI: I got drifted all over the place. I had eyesight trouble. I wasn’t, like everybody else I was going to be a pilot and all this carry on, and that. However, when I was examined I have and funnily enough my son’s got the same problem when I try and put my, I don’t know if it still does but when I put one finger to my nose the eyes, the eyes go in but one won’t stay there. It goes back. So they wanted all sorts and so I agreed then to change the entry into being a wireless op which is what I did at Yatesbury. The wireless school was at Yatesbury in those days. Near Calne in Wiltshire. So that’s, that went on there and I came out of that quite successfully and then the question came of where we got sent. I got sent all over the place funnily enough. I was, I even got up to Stranraer and then further up into Elgin in Scotland. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what that’s like there. And so that initial training was really in some ways it was I suppose was pleasurable because we got a fair amount of liberty and the hours in the rooms were fairly long but you have to try and remember that our ages at eighteen, life was very different now to looking at age of ninety plus. So the values are entirely different at that age rather than the values that we have now. There was no thought of long livity in those days where there is now. We all think about trying to live longer now but that didn’t happen in those days. We, we just took things as it was and made the best of a bad job and from becoming boys just having not long left school we became men very, very quickly. Going down to the boozer and fraternizing and things that we probably hadn’t done at home. I certainly hadn’t. But that’s the sort of thing we did at Yatesbury. We used to go down the pub in Calne where, famous for sausages of course. So that was the training really. And you passed out there with three stripes. Then of course you immediately it tended to go to our heads a bit I think [laughs] because I remember we threatened that if we could find any of the corporals that had given us big stick we would make sure that they had to suffer. But the night we went away from Yatesbury we went down to Calne and we couldn’t find a corporal anywhere. So the PTIs got away with that very fortunately I think.
DE: I think they probably were expecting it. Yeah.
RI: That had happened before obviously. That wasn’t new to them. So that was training over really.
DE: Did you —
RI: Then the next thing really is crewing up I suppose. I suppose that’s, I can’t just remember where the hell I crewed up now. I can’t just remember. And I’ve no mark on that so I can’t remember.
DE: Did you, did you do Morse when you were at Yatesbury?
RI: Yes. Oh yes. Yes.
DE: How many words a minute?
RI: I can’t remember now [laughs] It becomes a, I just, I just cannot remember now. I really can’t.
DE: I’ve read about something called Morse headache.
RI: I never suffered with that. Some did get some Morse Madness I heard of. I think one or two did fall by the wayside. But of course that was commonplace I think, wasn’t it, during RAF training? Some people took to madness or near madness and things because there was a place near Sheffield where some aircrew bods used to get sent that they couldn’t deal with otherwise and, but that’s sort of in the memory I think to be very honest. So then the crewing up came and which I can’t just remember where the hell it was now. But I sort of then was going to be crewed up on Halifax which now seems to be, it’s very little heard of. When we talk to people these days about the Halifax some of them have never heard of it. They’ve only heard of a Lancaster. Or in the case of a fighter a Spitfire in the case of a Hurricane. But that’s life. So that really was the training and then the commencement, that was the commencement of, we did a lot of when we were crewed up we then did a lot of cross countries and a few, I think we did a few leaflet raids as well. I think, while we were, while we were still in the u/t, under training but we certainly did a lot of cross countries and long ones to Ireland and right back down into Yorkshire. Yeah. I think we were. I know we were now. The thought has come back. It was at Riccall. At Riccall where, where we crewed up, because there was a runway at Riccall just between some trees because we pranged an aircraft down there. In fact, I’ve still got part of it in one of the drawers in there because I pinched the clock out of it at the time which lead to a big inquest from the, they had the coppers came around to us in our billets at night trying to find who’d stolen it. Who’d stolen the clock out of the aircraft. So, they won’t prosecute me now. It’s too late [laughs]
DE: I think you’ll be alright now. Yeah. I hope so anyway.
RI: Yeah. But there’s bits of it in there. Yes. So that, that was training at Riccall and then we eventually got posted along to 578 Squadron and which is where it all started and all the RAF career really ended. Or at least that part of it did. So probably the flight that involved the crash isn’t really relevant at this stage is it?
DE: Oh, I think. Yes.
RI: Is it?
DE: If you want to tell us about it then, yeah.
RI: Is it?
DE: Yeah.
RI: Well, the flight was to Gelsenkirchen which was an oil refinery. By this stage then in ’44 they had, much to a lot of people’s disgust Bomber Harris had then thrown everything to the wind really. A lot of the raids that we took part in I think into the Ruhr particularly were done in daylight where they actually could have been done in the dark with a lot less loss of life I think. However, we pranged in in Gelsenkirchen but we were hit at the rear of the aircraft and the rear gunner was killed. We were going to, when we found out he was, he was dead we left him there but the idea originally was to get him out, put a ‘chute on him and chuck him down because we were only minorly damaged really but enough that we lost some control of the aircraft. So when we found out he was dead he was left in there and went down with the aircraft. Now, I landed. On my way down I heard a big tear and the parachute, obviously they’d been aiming at me and they’d hit the parachute. This was broad daylight of course. They’d hit the parachute and just torn one panel. I’d forgotten that they weren’t in, they were only in panels which of course was the safest. So I probably descended a little bit quicker than normal but I got down quite safely and landed about, I don’t know about as far as from here to the, to that hedge. I don’t know how far that is. Down at the bottom. And about that far away from that ack ack site.
DE: Just a matter of yards then.
RI: Yards really.
DE: Yeah.
RI: And they were, I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were all young kids. Or they seemed to me to be young kids on there and just two who, who were officers. And eventually [pause] this is not in here I don’t think. It’s just coming back to me now. Eventually they handed me over to the civilian police who along came a German copper, handcuffed me to a bike, took me down to the local village and locked me in a cell and came, and through the bars of the cell said, ‘Essen?’ Now I thought when he said, ‘essen’ I thought he was asking me if I’d flown on a trip to Essen and my imagination running wild I thought he must think we’d dropped bombs on Essen. Perhaps killed some of his family. So I shook my head and said, ‘No.’ Of course later on when I learned what essen was [laughs] I’d then refused all the forms of food so of course they didn’t give me any. So, so that was that. And then of course we all were sent then to this aircrew, I forget the name of that. That’s in here somewhere I think. But there was a centre. There’s a picture of the, of the bod in there I think somewhere, however we’ll find that.
DE: Dulag was it?
RI: Yes. No. No. That’s dulag. No. There was a reception centre for all aircrew where you were put in small cells and questioned at all hours of the sort of nights and things. But by 1944, in September ’44 there was a great, a lot of the Germans were beginning to think that they weren’t going to win the war and so perhaps the interrogation wasn’t as bad as it had been previously. I spent, I think I spent three weeks in there I think, and then we were transported by rail out of there to various camps. And in my case of course some of the, it was due to German guards really that I think we would have all lost our lives I think. Because in some of the, some of the major stations we went through on the line back to Stalag Luft 7 the lines were broken and so we ended up walking through one bit, some bits of some of the Ruhr towns and then re-trained and went further on down the line. But the, the Germans if it hadn’t have been for the guards I’m sure we would probably have been executed. I’m sure we would have been executed anyway. The bitterness was, from the, in the cities was terrible of course. So that was the story. And then I’m now then in in Stalag Luft 7. And in there this is where the piano accordion business all came to fruition on my part really. What happened was two or three days after I’d been in there I heard a chap playing the piano accordion so I made my way around. I found him. And there was also a bod there had bagpipes funnily enough [laughs] God above. However, I got [Leo Mackie] I remember the man’s name now. [Leo Mackie], I think. I don’t know what nationality he was, however he played the squeezebox so I had a word with him and he gave it me and I had a play on it. So he said, ‘What about we try and get some more squeezeboxes?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Let’s have a — ’ So we asked some of the Germans and they wouldn’t play ball with us. However, we got through to the Red Cross and eventually we got sent six brand new piano accordions which, which was brilliant for us and a drum kit and a double bass and a guitar I think. Yeah. That’s right. I think they’re all, and there’s a picture involved which I’ll come to shortly because how we got that picture was later on. So, it bore fruition in many ways in that we started it. We got together. We used to play every day all day of course. Nothing else to do really. Or walk around the camp which so that was really a saviour for me because whilst I’m loathe to admit it now we went out on several nights under supervision to the German officer’s headquarters and played for them to dance and [emphasis] they gave us a meal which of course was a big thing. I’m a bit ashamed to say that now but however it is part of the truth of the thing and of course as we said at eighteen, nineteen things look very different and self-preservation is, becomes very important. So that was that of which we’ve got a photograph which we’ve only recently acquired. It was sent to, it was sent to Hollis. This photograph on there of course there’s a conductor. He was a professional musician and the lady at the end of course was just another bod all dressed up in lady’s attire [laughs]. So we used to give concerts both in the camp and we occasionally went out to give the Germans, so that really was a really big help for my part in the prison camp. A big help. And then of course eventually 1945 arrived. We spent Christmas in the camp of course which really wasn’t to be [laughs] However, 1945 arrived and eventually we could hear gunfire at nights which was of course the Russians advancing. Well, there wasn’t, Stalag Luft 7 was a virtual new camp when I went in it because when I first went in it was hen huts. Really hen huts. That’s what it was. But it was rebuilt not long after I got there so it was very tolerable living conditions really. Nothing like as bad as some of the other people had suffered I think, because of course the SS had tried very hard to take over Luftwaffe camps but the, but their Air Force wouldn’t let them. So their camps were run naturally by, by Air Force personnel, or their Air Force personnel which was a lot easier I think to what I’ve been told from the SS run camps. The SS tried to run them but couldn’t. However, they marched out by being turfed out which I can refer to later on and it’s all detailed down in some of these books anyway. After, I think there was about fifteen hundred of us in Luft 7, and but when we got to a thousand we got a doctor. Our own doctor then who was an ex-kriegsgefangene, he was a prisoner as well. He was, he was in the army actually. And as we, as we assembled out to march away we didn’t know what we were going to be doing but that’s, obviously we’d heard the gunfire at night and particularly, and so the doctor addressed us and said, ‘Now, unless you’ve got adequate provision stacked by and or can speak fluent German don’t try and escape and don’t carry anything that you don’t really need. And I mean anything.’ Well, this part you won’t believe anyway but I’ll tell you. I had a piano accordion and I read through the line and I thought that’s out definitely. And it was snowing now, down to about, well the temperature on that part of the march was between minus twenty and minus forty. It did get to minus forty once. Minus thirty most of the time. So I tried to flog this piano accordion for anything I could get hold of and eventually I couldn’t sell it at all. I could not get, you are not going to believe this. It’s gospel truth. I couldn’t get one cigarette for it. So why we hated the Russians so much I don’t quite know. So I kicked it to pieces and so did several others as well. So, these were brand new squeeze boxes and so that was, that was the end of that part of the story really. And from then of course they marched us on the Long March which there’s been much reference made about and there’s all sort of information in these books which I’m sure some time you’d like to have a copy of or whatever. It was, we straggled, but we were told really not to escape because if you got tired and laid down you certainly wouldn’t, that would be the end of the story. How many [pause] quite a lot did escape or did elect to leave the, the throng. So how many actually died on that march I haven’t the faintest of ideas. All I know is that there were at least half were sort of in Stalag 3a at the end. But whether or not they’d lost their lost their lives or gone elsewhere I was never quite sure. The only thing that happened in Stalag 3a was that the Russians liberated us and the Americans came with transport to take us over the river and take us back home. But the Russians wanted an exchange of prisoners over the river. They wanted some of their prisoners bringing back in to their land and then they were going to exchange and let us go. So we were held five weeks in which time they never, they never gave us any rations. Nothing. We had to go down the village and so we went down there. And another story, down the village which is only just coming to light now. I used to go down with John Tregoning down the village to steal food and if you couldn’t get into the houses you just, the Russians were up and down there on motorbikes and things. Riding about like children they were actually. They hadn’t seen such things and they used to ride down there firing guns through the windows and all. It’s unbelievable really. But John and I, walking down the street in the local village could hear either ducks, geese or some form of livestock and we knocked on the door of this property and they wouldn’t let us in. So we got hold of a Russian eventually who came past on a motorbike. We waved him down and pointed to this noise and pointed to the [laughs] that we wanted, and so he broke the door down and got us I think it was a duck. I think. Certainly, yes I’m sure it was a duck and so then he chopped it’s head off and gave us the body. So we took that back. John and I took that back to the camp and had a feast. But that’s how we lived for those, for those few weeks and eventually it became a bit more liberal and so John and I whilst we were still waiting for transport we decided to make our own way and we eventually made our own way from 3a as far as Brussels from where we flew home. So that was the end of that story really.
DE: Yeah. You mentioned before we started the recording about a crew member and a sledge. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
RI: Well, that’s Johnny. It’s in that book. It’s in the story that John’s written isn’t it?
DE: Yeah.
RI: That was done because John Tregoning had gone on the march. John had gone off his legs and, but that’s all been, he wrote that of course actually when we were on the march. This is a copy that he wrote afterwards. John. John did. He’d gone off his legs and found it very difficult to walk and we were terrified we were going to lose him and he thought he was going to die as well. So we fabricated some form of sledge by like two lengths of timber. I think John got them somewhere one night when we were locked in a farm I think. We then lashed a sort of a sledge if you like. Whether you’d call it a sledge or, I really don’t know. All it was two lengths of timber lashed together with a space between. And we took, one of us, it took two of us we took one end of each length of timber if you like and walked, and John laid in that and then the back two ends we dragged because of course it was, it was snow laden so it was very slippery anyway. It wasn’t hard to pull in any case. It would have been had there been no snow but with it being snow and ice it was reasonably easy to pull. So we did that for several days for which John, I’ve visited him in Plymouth many times since, he’s dead now but he thanked me very much because he said, ‘I’d certainly would have died, Ron if you hadn’t have given me that, if you hadn’t dragged me on that sledge down there.’ So that was that bit really on the march. Really. Yeah. But as I said you have to remember how old we were. You know the thought nowadays was you can’t even imagine it now at forty let alone ninety but it was relatively easy speaking I suppose at that age because I was back home for my twenty first birthday, of course.
DE: Ok. What was, what was the journey to Brussels like?
RI: Alright. It was great really because we, we, I saw Glenn Miller’s band. We used to stay in various camps. They made us very welcome. It was funny really. They never sort of thought that we were traitors or anything. Or anything of that sort. Coming to traitors. That’s another thing I’ve completely forgotten about, which is also in these books anyway and in the official book as well. I might retrace my steps a minute then.
DE: Ok.
RI: In the prison camp when I first went in the senior NCO, there were no officers in that camp, I was in Stalag Luft 7. At that stage there were no officers. They were all NCOs and the senior NCO he’d, he’d sort of taken charge of the whole thing, and you were told to go and have a word with him. And so going and having a word with this, this body we were warned that there was a traitor among us and that, he told us who he was, what his name was and all the rest of it and to beware of this because he was going around with bogus Red Cross forms. Wanting you to know and all the rest of it. However, I did see this bod and one night. This was in the early, this was before the camp was, before the new camp was built. This was in the old camp we used to sit around at night and play cards or whatever we did. I think some form of game. We got hold of some game. We used to sit around in candle light. There was no electricity of course. In candle light. We’d made our own candles out of whatever you could. Anyway, we got made, made up candles. And this bod came in. Now, I think there was about six of us in this and so he tried to enter conversation and nobody would speak. None of us would speak to him. This sounds impossible but its gospel. So this bod came in and, and then he said, ‘I’ve got a photograph of my lady friend here.’ Now this is unbelievable. So he passed this photograph around and when he got to me I said, ‘Oh, I know that girl.’ He said, ‘I don’t think you do.’ I said, I said, ‘She’s one of a twin in Worksop.’ And so she was. So to go forward again now so that was that. But he used to disappear. He used to go to Berlin and he used, he was a big friend of Lord Haw Haw in those days. He used to go to Berlin. Disappear, come back all well dressed and all the rest of it. So we all knew but of course he was shunned in the camp. But at the end, of, at the end just at the end of our stay in the prison camp he disappeared from Luft 7. He disappeared altogether and that was the last I heard of him of course at that time. So we didn’t know whether he’d been killed or, we didn’t care either. That didn’t matter too much to be very honest. However, after the war was over and I was in Worksop I had a lady friend who, we were married afterwards, Joyce. And she worked in the Co -op. We used to walk, I used to take her for, I had about three months leave altogether. However, that’s another story. I used to slip down to the Co-op. We used to go out for lunch together of course. You’ve got to imagine I’m twenty then [laughs] So you can probably, I’ll leave that to your imagination. And we were walking up Gateford Road near to where I bought the piano accordion funnily enough. Walking up there and I see this bod coming down with a lady on his arm and it was him. That was in Gateford Road in Worksop. So I said to Joyce, ‘We don’t speak to this man. Walk past him.’ Which is what we did. I wouldn’t, he did try and speak but we wouldn’t speak and so that was the end of that. And that was the end of it so far as I was concerned except later on when I got a news bulletin he’d been, he’d got five years hard labour I think. Eventually when all this, because of course we all made reports about him at the end of the story and so he got five years hard labour. So that was, we all clapped or at least I clapped. That was after the war that was. I clapped hands then when I found that out of course. That was it. But so that was a great coincidence in there really. But as I say the piano accordion made my life that bit better more than most. Well, it did anyway. There’s no question about that. So that was very fortunate really. Yeah. It was. Yeah. So that ends the story really as regards the prison camp I think. I can’t think of anything else.
DE: You were just about to tell us about the walk to Belgium and what that was like.
RI: Oh yeah. It was, we were gobsmacked really because we used, John being a navigator and a very intelligent one at that he knew the way right enough and so we used to make our way from camp to camp. It sounds impossible now but that’s what, we actually went to one, we got in one American camp one night or one day rather and they made us awfully welcome. And food we’d never had for ages and Glenn Miller’s band was there. He wasn’t there of course because he was dead but his band were there. They played all day every day. That was wonderful that was really. I’ll never forget that really. Being in the musical business myself as well. Yeah. So that was that but we went from place to place. Army places and all sorts but from there we enjoyed it I suppose in a way because we’d eaten. We ate plenty you see and that sort of thing. Yeah. The only thing about the remnant of the outcome of all this was when I was in 3a I got yellow jaundice. Now, yellow jaundice in the hospital there all it was was a mattress on the floor and there were loads of us. It was caused by eating too much fats we think. Or I think. At the time when we were liberated we were liberated then and we were eating all these fats and that came one way or another. And so I had yellow jaundice. I was five days in there. Now, when I came home, I’m going on a bit now I’m back in the UK, having flown back from Brussels. I’m now back in the UK. Now, I’d never heard from my parents through that nine, ten months I was away. And I arrived, I get a leave warrant and I come, I’m coming home now with my kit and a leave warrant. I got a month’s leave I think to start with. And when I got off the train there was the station master in Worksop then was a man called George Taylor who was a large friend of my father’s and when I got off the train George was waiting for me and he said, ‘Oh, Ron. Let me just have a word.’ He said, ‘Before you go home I want you to go up to the shop and see your father.’ So I said, ‘Whatever for?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t really know. Your father wants to see you.’ So I think that in Worksop from the station up to the top of Bridge Street is about a mile so I walked up there to right where the Town Hall is in actual fact. So I walked up there to the thing and saw my father was there waiting to see me. And they knew, I’d sent a telegram I think to say I was coming home and then he knew. My father knew. So he said, ‘Well, before you go home you’ve got to go and see Dr Anderson down Potter Street.’ So I said, well, that was just a bit further down the Town Hall. Down Potter Street. So I said, ‘What for?’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t really know.’ So I put two and two together and I thought now this is yellow jaundice. I’d had an x-ray by the way after, after. So I thought this relates to yellow jaundice. It’s given me heart trouble. That’s all I could think of because actually yellow jaundice has, does give all sorts of problems. So that was, that was, so I trooped down and sure enough Dr Anderson’s waiting. He had two sons then running his business but he was there waiting to see me. So he got me sat down and he said, ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you.’ I said, ‘Ok. Thank you,’ thinking, still thinking, I mean I’m in now dead stuck. So he said, ‘Your mother’s very ill.’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon.’ He said, ‘Your mother’s very ill and one of her sisters is looking after her and,’ he said, ‘I think she’ll probably live two weeks. She’s purely alive to see you.’
DE: Oh crikey.
RI: Which [pause] so I then made my way home and of course all that he’d told me was true. My mum was in a bed in the front room and had been there for months. And she did die about a fortnight after I got home. So that was home coming [pause] I’m sorry.
DE: No. Do you want me to stop it for a minute?
RI: Yeah.
[recording paused]
DE: Ok. So we’re recording again.
RI: The worst part of it really was that I had no need in the first place. As I was in a Reserved Occupation being a bound apprentice I was a fool to go. I’d no need to have gone in the Service until I’d done my apprenticeship. Five years. Or seven years, I think. And I’ve, in some respects I’ve held myself responsible for my mother’s death.
DE: You think it was something to do with her worrying about you.
RI: Well, I’d no need to have gone in the Services. I could have stayed out. And I think with hindsight it was what I envisaged the Service offered as against what I’d got at home. I’d got a marvellous home but at the same time you were subject to sort of home discipline I suppose in one way or another. And of course by going in to the RAF I envisaged all sorts of things which some which materialised and some didn’t but I’d [pause] people have said what a fool I am to think that I caused my mother’s death. I still don’t know to this day what she died of.
DE: Right.
RI: I don’t know what the death certificate was made out of. I don’t. I’m not quite sure. I went, I went to pieces actually for a while. I went back to Church Fenton which was, after I had this month and was interviewed by a wing co or whatever. I can’t remember what rank he was but it was an interview and he said, ‘What do you want to do with the rest of your stay in the RAF?’ And I said, he said, ‘Do you want to go on a pilot’s course again?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know really.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, we can put you on a Mosquito course if you like or — ’ I said, ‘What’s the alternative?’ he said, ‘Air traffic control. Flying control.’ So I said, well I then went out and then explained to him about things at home and all the rest of it and he said, ‘Well, take some more leave. Take us much as you like.’ I had actually about three months leave in total I think. But betwixt times I got talking to some friends, ex-RAF friends and as they said, ‘Think twice before you start talking about flying because the Japanese war is still on and the Japanese don’t take aircrew prisoners. What they do in actual fact [unclear] I speak to you. They cut the goolies off and sew them to your mouth and kill you.’ He said, ‘That’s what happens to all if you get shot down.’ But I think and I’m nearly sure that people that flew over Japan at that particular time towards the end of the war were given suicide tablets anyway. I’m not a hundred percent sure about that but I’m nearly certain that’s what happened. Yeah. Because the death rate they just didn’t take prisoners. Aircrew prisoners anyway. So that was that. So then the air traffic control business came in then. And the only row I had in, in my RAF career I think ended up by, I went on a course for air traffic control business which really didn’t amount to much. I got all the rudiments of it anyway and I was, I got eventually sent to Spitalgate near Grantham and there was a flight lieutenant there that was in charge. I was a WO1 in those days. The overall bod in that flying control at Spitalgate was the lieutenant and he’d, he was a pre-war bod who hated aircrew anyway because of the rapid promotion. [laughs] Not unusual. And, but I was the senior NCO there and the station warrant officer was also an ex-aircrew bod which was a blessing. So Christmas came in ’45 and there was a list arrived on the notice board of people on duty over Christmas. Of which I was one. So my father was now of course on his own and I spent the last Christmas in the POW camp. So I got hold of this flight lieui who didn’t like me anyway and I, mutual and I said, ‘I find that very hard to take.’ I said, ‘I think,’ I said, ‘And there are one or two more NCOs who’ll take my place anyway because I’d already broached it with them,’ and I said, ‘There’s one or two NCOs that will take my place so that I can have Christmas leave.’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘It’s all been done fairly. That’s the end of it. And you’re on at Christmas.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘In that case I’ll put an application in to see the old man,’ who was an ex-aircrew bod you, see and I knew, I knew he was on a loser. So one thing led to another and then my name disappeared off there and I got Christmas leave and some bod took it on. But when I got, when I came back after Christmas leave a couple of the bods said, ‘You want to be ever so careful because he hasn’t half got it in for you now.’ I said, ‘That won’t matter anyway,’ I said, ‘No chance.’ He didn’t know I’d got a car anyway and he didn’t know that. Cars were very scarce in that time of course but I had my own car. And he sent me out to Coleby Grange which was in Lincolnshire here and I I ended up stopping there and closing that place down ready for the Yanks because they were going to put nuclear weapons in there eventually. In Coleby they were. And so I had a great time at Coleby Grange unbeknownst to him you see, yeah because I was a senior bod there. There was supposed to be a commissioned officer but we never hardly saw one. But we had a great time there. A really great time. And another part, another story which, this is hard, you’ll find this hard to believe. It became a storage place for the RAF when they were closing stations down we’d get all sorts of tackle then. And I got landed with the job of putting all this stuff that appeared on lorries and trailers and things into these hangars that were empty then. And of course one day, I hope you believe this, one day a lorry arrived and he came. I went to talk to the driver and he wanted to know where to take it. So I said, ‘Well — ’ And they were balloons they were. Air sea rescue balloons but not, not the land ones. The water ones. Over the water. So he said, ‘They’re all barrage balloons I’ve got.’ So he said, ‘Do you want one?’ Now, this sounds too silly for words but it’s, so I said, ‘Well, I don’t know really. Yes. Yes.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve got one spare if you want one.’ So he give me one of these balloons. Bloody great thing of course. So I got one of the ground crew lads to take one of the seats out of the car and I got it in there and I eventually took it home for all the ladies to cut it up and made clothing for themselves after this. This was of course when clothing was scarce. So that was really the end of all that and I stayed there until Coleby closed down. Then I managed to get, I was demobbed then and came home. Since when of course a lot of these other things have born light now. And which I’ll probably go into now with. When you’re ready. Yeah.
DE: Okey dokey. Yeah.
RI: So really that covers, sort of I don’t know if I’ve done right.
DE: No. That was wonderful. So what did you do after you left the RAF?
RI: Well, the RAF. When I, as I was coming out of the RAF the RAF informed me by letter I think that certainly I was communicated somewhere or other, the RAF would pay a third of my wages to complete my apprenticeship. Which is what they did. And there’s a completion of apprenticeship papers in there somewhere. There is. Well, there is. It’s in there. And so I did two years and I did very well to be honest. I got, and I got on very well with, with the employer and who gave me a magnificent twenty first birthday I might add too. Gold cufflinks and everything which I’ve still got of course and, but I was obsessed with self-employment rather than somebody to, I’ve never liked people telling me what to do. That’s unfortunate. So I was obsessed with the idea of you know getting on my own sooner or later and [pause] And I hadn’t the money to set up in business but the Yorkshire Penny Bank I knew the manager in there. The Yorkshire Penny Bank as it was in those days. And I eventually took a shop in Chesterfield that sold news and it had, there’d been that, it was a big shop actually for a new starter but I borrowed money from one place or another and what money I had and we went into this. There was, we had a thousand paper customers. I’d never been in the shop in my life before. With bacon and everything in but it progressed but there’d been thieving going on terribly and the place had lost money. However, I soon put a stop to that and I got some of the family to come and help and so we progressed from there and then I eventually sold that. And because I wanted to go and live, oh I did have, I suffer with catarrh. Still do. And the doctor said, ‘You want to go and live by the coast.’ So eventually I went to have a look at the coast and found a piece of land and built half a dozen bungalows on there which we then let in the summer time and then eventually sold. And then through the Chesterfield business a chap arrived where I lived in, in, down on the coast and introduced his self. He said, ‘I’ve had a word with — ’ I think the Heinz representative, he said, ‘Who met you in Chesterfield. I said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ He said, ‘You wouldn’t be interested in coming along with me would you?’ So I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. In what respect?’ So he said, well he said, he was a man just a bit older than me, he played the organ as well by the way, Johnnie did. And one thing led to another and he said, ‘Look, why don’t you come and take the store over in Sutton on Sea for me?’ Why this all came through a traveller that had been to me in Chesterfield and then met him in Sutton on Sea. So I said yeah. So I took over and ran that and put it, it was losing money, we put it back on profit and sacked a lot of the staff because they were all at it. And yeah, so that was, so well my kids came and helped in there as well. So that, that was going, and then Johnnie was getting to the, he got caught with his, well that’s another story but he, he his wife left him and then he got married again. She was a great woman too I might add. However, things progressed and then he opened an organ shop. She came from Derby and he said, he was thinking of retiring and one week he came, he came down to, and had a word. He said ’Look,’ he said, he used to come to our house in Trusthorpe and he came and he said, ‘Look, Ron, can I have a talk with you? Can we come Sunday night and have a talk to you and I’ll bring Edna with me?’ I said, ‘Of course you can.’ So he came around, we had a meal together and all the rest of it and he said, ‘Look, he said, ‘I’m thinking of retiring.’ Now, he’s got a business there or had then and employed about two hundred people in the summer time. He had a Rootes group, a car place, spray shop, loads of restaurants, fish and chip restaurants. You name it he’d got them. He’d really got it. He’d been in the RAF too. But he’d really, he was a gruff man. You’d never believe with some of his language but the best business man I’ve ever met in my life. So we sat and he said, ‘Look Ron, he said, ‘I’m not looking for money,’ he said, ‘I’m looking for you to take it over lock stock and barrel,’ he said, ‘And you can pay me back.’ He said, ‘We’ll put it through a solicitor but I want you to pay me back gradually. A bit at a time.’ So I said, ‘Well, ok. Let’s think about it then.’ So off he went thinking we’ve already agreed to this. So when he’d gone I said to Joyce, ‘Look, I’m not really too sure about this. We’re going to, this, this business is a seven day a week thing from eight in the morning ‘til 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock at night when we close up.’ So I said, ‘Look, I think, I think not.’ So I went to see him down at his house in Mablethorpe and I said, ‘Ray, I’m ever so sorry but I’m going to turn you,’ Oh he couldn’t believe it.’ He said, ‘You’re never turning it down.’ I said, ‘Yeah. I am. Because I want to be on my own.’ So from there that was that. And I’ve always been interested in antiques as you probably look around you’ll see. And I said when we built these bungalows, I said to Joyce, ‘We haven’t had a holiday. Let’s bugger off and have a holiday.’ So we grabbed the kids and took the car and went toured around Scotland. We’d arranged to stay away two weeks and after about, I can’t be still anyway, after about twelve days, no. Less than that. After ten days we were back around as far as Stranraer and we got, I said, ‘Let’s have another two or three days before we go home. So I said, ‘Let’s go across to Ireland and find John Tregoning,’ who was the fella I’ve referred to already. He was a customs officer on the border. Now, I didn’t know where he was unfortunately so the first morning we were there we went into the customs headquarters in, in Dublin. No. In Stranraer sorry. Yeah. In Stranraer. No, it was over in, no, the headquarters of, it was in Ireland somewhere where the headquarters. Anyway, I went to see this bod in there and I said, ‘I’m looking for a man called John Tregoning.’ And he said, well we wouldn’t tell me where he was, he said was because, ‘The reason I don’t tell you is I don’t know whether you’re looking for retribution or whatever.’ So I said, well, so I explained it to him and then he said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, ‘I’ll get in touch with him and I’ll have a word with him,’ he said, ‘And then if you come back I’ll tell you either yay or nay.’ So we do this and we went back and he told us Ray lived in Auchnacloy down on the border, you see. So we get down to Auchnacloy and we have festivities as you probably can imagine. And walking through, through the village we see a fella who obviously knew John, called George Taylor and we eventually go across to his place down in, he was dealing in antiques and horses and horse and carriages and things. I couldn’t believe the stuff he’d got. So, anyway, one thing led to another and so I formed a friendship with this George Taylor in Auchnacloy and it lasted, well until I packed the antique business up. We used to go to Ireland weekly, virtually. But he, he had some carriages and all these things that you see on the TV with these fancy carriages and stagecoaches and things and he’d all these. He’d over a hundred in one field. Traps. So I ended up buying some bloody traps you see and bringing them home to the UK [laughs] and landaus and all sorts. So that bore fruition, and went very well until to go back to my son he, he wanted to go, he wanted to go into navigation in the Merchant Navy. But when he went for a medical examination he found, they found he’d got the same trouble with his eyes I have. And so we had a, they rang me up from, from Grimsby actually. Been for this test in Grimsby and they rang me up and said this problem and they said that you could probably get him cured by getting him going to the relevant people. But he said, ‘We must warn you that he’ll have to undergo the same eye test every year. Now, he said if it deteriorates he’s never going to be out of trouble.’ So I went over and I told Robert what all this was and he said, ‘Well, I don’t know what to do, dad.’ I said, ‘Well, do you want to come and work with me for a while?’ So he joined me and that’s how it all ended up and it’s still the same thing now.
DE: Right. Ok
RI: He’s still, still doing now. He’s got some bungalows. So that’s another. So that, so that was that story really. How that all came about. My son came to work, to work with me and that’s how. Then of course the family all then we all amalgamated and got together and poor old, poor lad then we put him in we had a hot dog stall in Mablethorpe so we put him in there at nights. I think he gave more away then he sold but if you ever meet him. Oh, you met him anyway because he was with me when we went there.
DE: Right.
RI: Robert was. Yeah.
DE: So you mentioned that you met up with some of your crew.
RI: I did yes. I did. Well, I used to see John regularly because he was in Auchnacloy and we used to go and stay there you see. So we used to see John quite regular. Now, Tom Coram, came over from Australia and he wasn’t a very nice chap so that was best forgotten really. So I then decided to go to Canada to see, to see John Callingham. So we went and had a ride down the, you know, down. Did all the trip and I went and flew over on Concorde and all the rest of it we did because [laughs] So, so that was that. And so, yeah. So we had, we had a great time with John. There’s photographs of him somewhere which we’ll come to shortly. So we discussed all this. What we’d done and of course we were much older by this stage of course, you see. So things take on a different light really. But we had a lot of, he was a hell of a nice man and he’d taken a big part in in Canada in in Toronto in the ex-Service Associations. They used to fly him over to France every year to the, to this thing there. So he’d taken a big part actually after. He was a, what did he do? He was a [pause] he weren’t an engineer. No. He was a surveyor I think. Yes. He was. Yeah. So I saw him and the mid-upper gunner. He went. He played the clarinet by the way, the mid-upper gunner and, but he went to live in Australia and so I lost touch with him. The last time I talked to them on the phone he’d got dementia and so he didn’t really know anybody and all this tragic story. So that ended, and that finished that. John Tregoning, who was the navigator was the bod who we became very, very friendly with. We used to go and see him in Plymouth. When he came back from Ireland he took a big job in Plymouth so we used to go down there and have a few days with him in Plymouth. And he used to, hadn’t been on the Hoe and this Plymouth Hoe and all this business. So we had great times down there. Yeah, yeah, so that. And the Eddie Gaylor, the bod who was the spare rear gunner I met him regularly then of course because he used to walk past with his little dog and so forth. So I met him quite regularly. So, but the rest, for the rest, it sort of it disappears doesn’t it? The engineer that we had he had joined us latterly of course after, after we’d crewed up originally. He joined us last but he was a married man and he was twenty eight. Lived in Liverpool. But to us this is incredible.
DE: He was an old man.
RI: We thought he was an old man. He’d got kids. So we never sort of mixed with him at all whilst he was a good engineer so far, but he never sort of became part of us at all. And Christ he was only twenty eight [laughs] This is unbelievable really now.
DE: Yeah.
RI: You’ve disturbed all this news you have [laughs] you’re the one that’s responsible now. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So when did you start going to Squadron Association meetings and reunions and things?
RI: Do you know, it was only through him. Through Eddie that I went. Meeting him. That was. Oh, it must be —
DE: Eddie was the spare bod gunner.
RI: Yeah. He was the spare bod gunner.
DE: Yeah.
RI: Yes. Yeah. And that of course at the reunions was where I met the fella who sold all the books. I will show you. I won’t let you read them now but I’ll show what he’s written. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Of which he’s put copies in the museum in Elvington. But you can’t get at them unless you get permission but they’re there to be read. All of them that he wrote on my behalf. Yeah. He became a great friend. A great friend, he really did, a real nice. What a nice man. He really was. Yeah. Really is rather. I must ring him, because going back to the rear gunner’s memorial at your place when your helpers told us that his name wouldn’t be on there because there was only Lincolnshire names on there I had to tell you that didn’t I? And then we find out from your good self that, that wasn’t true and of course the names that I imagine that the two Ridleys on there weren’t him but of course they are.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. One of them is. Yeah.
RI: Yeah. That’s right. One of them is Bert so I‘ve now got to ring around some of his family because they want to, they’ve seen it all at Elvington but they’ll certainly want to see this at your place now. So I’ve got the, one of them, one, his cousin he lives in a castle up in [pause] his two lads. One of them’s a test pilot for [pause] in France. And his wife flies the queen. And the other one is, is in charge of building the new airport in Hong Kong. So you can guess what they are.
DE: Yeah.
RI: Yes. So they all want, they send hampers to us at Christmas and all this sort of thing now. So it’s all, just to tell you the story about his family about the rear gunner’s family that’s written down. But you’ll see this but if you want to record it while you’re here. What happened was, I forget how many years ago it is now, but it does tell you in there anyway. How many years ago I get a phone call one Sunday afternoon and a bod saying, ‘Is that Mr Indge?’ Now, I don’t like being disturbed Sunday afternoons and I thought it was somebody trying to sell me double glazing or some silly bloody thing so I said, ‘Yes, it is,’ I said, ‘What do you want?’ I wasn’t very courteous I don’t think. So he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘All I can say to you Mr Indge does the name Ridley mean anything to you?’ I said, ‘Yeah. It does. It means a lot to me.’ I said, ‘Why? Do you know him?’ And he said, ‘No. But,’ he said, ‘I’m one of the Ridley family.’ So then we start to converse then and one thing led to another. So then he got in touch with his brother and his father who then ring me up and all this. So then eventually they want to come down here and have a look at a Halifax, you see. Now, I’ve been in the one in Elvington several times, and they normally in those days and still, as far as I’m aware still do, you can go in. You go in. Of course we didn’t, we didn’t come out that way. We came out via a hatch but the side of the Halifax is well back.
DE: Yes.
RI: But they won’t let visitors turn right down to the rear turret. They only let visitors go left up in to where the engineers and everybody else was sat. So they arranged then to come on holiday for which I never coughed a penny. They paid for my hotels and all this they did. These three did. And so then I rang Elvington and arranged that I could take them and they’d let them go inside the aircraft probably and have a look. Now, I’d been in several times obviously, and there was usually young men that were there to show you around the aircraft because it’s really a job for a very young man climbing in and out anyway. So when I went with these three Ridleys, it was an old man. Well, old. I say oldish. I suppose sixty five, seventy perhaps and he was going to take us into the aircraft. So he climbed into the aircraft first followed by perhaps myself and these other three bods and he then starts to, I said, ‘They would like to look in the turret.’ He said, he said, ‘You know that I can’t let you go down there.’ I said, ‘No. But — ’ I said, I told him who they were and he said, well he said, ‘All I can do,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk up the front,’ he said, ‘If they’d like to go down to the rear turret but,’ he said, ‘If I catch you,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to say. I’ll have to say.’ I said, ‘That’s fair enough.’ Now, perhaps this is unbelievable but they all went down. They went down into the rear turret in turns. Three of them. And they even say now how, how Bert’s cousin got in there because he wasn’t young of course by now. How the hell he got in there is beyond belief. But you’ll perhaps, you’ll find this out, they all came out crying. I’ve been and sat in the rear turret. They all deserved a VC. It was an awful job. An awful job. You were sat with nothing. It’s awful. Terrible job. Terrible. So that was really, so we’re now big friends and all the rest of it and so they all now want to come to the new one at Lincoln and have a look at the one of Bert’s name on the —
DE: On the wall. Yeah.
RI: On the wall. Yeah. They do.
DE: They’ll be most welcome.
RI: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. I’ve not, I’ve not been inside the Halifax at Elvington. I’ve been inside a couple of the Lancasters.
RI: Yeah. That’s funny. I never have been inside a Lanc ever in my life.
DE: Have you not?
RI: No.
DE: There’s not meant to be as much room is there as there is in a Halifax?
RI: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. There was very little. They could get another thousand feet in height roughly. But their bomb load was a little bit more. But there weren’t a lot in it. A lot of the bods that had flown in both reckoned that the Halifax was the better of the two. I don’t know. I’ve no idea. I don’t really know. They were there just for a job weren’t they?
DE: Yeah
RI: They weren’t designed for comfort. They were designed to do a job weren’t they?
DE: Yeah. You were talking a bit earlier again before we started recording about how the Lancaster has been remembered and the Halifax less so perhaps.
RI: Yes.
DE: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command has been remembered over the last seventy years or so.
RI: Well, it’s got you see, even at Elvington now there’s some young men how this should be done now. They’ve rebuilt a Mosquito up there and they were hoping to get, we became very friendly with the bod that was building it. He reckoned it had cost him his marriage. And he used to get some young engineers from right from down south to come up there in the holidays and help him to rebuild this thing. And his second wife, Sotheby’s have an aircraft sale once a year and she, for some reason or other went to see them at this whatever in, up in Leeds. And they said to her, ‘If he wants to sell it we’ll get, could get him a million for it. But,’ but they said, ‘If he can get it airborne we’ll get him two million.’ But of course he won’t because he’s had bits to rebuild this thing from all over the world actually. I haven’t been for a while so it’ll be finished now I presume. But what a nice man that rebuilt this Mosquito. Yeah. Yeah. So you know and so it’s all progressed from there now and a lot’s happened since of course finding where the aircraft crashed and all the rest of it. Do you want to go down the route now? Or —
DE: Yeah. Fine.
RI: Or later?
DE: No. If yeah if you have a story to tell about that then yes please. Yeah.
RI: Well, when, I don’t know how this started now. How the hell did it? [pause] Well, we went. I went myself and Hollis’ went to Germany to Bert’s grave on several, three or four occasions because there are in Reichswald Forest there are several 578 bods buried. And when we used to go there’s always brought two little wooden crosses and we used to not only go to Bert’s but go to all the others and put a little cross on them. This was on Reichswald Forest, and so that went on for several years and I then started going down. I lost my wife and I started going for, the RAF have got some places, recuperation places. I don’t know what you’d call them. There’s one down on the south coast, there’s one in Scotland, and there’s several of them. I went to one of them down on the south coast and some bod down there got in touch with the National Lottery. This all sounds, but however it’s true and eventually I hear from a lady in, the National Lottery then had an office in Nottingham in that time of the day and I had a letter from them. Would I be, did I want any lottery funding for anything that I might? So I said, ‘Yeah, I do really.’ So, however the outcome of that was they sent me a thousand pounds. The National Lottery did. So I gathered together and there’s pictures now of this. There’s pictures of them all somewhere in this somewhere which I’ll give you before we go too much further.
DE: We’ll find them.
RI: We’ll find them. Yeah. So I then, so we gather, so we got this funding from the National Lottery but at the same time a German who worked in Germany, an Englishman who worked in Germany who was aircraft mad had discovered in Gelsenkirchen where there was some aircraft, aircraft had crashed. Now, he’d gone as far as sorting out that there was a Lanc and a Halifax. Now, they couldn’t decide which bits belonged to which except all the crew of the Lanc were killed and in our case only the rear gunner was. Now, we’ll get to this bit in a bit. The rear gunner was still in the, in that, in the back bit of the aircraft. And what happened was this, this bod who was Air Force mad but worked in Germany he, he found out that going back a little bit he found out that they’d been widening a dyke and they’d found all these bits of the aircraft and the turret with the body of Bert still in. Or what remained of him. And also he found out that there’s an old man with dementia, well it’s all fell foul now, but there’s an old man in that village that had got a photograph of it when it first came down. Before it, and actually there’s good photograph of Bert in it actually. Or what remained of him. But he won’t part with it. But they’ve promised us that they will part with it eventually but when the eventual will be I’m not, I’m not quite sure. But this is, this is part of the epilogue of course and this refers to it. This is what I’ve been meaning to give you, and let you look at. Now, I think, I think you’d better take the recorder off.
DE: Ok.
[recording paused]
DE: Recording now. You were saying about petrol.
RI: Yeah. Well, we were aware, I was aware that, and of course we all were, all aircrew members that once you were on ops you could get a petrol allowance for pleasure. And so far as I’m aware, and I’m certain we were the only people in the UK that got actually a petrol allowance purely for pleasure. Not involving business. So that, that, I never registered the thing. I never taxed it or anything. I’d no driving licence or anything of course but nobody bothered us in those days. There was nobody about. So when we were shot down they sent a list which they’re all here still. Those lists are still here. You’ll see them if you want to. Those lists told my father what, what behind, what was mine. There was a bit of money. There was several things and they would be forwarding this stuff to him. But there was no mention of a car. So of course my father apparently panicked and then rang about this car because there was a bike. That got sent back but there was no mention of a car. So my father actually went up to Burn I think eventually and some of the bods there had pinched the tyres and the battery [laughs] So eventually they got it squared up and my father was friendly with a garage and they got some tyres from somewhere and managed to get it. And so the Ministry wrote to him to say that the car was available for collection. So that’s, so it was here. When I got home it was there. All taxed and ready and on the road it was. Yeah. So that was another thing out of there really that I hadn’t told you about which it’s only you coming here that disturbed all this information.
DE: Made you think of it. Yeah.
RI: It has. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: So it wasn’t a bad life when you were on the station on ops then. You —
RI: No. No. Because I used to go out. We used to, we got in with several pubs locally. We used to take the squeezebox down. Never had to buy any drink because we just used to use the squeezebox and that was it. Yeah. No. That was good really. Yeah. From that point of view. Yeah. Yeah. You never thought of what might happen I think did we? You just, your name just got rubbed off [coughs] excuse me. Your name just got crossed off when you didn’t get back. So yeah. That was it. So that, that was the end really of the of the escapade until, a lot of it came to light with the grant from the Lottery Fund and when we all went and met among these others. Well, there were pictures of that too. We met this Roman Catholic padre and a member of the press came around and wanted to take pictures of us and all assembled. It was, it was remarkable how they found bits and pieces of the thing really but, but there was I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet there’s a vague picture of the remnants of the turret.
DE: I did see it. Yeah.
RI: Did you see it? Yeah.
DE: A black and white one.
RI: Yeah, it is. Yeah. So whether we shall ever get any more we don’t know but there’s nothing so sure that in my mind that that was actually him. Yeah. Yeah. So, but they took us for a ride around the old oil refinery at Gelsenkirchen where we were shot down and it’s a lot bigger now than it was then of course. But whether it was all in vain I’m not quite sure. I don’t know. I remember us all saying at the end of it all we’ll never buy anything Japanese or German ever again.
DE: Right.
RI: And look at us now.
DE: Yeah.
RI: We’re all riding about in them now.
DE: Yeah.
RI: But we all said that you know. We’ll never buy anything from Germany again. Yeah. I know the March reflection, you know. You’ve brought all of these reflections up. The March. Now really it’s unbelievable that we were straggled out for miles but the cold weather. I mean we couldn’t, I couldn’t live through it now any more. I suppose you’d [emphasis] struggle perhaps.
DE: I’m sure I would. Yeah.
RI: With twenty to thirty below. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
RI: Yeah. But we were lucky because the Germans marched us through the day normally and at night time locked us up in farmyards and things. But we were a bit lucky because John Callingham, he was, he was of farming stock so he was able to, where a few nights we did manage I think he managed to get us milk and all sorts of things. Having been a farmer’s son and the rest of it. So that was very useful really this extra milk and things like that. Yeah. And then we, yeah, so there we go. So what else you would like to know about I’m not quite sure.
DE: I think we’ve ticked off just about everything that’s on my list.
RI: Good.
DE: Yeah [pause] No. So unless you have anything else that you’d like to tell me I’ll draw the interview to a close and thank you very much.
RI: Well, only that I’ll just get a couple of the books out and show you. Not that you’ll want to read them.
DE: I’ll just pause this then.
RI: If you ever do want to see them you know where they are.
DE: Smashing. Thank you.
RI: I don’t, you know one way or the other.
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 Ronald Indge
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
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
2018-01-31
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
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Sound
Identifier
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AIndgeRC180131
Format
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01:24:29 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Great Britain
Poland
Belgium--Brussels
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Worksop
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Tychowo
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Indge was a wireless operator on 578 Squadron and became a prisoner of war after his Halifax aircraft was shot down.
Upon leaving school, and unable to obtain employment in his chosen career, his father arranged a bound apprenticeship with a joiner. Attracted by the glamour of the RAF, when almost eighteen, and without his parent's knowledge, he travelled with a friend to Sheffield and they both enlisted in the RAF. Entry was initially deferred until Ron was at the required age. He describes his route through training, on successful completion of which, his crew joined 578 Squadron. In February 1944, Ron’s aircraft was attacked from behind, killing the rear gunner. With limited control of the aircraft, the remaining crew was forced to evacuate and Ron was immediately captured. Following interrogation, he eventually arrived at Stalag Luft 7. Whilst there he met a fellow prisoner playing a piano accordion. Having learnt to play in his younger days, Ron describes how further instruments were obtained and the formation of a concert party which enabled them to entertain their fellow prisoners. However, they were also required to entertain the German officers which caused some concern to Ron, but they received meals in return. There was a known collaborator amongst the prisoners, and care had to be taken to ensure no loose talk gave away any information. In January 1945, the advancing Russian army forced the evacuation and the prisoners were forced to march to Stalag 3A. This took several weeks in temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius, and improvised sledges were used to pull weak prisoners. Following liberation, Ron returned home to discover his mother was terminally ill. He spent some time on general duties before being discharged and with support from the RAF, was able to complete his apprenticeship. Contact with some of his crew has been maintained in conjunction with 578 Squadron Association, with several visits to the grave of the rear gunner. The site of the crashed Halifax, with the body still in position, was located when civil engineering was carried out in the area.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1944
1945
578 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
entertainment
final resting place
Halifax
military living conditions
prisoner of war
RAF Burn
RAF Riccall
RAF Yatesbury
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/904/11144/AJonesS180704.1.mp3
80c2e202ad4f4458168493bf3f62b079
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
Jones, William
William C Jones
W C Jones
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Stella Jones about her late husband, Sergeant William Jones (b. 1924, 1852503 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents and photographs. His photograph album is a sub-colection. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 218 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stella Jones 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
2018-07-04
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
Jones, WC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PJ: My name is Pete Jones. I’m interviewing Mrs Stella Jones and Mr Kenneth Shearhan. And other people attending are Sandra Jones and Jean Shearhan. It is Wednesday the 4th of July 2018 and we are in Mrs Jones’ Home in Bladon, Oxfordshire. Thank you, Stella for agreeing to be interviewed for the IBCC. Stella, now tell me about your late husband William Jones before he joined Bomber Command.
SJ1: He was born in 1924. November 1924. And he left school at the age of fourteen. He went to work at Gill and Company which was a little iron monger’s shop in Oxford for a while. And then moved to a sawmill where he worked for a while. And then worked at the factory at Morris when it was Morris Motors then and I think they were working on tanks at the time and I think some Spitfires were made there as well. And he joined up in 1942 at the age of seventeen and a half. Volunteer Reserve as they were in those days and he was doing his training at Westcott which is in Oxfordshire which is quite handy because he could cycle home at weekends and at night sort of thing. Near Aylesbury. And I don’t know whether people know but after his training they were crewed up with the crew. And they were crewed up in a hangar and all the pilots were in one section, all the mid, all the gunners were in another section etcetera and they were just left to meet each other and decide who was going to be together. So he met up first of all with Harry who was the mid-upper gunner and they got chatting and found they had a great interest in swing music. Especially American swing music and that joined them together and they had that all their lives. And they were looking around for a pilot. Well, they saw the pilots in one area and there were two or three Australian pilots and one of them was about six foot two and very broad. Broadly built. And Harry said, ‘I think he’d make a good pilot because you would need someone strong to bring in these big bombers. Anyway, they went to him and said, ‘Do you want a wireless op and a mid-upper gunner?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And that’s how they met the rest of the crew. They just went around talking and they met all the others. And they stayed together the entire time until they were demobbed. So they had the same aircraft which was B for Baker. Beanie Baker. And they joined the 218 Gold Coast Squadron which was stationed at Langar and near Bury St Edmunds. And as I say they were together the whole time. Now, amongst these things I think you’ll find Bill’s what do you call it? His logbook. So you’ve, there he’s got all his various trips and dates and everything else. And so I’m trying to remember [pause] Oh yes. They had one or two dodgy things. Nothing very exciting happened to them really. Just one or two things. They were hit once on one trips and I’m not sure which one it was and Winkie, that was Ronald [unclear] Wilson, the Australian and they called him Winkie called out. ‘We’ll have to bale out,’ and Bill said, he couldn’t find his parachute and he said, ‘Winkie, I can’t find my parachute.’ As Bill told you. He said it in his little sweet voice kept saying, ‘I can’t find my parachute.’ And Winkie being Winkie said, ‘My flaming oath.’ And he said, ‘We’ll have to do something about it.’ Anyway, he and the engineer who was Frank Haswell tried to control the plane which was banking and doing all sorts of things like this. Anyway, they had to call up to get help and Harry went up to the front and he and Winkie were struggling. And Harry said afterwards, he said, ‘If we hadn’t have chosen Winkie as our pilot we would never have got home.’ It was his strength, you know with him helping to keep that plane on course and then they had to divert. They couldn’t get back to Langar so they got, had to go to Syerston. I’m not quite sure how far that was away but there was a place called Syerston and they landed there and then went home. There was another little story where there was a training area but also when Colin, that was the bomb aimer went back to the loo at the back, over the main spar caught his parachute on something and it billowed out in the plane which caused quite an amusing episode. But there were all sorts of silly things like Bill being a wireless operator sometimes if he wasn’t being busy at the time he would sort of tune into something else and one thing he tuned into was, “Coming Home on a Wing and a Prayer.” Remember the song, “Coming Home on a Wing and a Prayer,” and they all appreciated that. And another little story he hadn’t been there very long. I think it was about his first or second trip out and they had, they had special signals every day which were changed. Which were changed for the wireless operators and he couldn’t work this one and, or he couldn’t find it so he got off the plane, they hadn’t started off and he went to someone else and said, ‘I can’t find — ’ and it was only the chief signal officer. It wasn’t just any old signal person that was there. It was the chief man. He wasn’t very happy with him. I can’t really think of many other ones. He came out in, he was actually demobbed in ’47 but after they finished they had to take various courses. Some of them took something nice and easy like library work which I think Colin did. Colin [Guy] or worked on bicycles which Harry did. Easy jobs which of course being flying crew they weren’t regarded very nicely by the regular RAF. They didn’t like these ex-aircrew because they didn’t have any discipline. You know. There was nearly no discipline. Anyway, he took a fitter course. A Fitter 2a. A Fitter 1 and a Fitter 2a course which I don’t know why he took that because I can’t think it made much difference to him and it was quite a, you know a bad, a difficult course to take. I think at one stage he was at Locking. You mention Locking because I remember writing to him at Locking so he was there at some stage during the career. And then at one time he was in charge of a lot of the German prisoners of war when they were cutting up these Spitfires that were no longer in use and they were cutting them up for scrap. And he said afterwards, you know what a waste. Those beautiful planes being cut up with all these acetylene things. It was dangerous work really, you know.
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: And he was in charge of about ten big German prisoners of war. And then as I say came out in’47 and then he went to work for [pause] no. He, he didn’t go for work for a long time because he spent all his money. You know all the money they got when they came out of the Forces and he just did nothing really for six months until all the money had gone and then his mother sort of said, ‘I think you ought to get a job,’ [laughs] So he went to work for [pause] oh it was a paper factory on the, on the Botley Road. Something. Not Bettercore but it was a name like that he worked on to do with paper. Reams and reams of paper that they were manufacturing. Whatever they were doing with them there. And then he went to work at Morris. We got married in ’49. July ’49 so he was what then? Twenty four or twenty five I suppose and he went to work at Morris Radiators. And then he went to Morris motors. That’s right. Morris Motors. And then he stayed on the line for a long time working on Morris Minors. And then we went to Australia for two years. And when we went to Australia of course the first thing we did we must look up Winkie. We had been, the odd letter had come occasionally and so we landed in Perth because we were on the boats. On the ships. We landed in Perth. Found Winkie’s name on the phone book. Phoned up and spoke but it was his ex-wife we spoke to because that was his old telephone number and Winkie had actually gone to America because he’d trained to be a dentist and he had gone to America for a course in dentistry. So we had missed him. He was there for two years so we missed him. So we went on to Brisbane and it was some years after we’d eventually moved here. Now, I’m trying to remember when it was when Winkie came over here. We had a letter to say he was coming over to England on a dental thing they were having in London. A special thing they were having because he was a dental surgeon by that time and his wife who, his third wife who was now, who was English actually lived in Manchester, had lived in Manchester and they were visiting her parents and hoped to get to us one day. So, having been in touch with Harry all these years, having seemed at least twice a year we’d either go to Coventry or they’d come to us. We’d been in touch all the years. We got in touch with him and so Harry came here. They went to the station to meet Harry. They were waiting because the last time they’d seen him he had black hair. Short black hair. You know. And off the train got this tall fellow with grey hair, long grey hair down to here and Bill said, ‘I’m sure that must be Winkie.’ They called out, ‘Winkie,’ and of course immediately he turned around. And it was, as he said with a bit of stuff on his arm, typical RAF sort of thing a bit of stuff on his arm and that was his, that was Margaret, his wife. And we had a lovely day. We all went out to lunch and we had a lovely day and of course all the stories came out again. I heard Winkie’s side of it. As I say having been to stay with Colin [Guy] and his parents in Workington. Taff, we’d been to stay with. Taff, the navigator, in Wales. We went to see the rear gunner who lived in Hastings. That was [Trace Hilder]. We went to see him. And who was the other one? The engineer lived in Dagenham. That was Frank [Haswell] We went there for a day to meet him. So I had met them and heard all these stories. And then Bill retired in [pause] when did he retire? 1988. Would it be ’88 or was that mine? ’88. He was sixty five anyway when he retired and we’ve lived here until he died in September 2016. So he’s been gone just about eighteen months now, I suppose. But he was very proud of his RAF days really. It meant a lot to him and the people he, the friendships he retained all that time, you know. As I say there’s only Harry left now. Colin [Guy] I don’t know. He went to Africa and then he oh, he died because we went, when we were staying in the Lake District we went to visit his, oh well what was his home in Workington and his parents had died but we saw his aunt and she said Colin had gone to Africa. Unfortunately, he died about two months beforehand so we couldn’t even get in touch with him. But he used to write quite often. He did write to us after he got to Africa and then these things drop off after a while don’t they? As you say. And I think unless you can think of anything else he’s told you that I haven’t said. Or — [pause] Mars bar. Yes. Dropping the Mars bars on Manna.
KS: Oh you heard the story. I didn’t even know you even knew about it like.
SJ1: There’s not much I didn’t know about those things.
KS: No. I understand. Anyway, the only thing I meant —
SJ1: Those things that went on in Leeds when they had, before I knew him.
KS: We won’t have that Mars bar story Stella [laughs]
SJ1: No. But that was funny. That was —
KS: They would all melt.
SJ1: Yeah. But the funny thing was, the strange thing was they know how Bill kept his sweet ration and his Mars bars to himself. And the fact that he let it go very gingerly. That was a great thing.
SJ: So tell us that about the Mars bar situation?
SJ1: Oh, didn’t you hear that? Oh, well when they, when they were on the when they used to fly over Holland for Manna. When they flew for the Manna operation and they were dropping official sort of food and things for them the crew dropped their sweet ration and things and they said Bill actually let his Mars bar go with a little parachutey thing they dropped. They dropped his Mars bar which is quite a thing.
KS: Ration.
SJ1: Yeah [laughs] oh dear. So anything else Jean that you remember?
JS: Oh gosh. No. I can’t really remember. The time before at gran’s house. That’s all I remember Bill.
SJ1: Oh yes.
JS: You know.
SJ1: Yes. He was brought up in, how well would you know Oxford? Very well. You do. St Ebbes. Littlegate Street. Well, he was born in number 4 Littlegate Street which was two up and two down and there were six children and he was the youngest so he was very spoiled as you can imagine. And he had a wonderful childhood. A very very happy childhood. Poor as they were and they were poor.
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: Really poor.
KS: Yeah.
JS: Definitely.
SJ1: I mean, an outside toilet.
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: And no, no taps inside. You know, really. Really. They would never be allowed to do it today.
KS: No.
SJ1: But he remembered his childhood with great fondness and his mother was [pause] that’s, that’s his mother [pause] She was a lovely lady. He always said, ‘Mum’s a lady.’
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: And —
JS: I remember gran was always smiling.
SJ1: Oh, she was, wasn’t she?
JS: She was always happy.
SJ1: That of course was, was Bill in later years. That was about [some] years ago wasn’t it? I don’t know quite remember when that was taken.
JS: Do you want us to pass these over Stella? These are —
SJ1: Oh, I’m still talking about the thing aren’t I? I’m just trying to remember any more stories. Oh yeah. That’s Bill. That’s Colin [Guy] the bomb aimer. A very attractive young man. That was Taff, the navigator. That was [Trace] the rear gunner. That was Harry, from Coventry the rear gunner.
JS: Can’t really make out —
SJ1: That was Winkie. As you can see he was a big fella. And that was the engineer. Frank. Frank [Haswell]. So a lot of the photographs are in here but these are the big ones.
JS: I’ll come to all that [unclear] stuff really.
SJ1: And there again we’ve got the same. They’re in their flying uniform there and that’s Beanie Baker.
KS: Right.
SJ1: You can see the actual bear on it. A big photograph. We had a big oil painting done by the chappy that used to do the oil paintings at Morris Motors for the, doing the cars for the executives there and they used to hang up in the wall. And Bill knew this bloke and he from all our photographs —
KS: Yeah. Yeah.
SJ1: He drew, he painted an oil painting of the Lancaster itself.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: And he had a book full of clouds that we could choose to have the clouds, all the clouds coming behind. And we had this, and it was a big big painting. It was on the wall and then when we realised we were getting a bit older we’d maybe do something about it and we gave it to Harry’s youngest son who was very interested in all the stories. And we gave it to him but before it went Ken took a photograph of the plane for us.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: And he made a —
KS: A plaque.
SJ1: A plaque with all their names on it.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: And their nicknames because they all had nicknames.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: And the dates and their rank and all that went to Harry’s son David. And so we now, I’ve just go the photograph of the plane but the colouring isn’t the same. The colour’s sort of gone.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: Over the years, really. So I have got that. But it’s a pity you didn’t see the original because it was a beautiful painting wasn’t it?
KS: Yes. It was a nice painting.
JS: Definitely.
KS: Yeah. It was nice.
SJ1: Yeah.
KS: And, yeah, the plaque that I made, being in the tool room we had engraving equipment you know because we engrave pantographic and me and a couple of the chaps there we went to town on it and we built it. It was about as big —
SJ1: Yeah.
KS: As big as this.
SJ1: It was lovely.
KS: In brass.
SJ1: Yeah.
KS: With all the names engraved in it with the dates and their nicknames. The whole thing. And that was pinned on the —
SJ1: It came underneath didn’t it.
JS: Underneath.
SJ1: On the wall.
KS: Underneath the thing with the thing and I don’t know where that ended up at all.
SJ1: Well, it was supposed to have gone with it.
Yeah. It should have gone with it but —
SJ1: But they said they couldn’t find it.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: It was there.
KS: [unclear] well, no. They made it.
SJ1: Well, I know you made it. Yeah. Yeah. So they, he came a long way really from Littlegate Street to here really.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: He was very proud of being here. He used to say, ‘We’re so lucky to be here.’ You know.
JS: Absolutely.
SJ1: Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
SJ: So can I just go back? You say when he was sort of in the Gold Coast.
SJ1: Yeah.
SJ: What did he do on the Gold Coast?
SJ1: Oh no. The squadron was called 218 Gold Coast Squadron.
SJ: Oh, sorry.
SJ1: Because they originated apparently there. Before they did the Lancs was it Stirlings? I think Stirlings before ’43. I think they had a lot of store. When did they start using Lancs? About ’42 ’43 didn’t they? But before that, I suppose ’41 I think the main planes were the Stirlings. And I think the squadron originated in Africa as the 218. And it was the 218 and we used to have a reunion. Well, they had a reunion every year. Marjorie Griffiths, who had been a WAAF she started a reunion with all the people who were in the squadron and for years and years and years they had this every year near Bury St Edmunds. I can’t remember where, the name of the place. Anyway, two years, we went along for the last, almost the last two years we went and there were hundreds of people. People would come from Africa there and from America and from Australia. Would come every year to meet everybody, you know. And she had it in the grounds of her, she had a big bungalow and some lovely grounds and she had a big outbuilding in which she had all the photographs and all the memorabilia. And Bill had a lot of his, these photographs in here he had blown up this size and sent them and they were all on the wall. That’s another story. And somebody came. We had a photograph of one of the planes that blew up on take-off. Gosh. I can’t remember his name now. And Taff, who had a little Brownie —
JS: Yeah. Those little cameras.
SJ1: Camera. Because they weren’t supposed to use cameras really and he took a photograph of the wreckage there and that was on there and somebody came and went to Marjorie and said, ‘Who took that photograph?’ Because it was named obviously. What it was.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: ‘Well, Bill Jones and he’s here.’ So they brought him over and he was the only person that got out of that plane and he’d been very badly hurt but he got out of the plane. He came up to Bill and he nearly cried on Bill’s shoulder because it was the first time he’d seen that plane and all the others perished and he, and he was badly injured. But for him to see that photograph. It was the only photograph ever taken of that and everybody knew that story. The name’s right gone out of my mind and it was something I knew so well at one time.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: Yeah. So that —
KS: It was the engine caught fire or something went with this plane and it, anyway at the end it, some of the bombs that were on board exploded.
SJ1: Yeah. It was a dreadful thing.
KS: And that’s why the whole thing was blown to smithereens.
SJ1: Yeah. I think he was —
KS: And there is a picture in here, I think.
SJ1: Yeah. There is.
KS: Of the remains.
SJ1: There might be because I expect he had it blown up so that they had the bigger picture.
KS: Yeah. Yeah.
SJ1: We’ve probably got the little one in there.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: Probably some of those things will bring back other stories by the time I’ve looked at them again. It’s been a long time —
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: Since I’ve looked at those photographs.
KS: Well —
SJ1: But —
KS: Do you want to look at them now or should we —
SJ1: No. I’m just trying to think if there’s something about the reunion.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: The one we did the next the year we didn’t go Marjorie managed to talk to the RAF about getting a flypast and she they had the, they had the last, you know the City of Lincoln fly over and that must have been a wonderful moment because you know to see it come over and they were all there. That would have been lovely. But we didn’t see that and I think the next year she had it but but she lost her eyesight and it was, and she had to well they had, they had magazines every month which we’ve got them here haven’t we?
KS: I’ve got them there.
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: With stories.
KS: We’ll get to that eventually.
SJ1: Yeah. We’ve got the stories of all sorts of people who I’ve never heard of but some I have because I met some of the crews there. There was one complete crew were there for the years we were there. That was the last remaining complete crew. Because all the others, people had died off or whatever. So the story. And then they eventually went. But all these wonderful stories about what happened on their missions, you know. Or ops, I should say.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: He got annoyed when people said missions.
KS: Ops.
JS: Ops.
SJ1: On ops. Yeah. And, yeah and they, yeah she had to give up and they amalgamated with Mildenhall which I don’t think 218 Squadron were very happy about that. They felt they were on their own but they had to I think. So they said did you want to continue to contribute now you’re with Mildenhall? And we, Harry and us, we said no, we didn’t. Or Harry and Bill said no. They didn’t bother. So that was about the reunions. So Ken, is there anything else we’ve got there?
KS: Well, we’ve got, we’ve got this photographic album of his and there’s some pictures from right back in the ‘40s that was taken.
SJ1: [unclear]
KS: I don’t know quite how to —
SJ1: Can I have just a look now? Sort of see —
KS: Wait a minute. What was this? Yeah.
SJ1: Oh, yeah. Let me.
KS: I just want to take that out.
SJ1: Yeah.
KS: I can’t remember what that was.
SJ1: Yeah. Now, that was drawn by Harry. Harry drew that. That was supposed to be Bill. He had a big bottom in those days and his hair and everything. So Harry drew that so we kept that. Obviously that was his training. Oh gosh. I don’t know where he is now on that. I’ve forgotten where he was. I’d have to go through the whole of that. So we’ve got his flying clothing card. We’ve got his sergeant, well he’s five foot nine then. He ended up about five foot seven. He lost two inches, look. A group of would be flyers. I mean he’s written all sorts of stupid things amongst these but I mean there are some interesting.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: “In my younger days,” he’s put. Oh yes. So there’s all these various photographs of them which again, which are going to be quite interesting.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: More of the plane. There was the little, there was the bear that you know Beanie Baker that was drawn for them on the side of the fuselage. No. That’s not the one. It would be. Oh, Tubby Spears. Tubby Spears buys it. That’s right. That’s it. Tubby Spears. Everybody knew about Tubby Spears and that was the only photograph ever taken of it. Well, as far as we know.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: And they had that. And she had these photographs in this museum place. I don’t know what’s happened to all the photographs they had there. That was when they were mucking about. Oh, that was Chedburgh. Chedburgh that was it. Langar was Chedburgh wasn’t it? Sergeants mess thingummy bob there from Chedburgh. Subscription card. Medical thing. Have you got his thingy? I’m sure he was on a charge once. I’m sure we’ve got that somewhere. Oh, and there’s some photographs there which would be quite interesting. I’m not quite sure what they, they were probably from Taff. They must have been from Taff, mustn’t they?
KS: Well, some of these are. Well, I can’t see them from here. Some of them was bomb damage that had been inflicted.
SJ1: Yes. That’s what they are, Ken. Yes.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: Or a bomb. Oh, that’s right. The bombs sink the Scheer. On reassembling in air crew. That’s probably where they, I don’t know. Anyway, that’s quite an interesting little. Well, the eighth, there was a book called, “The Eighth Passenger,’ By Miles Tripp. And the eighth passenger was fear apparently. He wrote this book and he said the eighth, I don’t know why I’ve got written that down here. Probably so I could get hold of it I suppose because that was my writing. But they were all the passengers on this particular trip by this particular op by Miles Tripp and he said the eighth passenger was fear.
JS: Was fear. Yeah.
SJ1: That’s interesting.
JS: Yeah.
KS: There’s a couple of things there. When you look at it, when you talk about the, looking at it the other day and I had it all figured out. What was that there?
SJ1: Must have been one of their trips because that was on his —
KS: If you look at that one that was the one he told me about. That’s like a football pitch down there and you see there’s a bomb crater right in the goal. They called that a goal. It’s right on the line and right between the posts. You can make it out can you? You see it up there.
SJ1: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: Yeah. Well, there you go. Lost it again going around.
SJ1: I wish I knew where they were.
KS: There.
SJ1: Yeah.
KS: There’s the crater.
SJ1: Yeah.
KS: And that was there and then there was —
SJ1: I’d like to know where the, where the photographs were though.
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: He didn’t write on —
JS: He never wrote that down.
KS: More bomb damage there. Yeah. That’s his service medal thing or something there. More of it there. And then there was service medical thing. Another one there on the wall there.
SJ1: Yeah. I’ve shown them that.
SJ: Yes. We’ve seen that.
KS: There was, there was one there.
SJ1: Oh, have we got his logbook here somewhere, Ken?
KS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was just trying to see what I was saying but I can’t. Anyway —
JS: Let Stella have it then. The logbook.
SJ1: Pass it on.
KS: I’m just getting it out now. This was, this envelope was in that thing. It shows you some details of where the, you’d probably make more sense of it then me.
SJ1: Maurice Gardner. That was Maurice Gardner was the person that painted the painting wasn’t it? 218 Gold Coast Squadron. Motto — “In Time.” Oh yes. They’re motto was “In Time.” Formed. Oh, it tells you all about it. It was formed in Dover 1918.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: France. [unclear] France. Beaumont, France. Oh, it wasn’t done in —
KS: It says on here, “The history of 218 Squadron 1918 to 1945.”
SJ1: Chedburgh. Chedburgh, Suffolk. December ’44 August ’45. Disbanded in ’45.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: Oh yes, that tells you all about the 218 Squadron.
KS: Yeah. That’s what he’d written on the front you see.
SJ1: That’s what I wrote. Yeah.
KS: You wrote.
SJ1: I wrote. I know my writing. You could never read Bill’s writing.
JS: No. [unclear] writing.
SJ1: That should go with that shouldn’t it? [pause] The Bomber Command clasp. Oh, he wasn’t very happy about the clasp.
JS: No.
SJ1: Disgusted, he was. Disgusted.
JS: I think everybody in Bomber Command was disgusted with it weren’t they?
KS: Do you want me to pull that open it for you?
JS: They wanted a medal.
KS: You’ve got that end there. That’s —
SJ1: I don’t know why he kept it really but he just kept it for the disgust. “Compliments of the Under-Secretary Of State for Defence and Minister of Veterans. This veteran’s badge presented to you in recognition of your service.” It’s a wonder he didn’t throw it away isn’t it?
KS: I think you pull it or push it or do something with it.
SJ1: Not worth opening is it?
KS: I think you need a little knife or something to get in there.
JS: There’s probably an easy way of doing it.
KS: These are the [pause]
SJ1: No [laughs] There’s not an easy way to do it.
KS: Not that anyway. That says on the back what they are.
SJ1: Well there you go.
JS: Oh, that’s, that’s the one Bill painted.
SJ1: The clasp.
KS: Yeah.
JS: That’s the [unclear]
KS: That’s the ordinary. That’s the War Memorial.
JS: Yeah. War medal.
KS: France and Germany Star.
SJ1: Yes.
JS: It’s just so sad that, you know he never —
KS: What did you do then?
PJ: Yeah.
KS: I’ve been pressing that. I’ve pressed it. It wouldn’t work for me.
JS: Oh, no. You don’t. I don’t know.
KS: You must have stuck your fingers up.
JS: Yeah. You do. You press it. Yeah. See I did it quite easily.
SJ1: France and Germany Star.
JS: Yeah. Seen it. Yeah.
PJ: Let’s have a —
JS: What a lot.
JS: Push it in. That’s right. There you go.
KS: That’s a straightforward ’39 ’45 Star.
SJ1: That’s right. Gosh. I suppose there’s thousands of those about anyway. It’s not [pause] I wonder what’s happened to his logbook? Because that’s the one he always, whenever he was talking to Harry on the phone he used to get the logbook out and say —
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: ‘Do you remember such and such a journey?’
KS: Veterans Agency or something. The man with the medals.
SJ1: Oh, that’s with, yeah. That’s just the stuff with the medals isn’t it?
KS: [unclear]
JS: So, where’s the one with the logbook in?
SJ1: Don’t say we’ve lost it. There it is.
JS: There you go. Give it to Stella then.
KS: It’s a rare thing isn’t it?
SJ1: Well, it would be. Yes. Rather like so everything was logged and entered here. I’m sure he had a charge somewhere, you know. Will Smith. Everybody knew Smith. Terrible chappy in charge. Wing Commander Smith. Not a liked man.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: Anyway, that’s the log book which is very important [pause] Perhaps I’ve seen these, you know. Halifax 2. Halifax 3. What were they doing with Halifaxes? Take off and so and so. Nuremberg. That’s something about Nuremberg on here. What’s that one then?
JS: Oh, that’s the photo isn’t it of —
SJ1: No. No. That’s another. That’s the Grand Slam. No. That’s not theirs. It was just a photograph I think that the chappy that did it had a photograph of the Grand Slam which were the three.
KS: Yeah. I’ve just —
SJ1: Maurice Gardner’s dramatic painting of a Lancaster bomber receiving twenty two thousand pound bomb designed by the late Barnes Wallis. So that might be an interesting thing for them to keep, mightn’t it?
KS: This was, this was sent to him.
JS: Yeah. That was —
KS: That was sent to him.
SJ1: Wireless operator 460 Squadron in an Avro Lancaster.
JS: Look at the front Stella. Look at the front. That was, that was —
SJ1: Oh yes. That was his —
KS: Do you remember?
SJ1: Yes. That was —
KS: That picture of where, that’s not him. That’s what it would look like.
SJ1: Yeah. That’s right. Jean and Geoff found it didn’t they?
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: Another Jean and Geoff. “Will this bring back any memories for you?” That was just his set. Yeah.
KS: Any idea of this?
SJ1: Oh, I’ve got the, I’ve got the other one of that. That was him when he was training.
JS: Oh dear. Yeah. Yeah. That was nice. That’s a good one.
SJ1: He said he couldn’t smile. He’s smiling. He always said to you he couldn’t smile.
JS: No.
SJ1: He was like Alan Ladd, ‘I can’t smile.’
JS: He was, he was ok when he was younger but it was when he was older he never used to smile did he?
SJ1: Not very often.
JS: No.
SJ1: You didn’t see him laugh out loud or smile.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
SJ1: He could. He could smile. He had lovely teeth.
JS: But in his younger days he was fine, wasn’t he?
SJ1: Oh, he was lovely. He was lovely. Why do you think I fell for him?
KS: This has got, this has got quite a bit of stuff. Look. Conditions of release authorisation. More release or —
SJ1: That ought to go with it didn’t it because —
KS: More release stuff. More certificate or something all to do with releases.
SJ1: The Grand Slam. That should go with that shouldn’t it?
KS: Let me show you when you get back.
SJ1: It must be awful to sort of lose, you know. Lose it completely. You know, go into a, in to the, you know for it just to go into the scrap. In to scrap material, wouldn’t it?
KS: Somewhere in this lot, I don’t know where it ended up there was the —
SJ1: This had better go with it all. Yes. That had better certainly go with it.
KS: There was the clasp you know. The Bomber Command clasp.
SJ1: We’ve got it.
JS: Yes, we’ve got it. It’s there.
SJ1: We’ve got it.
KS: Oh, you’ve found it.
JS: It’s there. We’ve looked at it. We’ve seen it. Yeah.
KS: I was looking through it myself.
JS: Yeah.
KS: There’s so much stuff there.
SJ1: No. We’ve got it.
KS: I knew it was in there.
JS: It looks cheap compared with the other ones.
KS: You’ve got to press that at the end. Push it in.
JS: And then pull it.
JS: That’s it.
SJ1: Why have we got all things with the Halifax. Halifax, you know. We don’t, we didn’t know anybody with the Halifax.
JS: There you are.
KS: Yeah. That’s it.
PJ: Is that it?
KS: Yeah. Put that in there. I’m not sure if there’s that many around. Well, there will be a few. This is the, I’m trying to figure out what this blooming thing is.
JS: That’s his service record.
KS: [unclear] in air temperatures.
SJ1: That was about an attack on Nuremberg so perhaps, nothing to do with 218 Squadron I don’t think. That must have just been just some —
JS: Stella might know what it is Ken.
KS: I don’t know.
JS: It’s all stuck together.
SJ1: It is isn’t it? Forecasts and air temperatures. Oh yes. It must have been very important. And various routes and —
KS: Yeah. I think this is something similar.
SJ1: Of interest to somebody who knows something about it. I bet Taff gave him that, you know. Better put that with it because it probably is historically important.
KS: Put that with it.
SJ1: 218 Squadron. Captain Allardyce, Navigator. Oh yes. Taff. It’s Taff’s. That’s right. He must have had this. That was the navigator. That must have been the navigator’s bits and pieces but as he was the same plane and that was his own navigator they should all go together then shouldn’t they?
KS: We’ll sort that away.
SJ1: But now we’re going to put it all together.
KS: No. That —
SJ: Is there any other, is any other stories you’d like to say?
JS: Oh. Not unless, Ken. Ken’s probably got more because Bill used to talk to Ken. I mean not so much to me.
KS: [unclear] There was one of those pictures in there. If you examine it you’ll know what I mean because it’s taken from a window of a Lanc and in the distance you can see all these little tiny black dots which it says was the flak as they were flying over the target. That’s in there. In that photographic book there’s a picture of that. So it shows you what they were facing really, you know when you see that. Dreadful. This, now we get into this which is [unclear] I know. As is say the 218 had this reunion every year and these are the newsletters that they published after it and sent a copy to Bill. So he’s got all these newsletters. Well, I don’t know if you’ll want to go through it all.
SJ1: Wonderful. Wonderful stories.
KS: Pardon?
SJ1: I say all these wonderful stories about different crews.
KS: Well, I tell you what. I’ve read some of this and it’s, you could sit through a couple of weeks reading it. It’s that interesting. If we just, I’ll take this out at random look. You know. And you’ll see what, what you’ll be up against if you try to plough through it. What does that say?
JS: Don’t you try and read it. Let Stella read it.
KS: Oh, don’t start that. Shut up. Gold Coast Squadron Association. November ’34. “Dear all,” and then it goes on in the newsletter and it’s got the whole page and then whoever wrote these. Look. Tonnes of it. Tonnes and tonnes and they were all the same. Look at it. Pages of it.
SJ1: They were originally done in a proper thing. In the end they were doing them like this but they were originally sort of done in proper.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: He’s got on this one, “Page 7. OTU Westcott. We were there.”
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: Something about when he himself was in, at Westcott.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: So, on page seven. And they used to write little poems and they’d tell you all the people that had died or you know, had passed on or whatever.
KS: Well, all the experience. There’s a wealth of information in here.
SJ1: Yes. There is.
KS: Of what was going on, you know. “Frank has now returned to the squadron but then he needed a long recovery period and his place in the crew had been taken by a new wireless operator, Ron Partridge.’ And then it goes on. “April ’44. We were attacked three targets to France. Then began training to use a new type of Gee called GB.” Whatever that is. “This will enable the navigator to direct the pilot to within a few yards of a position on the ground to allow bombs to be dropped.” Goes on. All this lot are full of that sort of stuff.
SJ1: This is all history. I mean.
KS: It is.
Yes. it’s all part and parcel of the history of 218 Squadron. Yes.
JS: Absolutely.
SJ1: As I say there was one crew, I can’t remember which one it was —
KS: Yeah. And then —
SJ1: Full crew.
KS: And also —
SJ1: We couldn’t keep them all but most of them we kept. Somebody would be interested in them I should think, you know.
KS: [unclear]
SJ1: Sometimes he wrote on the front if there was something important like he did on that one saying that —
KS: Here we go this is the reunion.
SJ1: Oh gosh. Let me see.
KS: Reunion of 218.
SJ1: Honeysuckle Cottage at Bradwell Heath.
KS: July 1997.
SJ1: Honeysuckle College, Cottage. That’s where Marjorie Griffiths had the reunion. Bedwell Heath in Suffolk. So these were, oh, that’s Harry. Harry must have been with us then. And that was Bury St Edmunds. There was something. That’s where we stayed while we were there. At the Bury St Edmund’s hotel. The Angel Hotel at Bury St Edmunds. That was where she had the reunions. In the grounds of her cottage. These are all the people in there. And also when we were there there was a photograph there and a bloke came up to Bill and he said, ‘You were with, you were with [unclear] Wilson’s crew.’ He said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I was in charge of the ground crew.’ And there’s a, we’ve got a picture of the crew with the ground crew in front. That’s how he’d found it. He’d seen a photograph of himself and the ground crew.
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: Sitting in front of the crew. I think that must have been one of the photographs.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: And he was in charge. He was in charge. His name was Balls. Somebody Balls.
JS: Balls.
SJ1: And yeah. So that was quite interesting. You should meet him there. That was me and Bill and Harry. That wasn’t Harry. That was somebody else. Eunice. Oh Goonie. We called him Goonie. That’s awful. We called him Goonie Balls.
JS: Getting confused now.
SJ1: That was him. That was a chappy, the ground crew chap and he looked after their Beanie Baker the whole time they had it. That was another interesting feature. That’s Marjorie being presented with a bouquet. I think that was Eunice. Harry’s wife.
KS: Oh dear. Lost the lot there. This is an absolute wealth of information. It really is.
SJ1: From Harry.
KS: It’s experiences of war. A crew talking about it.
JS: That one there where you said flying over —
SJ1: Yes. We weren’t actually on that one.
JS: No.
SJ1: We didn’t go to that reunion. But the following year he actually had the fly over.
KS: Yeah.
SJ1: Which was rather good they thought.
KS: And the —
SJ1: It was quite nice seeing those again. The reunion ones.
JS: Yeah.
KS: It’s got there about an English country garden. There appears to be a bronze figure of a pilot on that when I looked inside.
SJ1: Well, it has got on the back what’s happening here.
KS: Just a teddy bear.
SJ1: 1997. That’s a long time ago wasn’t it?
JS: It is a long time ago.
SJ1: The two gunners and a chap from California.
KS: There you are. There’s a picture of Harry.
SJ1: Harry Fisher. Nothing, not Harry Haswell. Not my Harry. Not Harry Horton I mean.
KS: Another Harry.
SJ1: Not Harry Horton. No.
KS: Another one [unclear]
SJ1: Two gunners and a chap from California. Oh yes. Harry met another gunner. That was right. They met another gunner. Another couple of gunners. So they were sitting there and they were from California. They’d come over from California for the reunion. So they’re all quite interesting you know if anybody ever saw them and found [unclear]
JS: That’s right. Yeah.
SJ1: As I say when people walked around the museum and saw the photographs they’d say, ‘Oh, where did you get that from?’ And Marjorie would tell oh so and so got it or whatever.
JS: I wonder what happened to all, like you say the ones that she accumulated.
SJ1: I don’t, that’s what I’d like to know.
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: Whether it went to Mildenhall because it was quite a big sort of out building you know and the walls were plastered with all the wonderful photographs.
JS: She had family as well. So whether they took on the —
SJ1: Yeah. She did. Yeah, because her daughter used to help her. I think her husband was a bit disabled but her daughter used to help her there and they laid on wonderful teas. And people would stay the weekend and then they’d go to church service on the, at Chedburgh the next morning. On the, yes on the Sunday morning. And they had a big party on Saturday night you know in the village hall. The only thing was they had a little local group playing all the tunes which they thought was wonderful because it was all the swing music but we thought if only they’d used the proper records with the original artists.
JS: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
SJ1: Like Harry James and all those you know. It was a bit pathetic but nevertheless it was the music. They were using all the same songs but it wasn’t quite the same as having the original artists.
JS: Artists.
SJ1: You know. They could have had records. It would have been much better really. Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
SJ1: But I can remember seeing Harry and Eunice jiving. You know, it’s funny to see older people doing a really good jive, isn’t it?
JS: I know. Yeah.
SJ1: You know. We didn’t because Bill wasn’t a very good dancer.
KS: I’ve just found another hidden piece.
SJ1: I saw that.
KS: Did you?
JS: Yeah. They’re from Harry. A letter from Harry after the reunion saying what he thought about the reunion.
KS: I only saw that bit.
SJ1: Yeah.
KS: But this has got, all these pictures have got on the back what they are.
SJ1: Yes. Yes. I know.
JS: Stella wrote it all on there.
KS: Yeah. I realise that.
SJ1: Yeah. I wrote it on.
KS: Two gunners and all that lot.
SJ1: Yeah.
KS: So that’s another record of 218 Squadron.
SJ1: This was all 218 isn’t it really. Yeah.
KS: Well, that’s what he was in, wasn’t it? You know.
SJ1: Yeah. So that’s really the story.
KS: That’s about it isn’t it?
SJ1: His life. But I’ve lived it. Do you see what I mean? I’ve lived it from [pause] when did I meet him? ’45. And he’d just, yes. He’d stopped flying then and you know so he wasn’t flying but he was still in there for another two years which he hated of course. Oh, he was at Newmarket and he went to, yes he went to [unclear]
KS: I’ve got to present you with something. A bag to put it all in.
SJ1: Oh, I like that.
KS: I said I bet you won’t remember to bring something.
PJ: Right then. I’ll —
SJ1: Do you realise you’ll have a nice empty case, Ken to put things in?
KS: Yes. I’ve just got my —
SJ1: Oh, your medal. Yeah.
KS: The one that — apart from that [unclear]
SJ1: Oh yes. That’s right. No. That’s right.
KS: It’s empty. My job’s done.
SJ1: Your job’s done.
PJ: Well on behalf of the IBCC, Stella.
SJ1: Yes.
PJ: Kenneth and Jean. Thank you for letting us interview you today. Thank you.
JS: You’re welcome.
KS: Lovely.
SJ1: You’re welcome. That’s very nice actually. Thank you very much.
KS: And if —
SJ: I got through it.
JS: You did very good Stella. Well done.
PJ: That was very good. That was very good, you know.
JS: Yeah. Well done.
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
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Interview with Stella Jones
Creator
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Peter Jones
Sandra Jones
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-04
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AJonesS180704
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:45:15 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
William Jones was a wireless operator on 218 (Gold Coast) Squadron. He met his future wife Stella in 1946, who recalls the wartime experiences of her late husband. Having just left school at the outbreak of war, William initially worked in an Oxford ironmongers shop before taking employment with the Morris Oxford car manufacturer at Abingdon. The production line at this time was for tanks and Spitfires. William joined the RAF in 1942 and undertook training at various locations before qualifying as a wireless operator and being posted with his crew to 218 Squadron. The crew remained friends throughout their lives and Stella recalls some of their experiences that were discussed at reunions. Some amusing, such as when the bomb aimer inadvertently streamed his parachute when passing through the aircraft, when the pure strength of the pilot kept the aircraft airborne after being damaged, and adding their own sweet ration to the supplies they dropped when on Operation Manna. The failure of the authorities to award a campaign medal was a huge disappointment to the crew, and they were not happy with the issue of the Bomber Command clasp.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1945
218 Squadron
aircrew
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Chedburgh
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/937/11294/ALyonJK180202.1.mp3
741ac5d555a5640deb1186b8e219f3a1
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
Lyon, Jack Kenneth
J K Lyon
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Jack Lyon (1917 - 2019. 903044, 62667 Royal Air Force). He flew three operations with 58 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of 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
2018-02-02
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
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Lyon, JK
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB; My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 2nd of February 2018, and I am here in Bexhill with Jack Lyon, to talk about his life and times, now he’s aged a hundred. So Jack what is your, what were your first recollections of life?
JB: Well I think a baby in a pram, and I remember going past a hoarding in Sydenham and I must have dropped something, yeah that’s my first, I was only about five years old I suppose then, apart from that I-
CB: What did your parents do?
JL: Sorry?
CB: What did your parents do?
JL: My father worked in the Smithfield Market, connected with the wholesale bacon trade, that sort of thing. He was a clerk in, George Bowles Nichols was the name of the firm. It had a, you know, a stake in Smithfield Market but they didn’t deal much in meat, mainly in products like ham and that sort of thing. George Bowles Nichols it was, he was a clerk in there. And he was a, oh right from a young child he had a, he was, had a bad health, in fact he had three brothers and they all did except one: they had a hereditary disease which gave them this hump back sort of thing. He nevertheless managed to work, to travel up to London every day, until in 1932 he had a, well he had a, and he died in 1932, anyway, of this, it was while we were on holiday my memory, in this town of Cleve. He didn’t die there, but he was in a very bad way and we only got home, a few days later he died. Well that was, what did I do then.
CB: And you lived in Sydenham then.
JB: I, we was living in Sydenham, and I attended Brockley County School. I’d passed what was the equivalent of the eleven plus from a, I began my school at five years old, in a, they call a church school I think it cost me, cost my mother about a shilling a week to get to, for this, a good education though, very good. I was going to say I passed this, the equivalent of the 11-plus and I went to this Brockley County until, well, I left school at sixteen and I went to work with a London gas company, the South Suburban Gas Company, which had an area extending from Lewisham right down to Tonbridge. I worked in their admin department. At the same time I was studying night school and, let me see that takes us up to, oh yes the, I left, I passed that what’s called the 11-plus and I was at the school and then the South Suburban Gas Company, I joined that in February 1934, and at the same time I tell you I was night school at a place in Knights Hill and I remember on the 30th, sorry on the 30th November 1936, somebody rushed in and said the Crystal Palace is on fire and of course that was the end: we watched that happen. Great pity because it, well it had, anyway I continued to work. In 1939 when I was still working for the South Suburban, I was studying night school as well - accountancy and that sort of thing - I passed stage one of the Royal Society of Arts bookkeeping, and the tutor was, worked for Shell and he poached me. He said, ‘you’re, you have quite good knowledge of accountancy and that sort of thing, would you be interested in transferring from the gas, from the gas company to Shell?’ Well I thought about it, and financially it didn’t, in fact it was slightly worse off I had to pay my train fare to London, but I thought well, it’s a good thing to be a small fish in a very large puddle and you couldn’t get much larger than Shell, could you? It was world wide then, Royal Dutch Shell, and I agreed. In fact I joined Shall about the 1st August 1939. I remember Shell opened an account for me with Lloyds Bank, 39 Threadneedle Street, where they banked themselves; they opened this account for me. But as I say, at that time we were working in St Helen’s Court and there was another famous RAF person also working there, Douglas Bader. He, when he lost his legs in a flying accident, he was invalided out of the service and he joined Shell as a management trainee, I remember that. Well, as I say on the 1st of September, Shell began, operated their wartime programme and that involved closing the London office. So they said well Mr Lyon we shan’t require your services during this present emergency, but in the meantime we will bring your salary up to parity with, what until it’s parity with what you’re earning now, and [emphasis] at the end of the emergency you will be free to rejoin the company if you so desire. Well that’s what, on 5th, war was declared on the 3rd of September, wasn’t it?
CB: Yes.
JL: That was a Sunday, wasn’t it.
CB: It was.
JL: On the 4th of September, I and a friend of mine, we made an effort to join the army because we had a connection with the Royal West Kents. They used to invite us to their annual, the Aldershot Tattoo, and we used to be entertained in their sergeants mess so we decided to join the army, but when we got to Parish Lane, Penge where their office had been, it was closed! [laugh] I suppose part of the war, we said well that’s a funny way to run a war but still, that’s it, there’s nothing we could do about that. And the next day, the 5th of September, somebody said oh they’re opening an RAF recruiting office at, in the Yorkshire Grey pub so we took a 75 bus from Sydenham High Street to there. We were examined and my friend was rejected because he had flat feet. I said he would have been more apt if he’d been joining the army, but still, that’s the way they work. I was accepted and I was told to go home, get overnight things and come back and I would be taken to RAF Uxbridge. I did that and, as I say, I was examined and accepted for, in the air force. They asked me then what trade I would like to be in and I said well what can you offer me and they said well cook and butcher well that didn’t ring any bells with me so I said hmm what else, and they said you could join the secretarial branch. Well I’d been pushing a pen for the last five years and in those days I think I want a change. They said well what about aircrew? I said well what about it? They said well if you complete your training satisfactorily you’ll be automatically promoted to the rank of sergeant, receive twelve and sixpence a day I think it was, plus so much flying pay, so there was really no contest was there. And that’s how, I passed the medical for flying and I was given a uniform which I must, was told to wear at all times because I was still actually in the air force. I was given two books to study. One was called mathematics for engineers and the other one was practical mechanics. Neither of them had much bearing on flying training, but there it was. Now this was the phoney war. I went back to my house, we were living in, oh, we had a little flat, my mother and I had a little flat in, just near the Sydenham Road, well as I say the phoney war dragged on until the 30th of December 1939. I had a telegram, “proceed to number one initial training wing, Downing College, Cambridge,” and that is where I went. Now the course was supposed to last for six weeks. In fact it dragged on to nearly four months. The reason was there were still no training facilities available. It had its up side. We were billeted in the, well what used to be the students home in, when they were there because when they were students there in Downing College, some of the colleges did have students as well, but we didn’t have that, we were permitted to use the clubs, that the College’s silver, yes, and we took turns at serving and washing up. So as I say, that relieved the monotony a bit. But this dragged on until as it were, what they say the nemesis, on the 10th of June, 10th of May 1940 the Germans invaded the Low Countries, Holland and Belgium, yes. I was, I was on fire picquet that night and the admin had been headed by a, well I must go back a bit. Before the second world war, Brigadier Critchley, his name was, was chairman of the Greyhound Racing Commission. Now when the war started he was given the rank of Air Commodore and he recruited quite of his old associates for various posts. Our adjutant was a name of Shaffey and I believe in peacetime was a tennis coach, he came and he was in a terrible state, he said LAC – we’d been promoted to LAC by the way after a number of weeks, which meant our pay was a bit better, Leading Aircraftman - what do I do with this LAC Lyon? I said well you must call, as soon as it’s light you must have a general, a roll call of all the students, all the would-be airmen, check for deficiencies in kit and that sort of thing, and the instructions were: ten recruits and each, name, not by name but by number, to various RAF stations, not necessarily air training stations and I and nine others were posted to RAF Kinloss which was not, at that time it was called 45 MU I believe, there was no flying directly from there, because as I say it was mainly material. Well we made the journey up, I had to stay, we stayed overnight I remember in the YMCA in Edinburgh, we managed to get a billet there. We travelled on the next day and we arrived at RAF Kinloss to be viewed with a certain suspicion because at that time it was stories of nuns in parachutes, coming down by parachute and all the rest of it, we were not exactly given a heroes welcome. However, they found us a billet where we could lie our heads for the night and after a day or so they received some sort of confirmation of our status and we were trained in air station defence. I think we, they, the weapon we had was interesting: it was a 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon which had to be what they called “cocked” before it could be fired, the great thing is not so much the strength, dexterity because the story was if you lingered a bit you could lose a few fingertips, however we were trained in the use of it. And we were going to have a read out, two read outs, five of us in each, in each one, but the cannon was, overnight was requisitioned for service in the south of England where it was thought would be far more useful in the event of an invasion. It was replaced with a, I recall it was a 1912 Lewis, Lewis gun with a pan for ammunition.
CB: A drum.
JL: And even then it was a bit of a situation. We were told we must not open fire under any circumstances without consulting the Station Defence Officer. Well first of all we didn’t know who the Station Defence Officer was and even if we did we had no means of contacting him. So therefore, as I say it was perhaps a good thing that our skills were not called into account. This went on for a few weeks and the only outstanding thing I can remember is that one night, or one morning, we woke up to find on a stretch of uncultivated area in the camp were prone figures. They were guarded by normally armoured personnel and we were instructed not to attempt to approach these people in any [emphasis] circumstances. Well, they were in fact refugees from the evacuation of Dunkirk: they were up there because they were spread all around the country, they didn’t want too many in the same place, bad for morale. They stayed there, one night they disappeared and that was that. Not long after this, I was, we, yes, I and one or two others were posted to RAF Elementary Flying Training School at a place just outside, where the beer, Burton. Burton, that’s right, you know, there’s a sign he’s gone for a Burton, well that’s there. Burton on Trent. I was trained as a, in those days all aircrew were first of all trained to be pilots. I failed the pilot’s course – so the failure rate was quite high, something like thirty per cent - and then I was asked what I wanted to do, they said well the only question is becoming a navigator bomb aimer. The senior, the officer in charge of training there, tested my knowledge of mathematics, it was not a big test, it was comparatively simple, just sort of fourth fifth form geometry and that sort of thing. I satisfied him I was intellectually capable of becoming a useful navigator and bomb aimer and then I was then posted to RAF Manby, Number 1 Air Armament School, at a place near Louth in Lincolnshire, where we went through, wait a minute, no, no, one of them, sorry I’m jumping the gun, I was posted to RAF Prestwick, in Scotland for a navigation course. That went on until, that’s right, we completed the course in I think it was September 1940, and I was then posted to, wait a minute, that’s right, I was posted from Prestwick to this one, this Number 1 Air Armament School in Louth in Lincolnshire, that’s right. I satisfactorily completed that course and I was called to the Station Commander, or Training Commander in charge of aircrew training. He said, ‘LAC Lyon, in view of your passing out at the top of the class and your past service record you have been awarded a commission,’ pending what they used to call well, you know, gazetting, whichever, whatever the wartime equivalent of that was, where I would be promoted to sergeant, and I was posted then to, oddly enough, RAF Kinloss! But by that time it had become Number 19 Operational Training Unit, well, it gives you, it tells you, the name tells you what it did. That’s right, this, this was in, this would be about November 1940. I completed the course in early January and let’s see, I went to, oh yes, that’s right. Nothing particularly, well, you cut all the bits and pieces short. The course was completed in, oh yes, in about, I think it was, March of 1941 I was called to the admin office in Kinloss and said that your commission has been confirmed. I was given a week’s leave to get myself a uniform and that sort of thing and then I would return for operational training. I bought my uniform, I managed to stay with a family I knew, their name was Truss, I think it was, and he was an engineer and he was working actually I didn’t know turned out it was the largest, there was an article about it the BBC Channel 4 some time, it was the largest armaments factory in the whole of the country. I didn’t know the extent of it then, but he was employed there. I got my uniform and whatnot and returned to RAF Kinloss and after, in a few days, I was posted to RAF Linton on Ouse which at that time was, it had, it was unusual, a brick building very good accommodation. It was built in the intermediate war years. It also had the other squadron was, they had Halifax, they were being converted to Halifaxes but they were not operational. So that’s right, I stayed with them and returned. Right, well I completed at RAF, at RAF Linton on Ouse I remember I was taken a very bad cough and cold and I remember the medical officer said, ‘Oh, Pilot Officer you have a nasty sounding bit of congestion there.’ And within half an hour or so I was ensconced in this local nursing home to be treated for this congestion. After about ten days there I think, I was released and my training continued. Right. Now, here we come to our, first of all I was to join with a man named, was it Flight Lieutenant Walker, who I think he had the nickname Johnnie, well he would wouldn’t they, that name, but then that order was countermanded for some reason unknown to me, the rumour had it that he was getting a little too fond of his namesake, sort of rumours that are rife in war time. I was then teamed up with a crew the first pilot was Sergeant Roberts. I was the only commissioned member of a crew. Now I don’t know what you know about, can you see any particular reason that that would cause difficulty, you probably don’t now, but it did then. As I was commissioned and they were not I could only converse with them socially or otherwise, in two places: either in a crew room or of course in the aircraft itself, otherwise it was actually forbidden to associate with me as commissioned officer to associate with non-commissioned personnel on the camp area, so it did make things a little awkward, didn’t it. Very unusual situation, that. Anyway, on the, was it on the let me see there, the 1st, of, was that, would be May 1941 we were allocated a new aircraft and told that the, in the crew room, we were told that the target was marshalling yards and adjoining railway station in Dusseldorf, Germany. Right, and we were going to do a pre-flight air test, as you were operations rules insisted. We were in the aircraft waiting to start and well, Roberts, the captain, started the engines but calamity intervened: there were no chocks in the wheels, under the wheels and the aircraft rolled forward and collided with what I think was called a Huck starter.
CB: Oh dear.
JL: No one weas injured but the propeller blades of one engine the Whitley, they were, it was a Whitley 5 was the actual classification of the aeroplane. Well, there is, chaos reigned and it just about did because, I didn’t mention, but shortly after my arrival early at RAF Linton on Ouse, one night there was an air raid. Now I looked around and there were no instructions of what to do in the event of an air raid, I thought well, what do I do? I thought it was a question of Jack you’ll have to play it by ear and wait and see what happens. Suddenly there was an almighty bang! My bed lifted off its, it seemed about lifted about a foot in the air and came down well what do I do? If I rush out to find a shelter I may be going the wrong way. I thought no, I’d better stay put, so I did. The next morning I got up and I went into the Officers Mess and there was no hot water, well that was not unusual, what I didn’t know, overnight a shelter had received a direct hit and quite a large, I think about twenty airmen were killed, including the Station Commander, so that was not a very auspicious beginning to my stay at Linton, was it? Anyway, I did, I, well nothing I could do there then, just hold on. We, I, the station was in a really, a terrible, the pilot was confined to quarters, told he would face a charge of gross negligence and we were told that we would not be flying that night, so we returned to, the rest of the crew, returned to our quarters. Not two hours later there was a change once more. Group, you see it was Headquarters at 4 Group, Group wanted a full number of aircraft involved, no exceptions. They said you, we have allocated you another aeroplane. You must be ready within two hours for take off and your pilot will be Sergeant Roberts. Now there’s a volte face isn’t it, one day he’s considered not fit to fly and next moment it’s all over and he’s fully qualified to fly as captain again. Well, that aeroplane that they gave us should never, in my opinion, should never have been used. We’d only, we took off with the rest of the squadron, but after about only an hour and a half flying, the port engine began to overheat and the, Roberts could do nothing about that, we had to reduce speed, it meant we cut our speed by about ten knots. That in itself was not particularly of great concern, but what was far more important was that we couldn’t get above ten thousand feet. Now the previous briefing the recommended height had been fourteen thousand so theoretically we could have been knocked out with one of our own bombs, but I don’t think that that’s very likely. There was no, well there wouldn’t be any fighter aircraft, they were also using anti aircraft fire, in any case, I think all the fighter squadrons in that part of Germany had been withdrawn and were sent to the, what would be the east front in Poland and regroup and practice for the, what the plan, what was it called - Operation Barbarossa – which was due to and took place on the 21st of June, yes 21st of June 1941 so there were no. Well we, I, we flew on this and almost immediately [emphasis] we were caught in that blue light which locks on to you and it is so dazzling you cannot see your own instruments, it’s so, it’s, you’re virtually as good as blind. We, I released the bombs at what I considered, though I had no idea really where it was, but I knew we’d got to get rid of them, they went down, and we immediately turned and I gave, I gave Roberts a course for home, although we never had any time to check the variation from magnetic to compass course, but let’s hope it was alright. But not long after we turned on for home, the port engine caught fire! The extinguisher didn’t work so therefore we flew on. Now, then the pilot said to me, ‘look Jack I can’t contact the rear gunner. Do you think you could crawl along the fuselage and see whether he’s all right?’ I said, ‘yes I’ll try.’ I opened the door behind the wireless operator and I was immediately assailed by a cloud of fume and flame. I really thought my, my time was up. I didn’t feel particularly frightened, I don’t know why, but then of course the adrenalin snaps in, doesn’t it. I seized an oxygen mask, took a few gulps of it, and Rob looked around, and he said, ‘oh my gawd, abandon aircraft.’ Now, it so happens that the exit is, in that particular aeroplane, was right beneath where I was sitting, so I had to be the first one out otherwise I’d block the exit for the remainder of the crew. I opened the hatch, I jumped, I don’t actually remember pulling the cord, the release, parachute release cord, I obviously did otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I? I came to and I could see by that time the aeroplane below me and it was like an enormous [emphasis] torch in the sky, the entire plane was burning. Now how this happened, I don’t really know, but that was a fact. I saw it hit the ground with one tremendous kind of smoke and flame. I landed, and it was a windless night, so much so that the canopy covered me. I looked, I got it off and I looked around. Now I’d either landed in what was a probably a recreation ground, or what might have been a sports field, but I think it was a recreation ground. I know in the escape books they scurry around and bury their, bury their parachute. Well, you needed a power, power digger to make any impression on that soil: it was hard as a rock! But within less than a minute a German soldier turned up and well he didn’t, although he didn’t say it, had he done so I’d have been inclined to agree with him. “For you the war is over.” Well I wouldn’t have got far in the old fashioned fleece lined flying boot with no proper heel to it and in British battle dress, so there was little I could do but accept it. Now, this one, I could have walked in front of him and he could have walked holding on one hand on his rifle and the other hand his bicycle, so we accepted that the only other alternative: I sat on the cross bar and he did, we proceeded on a bicycle. Now either way, he stopped. Now it was, I wasn’t quite sure at the time, but depending on whether Germany had double summer British, double summer time, but it was well past midnight, he knocked on the door of this house, at that time I could understand a fair amount of German because I’d been studying German at night school, but that’s another, that’s another. He said I have a wounded British officer here, I’d like you to give him a little help. The lady produced some warm water. Head wounds always bleed a lot although they’re really only superficial and this was only a superficial cut, she bathed all the dried blood away, and believe it or not, she also made a cup of tea. Tea not coffee. I thought that was very impressive and I knew enough German to say vielen danke, kneidiger frau: thank you dear lady for your kindness. We then proceeded on for the rest of the journey to a town called Goch, G-o-c- h, not far from the Dutch border. Now for some reason that I never discovered, I did not end up, oh, first of all the policeman, he said give me your pistol, I said ich habe keine pistol, I have no pistol, which I didn’t, the sort of thing I didn’t want to be lumbered with that. He thought maybe a bit odd but he accepted it and that was it. I didn’t spend that night in the cells, he put me in the telephone exchange of all places. And all night, it was a manual exchange in those days, you hear the thing going up and down to finding its correct slot to go in to, anyway I can’t say I slept much but still, that was, I was dry and I’d saved my life so I couldn’t really grumble. The next day the, a Luftwaffe officer turned up and he said would you please come with me, and together with, at some stage or other, we picked up the rest of the crew so I must have had, I think, a slight case of concussion, but anyway, we ended up, he took us to the Luftwaffe base at Duisburg, and he said, ‘oh by the way, your comrade, the rear gunner is quite safe, but when he landed he broke his ankle and he is receiving treatment in a clinic near here, but he is otherwise he’s safe and well.’ And now believe it or not, these, they were extremely polite these Luftwaffe officers, very high standard of education I’d say, in fact some of them could speak English; some of them had spent time in England. We were entertained in the officers mess. There was no attempt made to extract information from us. We talked about cricket or the weather or something like that, and then they said, well we now have to hand you over to a representative of the German Air Force POW body and we went, we, they duly took us in hand and we went by I think it must have been a sort of a mini bus I think, yes it must have been. It wasn’t a, wasn’t a truck, it had seats in it, I know. Well, where do you think they took us? Believe it or not they took us to Dusseldorf and we got out of the thing there, and we stood on the platform. There was absolutely no sign of any damage whatsoever. [Emphasis] We were not the object of any kind of well, abusive attention from the Germans. They looked us up and down and took no, virtually no notice, in fact we had, it was a corporal with us, and he came back with some sticky buns for us. Well, so that was the, from we entrained at Dusseldorf and we travelled to Frankfurt, that is Frankfurt on the Main, the river Main, which at that time was the prison, the Luftwaffe prisoner of war body as what they called the Dulag dursrstadtlager’s transit camp. Now we, when we reached this transit camp, this is where we, they put me in the, I suppose they did with the other, rest of the crew as well, in the interrogation cell, which was really not much different from a second or third rate boarding house the only thing is there were bars over the window. Now before we’d had no instructions to what to do in event of being taken prisoner, of course they do it now, but they didn’t in those days, in 1941. But anyway, a Luftwaffe major came in and he gave me a form to sign and he said if you complete this, your details will be sent immediately to the Red Cross in Geneva and your relatives or whoever you’ve asked to be notified, will know within forty eight hours that you are safe and well. Now, we had [emphasis] oddly enough, been briefed about this. It wasn’t anything to do with the Red Cross in Geneva, it was actually prepared by the German Intelligence Service. I read it and I said, ‘I regret, Herr Major, I am not allowed to divulge some of the information that you require.’ And he accepted this without argument: that was that. And the next day I was released into the compound there. Well of course they had got far more on their hands to worry about than a rather insignificant crew. The last Sunday I think it was, in May, which used to be called Whit Sunday, there was a break out, there was a tunnel, the permanent staff at the gulag had been building this tunnel which they broke on I say, on the Whit Sunday. All were subsequently recaptured except for Roger Bushell, and that’s another story. So you might well say that I wasn’t the only failed bomb aimer, was I? We know that now. Anyway we travelled by normal train from Frankfurt, after Frankfurt. There were some guards there, but they were, they didn’t make themselves too obtrusive. We arrived at a place called Barth, which was the site of Stalag Luft I. Stanlager all that means is it’s a permanent camp, Stan means permanent, as opposed to Durst means transit. So that’s all. That was Stalag Luft I we found ourselves in. Now at the entrance to that I went one way because I was a commissioned officer and the rest of the crew went the other because they were not, because at Stalag Luft I there was an NCOs compound as well as an officers compound and that was in fact the last I ever saw of any of them. Any of them. Peculiar isn’t it, never mind. We were only there, well I stayed there until about April of 1942 and that was when Stalag Luft III was opened. The journey there was uneventful. We got to Stalag Luft III and I was allotted a, well a billet obviously, a room, [sigh] how much more of this do you want from me?
CB: Just keep going. We’ll stop for a break. I think you deserve it. So, you said you were shot down on the 3rd of June 1941.
JL: Correct. Yes.
CB: You had been in the squadron since, for a couple of months, by then.
JL: Oh, no.
CB: Three months was it?
JL: I think it was.
CB: April.
JL: So much happened, air raid and whatnot. I think it was about the mid April when I got to Linton on Ouse, yes.
CB: And you talked about the crew, but in the air, what was the cohesion like?
JL: Well, we could fraternise.
CB: Were you all on christian name terms in the aircraft on operations? When you were flying?
JL: Well, the only one I knew quite well was Robbie, that’s all, the pilot. I don’t remember. If they told me I, it didn’t sink in.
CB: No. Then you already mentioned, that in, outside the flying period, if you were, time, if you were going out and socialising, that was different.
JL: Some of the better class, you know the real, the nice hotels in Linton on Ouse, didn’t like too many non-commissioned ranks in there, they were fussy.
CB: They only wanted the officers in.
JL: They only wanted officers, yes.
CB: Yes. I suspect times changed quite radically later.
JL: Oh, they must have done.
CB: When the heavies came. Yes.
J: They must. But in the early days it was a, it was strict, I was given, no doubt about, I was given strict instructions I was not to fraternise.
CB: Yeah, that was the early part of the war.
JL: They were very particular about it in those days, the air force.
CB: Right. And because you were shot down so soon into your tour, you didn’t have a lot of time to get to know your crew well, did you.
JL: I had very little time, Robbie was about the only one I knew.
CB: Yeah. Fast forward again into Sagan, Stalag Luft III. How was that organised? You had the officers and NCOs. But in the officers’ side.
JL: There was an officers’ compound, and an NCOs compound.
CB: And in the officers compound, how did that work?
JL: Actually I went in to a the, they were quite small huts, and there were only two more in the room that I was in. I was billeted with a man with, a chap named Jules Silverstone, who was in fact Jewish and also this chap Pop Green, who in fact had served in the first world war. He was a, interesting history, at the beginning of the first world war he held a commission in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry.
CB: Right. We were in that. We were in that.
JL: Really. Yes well, he had a commission in that but he later transferred to the Machine Gun Corps because the Germans hopelessly outclassed us in that, in those, in weaponry. He survived the war, but he was told that he was only allowed to fly on training missions, but being that sort of man he probably got himself on an operation and he was flying in a Hampden and they were shot down, and he survived, without, he wasn’t injured, and as I say I was billeted with him. He said that Passchendaele was the worst he had ever [emphasis] encountered. People died there not in action, but in a mass of filth and slime. He said it was, it was appalling. What happened was, he said the Germans withdrew to higher ground and left us in these swamped trenches. He said, as I say, he hated it. And of course, well he, [laugh] he was the only man who was rather sorry when the war ended. The reason was he’d have to go home and rejoin his wife whom he hated the sight of, [laughter] and last I heard of him he was running a taxi service in Bray.
CB: Any reason why he hated his wife?
JL: I don’t know, but he did. He didn’t go into that. [Chuckling]
CB: Yes. What, you said there were three others. So you had Jules Silverstone, Pop Green, who was the other?
JL: Jules Silverstone. His father was a solicitor in Birmingham, but he didn’t follow in this father’s footsteps, he moved heaven and earth to join the RAF. Now I think he was, at age, I think he was thirty four. He was too old to join as pilot or navigator, he had to be classed as a gunner. So, that was it, he was a -
CB: Was an air gunner.
JL: Pilot Officer Silverstone, gunner. Interesting him, because he knew all about this stuff they used to call window, the one that, when they released it, it had black, black on one side and a sort of reflective surface on the other. It played hell with the tech -
CB: With the radar.
JL: With the radar, yeah. And it wasn’t, he said they won’t use it, he knew this, he said but they won’t use it till they’ve found a reason to overcome it. And it was in fact, it wasn’t used until that raid on Hamburg, that firestorm they created.
CB: On Hamburg.
JL: Hamburg. In 1943. Yeah.
CB: Who was the third person with you?
JL: Sorry?
CB: Who, you mentioned two people, who’s the third one?
JL: There was only Pop Green and Silverstone. Three in the room.
CB: And you. Oh, just three in the room, sorry. Yeah, okay.
JL: They were quite small huts. There were only, I think there were only four, only four huts in the officer’s compound, certainly not many. I tell you what we, did happen one day, do you remember that story of the one who got away?
CB: The German.
JL: The German, yeah. Well he turned up, he was in, dressed in ordinary German uniform, he was a major, major, and I remember seeing he was on the doorstep to one of the huts chatting to a man named talking to Squadron Leader Mac Dunnell [?]. Of course he was, actually, the German, he was shot down during the Battle of Britain wasn’t he.
CB: Yes. Yes.
JL: That’s right. And of course Mac Donald [?] was part, flew a Spitfire I think. They were chatting quite friendly, and he was not accompanied by any other German personnel. he just wandered around chatting to people.
CB: Amazing.
JL: He had a sad ending, he was killed in a flying accident. He was testing new fighter apparatus I think, but he had engine trouble or something, he was lost at sea, never found, they never recovered his body, in November 19, oh, 1940 41. That was the one that got away.
CB: Off the Dutch coast.
JL: Yeah. He was there.
CB: Well. he escaped in Canada.
JL: There was obviously, you know, a bond in the, between the two air forces at that time, later on they didn’t, but there was in the early days.
CB: A Chivalry.
JL: Yeah. Chivalry. That’s it, chivalry of the air.
CB: Extraordinary really.
JL: So well that’s my story. Long before, Douglas Bader, who was, he was taken prisoner wasn’t he.
CB: Yes.
JL: When, something, either his plane collided with another one, anyway but he was taken prisoner.
CB: He was shot down.
JL: Whether he was shot down or not.
CB: By one of his own people, he was shot down by one of his own people it turned out.
JL: Ah well that’s. By one of his own people?
CB: Yeah. They met in prison and the chap had to own up.
JL: Oh, I met him personally.
CB: But he didn’t admit.
JL: Because he was also Shell.
CB: Yes, he was.
JL: Well anyway, That was a. When he was in the camp he used to play golf, he would try to. And because of his, he lost his legs you see, I mean his prosthetic legs,
CB: Yes.
JL: I think they replaced them, they threw them out or something like that. He would sometimes fall over but god help you if you went to assist him, you know he would swear at you, he was determined to get on his feet unaided. Anyway, he had a bit of a falling out with the powers that be there. Because he didn’t like the way they were treating the guards and whatnot as if they were friends not enemies. it was decided he would be better off in another camp and the last I saw of him, well not the last, the last in the prisoner of war camp I saw him, he was being escorted out, he turned it into his own advantage inspecting as if these as a company.
CB: Oh you saw hm doing the inspection did you? Of the guard.
JL: He was inspecting the, yeah. That’s typical Bader, isn’t it. Now! I retired, I left the air force in something like well, October 1945 but I remained on as a, I was paid by the air force till I think it was January ’46 and very soon after going to, where did we work to? Very shortly we, I was asked if I wanted to go to Venezuela because Venezuela still had most of its wells, oil wells and I agreed, and I was, I went out to, we didn’t go out on a ship I went out on a tanker SS Luscia, Luscia I think she was. She was imbalast so she rocked about a bit I’ve never been seasick or any other sick in an aeroplane. We finally docked at Aruba, in, which belonged to, was a Dutch possession then, Aruba, in the West Indies and I was only there for a night and then we got a, I was flown to Maiquetia, which was the airport for Caracas. Caracas itself is about five hundred feet above sea level, the capital of Venezuela. I was, from Maiquetia I travelled by a bus on a road which they say was built by convicts in the Gomez, when Gomez was a dictator of Venezuela, you could sometimes look down and see where you’d been ten fifteen minutes before. I reached Caracas, or I might say that they charged me, I had to have what was called a certificate of identity, and I had to pay for it in the local currency. They took a, all I had, was a, I had an English, I had a five pound note I think, they gave a stamp and it was probably worth about one tenth of that in the local currency, the so-and-sos. That’s how it happened. When I got to Caracas, I found a billet in the Hotel Majestic and I knew enough Spanish, I’d, interesting while I was in the prisoner of war camp I had lessons from of all people Tom Kirby Green, why he should be a good Spanish speaker, mind he served with the Republicans, didn’t he, in the war in Spain.
CB: In the Spanish Civil War.
JL: Lord Haw Haw announced it, didn’t he, yeah. So that was that, yes. I had enough Spanish to say I’m in the employ of Shell, they were called the Caribbean Petroleum Company then, they didn’t, Shell, enter into the name although they used the, what it is, the, oh it’s a scallop isn’t it, that’s the Shell sign isn’t it, the scallop, and oh I think it was the afternoon of Christmas Day, a chap named Swinson turned up, he said, ‘Oh Lyon, I’m glad to find you,’ he said, ‘I know you, we were advised you were on your way but then we sort of lost track of you.’ But then of course I served in the, on what they called internal audit, that is not, not, as opposed to the exterior audit, was actually Price Waterhouse in those days. They did the proper auditing of Shell’s possessions there, I went round to these depots making sure their equipment and whatnot was properly registered and that sort of thing. It was quite interesting work. Well, while I was there, who should, that was having travelled down to the fields the main producer in the Maracaibo, while I was there on this what they call internal audit, who should turn up but Douglas Bader. Now he was on a, well they say he was just, reviewing his position, he was visiting, but what he was really was doing he was trying to push the company to try to use British aero, aircraft rather than all American, and I was introduced to him as: ‘oh this is Mr Lyon from our head office in Caracas.’ And he said, ‘oh, hello there.’ I said, ‘but sir, we’ve met before haven’t we. He looked, I said, ‘last time I saw you, you were acting as a kind of inspector of a -.’ ‘Oh my gawd yes!’ And we kept in touch quite a lot afterwards, I’ve known him for quite.
CB: Did you?
JL: Yes. Bader, so.
CB: How did you find him, outside Stalag Luft III?
JL: I got on with him very well. He certainly wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but he had a, he was shrewd. One of the airfields in the concession area, was at a place called Mushi de Suleman [?]. It’s at five thousand feet and in the hot season the pilots were having great difficulty in taking off because of the rarefied air. Now in those, this was the days before computers, I didn’t get a, I got a file across my desk one day, and this was, Bader had seen this problem that they had and he had written in the margin, “let them take off with half tanks”, and he knew that in emergency they would still have enough to reach wherever necessary to safety and yet still travel with only half a tank. He did very well as a, in Shell. He finished as the President of Shell Aviation with a private jet to fly. So he did very well there. But he certainly, he had this, being able to see the, you know little bit further through a brick wall than most people. I had great admiration for him. But I agree he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I always got on with him quite well. Yeah.
CB: Where did you go from there?
JL: Sorry?
CB: Where did you go from there?
JL: After I returned home by 1950, April 19. By the way, I flew the Atlantic in, at a time when there weren’t many transatlantic flights. I was staying in Montreal at the time, I had some relatives there and I was booked on this, it was little more than a souped up DC4, the aircraft we flew in. We were due to call only at one place: Halifax, but I remember the pilot made a special landing somewhere, he wanted to pick up, I think they were Catholic priests I believe, the look of ‘em, there was snow on the ground, I think we were lucky to take off again, but anyway we did. But flying at that, of course in those days you only flew at probably about twelve thousand feet, something like that, looking on down this unbroken mass of well pine trees I suppose, you wouldn’t have stood a dog’s chance of anything if you’d had to make a forced landing in a plane in there. Anyway we did we, I got home and 1950, in April 1950 and I, [pause] I met my future wife. Now, now I had known her as a schoolgirl because I was friendly with [chuckle] her half uncle, it sounds like carbuncle, doesn’t it [laugh] but he was a half uncle because they’d been, the father grandfather [unclear] had married twice, but that’s all I, we met again and well we decided to get married, Hazel and I. Our, our union, we didn’t do too bad: sixty three years exactly because she died on our wedding anniversary.
CB: Did she really.
JL: In 19, sorry, 2013. So we’re not bad was it.
CB: Fantastic!
JL: So , and then I, well I continued with working. I had the opportunity to leave about the end of. You see they formed what they called Iranian Oil Participants which was agreement hammered out with the Shah as he was then and when they kicked out Masadic [?], he agreed that concessions could be opened by this consortium of oil companies, and there was the BP had a forty per cent interest in it, the major oil, American companies had another forty, Shell had fourteen percent and the Company Francaise de Petroleum the remaining six per cent. That was how Iranian Oil Participants, and I was senior financial, financial assistant in, seconded to Iranian Oil Participants and I held that post for seventeen years. At the end of it I was getting a bit tired of it. I had a man that I’d no respect for: a man named Hoppen. Let’s say he shafted me once, he fed me to the, he tried to feed me to the lions that’s it; fortunately I was set, I had no respect for him after that. He said, ‘I’m not going to make you redundant, Lyon.’ I said, ‘thanks very much, I don’t want to be called redundant, I think I’ve done a pretty good job for seventeen years. Thank you.’ All I asked was that they brought forward the, at Shell you retired at sixty, that was before, and then there was also a reduction made for overseas service which I had, so it would only mean bringing forward my pension date by three or four years, not too much to ask, but that served me well because you see it’s an index linked pension.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Now, my monthly salary is worth, worth much more that I was actually paid when I retired.
CB: Yeah.
JL: So I made the right decision there.
CB: You did, yes.
JL: Staying with, staying with Shell. So I have some things to worry about but money is certainly not one of them.
CB: What made, what brought you down to Bexhill?
JL: Ah! Shortly before I retired, I’d lived in St Leonards. We had a, I had, we had a small bungalow in what they called the Links. It was actually originally it was a golf course, because I, it wasn’t being used as a golf course then but nothing else. I used to walk across this links to West St Leonards where I picked up the train for, used to take me to Cannon Street. But so, that brings it well, I’ve been with them ever since.
CB: But you decided to leave St Leonards and come to Bexhill.
JL: Oh yes, well, I made the right decision there.
CB: What made you do that then?
JL: There wasn’t much there for me in the air force: a failed navigator. I mean. They don’t even have them now anyway do they?
CB: Well, It’s different.
JL: No, no I made the right decision there. I knew I would. No, I couldn’t go wrong.
CB: You mentioned air force again. Going back to your flying times in the Whitley.
JL: Yeah.
CB: What navigation aids did you have in those days? We are talking about 1941.
JL: Well you had a thing called a CFC, whicb you set your, you set your, the course you would want to follow, and then you fed in what the, the wind direction, and you fiddle around with it and that gave you your course to fly. They did have, you could have, some of the Whitleys, not the one I was shot down, didn’t have one, they had an astrodome.
CB: Oh yes.
JL: So if you’d been trained in the use of the [unclear] mill, polar, star charts you could theoretically fix your position by air, star sight, but certainly the one we flew in, the old one they trundled out, that didn’t have one, didn’t have a - there was only one exit there, and that was downwards.
CB: Oh right.
JL: So that was the only navigation instrument we used to rely on, and dead reckoning as they called it.
CB: So in the daylight you could more easily see where you were, but flying at night, what did you do there?
JL: Oh yes it was. I did in fact, have use of, while I was waiting for this, at Cambridge, Downing Cambridge, Downing College Cambridge, I used to read Air Publication 1 2 3 4 and this was the navigational training of a pilot,
CB: Right.
JL: Because we were all supposed to be trained as pilots to start with in those days, they didn’t have different courses then. I was able to use it one day because I know we took off and the mist came down, I was pretty certain we were drifting off course, well it did tell you what to do. You flew halfway to your, half the distance that you’d previously calculated and then [emphasis] you gave the pilot orders to fly twice the distance that you were, you think you’d been going off course, twice that distance and that should give you a course to your original. It really, all you’re doing is flying the two sides of an isosceles triangle, and I tried it and we did, and out of the water, out of the thing, saw this, it was just an island.
CB: You’d got it right.
JL: So it certainly, it worked, I know.
CB: This is doing the maximum drift calculator isn’t it.
JL: Sorry?
CB: This is the maximum drift calculation.
JL: Yes, it’s for, they call it pilot navigation.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yeah, oh yes. Because he couldn’t take bearings and all that sort of thing could he. As I say, it’s a simple, simple, it’s just geometry really, that’s all you’re doing, flying the two sides of an isosceles triangle. Yeah.
CB: So how many ops did you do before you were shot down?
JL: Only a couple, that’s all.
C: Right.
JL: We had to, they call them nurseries, they were using them to bomb an occupied port like Calais or somewhere like that. How they arranged it so that the, you weren’t dropping bombs on German and French civilians I suppose they had some means of contact in, I didn’t know what it was but that was all, a couple of those and this was just our third trip, that’s all.
CB: How many aircraft were there in the squadron?
JL: That I don’t really know. It was not public information anyway.
CB: And when you went out on a raid, on an operation, did you go with other aircraft or did you go as individuals, as singletons?
JL: Each one took off, you got the, from the Control Tower you get the take off clear, that’s it, one by one.
CB: But you weren’t in any kind of formation or cohesive?
JL: Oh no, it was only Americans that did that, formation flying. Oh no, quite impossible at night.
CB: Yeah. And before you went on the op how did the briefing go?
JL: Well as I say, it was quite clear. The marshalling yards, and the adjoining station: Dusseldorf. That was in the briefing, that was the target.
CB: But they got you all together in a room where everybody was briefed together did they?
JL: That was, yes, well not the second time, we were only given about a couple of hours’ notice to, there was no second briefing, we were just told to fly the original course. Yeah.
CB: Were, when you went off on the ops were all the crew together or were the briefing only for the pilot and navigator?
JL: Well, the pilot and navigator, myself, or bomb aimer I was acting as, we were there and the second pilot, and of course, but the rear gunner was at, well where he should be, the rear gunner. What he, you see he was getting, he was getting fried, there’s no doubt, because the whole aeroplane was on fire and we didn’t know it.
CB: Ah!
JL: So he, what he did, he just rotates his, rotates his, turret, pulls the ripcord, and the airstream takes him out, clear of the, the Whitley was built so that you were clear of the tail, the rear gunner was clear of the tail, twin tail, it just pulls him off and that’s it, that’s what he did, yeah, but as I say he broke his ankle, that’s all.
CB: So all the crew survived.
JL: All the crew survived, yes.
CB: And all of them were captured.
JL: All of them were taken prisoner, yes.
CB: Taken prisoner. What about after the war, first of all how did you get back? Were you flown back or did you come on a ship? Or what happened?
JL: Well at the end of the war, I was here wasn’t I.
CB: No, but you were flown back were you? Or did you come back by ship?
JL: Oh I see what you mean! Well, we by the I think it was the 1st of May 1945, we heard a bombardment and we guessed that was to cover the crossing of the Elbe by the British forces. The next day, the 2nd into the, we were billeted in a farmyard, well we were told that it belonged to a German, well he was in the tobacco business we heard, I don’t know how true that it was, but anyway, the accommodation was fine, we managed to get, it was good weather then, quite warm, no problem there. Into this compound the, came a, there was a British light armoured vehicle. There was a Captain I think, and a corporal. He didn’t say it to me but apparently he said to somebody, I believe there are quite a number of POWs here, and they said yeah, about six hundred if you look around. And that was the end of the war. What we didn’t know was, that as of the 30th of April all German forces in North West Germany surrendered to the British. Well they obviously, they’d rather surrender to the British than the bloody Russians wouldn’t they, that’s what they did. So actually the war ended in that part of the world a week before the main alliance. So, I remember the guards, they neatly piled their arms as you should do and that and they went off to what was called the cage, which was, that was the name the British gave to it, where they, and then they’d be taken ordinary prisoners of war. We’d only been there a short while and a convoy of American Mac trucks turned up and we were loaded on to these and this convoy set off. We got to a place called Rheiner, where we exchanged the American transport for British, well they were only yes, British RSC vehicles and we finally, we crossed the Elbe, I know. They had, well they had one of these revolving things and all the searchlights on, the idea because the war was still on theoretically, as protection as we crossed the Elbe. We, that’s right, we stopped at Luneburg, which was the place a week later the official German surrender took place, and they flew us on, then they drove us on next day to this Rheiner, this airfield at Rheiner. And we waited and we, I was flown home, most of them were, in the, it was a Douglas DC3.
[Other]: Dakota.
JL: They called it a Dakota. And we landed at Dunsfold in Surrey I think it was, where they gave us tea and biscuits you know, the Women’s VS, and we were really then rushed high, as quick as possible up to RAF Cosford which was the gathering centre for POWs, and there we were stripped bare, I don’t think, I never had any, they were thinking of lice. Actually, interesting thing I never saw a louse all the time I was in Germany, let alone getting infected with them, lice so that was. We used to get showers occasionally, but that was, that was certainly not getting rid of lice, it was merely to get a bit of, clean ourselves. We had a quick turn around. I was given fresh clothing, battle dress only with an officer’s stripe on it and I was home on the 9th of May 1945. We were living, my mother was living in Wallington. She had a flat which was a house owned by a relative. Wallington it was, yes.
CB: In Surrey.
[Other]: Surrey.
JL: Yeah, in Surrey, yeah. That was it, that’s my war story.
CB: So how did you actually get to the Elbe? Were you in the Long March?
JL: Oh, I, you look at my book, I never called it a march, it was a, I called it the long walk home.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yeah well, in those days the incurable optimists thought that when the Russians turn up: oh they’ll be brothers in arms and we’ll celebrate their victory with liberal tots of vodka. [Laugh] We didn’t think that! We refused to countenance the story that Hitler, and he did actually give this order, all, all commissioned personnel, ex-prisoners of war to be shot. But fortunately in those days his writ didn’t extend much beyond his bunker. So we refused to accept that. The one that we thought would happen and in fact it did that we would be put on the road and have to leg it to wherever we were supposed to be going. That is why I used to do at least five circuits a day on foot.
CB: In the camp.
JL: In the camp, yeah, in preparation for this, and of course it paid off. It wasn’t, the Germans never pushed the pace. The only thing is, our first night I couldn’t find any covered accommodation. Everywhere I went I was politely told to shove off [laughter]. No room at the inn. So I crawled into a great pile of hay, or straw I suppose it was really, covered myself entirely and I went to sleep and next morning I got up and I was all right. From then it was really dead easy, because a thaw had set in. These people who had built themselves sleighs – they were useless. Similarly those people that had got trollies, they were useless because they didn’t have any hard wood for a bearing, it went through and that was their trollies and their sleighs were useless. I went, I just plodded on. I had a little suitcase I remember, made of fibre. The first, the second night, after the, when I settled down to the straw or hay, or whatever it was, we were billeted in the stable. I believe it was actually, the stable was owned by General von Arnim. The man who replaced Rommel when he was repatriated on grounds of ill health, wasn’t he. I don’t know, that’s the story, it belonged to General von Arnim. Anyway, I was bad enough to get a dry place to sleep. I admit I was a bit close to the horses, but I don’t think they’re any particular menace. I was awakened by a terrific bang! I thought oh my goodness that’s a shot first of all, isn’t it. I thought no, not a shot. I looked, I was using my little fibre suitcase as a pillow, and there was a bloody great hole in it, it was the hoof of a, it must have been within inches of my head! [Laughter] But from then on it was dead easy because the, we stopped at a place called Spremburg. Now there was a glass factory operating and it was still working. We managed to get a, I did manage to get a bit of a wash down and the girls were decent enough to look the other way. I managed to get myself a bit of a clean up. From there we went on to a place called Spremburg, which was a rail head. Now here our column was split in two, why, I don’t know. One, we were loaded on to, on to, they weren’t cattle trucks, they were the old fashioned you know, these Eschable carourdon [?] variety from the first world war, we were loaded in to one of these. The others they went to a place called Luckenwalde, I think was, actually that was liberated by the, by the Russians, and from all accounts they weren’t too well treated to start with by the Russians until they found, were sure who they were. But we were lucky, we were loaded into this. Well, it was crowded, yes I grant you, but the real reason was that we were in pitch dark, everybody wanted, for some unearthly reason to sit as near the door they could. I don’t know if they think it was suddenly going to open and they were going to be wafted away to safety, but they wouldn’t move. When daylight came we were able to sort ourselves out. Now I grant you the toilet facilities were not all that good, but no worse than a ordinary soldier in the field in action has to cope with, a sort of open latrine, and above all, I’ve virtually I’ve experienced worse crowding in London’s underground. So it wasn’t all that bad. We trundled along, we, I remember we did a very slow stop-start circuit of Berlin, course there was a raid going on at the time. We arrived then at a place called, what was it, oh it was a little village, small settlement, not far from Bremen. We, it was, I remember we stopped outside this camp, and look up at it and miserable rain was coming down, there was this thing over the door, well it didn’t, we used to always used to say it was a “Work Makes You Free”, and we used to say “work yourself to death”, but it looked a pretty dreary and unuttering place and we went in to this. It was called Marlag and Milag Nord and it was designed, by the name you could tell, for Royal Marine and Merchant Navy officers: Marlag and Milag. And there were, we were a little concerned because we thought this camp is empty. Where have all these Marine, Naval and Marine officers gone? And we got a horrible thought they might be in some mass grave or other. However, it wasn’t true, they had been moved, when, where and why I’m not actually sure. But when we got inside, well if we had any clothing, warm clothing we were lucky, or dry clothing we put it on. It was a nothing, not a camp I’d recommend but it was, at least it was dry and there was, we had adequate food. There was a certain thing, belief that we were short of food, well I can assure you we never were, we had more than we could do with because the Red Cross parcels were being delivered by since the rail system was on the blink they were coming in by truck and they were, they were dumping parcels by the side of the road by us. Well I couldn’t carry, well most of us did, took out things like chocolate and tea and coffee and things like that, the rest of it. We offered them to the guards but they wouldn’t, neither would the civilians, I suppose they still might be pounced upon by die-hard SS, SS army, the army SS not the civilian SS. In fact one, one night we were billeted with these SS Waffen, Waffen SS, they, weaponed I mean, armed SS and we did, well always had a low profile but these chaps were very willing to chat to us. They got somehow idea that it wouldn’t be long before we joined forces with them and then finally put the bloody Russians -
CB: Out of Germany.
JL: Where they should be. Well it was, well, actually the second, as I say, if the first leg of the, our all expenses tour of north Germany was bearable, the second was a doddle. It was fine weather. Warm enough to sleep outside, in fact sometimes we walked through orchards white with blossom, not with snow with blossoms and we, there was no attempt to force the pace, but what did happen on the way, we stopped, in all the, four, nearly four years I was a prisoner of war I never suffered not even verbal abuse, let alone physical, never, but this particular, we did have a bit of trouble there, it was more directed at personal about us, in general. In fact the civilian population we got, they tried to you know, reach our ranks, the Germans just turned bayonet and rifle, pointed and don’t you dare come any closer. Well we moved on and then we thought we heard an explosion and we saw smoke arising from this. We thought it was the town that had been attacked, and we, you know as they say well it couldn’t have happened to nicer people. I’m afraid it wasn’t that, it was our column [emphasis] that had been attacked! By a, I think it was a Canadian Squadron Leader flying a Typhoon. He, he must have been blind, because this, it couldn’t possibly been a, it wasn’t a, looked like a German unit of any description but anyway I’m afraid he did and there were quite a few people killed on there. And that to my mind I think was the only, some, I’ve read in terms of hundreds something, hundreds killed on this so called long march, it’s just not true. The only other fatal casualty was a chap named Large I think it was, he had a ruptured appendix but there’s no reason to say he wouldn’t have had it anyway, it wasn’t caused by the conditions and that was that. We reached, we reached the place called Stade, was the southern side of the Elbe, and oh one thing I did see while we were at Marlag and Milag Nord, I saw a V2 fired, not many people have seen that. There was a bit of a rising ground and I happened to be on it and then suddenly I saw this, this thing, this great rocket, with this great burst of flame as it rised slowly and slowly and slowly, and it appeared, of course that was as much an optical illusion, it held itself out and it turned to get its bearing and by that time it couldn’t reach Britain, so probably the target was Antwerp, but that’s I saw a V2 fired and not many people have seen that. Anyway, we got to this Stade place and the Elbe ferry if you please, was still not operating normally, it was, and there was a, there was a boot repairer there, some people’s boots needed a bit of attention, mine were all right, but anyway he did what he could. We crossed the Elbe and we arrived at a place called, oh, just outside Hamburg. You come up a cobbled street, which we had, quite steep and we were then met by what, I, was the most horrible thing I’ve ever come across, a migration of slugs! Can you believe this, they were marching up on a broad front. There was absolutely no way of avoiding them. Blankenese, was the name of this little town, that’s the name of it: Blankenese. We tried to pick our way, very, very carefully and thank god I managed to keep on my feet, otherwise if I’d fallen can you imagine the state I’d been in. Well from then on it was, it was easy going and as I say, we got to this, this open, this tobacco man’s, well he was, farm and from then on it was the journey home. But I’ll never forget, oddly enough we saw a reverse, I mean a thing so beautiful. I’d never seen it before. It was a, I didn’t tell you, hadn’t told you that in September of 1942, I and a number of others were for some reason which the Germans had and they didn’t bother to give us the details, we were transferred to a place called Offlag 21B. Now Offlag meant it was an officer’s camp, that’s all. 21B. And we stayed there through a rather dreary time, the winter, until we moved in April, but I came back and I didn’t go in to the north compound I went back to the east compound for some reason or other. Why I don’t know, and actually I didn’t move into the north compound where the tunnel was being dug until September of 1943. How are we doing?
CB: You’re doing well. One final question. What happened to the guards after you’d walked all this way? Did they just surrender or did they leg it or what did they do?
JL: Oh yes. Well they were only part of this. They’d realised, they heard they were all German forces had surrendered and they were only too pleased, they just neatly piled their arms and that was that. They knew all right. And they went off to go, to be taken in what we called the cages to a British prisoner of war camp. Some of them actually, when I lived in Salcombe in South Devon many years later, there was a chap there used to run a driving tuition, he’d been one of these there and he’d stayed in England.
CB: Funny.
JL: So he didn’t have too bad a time.
CB: Well Jack Lyon, thank you for a very interesting conversation.
JL: My pleasure.
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
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Interview with Jack Kenneth Lyon
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-02
Rights
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ALyonJK180202
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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02:03:03 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Jack Lyon was a navigator/ bomb aimer and a prisoner of war for almost four years. Born in 1918, he was employed with the London Gas Company as a bookkeeper until August 1939 when he transferred to Shell. At the outbreak of the war, Shell closed their London office and Jack enlisted in the RAF on the 5th September. He was attracted to the extra privileges that aircrew received. Initial training commenced in late 1939 and elementary flying training in June 1940. Being unsuccessful with pilot training, Jack completed navigator training at RAF Prestwick, followed by armament training at RAF Manby, and operational training at RAF Kinloss. On completion of training, Jack was awarded his commission and posted to RAF Linton-on-Ouse. Being the only commissioned member of the crew, Jack found the opportunities to socialise restricted. Having only completed a few operations, Jack and his crew had to abandon their stricken aircraft. Separated from his crew, Jack was arrested by a German soldier cycling past who, faced with a long walk, decided the easiest way was for Jack to ride on the crossbar. Stopping at the first house they came to, the soldier arranged for Jack’s wounds to be attended to, and he was given tea and cake. Initially billeted in Stalag Luft 1, before being transferred to Stalag Luft 3 in April 1942, where he remained until early 1945. Douglas Bader was also billeted there, and Jack witnessed the famous incident when Bader inspected the German guards before being transferred. Early in 1945 with the advancing Russian army getting near, Jack participated in what became known as “The Long March”. Following the German surrender, Jack returned home, and following demob, returned to continue his career with Shell.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Poland--Żagań
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-05-01
1941-06-21
1941-06-03
1942-09
1943
1945-05-01
1945-05-09
aircrew
bomb aimer
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Kinloss
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Manby
RAF Prestwick
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1015/11304/PLeedhamHJL1801.2.jpg
fdabc281256a5511e83607203749a467
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1015/11304/ALeedhamHJL181212.1.mp3
eca92a44a63ba05981df7098454718ac
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
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Leedham, Bob
Herbert John Lewis Leedham
H J L Leedham
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Bob Leedham (b. 1922, 1183577, 160986 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 90 and 57 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-12-12
Rights
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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
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Leedham, HJL
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview between International Bomber Command Centre volunteer Harry Bartlett with Mr Herbert, Bob, Leedham, who lives at Ashbourne in Warwickshire. He joined the RAF in 1940, but we’ll no doubt will come to that shortly. Bob, if I can just ask you what were you doing on, in the few years before the war?
BL: My family, my father was a skilled carpenter, but on my mother’s side, she had three brothers all of which were very keen engineers and one of which was exceptionally keen and he worked for a local motor company and he was involved in motor bike racing at Donnington, mainly, and it was him that inspired me with a heavy engineering interest, and consequently when I left school, I was educated in Burton on Trent, the dear old brewing place, I finished up there, I was, won a scholarship to be educated at the main system, which was the central system and the grammar school and so on in Burton and I survived that. And on leaving I decided my real choice was to follow my uncles as it were, into the motor trade, which I did. And I was trained fairly quickly as an apprentice in the motor trade and of course when the war started most of them were already on the reserve and they were the first people to be called up. So myself and a couple of my colleagues of my age, and at that time we are talking about an age of seventeen, sixteen to seventeen, I had already passed my driving test and was driving of course and we were left to run the very large garage very quickly after all the others had been called up, and so it was hands on experience with a vengeance. We were left to run the garage and carry on operations and consequently even a relatively short time I had a good engineering background. However, when I got to seventeen and a half, all my mates that I knew and went to school with and so on had all got into the air force, they’d volunteered in some way or other. In fact some of them were actually called up and I knew that sooner or later I would be called up as soon as I got to the age of I think it was eighteen or nineteen and the chances were that I would maybe put in to the Army. Well I had no interest whatsoever of going into the Army. My first choice was always the air force. Unknown to my parents, at seventeen and a half, I went over to the Assembly Rooms in Derby to the recruiting centre and signed up to join, but I had to give my age as eighteen. They probably accepted this with tongue in cheek knowing that I’d lied a little bit about my age. However, I was accepted and instructed to come for a medical a couple of days later. Very amusing and perhaps interesting thing was, that bearing in mind I had been brought up in a relatively conservative sort of area in Burton on Trent as opposed to big cities and so on, so we were living in a relatively closed environment, despite the fact we were all qualified, and highly qualified tradesmen then. So I went over to have the medical. There was about twenty of us lined up. The doctor came in, he says, ‘right, take your shirts off boys, I’m going to check your hearts.’ So he went along, checking everyone, all the way along, and when he got to the end he says, ‘Right, put your shirts on boys,’ then waited a few minutes, said, ‘drop your trousers then.’ I thought ‘drop my trousers!’, bloody hell! I’d never been exposed to anyone in my life before, you know! And I feel that at that moment I changed from being a boy to a man. That’s the way I felt about it, I couldn’t believe, having to drop my trousers and expose myself even to a doctor. That was the sort of background we were brought up in of course, in those days. It’s totally different now of course. So really from then on the next few days I was down at Cardington for the, attestation and so forth and then I was allocated for training. So initially because of my engineering background the RAF at that time were quite short of experienced engineering people, and they’d set up training units and so on but, they were very good from a theory point of view but nothing in the way of hands on. So I was immediately shuffled into training as a fitter 2E. But I wasn’t happy that, I wanted to fly. So it didn’t last long, and I managed to wiggle my way in to ITW at Blackpool, and found myself on a pilot’s course.
HB: ITW?
BL: ITW: Initial Training Wing.
HB: Right.
BL: Which was at Blackpool in those days and that’s where they carried out the tests as to whether you were suitable to fly in an aircrew capacity. So I was accepted to fly an aircrew capacity to be decided specifically by the selection board’s requirements. And the next thing was, at that time the pilot training was being geared up dramatically. The original pilots in the air force at the start of the war and going right up to probably about the end of 1941, were pre-war pilots, mostly people who’d come from quite wealthy backgrounds who could afford to train them as pilots and by the end of 1941, these were the people that the air force had to rely on in the early days. When I look back historically on some of the situations, bombing raids and that sort of thing using obsolete aircraft like Lysanders and stuff like that, it was dreadful really and by the end of ’41 most of these boys had disappeared: they’d either been shot down, been killed, they crashed or were POWs. Result was that there was a colossal demand for fully trained new aircrew. This was done from a pilot’s point of view in Canada, or America, or Southern Rhodesia as it was then, which is now Zimbabwe, of course. Those were the three, main three areas where the pilots would train from about 1941 onwards. And they set up very, very good systems. But there was a difference between Rhodesia trained and particularly American trained. The American instructors were extremely, quite different to us: they were very hard, very dedicated and they set up a system for training pilots, that if you didn’t go solo in twelve hours, you were thrown off the course. You were downgraded to either a navigator or a bomb aimer or anyone else that had any sort of background which would be useful to the air force, in my case an engineering background. And when you consider, you know, people, ex bank managers if you like, and people from a whole variety of trades in civilian life, there they were, shipped over to America to train as pilots and expected to go solo in twelve hours. Just dreadful really. However, that was the way the system worked. It wasn’t quite so severe in Canada, but nevertheless it was similar to the American system but the ones trained in Southern Rhodesia of course, it was very much more realistic, and they didn’t stick to any specific hours to go solo and things like that you see. So the result was when finely trained aircrew of any category then came back to the UK, the usual routine was Initial Training Wing and then on to type training unit and so on and find a way into things like Wellingtons and Hampdens and Lemingtons, er Wellingtons and things like that.
HB: Can I just take you back a little bit Bob? [Cough] excuse me. When you joined up, you started your initial training as a fitter.
BL: Yup.
HB: But you then went for aircrew training.
BL: Yes.
HB: Did you go to train as a flight engineer, or did you go to train as a pilot?
BL: No, I went to train as a pilot initially.
HB: Right. And where did, which you, where did you actually go train as a pilot?
BL: I went to 32 SFTS in Carbery Manitoba, Canada.
HB: Canada, right.
BL: But I didn’t make the twelve hours solo so I was downgraded, the same as three quarters of them. There were very few, at that time anyway, who were competent enough after twelve hours to go solo. So it was a very hard path really. I came back to the UK, together with many others, who’d been diverted then in to training as a navigator or a bomb aimer or a gunner – I’d forgotten that one – and, but in my particular case the fact that I had the engineering background, which they wanted, they downgraded me to co-pilot and flight engineer. So predominantly I was trained as a full flight engineer, despite the fact I was accepted that on aircraft for instance like the Stirling I had to act as co-pilot as well. So I had to take link training and all that. I was never allowed to take off and land, but I was there to relieve the main pilot and to act as co-pilot duties. And that applied pretty well throughout: Stirlings, Lancasters, Halifaxes and so on. So we were always virtually the number two so far as the mechanical operation of the aircraft was concerned. As opposed to the gunners who had their job to do, bomb aimer had his job to do and the navigator. A number of the early bomb aimers of course were also trained as type of navigators but very few of them flew as navigators, they flew mainly as usually as bomb aimer come front gunner. There was always a front turret, gun turret on the Lancs and the Stirlings and Halifaxes, so the bomb aimers were expected to man the front turret and also act as the bomb aimer so far as the targets were concerned. And the navigators of course, they did the actual navigation guidance to the pilots.
HB: So you came back to England and you went to do your flight engineer training for aircrew.
BL: Yes. At St. Athan.
HB: At, St Athan, right. So at the end of that training, where did you sort of stand in the scheme of things?
BL: I was at training, already I’d had my link training as a co-pilot as well, before I went to St Athan, when I left St Athan, fully qualified, the next thing then was to join a crew on either Lancs, Stirlings or Halifaxes. In fact in my particular case I was posted to Stradishall which was a main training base for Stirlings and then the crew of seven were created. There was nothing directed, they put us all in hangar and between ourselves we had to get to know each other and put ourselves together as a seven man crew, which is how it happened. Once that’s established as a crew then your flight training started, which we did at Stradishall of course, on the Stirlings in our particular case.
HB: Where did your, is it all in this hangar, did somebody come to you or did you think oh I like the look of him, I’ll go with him? Or? How did it work? What were the mechanics of it?
BL: It’s a variety really. Our captain, our skipper, was an ex Birmingham policeman and personally, personality was absolutely first class, but he was a strict disciplinarian being ex-police, of course, and so he was highly respected despite the fact he was definitely one of us, but very highly respected. And we got to know him, chatting away and he said well, he says ‘I’ve just come from OTU from Wellingtons,’ he says, ‘I’ve got a navigator and I probably have a bomb aimer.’ He says, ‘I’m looking for a couple of gunners and a flight engineer co-pilot to get the seven man crew together,’ and so from then on it was a question of who you knew and whether you thought they were capable, and see whether they were already in a crew or not that was how we all created seven together. It was done quite amicably, in various reasons, various forms, whether you knew each other or you say well I know old so-and-so, he’s a bloody good navigator, try and get him on our crew, you know, and that sort of thing. So we finished up as a very tight crew and it so happened, subsequently, that when we were doing our ops on the squadron, the camaraderie within the seven man crew was very tight indeed. The result was we found that we had seven first class crew members. Everyone worked together, helped each other and that was the way it went on the Stirlings. Unfortunately the Stirlings of course had a very bad reputation subsequently. The reason for this was because in its early days, [cough] it was built pre-war of course, a long way pre-war, and was a very good four engined heavy bomber when it was produced, extremely good, but unfortunately it came under the influence of the political decisions, the politicians came along and said that aircraft’s got a wingspan of a hundred and sixteen feet! We won’t get it in to the hangars at Cardington, they’re only a hundred feet, you’ll have to take sixteen feet off the wings. So, reluctantly, they put pressure on the manufacturers and the Stirling was modified to have sixteen feet, either, eight feet either side taken off the wings. Not only that by doing that they had to alter the structure quite considerably and raise the undercarriage very high in order to cope with this. Disaster so far as performance’s concerned, the result was the Stirling was always very, very much – what shall I say - the underdog as far as the heavy bombers were concerned. Result was the highest we could ever get to bomb was about twelve thousand feet. The Lancs and the Halifaxes were up above at twenty two thousand and frequently if your time was slightly out we were bombed by their bombs from above us. Frequently happened, there was a lot of aircraft were lost that way. Just one of those things. So really, although at that stage, when you think that the Lanc didn’t come in to service till towards the end of ’42, so in the early days the Stirling was the only heavy bomber and he was restricted in its performance by this political intervention and consequently it had a reputation of being something of a, I won’t use, I want to use the words death traps, but Bomber Harris had his own ideas on this and he was fully aware of it. In fact as ‘43 went on we were doing the Ruhr bombing and then of course Hamburg and then the start of the Berlin offensive which was in the autumn of ’43, and at that stage our losses were running on average seven, eight percent, we had one occasion when our losses were seventeen [emphasis] percent. And it got to the stage where Bomber Harris, he couldn’t stand it any longer, he was at war with a lot of the politicians himself of course by his insistence that Germany had to be bombed in order to minimise their war effort, and consequently it’s on record in one of, I think it was Max Hastings’ book Bomber Command I think he mentioned it in there, the extract of a meeting that Harris had with Churchill in round about October, I think, or maybe November ’43, and he was thumping the table and he said to Churchill, he says, ‘if I send my boys out [thumping] to get lost any longer in these bloody death trips, death traps called Stirlings they’ll call me a murderer.’ He says, ‘what I want is Lancasters, Lancasters and more Lancasters.’ there was a hell of a row went on and Churchill didn’t say a word. But finally he leaned across and said you’ll have your Lancasters. And it was then that the production on Lancasters was even, set up considerably higher than what it was already.
H: So when [cough] -
BL: So really, just interrupting,
HB: No, no.
BL: so going back from our training at Stradishall as a crew were posted to 90 Squadron to a little place called Ridgewell which was in Cambridgeshire, and not terribly well known and we were the first people in. A couple of farms that had been demolished and replaced with an impromptu quickly built runway. There was no, shall we say buildings, which were you might say were suitable for an operational squadron. There was mud everywhere, conditions were foul. They put a series of nissen huts up for us to live in and also for headquarters and the conditions there were not terribly good at all. However, there we were in the spring of ’41, er ’43, expected to use that as a base to operate, operationally against the various targets which were set out. We were at Ridgewell I think for no longer than about three months, four months, something like that and we moved then to a place called, it was West Wickham when we moved there but it was renamed Wratting Common, and consequently conditions there were far better. Again, it wasn’t a wartime, it wasn’t a peacetime airfield, but it was a good airfield and conditions there were far better airfield than Ridgewell. I don’t quite know what happened to Ridgewell in the end, whether it survived or not. I shouldn’t think it did: it was foul. But nevertheless we went to Wratting Common and we continued to fly our ops from Wratting Common on 90 Squadron, until, as I say, the autumn when the squadron was destined to change from Stirlings into Lancs and consequently they were moved to just outside Mildenhall at Tuddenham.
HB: How many ops did you actually fly in Stirlings for your tour?
BL: On Stirlings alone I think we did about twenty one I think it was, on the Stirlings, before we went on Lancs. As I say during that particular time conditions using the Stirling were very difficult, to make an understatement. Our losses were constant and it was amazing really, I mean for instance there was a Canadian pilot called Geordie Young. He was the senior pilot on the squadron, he’d got a lot of experience, and they went off on their last trip, their thirtieth trip, and they got blown up over Dusseldorf on their very last trip and that was, had a very, what shall I say effect on morale on the squadron, because they were regarded you know, the top boys on the squadron. One of the problems, in those days throughout Bomber Command, not just 3 Group which was a Stirling Group, but all the other groups as well, is that when Don Bennett set up the 8 Group, Pathfinder Group, he got old Hamish Mahaddie who he took on as his recruitment boss to collect all the very best crews off the different squadrons he could get hold of, to go into Pathfinders, and of course there was a colossal amount of opposition to this from all the squadrons. No squadron commander wants to lose their best crews, and consequently there was a war going on particularly on 5 Group, with Cochrane was the AOC on 5 Group in those days, based at Swinderby and he was very, very strongly opposed to it. There was open warfare going on the whole time, and despite the fact that 5 Group at that time of course, was the elite group which contained all the 617 boys and various other specialist crews for specialist bombing trips and he obviously didn’t want to lose any of those. And consequently he managed to get some political background particularly from Arthur Harris two of the Pathfinder squadrons in 8 Group would be transferred back to 5 Group. So he eventually had his own Pathfinder boys. Of course then when Gibson set up 617, that was also again from selecting top quality experienced crews. In the early days that was, but before the Dambuster raid, but not so much later on when they were really struggling to get replacement crews from the various crews they’d lost. So really Bomber Harris, Arthur Harris, he was very much supporting the 5 Group people, it was his elite group in Bomber Command and he always gave it sort of first preference on everything. There’s one, a very amusing aspect came at a conference they were having at Swinderby when at the time Princess Margaret was having this affair with Fighter Command Townsend and there was all speculation in the press about whether she’d marry him or whether she’d marry somebody else, and so on, and at this particular meeting, this conference of crews at Swinderby, it was a bit of a hilarious topic and someone was saying, ‘well it’s unknown who she’s going to marry, but it won’t have any effect on us here in 5 Group.’ And somebody stood up and said, ‘well there’s one thing for certain, whoever she marries, it’s bound to be somebody from 5 Group!’ [Laughter]
HB: Yeah. Can I just take you back a little bit Bob.
BL: Yes of course.
HB: I just noticed in some of your notes, I know this is jumping right back, it says you [cough] were posted to Coastal Command, 86 Squadron and flew on Sunderlands.
BL: Yes. That was when I was on 86. We were, we did a detachment down to Gosport actually.
HB: Oh right.
BL: And then to St, St Athan, when the two battleships Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst were at Brest and they were trying to get up the channel to get away and consequently we went down there with 86 Squadron to carry out operations against the two battleships. But for some reason or other, some of the squadron was detached to, in Coastal Command, to a flying boat squadron, which was 10 Squadron based at Mountbatten, at Plymouth. I don’t quite know why this happened, it was only a very short time, but I was one of the people that went on the flying boats for about three months.
HB: So you were there as a co-pilot engineer?
BL: Yes, on the flying boats. And again, bearing in mind our engineering background was what they wanted more than anything because we had to get involved with the maintenance schedules and so on as well. So I only had three months, I didn’t like it at all. Flying boats was not for me, and that was the main reason I thought that there must be a better way that I enjoy so I volunteered while I was there for Bomber Command. That’s where I started into Bomber Command
HB: Right. It’s all right, I was just trying to get the sequence of events into some sort of order.
BL: That was really how the sequence went through. Of course in Bomber Command, very lucky with our crew to survive a tour on 90 Squadron.
HB: What were the operations, you know, you’re flying operations into the Ruhr in the Stirling, and you’ve very clearly explained the shortcomings of the Stirling. What was it, you know, what was, what were your experiences of those, those individual sort of operations?
BL: Well it varied actually. But the Ruhr targets at that time I can remember them vividly. Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Krefeldt, Essen. And Essen was the one everyone hated [emphasis] because at that time that was the home of Daimler Benz, Krups and all the munitions factories, and they had a ring right the way round Essen, three thousand anti aircraft guns and radar controlled searchlights and when you’re flying towards Essen and you looked ahead, you think, ‘Christ you’ve got to get through that to get to the target point,’ and usually at briefing when the curtain was finally pulled back - we were never told what the target was until the very last minute of course - and when the target was pulled back you see Essen area, ‘oh Christ, not Essen,’ you know. However, going from what I say, first five trips Essen, then we went on to Gelsenkirchen, Wuperthal, Mulein, Bochum, Cologne, Munchen Gladbach. Now in my history of 90 Squadron book, there’s various aspects of the work that we did, and there’s a typical battle order printed there as an example. And that was August the 26th I think it was, on Munchen Gladbach and we were on the battle order for that particular night. I think the squadron was putting up something like thirty two aircraft or something that night. There was eight hundred and fifty on the, the full main force. And at that time the procedure on ops on the squadrons was that you didn’t do, as a pilot or co-pilot or anything like that, you didn’t go out with your own crew until you’d done a familiar flight with an experienced crew as a supernumerary and it just so happens that on that battle order I had one under supervision and there was one other crew with another one under supervision. It was on the 31st of August ’43. And these two chaps, I had one of them under supervision, and another crew had the second one. Out of curiosity, in the back of the book there’s seven pages of casualties on the squadron, and when I looked for the names down, both these boys’ names were down on the casualties, one, bear in mind, was on the 22nd of September bear in mind that was just 22nd, twenty two days after we had taken them on the supervision. One of them went on the 22nd, the next night the second went on the 23rd. So they only survived twenty three days on the squadron. And that was typical, absolutely typical. We used to live in a long nissen hut, seven beds each side, two crews in there. Three times we had a new crew come in, and three times we’d wake up after an op the night before, about midday, be woken up by the military police going through the, collecting the bits and pieces, belongings of the other crew who had got the beds on opposite. Three times we had new crews come in and three times we lost them very quickly, in two cases within the first three ops, and consequently we had, as a crew, we had a reputation of being a Jonah crew and nobody would move in with us. [Laughter] But in all seriousness that was the way it happened, you know and we lost some very quickly and didn’t even get to know them. There we were, soldiering on and finally got to the stage as I say, when the Stirlings were taken out of service and deployed on other work, mainly glider towing and things like that. Then the Lancs took over as the Lancaster production of course, got higher and higher.
HB: What do you put down to, I don’t want to use the word success, your ability to have got through those twenty something operations?
BL: A lot of people would say you must have been one of the lucky ones. Yes, to a point. But we had a very good crew; highly [emphasis] dedicated crew to the individual job they had to do and it was, there were various aspects of the operation that needed high concentration and dedication to execute that. I mean our rear gunner, Eddie, he’s still alive now in New Zealand, and he had eyes like a bloody hawk; he could spot these fighters coming in and he would control the operation immediately if he saw a fighter, to the pilot at the front, saying, ‘corkscrew, corkscrew,’ and instead of flying at straight and level from a to b to a target on our particular crew, we would fly perhaps just for a minute or so, then start weaving like that, so that there was no chance of the fighters beaming on to us in, as if we’d been flying straight and level they had a much easier job of coming in to us, and under from mid or something like that, shoot us down. But by weaving like that, was one of the things which we did continually, it was uncomfortable but it was very safe. But apart from the anti aircraft of course, it certainly kept the fighters at bay from us and I mean I think three times we were attacked by fighters and three times we got away from them. Largely due to Eddie in the rear turret. Who shot one of them down actually.
HB: Did he?
BL: Yup, He opened up, he waited till he got it in his sights, and let fly and it blew up in front of him, or behind him should I say. So really that aspect of it is the thoroughness of the type of flying and the operation which was necessary, but on the other hand of course, where anti aircraft was concerned it’s a different story. We, in the Stirling we were in the middle of it, weaving through it and if you had a direct hit or a hit which say damaged the aircraft severely you could say right you were just bloody unlucky like Geordie Young on his thirtieth trip, and that sort of thing, so. The worst night of for Bomber Command for all losses was the Nuremburg flight, you may or may not have heard of this, but it was on the Nuremburg trip when the met people made a complete balls of the forecast. They were forecasting plenty of cloud so that you could fly comfortably in and out of cloud and the fighters couldn’t detect you quite so easily. But on this occasion the weather didn’t turn out as they predicted and consequently it was a full moon clear, crystal clear night and the result was that the main force – there was eight hundred and fifty aircraft on that particular target. This was in the autumn of ’44, I think it was, and that particular night we lost ninety four aircraft on that night, and when you think there were seven men in each aircraft. Work that one out. That was the worst night ever [emphasis] for Bomber Command.
HB: And your crew were on that.
BL: No. We weren’t on that.
HB: You weren’t on that one.
BL: It just so happened that we were on leave at the time so we weren’t on it. But that was, that’s the hard statistics of it.
HB: Because I was interested in the, in the thing you were saying about the Lancasters and the Halifaxes going at twenty two and you know, the Wellingtons, obviously the Wellingtons were at eighteen thousand and the poor old Stirling’s down at twelve.
BL: Yeah.
HB: I mean that must have, that must have influenced your pilot and your crew at that point, when you were on, when you were on the bigger raids.
BL: Well, yes, to a point, but you had to admit it was one of those things. I don’t think, it was only when we got to grips with the Stirling and training and so on and realised what effect the modifications had had on the performance of the aircraft. It was not easy to get off the ground with a full load on. For one thing the inertia of the engines meant that it was, always had this sort of pull to starboard, to the right, which you had to maintain correction on, and not only that but the fact that the undercarriage had been raised quite considerably, very high up. There’s a picture here will show: that was our aircraft and the one that saw us all the way through our tour, and it was so high up it that when this sort of inertia from the engines, it was very difficult to keep it straight down the runway. In fact there was numerous occasions when the aircraft just couldn’t control it with a full bomb load on and it crashed or something and numerous messy situations like that developed. But this is why as I say, I meant occasionally that when I went from Stirlings up into 5 Group, I was posted up to the elite group. How that happened was, that at that time the Lancs were coming on stream and 5 Group at Swinderby was the training base for the Lancs, but again they needed them on the squadron so rapidly that they were pushing the crews through probably too fast, not quite enough training. And the result was that a lot of the crews had been trained on the twin engined Wellingtons and stuff like that, which didn’t give them any [emphasis] experience on four engined stuff. So in the, when we finished a tour on Stirlings, it was decided then by the powers that be as it were – Harris and co – they’d put a few Stirlings up to be based at Swinderby to get, be engaged on the Lancaster training programme so that we could give them experience on another four engine aircraft which was more difficult to handle than what a Lancaster was, and consequently I was one of the eight crews that were, instructors that went up there and that’s how I got in to 5 Group, posted up there on the Stirlings. And I always remember when we got up there about 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening. So we parked the aircraft went over to the officers mess, went in the bar straight away for a drink of course, and we were standing there and there was another group of the instructors and so on and amongst them was Dave Shannon and Mickey Martin – ex 617 – and quite a number of others who’d survived and they were curious as to who we were. And finally old Dave Shannon, who was a big Australian as you probably know from 617, came across and said, ‘who are you blokes then and what are you doing here?’ ‘Oh we’ve brought some Stirlings up to give you some help in the training programmes here.’ ‘Stirlings!’ he says,’ bloody hell!’ He said, ‘have you done a tour on Stirlings?’ I said, ‘yes’. He rubbed his hand over here, says, ‘Well where are your VCs then boys?’ [Laughter] And that was their attitude towards us.
HB: Yes. That tells the tale.
BL: But there again, life’s about winners and losers isn’t it, you know. And what we had we had went out to do the best you can, and as I say, it’s sad really that our losses were consistently high.
HB: So when you’d done, you did, you know, when was you last operation that you did with the Stirling? Can you remember?
L: It was on, I think it was either Hannover or Stuttgart, it was not the Ruhr, north of the Ruhr, but that was my, our last op. We did two Berlins on the Stirling, surprisingly, and relatively quiet trips too, long trips but relatively quiet, for us anyway.
HB: What was your feeling on, you know, you’re going to do your thirtieth or your last tour on the Stirling? What was going through your mind then?
BL: I don’t really think there was any feeling about it. I mean on our crew there wasn’t any suggestion of any feeling of stress or concern or the fact that you might be, the crew expression was – you might get the chop. No, we were a very good competent crew. We operated very correctly and safely as far as we could and I think that had a, that was the predominant factor in the crew. I mean a lot of people today often say to me well what about all the stress and everything? I said well the simple answer was we couldn’t even spell the word. You know, I mean the stress wasn’t there, it was concern. Admittedly we had one occasion when our mid upper gunner, Mick, suddenly went down with something, tonsilitis or something and he couldn’t, he had to go sick and consequently they stopped him flying that night and we were doing an op that night, on, I’ve forgotten where it was now, somewhere in the Ruhr, so we had to have a mid upper gunner, spare mid upper gunner who apparently for some reason or other he’d lost the rest of his crew, he’d done no ops at all, but he was spare, so they said oh you’re joining Cawley’s crew tonight because the gunner’s gone sick so he came to us and was a dreadful situation. He was absolutely petrified of the thought of going on ops, and halfway towards, over the Dutch coast on the way to the target, he suddenly started firing off indiscriminately at what he thought were fighters but they were clouds. And of course it immediately was bloody dangerous because if fighters around they see tracer bullets going out they home in on us. And Charlie was absolutely crackers, he went mad. What the hell’s going on? Go back and have a look!’ And this bloke was sitting in his turret there, absolutely terrified and it happened again, at a very dangerous point, he suddenly started firing off. Anyway when we, we survived the op, we got back and we landed, the crew bus was there to take us back to the base for intelligence and debriefing and he never said a word, wouldn’t speak, he wouldn’t get on the bus, he walked back and of course when he was interviewed by the Station Commander he said, ‘what’s the problem?’ The medical people there saw the condition of him and the RAF had a very cruel aspect of dealing with situations like that. They immediately used to braid you, used to name you as Lack of Moral Fibre which was dreadful really. You were immediately stripped of your rank back to basic and sent off to a unit which was down at Brighton to deal with these people who were so called Lack of Moral Fibre and that went on your records throughout your, a very cruel way of looking at it really. But that happened to us on this particular flight and as I say amazing really, the bloke was just absolutely petrified. Couldn’t face up to what he was asked to do, despite the fact he’d gone through training and managed to survive to train to become a qualified gunner, but there we are. Just one of those things.
HB: What did you do when you got back from your last op?
BL: [Laughter] Well I normally drink a gin and tonic but I think I had something a bit stronger than that that night! No. we had a, all went down to the pub locally and had a nice evening and then we knew the next day we’d be posted out, we’d all be posted to different directions and it was a question then where everybody went. It just so happened that in my particular case I was posted, for a very short time, to a place called Wilfort Sludge which is on the A1, but from there of course this deal came up to send some Stirlings up to 5 Group, so I was then posted out of 3 Group into 5 Group. And previous to that I’d, before I finished my tour I’d been recommended for a commission so my commission had come through so I was, and that came through six months late, so I went straight in as a commissioned Flying Officer then and went to Swinderby then as an instructor and it was, the rest of the crew: Johnnie went up to, he was the captain, he went up to near High Ercall, which is up near, in Shropshire somewhere, near Whitchurch to start training Stirling crews up there to tow gliders in anticipation, of course, of the Arnhem offensives and so on, so he went up there on towing gliders. The two rear gunner, the two gears, er gunners, the mid upper gunner and the rear gunner, they were posted to somewhere on special duties. Where they thought they were going on rest they suddenly found they were on ops again, on the special duties, doing, dropping these Resistance guys in France and so on. Harry our wireless operator, the navigator by the way, suddenly when I went to Swinderby I found he was already there and I was sharing a room with him in the mess for a while. Unfortunately, he’s the son of a clergyman in Cornwall, highly religious, he used to spend all his time playing the organ in the local church where we were down the pub having a drink, but he had a heart attack right at the end of the war and died straight away. The bomb aimer, little Barry, little short bloke, he went on rest for a short time and then decided he’d go on a second tour, But got shot down on the third trip of his second tour, but he was lucky. He managed to bale out and he was a prisoner of war for about the last six months. But Harry, our wireless op, his previous job in life he was, worked in the Metropolitan Police, on the vice squad and he was absolutely obsessed on flying against the Germans on Bomber Command, absolutely [emphasis] obsessed. His one aim in life was successful bombing Germany and when we were tour expired and they say, sent out as instructors or rested and so on, and what they called screened as they said, screened from operations. He refused point blank he says, ‘No, I’m not going,’ he said, ‘I’m going to carry on.’ There’s a little bit of discussion with the commanding officer about it and the adjutant and so on, but anyway he got his way was posted on to a Special Duties squadron somewhere, and he carried on flying. He did seventy four ops in the end. And in the end he got shot down over Denmark I think, on one these special, highly secret operations on his seventy fourth. If you go back to Lincoln his name is on the, one of the what do they call it, the metal -
HB: The walls.
BL: The walls.
HB: wall 118.
BL: That’s what happened to all of us in the end. And as I say, the two gunners they survived, despite the fact they were amazed to find themselves on this resistance dropping and that sort of thing. So that was where we all finished up.
HB: So you ended up at Swinderby as the instructor on, you know, giving people experience on four engines.
BL: Yes. So, when I went to Swinderby I was instructing on Stirlings and Lancasters at the same time.
HB: Right. So how did you, how would you relate to the engineering side of the ground crew?
BL: Well, very closely indeed, in fact the whole crew did. I mean our ground crew was our survival in many respects and we respected them, we had a very good ground crew. They kept our aircraft serviceable against unprecedented odds at times. I mean there’s numerous occasions we’d come back with shrapnel holes down the fuselage and that sort of thing, and there was one occasion when there was, we had a near hit, this was Dusseldorf again funny enough, the intelligence people used to say well when the anti aircraft batteries are shooting at you, if you can’t hear on, if you can’t hear any noise you know you’re safe, but if you hear a bang you’ll know it’s very close. We heard this bloody great bang over Dusseldorf and that was very close and it finished up with Norm Minchin, the mid upper turret, with the perspex turret round his head, a piece of shrapnel came up and cut right through the back of the perspex and cut the back of his turret off, and he didn’t know it! Without touching him at all! It just cut through this Perspex and the back, and after we had left the target we were flying back home and he came on the intercom and said, ‘Christ it’s bloody cold up here, have you got some heating on?’ Didn’t even know it had happened! Of course when we got back to base not only that but there was a hole in the side of the aircraft you could damn near crawl through. So the maintenance people had a pretty big job, you know, to patch up all the holes on it. And that sort of thing, but the, yeah, the ground crew were very much part of the team, very important and we had a very good ground crew, very good.
HB: And when you got to Swinderby, you would, you would continue that relationship as you do in the training of the crews.
BL: Well not with the ground crew, not at Swinderby.
HB: Right.
BL: No, I mean we were, at Swinderby all we were concerned with was training the new crews coming through, and the ground crew was general ground crew, not to with, nothing to do with individual aircraft whereas on the squadron each aircraft had its own maintenance crew and its own flight crew and that was our particular aircraft which took us all the way through.
HB: Ah right, yeah.
BL: That finished up by the way, when we handed that over to another crew, actually I read historically in one of the books somewhere it was listed, I forget where the, I think it was the Bomber Command Diaries, every aircraft that was lost they gave indications where they were lost and where they were found and so on and our particular aircraft, the other crew that had it and it finished up in the Zuider Zee!
HB: Oh right.
BL: It was recovered eventually, by the Dutch people, who were, the Dutch people were doing the archive details and so on and there was actually some photographs of it being pulled out of the sea, they’re printed in the Daily Mail I think it was actually, so I couldn’t believe it when I saw this, when I saw the number on the side BF524, that was its serial number. WPNN and it was just being pulled out the water and you could just see the name, the number BF524 on the side of it. Couldn’t believe it. Recovered it and there’s a bloke, a very elderly gentleman, he’s a semi historian based at Alconbury and he’s very much a Stirling enthusiast and he’s got a workshop there full of all the bits and pieces of crashed Stirlings and so on and he works hand in glove with the, his counterparts in Holland and one of the major museums in Holland loan him parts of aircraft which he’s, he’s rebuilt a complete cockpit of a Stirling.
HB: Has he!
BL: At this. Yes, Andrew found this out and took me over there and we had a morning with him. I was intrigued and he’s got this bloody old shed there, old hangar I think it is, a small hangar, packed with all these bits and pieces of a Stirling and in the middle he’s got a cockpit he’s already built. And when we went over there he was sorting out an undercarriage and he was showing us that the Dutch archive people were loaning him stuff out of their museum which he photographed and copied and so on and sent it back to them. He said he had a very good rapport with them. Very interesting this guy. I can’t remember his name. Andrew knows it, but it was at Alconbury where he is based.
HB: Well I think, what we might do, Bob, is we might just have a break now because I’ve just gone to check the battery and we’ve now been talking for over an hour! So if we have a quick five minute break. I’m going to have to change the batteries anyway. So we’ll just stop the interview for the time being.
BL: Yeah. Okay, fine.
HB: Well we’ve had a comfort break and we’re just going to, we’ve had a battery change. So we’re just going to resume the interview -
BL: Oh these bloody things! I hate these!
HB: Just having a problem with a hearing aid battery at the moment. [Whistling]
BL: That’s better.
HB: So we should be go, on the run now. So we’re all settled now for our second part of our interview.
BL: Yes. What I was going to say was, when we were talking about the losses on the Stirlings, the turning point I think, was when it was decided, when Goebbels was boasting that the German fighters and defences were quite adequate against the RAF Bomber Command, he made statements saying that they’ll never touch Berlin or our second biggest city, Hamburg, they’re quite safe with our defences and so on, they’ll never touch them. And that was the challenge which Bomber Harris took up, and decided in conjunction with the naval people, who were very concerned because all these u-boats and subs were based at Hamburg and they were going out into the Atlantic to pick off the convoys and so on, and naval people said we’ve got to get rid of these u-boat pens at Hamburg. So Bomber Harris decided we’d obliterate Hamburg; it’s in July ’43. And at that time, as I was saying, particularly on the Stirlings, our losses were very high indeed and morale was very low and they introduced for the first time this metal foil thing called window. That was these patches of metal things which we discharged through the flare hatch at the back of the aircraft every twenty seconds I think it was, or every thirty seconds, something like that, and these packs, when they went out into the slipstream, developed into a big screen of metallic which completely killed the German radar defences and those, radar, the German defences were based, anti aircraft, were based on the radar picking up the aircraft or picking up the target with a blue, bright blue light, searchlight and once it picked you up, it then brought all the other normal searchlights into a cone and you were in the middle of it, and once you were coned like that, it was curtains it just picked you off then because they had you, and the whole secret of their success was this radar control and when we used this window for the first time it killed their radar. The result was, the first time it was used on Hamburg, it could have been used very early in 1943 but the politicians and defence people were so concerned they thought that if we use it early the Germans will follow this, copy it, and use it against us. So they were very reluctant, but it was only that when our losses got so high they had to introduce it. And our losses immediately on Hamburg dropped to one percent: fantastic! I we went to Hamburg, we did the four nights out of six: I did all four of ‘em. The fourth one was a disaster in that the first three were completely successful and I can remember it now, looking down, a whole wave of fire throughout, it just wiped this whole place out, just like that. The fourth night we went of course the met people again, they were predicting storms, but nothing like as severe as we found. The result was I think of, the storms were so bad, we were struck by lightning and St Elmo’s fire which is on the windscreen, and goes down the fuselage, all the compasses were knocked out and our radar and Gee box was knocked out. We hadn’t the faintest idea how we were, how to navigate back again and I think out of seven or eight hundred aircraft there’s only about twelve or fourteen actually reached the target. All the others had turned back because of the weather, and we were icing up very heavily and on the Stirlings the oil coolers were slung underneath the engines and you know what happens to diesel vehicles in cold weather, the fuel starts waxing and clogs up the carburettors, and the engines stop and that’s exactly what used to happen to us. These coolers which start icing in the middle, and what we call coring, and you had to keep hot air flow going through them in order to keep them serviceable. We suddenly found that we’d got two engines with, suffering from this icing and then there was chunks of ice coming off the wings, battering against the side of the fuselage like, dreadful we had to abandon short of the coast. We jettisoned our bombs into the sea and the only way we could navigate back to the UK was star navigation, and Cyril, our navigator, he was particularly good, he could take star shots with his, with his, my blinkin’ names, what my memory’s going.
HB: Sextant.
BL: Sextant, yes, with a sextant. And a combination of that and following the stars he managed to get us going back in the direction of the UK. When we finally hit the coast instead of being, coming over the coast over Essex or somewhere, we were in the north of Scotland, over the Hebrides and that’s where we came in and of course we immediately identified where we were and we were able to fly back down to, in fact we made an emergency landing ‘cause we were running a bit short of fuel, at Wattisham, in Suffolk. That was on the fourth trip, but the first three were so highly successful, we absolutely wiped the place out, and as I say the losses dropped right down to one percent because of using this window. The rise in morale then was just fantastic, you know after that. Of course sooner or later the Germans found that they could, they changed their system and they found that they could nullify this window by using different types of radar and so on, so it didn’t last, obviously, but we were able to use it for some months actually, and it was very good. We’re just having a new kitchen put in at the moment.
HB: Ah right. That explains the banging.
BL: And the other thing about the ops on the Stirling, in ’43 when our losses were so high, when you counted the number of ops you’re doing, the way it was calculated by Group headquarters, it was decided that because when they analysed the losses and how it was happening and so on, they came to a system of doing thirty ops in a tour and the total would depend entirely on the type of ops. For instance when 90 Squadron went to Tuddenham on Lancasters in the end of ’44, or half way through ’44, their main job - they did very, very little main force bombing – but ninety percent of the jobs of their work and I’ve got it all listed in my history book of 90 Squadron, was on either, was mainly on resistance work dropping resistance and equipment for low level intervention into Europe, dropping arms and equipment to the French and the Dutch resistance movements and so on, and consequently this was done individual very low level operations and the result was that the ops compared with ’43 were very easy and the losses were very low and consequently because, and the short ops as well, and because of this to count one trip as an op they had to do four trips to count as one on the tour, and consequently this system which was introduced before we finished, was that because of the severity of a lot of our ops on the Ruhr operation were so incredibly high losses and so very difficult that they allocated that some of the ops, because of their severity, would count, you had to do one op was counted as two on your tour, because of the severity of the operation and the high level of losses. So it wasn’t, it didn’t always follow that you did a straight forward thirty trips, you could have done say twenty five trips but they counted as thirty on your log book and the severity of the targets.
HB: Did you ever do mine-laying, gardening?
LB: Mining? Yes. Gardening as they called it. Yeah. We did two actually. One off Le Creusot and one other, I’ve forgotten what it was now. We did, our particular crew we only did two mining operations, those were, they were easy ones too.
HB: Yeah. So. You got to Swinderby. You’re doing the training there. How did you move forward from there? So that would be 1944.
BL: Well it was the end of, Christmas, yes Christmas time ’43 when I went to Swinderby, and most of ’44 and as I said earlier I was a fully qualified instructor on Lancs and Stirlings then and towards the end of ’44, I think it must have been round about September, October, something like that, some of the Lanc squadrons in 5 Group were having very heavy losses and the analysis of those losses, was in many cases put down to the fact that, to inexperience, training not sufficient for them, because they’d been rushed through very quickly because squadrons, with their losses, need quick replacements and so on. The result was that at East Kirkby 57 Squadron and 630 Squadron were both there at East Kirkby, and 57 particularly although they’d been engaged on very difficult targets their losses were astronomically high and a hell of a lot of them put down to pure inexperience. So myself and Dicky, we were both instructors at Swinderby, we were seconded to 57 Squadron for three months to set up a revised training unit there, which we did, to give the training, give the operational crews quite a bit more familiarisation and training and so on to try and cut these, some of these losses down. So I had that period there. And it was whilst I was at 57 and about to go back to Swinderby, ‘cause I was still on the strength at Swinderby despite the fact I’d been loaned to 57 at East Kirkby to do this training programme, 463 Squadron at Waddington, the Aussie squadron, had been suffering a few losses here and there, and the, one of the leaders of the squadron, the co-pilot and flight engineer leader there had been lost, so I was posted to 463 as his replacement and I was lucky to stay there until the end of the war.
HB: So that was back on to operations.
BL: So, yes, so I went back on to ops. Of course when I was at 463, because I was the boss of A flight, I was the leader, I didn’t have a crew, so I could only put myself on to do ops when there was a, somebody had gone sick or something you see, so I did them with any crew, and by extremely strange coincidence, I said to you about Essen earlier, my very first trip on my second tour here was a low level daylight on Essen. [Laugh] I couldn’t believe it! But I’ll tell you what, it was so bloody easy, it was so different to 1943. But, so I stayed there really, and at the end of the war as I said earlier, I went to Skellingthorpe, just outside Lincoln when Tiger Force was set up. I was posted on to Tiger Force.
HB: And Tiger Force was - ?
BL: That was the equivalent to 617 to go to Japan to do the [cough] vital targets into Japan, very similar to what 617 had been doing, because the adjacent to 617 Squadron was 9 Squadron. They were both based then at Woodhall Spa and Wing Commander Cheshire was the, was one of the commanding officers at 617 at that time, amongst others. But so when I went to 463 as I say, I was there till the end of the war then, and doing ops from there, and because I was the leader there the flight engineer leader on 463, I was posted to Skellingthorpe to join Tiger Force and I was promoted then at Tiger Force to be in charge of that particular section to go to Japan and we were half way through their training when the bomb was dropped of course and it all came to a halt then. Consequently I found myself in civil flying.
HB: Yeah. You did tell me before the interview started, you were, you were made an offer by the RAF before you -
BL: Yes, offered a, I was a substantive flight lieutenant then, and for a very short time I was an acting Squadron Leader but only for four weeks! [Laugh] Because it all ended then. But I was offered a extended seven year flying, extended flying committee, er, commission and given the choice. I didn’t know much about, well I didn’t know anything about civil flying. I didn’t even understand what BOAC meant until I got there.
HB: But you were originally offered Transport Command weren’t you.
BL: Yes.
HB: What was your view on that?
BL: But I turned that down. I turned that down flat. But there’s a very, there’s another, a very ironic twist that I’ll tell you about. So immediately because we were then seconded from the air force to BOAC we had to get civilian licences. We had to get civilian licences and then they decided what they were going to train us on, so we had to go through the basic theory and all that sort of stuff to get civilian licences and we were allocated I think it was about either fifty or a hundred block licence numbers in the very early days. Once we’d done type training on, at that time on Avros produced the very first post-war airliner called the Tudor and the first dozen Tudors were just being built and they were destined to go to BOAC to start up to date pressurised passenger aircraft. They were quite nice aircraft actually, very good. So since we’d just, we were the first people to be trained on the Tudors. So we did our training on the Tudors and when they were just about to start to take, BOAC to take delivery of the Tudors, for some reason there was a political change and instead of coming to BOAC, they went to British South [emphasis] American Airways, and at that time was run by the old 8 Group Pathfinder chief, Air Marshal Don Bennett, who was a real press on type. [Cough] Highly successful with Pathfinders of course and he was the boss at British South American. They’d previously been running some converted Lancasters into what they called Lancastrians before long distance flying in South America and so on, and they hadn’t got a particularly good record they’d lost three or four of them I think, for different reasons and so they took delivery of the Tudors. Tudor 1s these were, Mark 1s. And I did quite a bit of flying with the, on the Tudors on the South American routes, down to Bermuda, and the Caribbean and so on, and I was put in charge of training at BSA as well. And then, as things went on, we got as far as 1948 I think it was, ‘46’ 47’ ’48 I think it was, yes, ’47 ‘48. Suddenly the Berlin Airlift comes up, and from nowhere I suddenly found BSA, because of their Tudors, the air force was already in force on the Berlin Airlift using mainly Dakotas, the old C47s and they couldn’t cope with, couldn’t make it that economical to cope with the heavy loads that was necessary so they asked a lot of the civilian charter companies and so on, if they could provide crews and aircraft to come on to the Berlin airlift to increase the load factors, and British South American got one of the contracts to, with two Tudors, to go on the Berlin Airlift and I was one of them selected to go on the first one. So I found myself flying over to Wunstorf near Hannover where we were based, to fly on the Berlin Airlift these two Tudors between Wunstorf and Gatow, Berlin. And ironically, I think, when I think that three years before, when I did my last operational trip with 463, there we were still bombing and knocking hell out of ‘em; three years later, there I was at Wunstorf flying into Berlin to try and keep the so-and-so’s alive. Ironic really, they were three years the difference. Anyway, I stayed at Wunstorf for nearly a year, I think it was. I did nearly three hundred flights between Wunstorf and, there were only three of us on board.
HB: What sort of things were you taking in?
BL: Well when I first flew out there, we were taking huge packs of canned meat and stuff like spam and all that sort of stuff, corned beef, and all that, which was fairly easy to handle, in big cases and so on. And then the RAF were getting a bit uppity about what they were going to do and what they were carrying and bear in mind that the US air force was also on the operation with their C54s and Skymasters and so on, they were based at Schleswigland I think it is. I’ve got maps showing all the different air bases that we used over there but we always used Wunstorf and because we were larger aircraft, they decided that instead of carrying packs of food and so on, we suddenly found ourselves carrying coal, huge packs of coal, great big sealed bags of coal, about a hundredweight apiece. So we spent some months then, this coal at Berlin. Landing at Berlin was quite something. It was the ground force of people doing all the unloading and so on was predominantly very elderly German ladies, old grandmothers and mothers and so on, and it was sad to see them. They were dressed, whatever they could find to wear, and they used to come on board. They did all the work of loading and unloading, all the heavy work and they used to come on board to us carrying these lovely family heirlooms like Leica cameras and stuff like that to exchange. They were desperate for two things: cigarettes and coffee, and you could get anything for a couple of packs of coffee, in fact I got a lovely Leica camera in exchange for two bags of coffee at one stage. They used to come up, had it all laid out on the nav table there when they were unloading and they’d bring these heirlooms up and do deals with us. Anything we could, anything they wanted we could give it to them, you know. Children we gave cigret – we gave sweets and chocolate to the children. The children loved it. The Americans set up, at one stage, when they flew into Gatow, over the Frohnau beacon flying on to finals for landing, all the children used to sit round the lake underneath waving to the Americans going over and the Yanks were throwing out chocolate and sweets to them. At one stage they set up, got large handkerchiefs which they tied up sort of like a parachute, and tied these bags of sweets to them, were throwing them out and in dropping them out and the kids loved it. Absolutely fantastic.
HB: Amazing.
BL: But anyway, as I say, another aspect came up then, some time after been carrying the coal, which was a very dirty operation, dust and everything in the aircraft and they suddenly decided that what they wanted desperately in Berlin was medicinal, what do you call it? Two things they were short of, one was straight run gasoline and the other one was, oh dear me, some large amount of some sort of medicinal fluids. I’ve forgotten what they were now, what they were called. But these were in great big packs but the hospitals were desperate for them. So when it was decided that they’d fly the stuff in, it meant that the aircraft that were going to do this had to be modified with huge tanks in the back to carry it. And the air force said point blank they wouldn’t do it, they refused absolutely point blank to carry straight run gasoline in bloody great tanks down the back of the aircraft, they said its far too dangerous, so they refused point blank to do it. So the civilian contracts were asked to do it and we had then replaced our two Mark 1 Tudors with two Mark 5s which had been built and never been put into service but they were much larger and so our two Mark 5s were then equipped with these bloody great tanks for straight run gasoline and this medical stuff and so for the last few months we were flying that into Berlin.
BH: How did you feel about that?
BL: Oh dear me. Well it was just a bloody big laugh I thought, we thought. Bear in mind we’ve still got this enthusiasm from Bomber Command which we’d brought from the air force to the civilian and it was such a big change, you know, but to us it was more of a bloody big laugh than anything else. But anyway, we settled down to it and it was a good operation, it worked extremely well. When you are turning on to final approach into Gatow, Berlin, you came in over the lake on the outskirts of the city and the final beacon was at a place called Frohnau, Frohnau Beacon, you had to call over the beacon which was virtually the outer marker for final approach and the timing was so accurately it had to be done. The timing of aircraft over Frohnau was every twenty seconds between aircraft.
HB: Blimey.
BL: When you think there was a variety of aircraft, everything from small Bristol freighters to Dakotas and converted Lancs and Halifaxes and anything the charter people could lay their bloody hands on. They buy them for peanuts and take them out there to take part because the airlift they pay very big money and we were no exception with our Tudors and it’s an amazing operation really.
HB: So you went through the Berlin Airlift. Just one thing just I’m just quite curious about. You started off I think, on particular kinds of aircraft as a fitter.
BL: Yeah.
HB: What was, what was the system for re-training you when you went to different engines and different engine management systems?
BL: Well there were various training stations set up. I think the initial one for fitter 2Es, or 2As, that’s the difference between fitter rigger and fitter engines was at Kirkham, Lancashire and that was the number one training base, apart from Halton of course which is still there and still doing it today! And Halton of course was always the base of the so called Halton Brats as they call them. They go there as small, young apprentices and three year training straight away and they’re still doing that today. Yeah, they’re still churning out young lads from Halton.
HB: Right. So when you were working with the Stirling –
BL: Yeah.
HB: And then you go on Lancasters, obviously you’ve got Merlin engines, you’ve got Hercules engines, you’ve got all sorts, you’ve got air cooled, liquid cooled. You’ve got all these different engines.
BL: Yes.
HB: So was there an element of self training or was it all formalised?
BL: Well it was to us, to a point where we were fully trained and fully experienced with a lot of hours in on Stirlings when we went up to Swinderby, the 5 Group elite Group., but we hadn’t been trained on Lancs. So we had, it was virtually self-training on the Lancs there by virtue of working on them and flying on them and training every day. So that part of it, yes, was to a large extent I think we did, there were short courses laid on for us. I did one at Cosford for instance, and places like that, but generally speaking more than anything you were self taught, and as instructors you were expected to be experienced and knowledgeable on all the different aspects, so that was how it worked. But go back to the Berlin Airlift though, when that finished, I came back, by that time British South American, there was a lot of demands because they had a very poor safety record. We lost Star Tiger and we lost Star Ariel, both in the Caribbean. Those were Tudor 1s, from the first Tudors that we trained on. The first one was lost over the Bermuda Triangle as they call it, up at twenty thousand feet, no idea what happened to him; it just disappeared. And the second one was, had flown out of the Azores which at that time was a very difficult operation, flying over the south Atlantic from the Azores to South America and weather conditions and very poor nav and all rest of it was very prevalent round the Azores; very difficult route to operate.
HB: How many passengers did the Tudor 1 carry then?
BL: It varied, on whether, the Tudor 1s, I’ve just forgotten. I think up to about eighty or ninety passengers, something like that. The Tudor 5s were much larger but they didn’t actually go into passenger service after the Berlin Airlift. I don’t know what happened. They were scrapped I think, in the end. But anyway, as I say, because of the loss of the two Tudors and the BSA had lost quite a few Lancs so Don Bennett was criticised very heavily and finally he was forced to resign. So he was taken over by BSA who was then taken over by one of the old traditional north Atlantic BOAC captains, Gordon Storr his name, and it was Gordon Storr who I was with, on the, we were the first two Tudors at Wunstorf when the Airlift started and then shortly afterwards after Bennett had left, they decided BSA would be would up so what was left of it came back into, it came into BOAC. But that stage I was still being paid as a flight lieutenant substantive from the air force, seconded to BOAC so I was paid by BOAC who in turn seconded me to BSAA so I was paid by three companies, very interesting situation. But then of course, having come back to BOAC then, BOAC were operating Yorks and converted Halifaxes called Haltons, and, oh there was still a few Dakotas being used, but generally they were waiting for the next civil airliner which came from Handley Page called the Hermes and that was a very good aircraft. I liked the Hermes very much. Performance wise it hadn’t quite got good altitude performance as such, but it was a very easy aircraft to fly, very comfortable, it was designed specifically for the comfort of passengers and so on. And it was after then that the Comet 1 came in from De Havillands, the DH106, which was designed and built by DHs and was at least twenty years before its time. And then of course to us anyway, a huge attraction to get on the first jet aircraft into service. So in no time at all I was, I joined the Comet 1 fleet. We were flying, first of all flying down to Johannesburg and then it was extended to the Far East and out to even as far as Tokyo and Hong Kong and so on. Then of course you know the story that Xray Kilo blew up over Elba on its way between Rome and London. They were immediately grounded, no one could understand why it had, how it had happened. There was a huge inquiry and after ninety-odd modifications they decided that one of them must have been the reason so they put it back into service. And in no time at all they lost a second one which blew up over Naples Bay. That was flown by a South African crew who were on loan to BOAC. We’d also got French crews flying them, and it, so it was then decided that because two of them had blown up, they couldn’t leave them into service any longer. Unfortunately a third one went. The third one was out of Calcutta and that had just taken over from Calcutta and was flying through heavy cloud and they put that down to the fact that it flew into a cunim cloud and the stresses were so great the aircraft just broke up. So then they were grounded completely and when Farnborough rigged up the test rig there, and put a whole aircraft on this water test bed, and they found out exactly why it had happened. The general opinion from the public and in aviation generally was that the pressurisation caused the windows to blow out but that wasn’t true at all. The fault arose through bad engineering practice on the design of the hatches in the roof. The hatches which covered the radio communication, adf system and these two hatches were like that square like that. Engineering practice is that if you design something that’s a square and it’s put under pressure, you see that little crack there, where that join is -
HB: Showing me on the photograph frame.
BL: That little crack there.
HB: In the corner. [cough]
BL: If a crack occurs, it will always come from a corner, and find its way across and finally disintegrate and that’s precisely what happened to the Comet. It was bad engineering practice because if you round the corners those cracks wouldn’t occur. Simple [cough]. Again, in fairness to De Havillands, they produced some very fine fighter aircraft, put in their own engine, the Ghost 50 engine in them, Vampires and stuff like that but they had no experience ever of high altitude pressurised aircraft, and so they built them to what they considered would be strong enough and so on. But I’ve got a book upstairs which Andrew’s been reading, of the whole story, the whole official story of the enquiry and the way they found out all the reasons for it at Farnborough. The summing up at the end of it, when they said officially you know, that the initial fault was the adf hatches that disintegrated because of the bad engineering practice, how it was designed. The general feeling was that the aircraft was twenty years before its time but it simply wasn’t strong enough, because De Havillands, or anyone else for that matter, had experience enough to build them strong enough, when you think that at forty two thousand feet the pressurisation equivalent in the cabin was only eight thousand feet. That was the highest the cabin pressure was ever taken up to give passengers comfort without having to go on to oxygen. So the difference between eight thousand and forty two thousand across the structure of the aircraft was eight and a half pounds per square inch which is massive [emphasis] from the outside to the inside, and it has to be extremely strong, the sort of structure, in order to withstand these pressures. So you can imagine that it was not only not built strong enough, but of course the fault occurred on the hatches which caused it to blow up anyway. The first one that went, Xray Kilo, I had flown that on quite a number of occasions, got it in my log book in a number of places prior to it blowing up. I think previously I’d, we operated it from Tokyo to Hong Kong only the day before I think it was, before it blew up at Elba, but that aircraft had only done seventeen hundred hours. The second one that blew up over Naples had done just over two thousand hours and the one that disintegrated at Calcutta had done less than two thousand hours. They were all going at the, virtually the same time. That was another factor that the inquiry of course dug up, when they said that, Tom Butterworth I think it was, that because of lack of experience at DHs on high altitude stuff the aircraft simply wasn’t built strong enough. You’ve got to go back to Con Derry who was the chief test pilot at De Havillands a few years before when he was doing demonstrations at the Farnborough air show in a, I think it was a Vampire, he was doing very, very tight turns demonstrating and on one of those tight turns the bloody wings came off. He crashed into the crowd there and killed a few people, including himself. That was another example that under extreme stress conditions, that DHs aircraft wasn’t strong enough.
HB: Yes.
BL: So all those factors, you know. So result was that going back to the Comet days, I was involved very heavily with the whole Comet story because then it was decided that they’d have to, they’d build the new aircraft much stronger and up to date. The other thing was, by the way, that De Havillands had their own engines, the Ghost 50 which only produced five thousand pounds thrust, which was quite adequate for the fighters, but for a aircraft like the Comet 4 Ghost 50 engines, they insisted on putting their own engines in and all the experts said no, we needed Rolls Royce Merlin engines, or Avon engines they were, but they refused point blank, they said no, its our aircraft, we’ll put our own engines in and they simply weren’t strong enough. We couldn’t even do a safe level cruise at altitude, you had to do a five degree climb the whole time to get to top of descent, largely because by continuing to fly like that you’re reducing your fuel flow and consequently you had adequate fuel to start your descent. It was because of the consumption levels and the lack of real thrust on these DH engines, it was extremely [emphasis] critical on fuel, extremely [emphasis] critical. They devised this method of five degree climb. You had to fly, when you flight plan you fly backwards starting at top of descent instead of top of climb and things like that, you know. So anyway, when it was decided then they’d build the new Comet 4 much stronger and it would have Rolls Royce engines of much higher quality and it had Rolls Royce Conway engines. So, they’d, after the 1s, they built some Comet 2s, which were destined to go to the air force. But of course after the crashes they never even got airborne, never even delivered, they were just stuck there at Hatfield. So they decided that they’d have to carry out a two year test flying programme to make sure that everything that was being put into the Comet 4 had been well proved, correctly and properly using these two Mark 2s which were used as test beds. So they modified these two Mark 2s, strengthened them up and made sure they were adequate to do the work. They put the standard Conway engines on the inboards and then the new big 524 engines on the outboards which were destined to go into the new Comet 4. So they hadn’t got any crews to fly these at De Havilland, so they asked BOAC if BOAC could loan them I think it was six, was six crews to fly a two year test flying for De Havillands on these Comet 2s, 2Es as they called them. So I was one that went on to those, on to test flying. The first year we, every day we flew non-stop to Beirut from London and back, every day for a year. The aircraft hadn’t got a certificate of airworthiness, of course it was experimental, so there was only three of us allowed on board, no one, none of the boffins were allowed on so they got all the, all the usual test equipment and everything was loaded all the way down the fuselage and it was all fed up to the cockpit where we were and we used to have, they used to give us a list of things we had to check and write the results down, the results of this stuff as we flew, and we had to fly at thirty two thousand feet and record all this stuff for them which was really interesting. I loved it actually. It was a bloody good programme and extremely well paid as well! [Laugh]
HB: Right!
BL: So the first year we did London Beirut every day and the second year they decided we’d have to do the Arctic North Atlantic trials to make sure it was adequate for very low temperature conditions so then we started a programme going from London to Keflavik in Iceland and then across to Goose Bay and Gander in to the Maritimes and then back to London. So we did that for six months. That was a very interesting programme, I liked that part of it particularly. And then of course decided to try and get permission to fly into America. So the Americans were very keen on noise abatement and the Comet did make quite a bit of noise on take off of course, and so they said yes you can fly in to America but not land there, and not do take offs and landings. So then we had a period where we were flying out to different places around America using the new VOR navigation systems and so on, and then eventually politically we got permission to do landings over there and it was at that time then when a lot of the American airlines were looking very enviously at the jet Comet to replace traditional old fashioned piston engine aircraft and we did a series, we were doing a series of demonstration flights when, at the time when Pan American, the number one American outfit had just received, they’d just taken delivery of the first of the civilian Boeing 707s and they were pushing out a lot of typical American bullshit that they were going to be the very first pure jet passenger flight on the Atlantic, transatlantic ‘Fly American. Fly pure jet’, and all that, you know. Anyway, at the time we were down in Detroit doing some demonstration flights for United Airlines, they wanted to buy some of these Comets, so we were doing demonstration flights there. And it was there when we suddenly got a call to fly back to New York and, for some reason, and we found we got to New York we were going to do the first transatlantic flight the next day. We beat the Yanks by sixteen days! And when the Yanks had put all this, all the usual stuff in the papers, and they got the big banners out: ‘Fly Pan American the first jet flight across the Atlantic’ and so on. And after we beat them like that they had to change it all and where it said, ‘we are the first,’ they had to put in: ‘we are one of the first.’ They never bloody forgave us for it! Amazing story! [Laughter]
HB: Oh dear.
BL: But anyway, as I say I was very, very strongly involved in -
HB: How many people were on -
BL: - the whole Comet programme from start to finish.
HB: How many people were on that first trans-atlantic flight?
BL: I think we had about sixty, sixty passengers, something like that, yes. You’ve seen the menu of course.
HB: Yes, yes. Got a copy of the menu there [cough]
BL: We got back to London and it was a very historic occasion. They gave us immediate take off at New York and cleared all the flights from London to give us number one priority to land. BBC and everyone were all were there in force to welcome us, and it was headed by Eamon Andrews on BBC.
HB: Oh right. Yes.
BL: They got our wives there and so on waiting. There was two aircraft actually. We did the eastbound New York London and the other one went the other way, London New York and we crossed over at about twenty degrees west I think it was and acknowledged each other, but you know, two of them, one going one the other. And when we went through all the procedure at London old Eamon Andrews said, ‘We’ve got a coach here for you, we’re taking you up to,’ um to, I’ve forgot where the studios were now, I’ll think of it in a minute, ’taking you up to, see we want to put you on TV tonight.’ They’d decided to put us on that programme ‘What’s My Line?’ And old, the panel at that time dear old, oh my bloody memory’s going, bloke who was extremely well known on the BBC, was the chairman of the panel there. Anyway we went on TV and on this programme and all that sort of publicity and so on; it was really interesting. And then of course the following year I was picked to go to, one of the flight crew to go to Ottawa, Canada to pick up Duke of Edinburgh, Philip. We went in the Comet; he was very keen to fly in the Comet, so we went there to pick him up. He’d been there doing a series of talks and so on. The Queen was at Balmoral at the time so we were to pick him up at Ottawa and fly him back to Leuchars in Scotland, which is quite close to Balmoral, drop him off there. But anyway, we picked him up at Ottawa and we were just, hadn’t been airborne very long when a signal came through to say there’d, a big mining disaster had just occurred at Monckton in the Maritimes and would we divert to Monckton and so the Duke could just put in a quick royal visit, two hours royal visit to the disaster area. So we dropped him off at Monckton and then we flew down, further down to Gander and we waited at Gander for him to come, come back and then we brought him from Gander and flew him to Leuchars, dropped him off there. Oh it’s here somewhere I’ve got a picture of it. On board on the way back he was fascinated with the Comet 1, he loved to fly in the Comet, oh the Comet 4 I should say and on the way back he got a lot of individual special pictures of himself and he signed one each for us, and a handshake.
HB: Oh lovely.
BL: I thought she’d got it up here, it’s been on the wall here somewhere. She must have put it away. But it’s personally signed: Philip.
HB: Oh lovely.
BL: Which is, very has, carried a lot of weight, in the years to come. It’ll be worth a few bob I should think!
HB: So when did you actually stop flying Bob?
BL: Well, from then on, after the Comet programme, first BOAC decided to buy the Boeings so they ordered these new Boeing 707s from Boeing of course, from America and in January 1960 the first delivery of, or first Boeing 707 was ready for us to collect. And there was nobody trained on it or anything at that time of course, since we hadn’t got any Boeings. But in America the military version of the Boeing was the KC135 and they’d already built eight hundred of those, they’d all gone to the American air force and the American navy and so on. So having had that number built, all the bugs and problems had all been ironed out, needless to say, unlike so many of our aircraft you see. So it was a well [emphasis] tried and well proven aircraft before it even went into service. So in January ’60 I was, one of the, I was, been an instructor on Comets for some time I’d always been instructing quite a lot and so there’s four instructors, myself and three others were sent out to Seattle to get trained on the 707 and the first Boeing 707 to come off was number hundred and eleven off the line, the production line, so we were still quite a way behind other airlines. Anyway, when we got to Seattle we were trained by the Seattle test flight crew. At that time there’s no civilian aircraft, aerodromes rather, in the UK that could take the 707 except Heathrow and obviously you couldn’t use Heathrow for training but they could use it for service, not for training. Shannon hadn’t got a long enough runway at that time anyway, but they were building a new one. So there was nowhere in the UK where they could train us. So Boeings decided, got permission to use Tucson, Arizona. So Tex Johnson was there, er Tex, not Johnson, Tex Gannard, Tex Gannard was the Boeing Chief Test Pilot at that time and he decided that we’d, he’d take us down to Tucson and we’d set up a training base there and he would train us as instructors and so on, to stay on at Tucson to train the BOAC crews as they were sent out from the UK. So we stayed there to run the training unit [cough] and the crews had come from London, we trained them and they went back and then flew the aircraft in service. So we had a very nice six months so, Tucson and the trainer, super that was. But hard work. I’ll tell you what impressed me more than anything else when I went to Seattle, to Boeings: the difference between the British way of life in [coughing] workload, dedication and that sort of thing in the British aviation industry, was so different to that of the Americans. Soon found the Americans are far ahead of us in their dedication to the work they were doing. It was a bloody eye-opener, believe me. Hard work, but they knew how to do it and it was an absolute revelation to us. For instance when we were doing flight training unit details at London they’re usually about two and a half to three hours at the most, something like that, and then the time we went to Tucson the thing that surprised us was that the minimum flights times were five hours! [emphasis] Bloody long details, oh Christ, but that was typical of the Americans and the hard work they put in. They had three of the test pilots at Tucson with us and a fleet to train us and certify us as being fully trained instructors on Boeing aircraft. And I’ve got a certificate to say that.
HB: Yes. That’s grand.
BL: And anyway, BOAC then got a bit hot under the collar about the cost of running Tucson and all the British bases, so they got permission to use St Mawgan at St Athan, at Newquay. They got permission from the aircraft, from the air force for us to move from Tucson to Newquay and used St Mawgan for training from then on so I then moved, as I say, from Tucson to the Bristol Hotel in Newquay. And being a typical seaside resort, very popular, they didn’t want any weekend flying Saturdays and Sundays, there’s all sorts of objections from the local authority and so on, so it was a bit of a doddle down there.
HB: Good grief!
BL: So it was on the 707 where eventually that was my last flying for BOAC.
HB: I see. There’s a good few years in the air there Bob!
BL: Forty years.
HB: Can I just –
BL: The reason I retired in the end by the way, I was very close to retiring at that time, but I was on training at Shannon at the time on the Boeing fleet. We were doing our winter training at Shannon and one of the details we had to do was to demonstrate the capabilities of the aircraft at high, high speed characteristics of the 707. The normal cruising in the 707 was point eight one mach, but the “never exceed” was about point eight eight, which you should never exceed on a Boeing and we used to have to demonstrate though as you got somewhere near the point eight eight the flight control characteristics changed aerodynamically and you had to be aware of this to happen should you ever stray up there in flight. So we had to demonstrate this and we used to fly at forty odd thousand feet from Shannon across to five degree west in the Atlantic then back again doing these high speed runs and I was doing one of those with two students and we suddenly hit a bloody air pocket – bang! It threw us up in the air and down again, hit it really hard, couldn’t, didn’t even realise it was there just clear air turbulence, and I got thrown up on the ceiling and when I dropped down I dropped right across the arm of the co-pilot’s seat with my hip like that and it buggered up something in my hip and I couldn’t even walk off the aircraft carrying my briefcase. So I had to go sick straight away. I went through all the usual palavers of different Harley Street specialists and lord knows what and all they could tell you, ‘oh you’ve slipped a disc in your back,’ you know and all this. They threatened to send me off for a laminectomy operation, but the BOAC doctor at Heathrow who looked after the flight crews, he was ex-RAF and he was bloody good doctor, Doc civil and liked gossip here with the boys, and he really looked after us, one of us, you know.
HB: Very much so yes.
BL: He says, when finally I got to the end of my tether, I couldn’t clear this up, the bloody pain was there, could virtually, almost couldn’t walk and he says, ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll pull a few strings for you,’ he said, ‘you’re an ex RAF officer’ he says, ‘I’ll get you in to Hedley Court.’ So a couple of days later he says, ‘I’ve managed it, you’re going off to Hedley Court they’ll sort you out there.’ So I went off to Hedley Court which of course is very famous today because all these guys from Afghanistan are going in there for amputainees and that sort of thing you know, so I went into Hedley for three months. Within three days of being there they found out exactly what was wrong with me. What I’d done when I fell down like that over this arm, I’d stretched what they call the sacroiliac joint in my hip, it’d stretched it and bent it and that was the cause of all of the trouble.
HB: Good grief!
BL: And they found that after three days there! All these bloody Harley Street specialists I went to see kept telling me all I’d got was a bloody slipped disc. But the outcome was that I spent three months there and they cured it ninety nine percent. And when I finally got to, they wanted to discharge me I went to see the old Group Captain medical and he says, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘we’ve cleared it up for you,’ he says, ‘you’ll be all right,’ he says, ‘there might be the odd occasions when you get a recurrence but the only thing is,’ he says, ‘I’ll have to put a four hour restriction on your licence,’ and of course BOAC wouldn’t accept that because I was on a world wide contract so they said no we can’t accept that but you’re very close to retirement we’ll give you an immediate retirement on pension. So that’s really how I finished. But it didn’t end there.
HB: Oh right.
BL: Another little facet came. I’d been very interested in act, different aircraft accidents and accident investigation. I was on the accident committee for a few years before that, while I was still flying and somebody at BOAC obviously realised that I’d got experience on them and they said well we’ll keep you on but not in a flying capacity, would you like to become a CAA FIA flight accident investigator. I said yes, so they said right. So they sent me off to the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, to do the full official FIA accident inspector’s course so I had a couple of months over there, and did the course in the university and I qualified, graduated and got my little badge and everything, as an official accident investigator. So I came back to London and I went on two of the accidents actually, one of which was a Boeing which landed with a wing on fire at Heathrow after one of the engines had dropped off into the Staines reservoir. I’ve got a photograph of that landing, with the wing on fire, amongst this lot here somewhere.
HB: Good grief. Yeah.
BL: And anyway after that I found it was a bit boring and of course by that time I’d got a farm in Surrey and I’d got, we were milking a hundred and twenty five Jersey cows, and I’d got thirty thousand chickens, got five vans on the road delivering fresh eggs and cream around London and it was taking up so much time I thought well I haven’t got bloody time to go in so I finally decided I’d quit completely and carry on farming and that really was the end of it.
HB: Yeah, it does bring it to an end, doesn’t it really.
BL: So, quite a lot of various incidents in my career.
HB: Just a few, just a few. Just going back, I meant to actually ask you this ages ago. When you were on 463 Squadron -
BL: Yes.
HB: With the old, the Australians, that would be towards the end of ’45. Did you ever, when you were there on operations did you ever come across the German jet fighters?
BL: Er, no. Not, not the jets, no.
HB: No. All right.
BL: Incidentally, talking about that, of course, when Peenemunde came up, it just so happened, we didn’t, on the Stirlings by the way, the Stirlings from the squadron, I think we put about a dozen Stirlings up on the Peenemunde operation and we’d been briefed from weeks and weeks and weeks that something very special was coming up, no one knew what it was except it was something very special operation but it was tied in very closely to the right weather. It had to be absolutely perfect on weather forecast and of course it turned out it was Peenemunde. And it just so happened that when the Peenemunde trip came up we were on two weeks’ leave. So we missed it.
HB: Yeah. Right.
BL: But it was from then on of course we were very active on bombing these flying bomb sites in France and various parts of Europe. But we never came across any of the jet fighters at all. No definitely not.
HB: Right. Well I think. I think Bob, we’ve come to a natural sort of end, and I just thank you very much. Absolutely fascinating.
BL: Well I hope I haven’t bored you too much.
HB: Oh no! Well I haven’t gone to sleep! [Laughter] No absolutely fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
BL: I’ve been lucky really in a sense, that you know, had all these different variants, military and civilian, I’ve very lucky to be on you know, these special products, projects. Rather like the as I said, the two years I was test flying with De Havilland, that was really interesting.
HB: Yeah. I’m going to, one of the things I forgot to do at the beginning, I didn’t actually say at the beginning: it’s Wednesday the 12th of December 2018. I forgot about that at the beginning, I got a bit excited! So I’m going to terminate the interview Bob and get on with the paperwork. Thank you very much again.
BL: 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
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Interview with Bob Leedham
Creator
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Harry Bartlett
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-12-12
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ALeedhamHJL181212, PLeedhamHJL1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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02:16:46 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Leedham was a flight engineer who carried out twenty-one operations on Stirlings. At the outbreak of war Bob was an apprentice motor mechanic, and along with other apprentices, was left to operate the garage when all the engineers were called up. In 1940 he enlisted in the RAF and following initial training, Bob was selected for pilot training but did not achieve the requirement of flying solo within twelve hours. His engineering background meant he was posted to RAF St Athan and trained as a flight engineer. A posting to RAF Stradishall followed, and conversion to Stirling aircraft. Now part of a crew and posted to 90 Squadron at RAF Ridgewell, operational flying commenced. Bob suggests political interference restricted the performance of the aircraft resulting in a higher casualty rate amongst Stirling crews, and explains how the introduction of Window anti-radar equipment improved this. In Spring 1943 the squadron moved to RAF Wratting Common and in Autumn, converted to Lancasters. With more Lancasters coming into service, there was a lack of experience on four-engined aircraft, and some Stirling’s were deployed to RAF Swinderby for crew training. This move coincided with Bob obtaining his commission and he became an instructor on both Stirling and Lancasters. Late in 1944, Bob was back flying operations with 463 Squadron at RAF Waddington, where he was senior co-pilot/flight engineer. Following peace declaration in Europe, Bob joined Tiger Force in preparation for moving to Japan, but the war ended before this materialised. Bob began a post-war career in civil aviation, initially operating the Avro Tudor, and flying approximately three-hundred operations during the Berlin airlift. He also gives an account of the development of the DH 106 Comet and details the faults which resulted in the aircraft being grounded. While undertaking demonstrations in America, Bob was recalled to New York, where his crew discovered they were to operate the first civilian jet flight eastbound across the Atlantic. In 1960, Bob was one of four certified to instruct on the new generation of aircraft, the Boeing 707. An injury sustained from clear-air turbulence curtailed Bob’s flying career, and he progressed into the investigation of aircraft accidents.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
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Azores
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
United States
Zimbabwe
Arizona--Tucson
England--Burton upon Trent
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Essex
England--Hampshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
India--Kolkata
Italy--Elba
Mediterranean Sea--Bay of Naples
New Brunswick--Moncton
Ontario--Ottawa
Scotland--Leuchars
Wales--Glamorgan
Washington (State)--Seattle
England--Cornwall (County)
Arizona
Ontario
New Brunswick
India
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Staffordshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
10 Squadron
463 Squadron
5 Group
57 Squadron
617 Squadron
86 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
C-47
flight engineer
Gneisenau
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Pathfinders
pilot
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
radar
RAF Alconbury
RAF Halton
RAF Ridgewell
RAF St Athan
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Stradishall
RAF Swinderby
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
RAF Wratting Common
Scharnhorst
Stirling
Sunderland
Tiger force
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1023/11394/AMatherR171229.1.mp3
ed4181335c0bd7c49d58457351627ba9
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
Mather, Ronald
R Mather
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Ron Mather (1817930 Royal Air Force), and five photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 49 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ron Mather and Darren Middleton and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-12-29
Rights
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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
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Mather, R
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 29th of December 2017 and we’re in Nottingham talking to Ron Mather who was a signaller about his life and times. So, Ron what’s the earliest recollections you have of your life?
RM: I went to Radford Boulevard Junior School and we had quite a few, it was a good school and it was a very good educational school. And I went from there to Forster Street and then from Forster Street my mother and father moved to Aspley. And I went from there to William Crane School. I passed my eleven plus and I could have gone to Secondary School but my mother said no. From there I went to [pause] when I left school at fourteen I went to a pawnbroker and I was a couple of years as a pawnbroker’s assistant and I used to write about a thousand pledges on a Monday with people coming in from the Windmill Road which was a poor selection, section of Nottingham and it ruined my handwriting I’ve no doubt [laughs] And then from there my mother got me a job at the butcher’s shop opposite where we lived in Aspley and I stayed there as a butcher until I volunteered for the RAF.
CB: What did your father do as a job?
RM: He was a baker.
CB: So why —
RM: A good baker.
CB: Why —
RM: One of the best in Nottingham.
CB: Right. So why didn’t you go into his business?
RM: Because my mother got me a job. In them days your mother, your mother told you what you was doing. And it was rather convenient because I was here and the butcher’s shop was just across the road. So as I say I stayed there until I volunteered for the RAF.
CB: So, what prompted you to volunteer for the RAF?
RM: I volunteered for the RAF because my brother volunteered for the RAF and he became a wireless operator air gunner. And unfortunately, he was killed after, on his second op.
CB: So what was he like?
RM: Took some, he was brilliant. He was very very very clever. When he left school he went to work at Pickford’s and they made him the manager after he’d only been there for four months.
CB: And he was —
RM: So that was the sort of thing I had to, I’m not saying that I am not intelligent because I am reasonably intelligent but nothing like he was. And then of course I joined the RAF at eighteen in April the 5th 1943.
CB: Ok. And where was that?
RM: I joined at St Johns Wood in London.
CB: And what happened when you were there? What did you do?
RM: Well, it was just a reception area and from there I went to ITW for training. Military training and discipline. Learning the discipline and then from there I went to Radio School in Yatesbury in Wiltshire.
CB: So what sort of things did you do in your initial training?
RM: Morse Code. Fortunately, I was very good at Morse Code and I could do up to thirty words a minute. So I thought that when I was, when I left the RAF I was going to take that as a job but I didn’t. I went as a baker.
CB: Ok.
RM: So I got to work with my father [laughs]
CB: Yeah.
RM: When I left the RAF.
CB: Secure job.
RM: Yeah. I went to, he was canteen manager at Chilwell COD and he worked the canteen. He was in charge of the canteen. So I became the baker.
CB: Right.
RM: And I went to radio, to the school, the University at Nottingham and got my City and Guilds in Food Technology.
CB: Right.
RM: And became a manager.
CB: Right.
RM: Later on.
CB: So back to your early days in the RAF.
RM: Yeah.
CB: You did your initial training at ITW.
RM: Yes. And then —
CB: And you did Morse Code there. What other things would you have to do?
RM: Well, it was more or less discipline than anything and keep getting you fit. It’s teaching you discipline and fitness which I was pretty, well because I played football [laughs] so I was pretty fit anyway and of course I wanted to be as good as my brother which I suppose I succeeded in the end. Better than him because I managed to survive.
CB: What influence do you think your brother had on you?
RM: Pardon?
CB: What influence did your brother have on you?
RM: He had a hell of an influence. I wanted to be him. He was very, as I said he was very clever so I wanted to be clever. I wasn’t. I was nowhere near as clever as him but I wanted to be like him. Yeah. So of course, when he got killed, when he went in the RAF I volunteered and I was lucky enough to get in the RAF because they wanted them at that time, aircrew at that time because that’s when they really started to build up the Bomber Command.
CB: So what, when was he killed on his second op? When was that?
RM: Just a minute.
[pause]
CB: I’ll just pause for a mo.
[recording paused]
RM: Same as —
CB: I think I think an interesting point if I may just go back to it is this. You said that both your brother and you —
RM: Yeah.
CB: Passed the eleven plus.
RM: Yeah.
CB: But your mother didn’t want you to go on to further —
RM: No. No. We didn’t go to either.
CB: The next level of education. Why was that?
RM: Because she wanted the money. She was a, she was like that I’m afraid. Very much so.
CB: So how did your brother and you feel about not going on to the next level of education?
RM: Not very happy actually. Especially him. But then again he went to Pickford’s and within a month —
CB: This is the removals people.
RM: Yeah, it’s a removals firm. They realised how clever he was and they made him a manager at about he must have been only about sixteen.
CB: Yeah. Right.
RM: I wasn’t as lucky [laughs] I was a butcher. But nevertheless I went to and got City and Guilds in Food Technology.
CB: Later on.
RM: And art as well.
CB: Yeah. So just exploring the family situation here your father was a baker.
RM: Correct.
CB: He had his own business from baking?
RM: No. No.
CB: He worked for other people.
RM: He worked, he went as in charge of the bakery at the COD Chilwell.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then when I came out the RAF the firm wanted to send me out of Nottingham as a baker.
CB: Yes.
RM: So my dad turned around to me and he said, ‘You come and work for me. With me in Chilwell COD.’ So I went and I worked seven and half years in Chilwell COD and while I was there as I say I went to Technical College and Art College and got my degrees.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then I became manager of the firms.
CB: And what did COD stand for? Ordnance depot was it?
RM: Yes. Ordnance. Civilian Ordnance Depot.
CB: Ordnance Depot. Right. So the family house. What was that? Was it detached?
RM: Similar to this.
CB: In a terrace or —
RM: No. Similar to this.
CB: Similar to this. Semi-detached.
RM: Yes. It was, it’s just up the road. Not far up the road.
CB: Right.
RM: It was a similar house to that.
CB: To the ones over there.
RM: You see that.
CB: With tile hung on the walls.
RM: Yeah. It’s like this, yeah.
CB: What, what sort of facilities did you have in the house?
RM: Everything.
CB: Except?
RM: Everything.
CB: Was the toilet in the house or in the garden?
RM: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
CB: It was.
RM: We had everything there.
CB: So you had everything there.
RM: Don’t forget now we’re talking about 1946.
CB: I’m talking about, I’m talking about when you were at school.
RM: When I was at school we lived in a terrace house and the toilet was outside. And it was the gasman cometh. And as I said we had the radio on the floor and the family that lived just near the bottom of us was Sillitoe. The writer. And as I say I went to Radford Boulevard. Then I went to [unclear] Street then from there I went up to this one.
CB: To the one at the top of the road.
RM: Right.
CB: You said the radio was on the floor.
RM: In the basin.
CB: Yes. So why was that?
RM: Because it was 1924.
CB: Right.
RM: There weren’t such a thing as radios then. This [laughs] this was a radio with a —
CB: Sort of —
RM: What do you call it? A battery.
CB: A crystal set.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And the effect of putting it in a steel basin was to amplify the sound.
RM: Yeah. And we sat around it.
CB: Right.
RM: That was the way it went.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Not for long of course because then of course the old-fashioned wireless came out.
CB: Ok. So that’s really useful for background. Thank you very much. We’ve talked about you joining the RAF. You went to the Radio School at Yatesbury.
RM: Yeah.
CB: What did you, what was the training at Yatesbury? What did it comprise?
RM: Well, they taught us the Morse Code. Taught us to operate that thing.
CB: Which is a radio.
RM: The 1155.
CB: Radio. Yes.
RM: And the 1154 which was a transmitter. And discipline of course to a certain extent. Not a lot. It was, it was quite good as well. I really enjoyed Radio School.
CB: What were the other people like who were with you?
RM: Very good. They were all, we were all mates. Of course, when I passed out at Radio School I became a sergeant then.
CB: While you were training you were what rank?
RM: Cadet. I just had that. Same as that photograph of Reg.
CB: Yes.
RM: With a white —
CB: So a forage cap with a white flash.
RM: I had a forage cap with a white thing in it that showed that I was trainee aircrew.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. It was marvellous when I went to the Palais de Dance. I could get some women I’ll tell you. Being a short ass it didn’t help matters but being aircrew in Nottingham it was something because they had Syerston and we had an awful lot of airmen come in to Nottingham in the 1940s.
CB: So what, the code for short ass —
RM: Yeah.
CB: Means vertically challenged.
RM: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
CB: In other words you were shorter than some people.
RM: Five foot one I was when I went into the RAF.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Five foot one. And I’ve got a grandson that’s six foot five. How does that happen?
CB: Obviously been fed well in his early years. So, at the Radio School then what sort of opportunities were they telling you you would have next? So you were being trained as aircrew.
RM: We were being trained by Morse Code and how to signal, how to take signals, how to transmit, how to receive and how to look after, to a certain extent the 1155 and the 1154.
CB: We’ve got one of those in the room with us. That’s why we raised it.
RM: I know you have. I saw it. It’s in the [toilet]. Yeah.
CB: Just for the tape. This is the early days of radar so to what extent did you touch on that? H2S I’m thinking of particularly.
RM: We, I’m just trying to think when we started Monica. That didn’t come ‘til later.
CB: So Monica is a tail warning radar receiver.
RM: Yeah. That’s right. And that was at OTU.
CB: Right.
RM: So we didn’t get that at Yatesbury because it wasn’t even invented.
CB: No. So you come to the end of the course at Yatesbury which was how long roughly?
RM: Well [pause] I joined in April the 5th. I went to what’s the name and then I went there so it must be about six months I would say.
CB: Yeah. And what was the passing out parade like?
RM: We didn’t have one. It was Christmas. We never had a passing out parade. But we did get the brevet.
CB: So who put the brevet on?
RM: And now we were the first ones to have the S brevet because normally all they had was the sparks on here and an AG badge.
CB: Yes.
RM: But I didn’t take firing a —
CB: You didn’t do gunnery at all.
RM: I didn’t do gunnery at all.
CB: No.
RM: Because they’d started this radar system.
CB: And it —
RM: And they knew we was going to come in to that and have to operate the radar system [unclear]
CB: They expanded the syllabus.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: They expanded the syllabus to take on these other items.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right. Ok. So how did, how did your course end in terms of putting the brevet on to your tunic? Was there any formalised putting that on or —
RM: No.
CB: You sewed it on yourself.
RM: I came in. We came back from a meal and it was underneath. You know how you used to have your blankets?
CB: Yeah.
RM: All set out.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
RM: Then your hat. My brevet was underneath my hat. That’s how I got it.
CB: Right.
RM: Because of course it was Boxing, it was Christmas Day.
CB: Just coming up. Yeah.
RM: Yeah. So they were more bothered about Christmas than that.
CB: Of course. What about your sergeant’s stripes? Were they also there?
RM: That was there. They were with it.
CB: In the pile as well.
RM: That’s it. That’s how I got. I didn’t get presented.
CB: Right.
RM: We didn’t have a passing out parade.
CB: No.
RM: No.
CB: And at what stage did you know your posting? Did they tell you there or did they get it later?
RM: No. No. They said I could go on four weeks leave [pause] on a fortnights leave, I beg your pardon and we would be notified as to where I was going.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then we got notification that I was going to Bishops Court in Northern Ireland and that I had to make my way up to Lossiemouth in Scotland. And you can imagine a eighteen and a half year old man going up there on his own. Somewhere he’d never even been and my, let’s put it this way. My travels were limited. I went to Skegness perhaps once or twice. So it was quite, and then to go across to Ireland and then getting in Ireland and then going to Bishops Court where I hadn’t even got a clue where it was. But it, was an education.
CB: What did you mean about Lossiemouth because that’s in Scotland so how did you come to go there?
RM: Well, we had to. I had to go up to Lossiemouth in Scotland.
CB: First.
RM: Go over to Belfast on the ferry. And then from the ferry at Belfast go to Bishops Court.
CB: Ok. I think, ok, we need to clarify the geography on that. Yeah. Right. Ok. So Bishops Court. What were you doing there? It’s an OTU.
RM: That’s when we started flying.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And in Proctors I think.
CB: Oh right. How did you feel?
RM: Eh?
CB: How did you feel about that?
RM: Marvellous. I did. Thought it was marvellous. But then there’s only one trouble is that at that time there was trouble with the, the Irish factions.
CB: Yeah. The IRA.
RM: The IRA.
CB: Yeah.
RM: So there was places we couldn’t go in.
CB: Right.
RM: Because if you went in there we’d get beat up.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Because there was, and that’s how it was at that time.
CB: So what was the nearest big town to Bishops Court?
RM: Oh, God. What was it?
CB: Was it up by Londonderry?
RM: Oh dear. I don’t, I can’t remember the name.
CB: Ok.
RM: But we used to go in the pub and I had, my mate was six foot two so he’d go in first. And the bar was long like that. RAF, ordinary Irish and IRA. This is true. And before the night was finished one lot was fighting the other. Sometimes it was the IRA and the RAF or sometimes it was the IRA and their own people but that’s how it was in them days believe it or not.
CB: And you kept going back because you liked the action.
RM: Oh of course. He used to carry me on his shoulders [laughs] He was a Scotsman. MacMillan his name was.
CB: Macmillan. Yeah.
RM: As I say he was about six foot two he was, and I was five foot one don’t forget [laughs] And then we went from there to, when I was at Bishops Court we was flying over the Atlantic. No. Over the Irish Sea. We were in a Proctor which is a smaller, a real small —
CB: A single engine. Yeah. Gipsy engine.
RM: And all of a sudden we had anti-aircraft fire all around us and we looked down and there was the Queen Mary and we was getting too near it so they fired at us. Yeah. When you come to think of it it’s, you can understand why because I mean they didn’t have anything did they?
CB: No.
RM: They had a couple of guns on one end of it.
CB: Yeah. Well, it relied on speed.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And that’s if you got too near. They didn’t aim at you.
CB: Right.
RM: But they did fire at, fire and let you know you’re too close.
CB: The shells were bursting.
RM: But of course, there would be thousand of troops in that. In the Queen Mary.
CB: Right. So Bishops Court was flying these small Proctors.
RM: Smaller aircraft. Yeah.
CB: And from there —?
RM: We went to Husbands Bosworth.
CB: Yeah.
RM: In Warwickshire. And there we went in to the Blenheims.
CB: Right.
RM: No. Anson.
CB: Right.
RM: Ansons. Not Blenheims. Ansons. Two. Two engines.
CB: Small. Yeah.
RM: From there we learned to send signals.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And receive signals.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Then you had to pass out there. I managed to pass out first there.
CB: Right. So did they have, did you go to a bigger aircraft there or did you have to move somewhere else?
RM: As I say went to a two engine Anson.
CB: No. No. From the Anson.
RM: From the Anson we went to —
CB: Did you go to Wellingtons there or did you go to somewhere else?
RM: No. We went to Wellingtons.
CB: Yes. Was it on that?
RM: Husbands Bosworth.
CB: It was at the same place.
RM: No. It was a subsidiary of Husbands Bosworth.
CB: Right.
RM: You know. There was two.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then we went on to Wellingtons where we got straight into the 1154 and the 1155.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then from the Wellingtons we went to Newark to go on to the Stirling.
CB: To Winthorpe.
RM: And then from Stirlings we went to Number 5 Radio School at Syerston to go from Stirlings to the Lancaster.
CB: Yes. On the Lancaster Finishing School.
RM: It was —
CB: How did you feel about that?
RM: Fantastic. It was marvellous. It was. It was. I went, I can always remember the first time when they had these air shows. The starting of the air shows. So I went. I was probably fifty at the time and I thought God how big that is and yet I hadn’t thought it was big when I was flying in it.
CB: Yeah. Years later you’re talking about.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So from the Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston.
RM: We went to a place. To Scampton —
CB: Right.
RM: For a fortnight while we was designated our squadrons.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then it was either 44 Squadron which was a Rhodesian squadron or 49 Squadron which was the one I went to at a place called, was it Snitterfield?
CB: Right.
RM: I can’t remember. Then we went there and within two days we was on ops.
CB: So going back to Winthorpe, sorry to Husbands Bosworth you’re then crewing up. So you’ve done your specialist training in the smaller planes.
RM: Oh yes.
CB: The Anson.
RM: I beg your pardon. At Husbands Bosworth we crewed up.
CB: Right.
RM: Right.
CB: So how did that work?
RM: This fella, I was operating a set, you know and this fella walks in. He said, ‘Would you like to belong to my crew?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Righto. Ok.’ And that’s how, that’s how it happened. And then later on of course we met the whole crew.
CB: So he was the pilot was he? The captain.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Who came in.
RM: Yes. He was the pilot. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Willie. Willie.
CB: Yeah. Right. So he, Willie Williams, yeah he had —
RM: Jay. Jay. His name. His name must have been John I think but we called him Willie. Everybody called him Willie. So —
CB: And he was a flight lieutenant at that time.
RM: He was. Yeah.
CB: So he’d already been around a bit.
RM: No. I think —
CB: Was he?
RM: No. He was, he was a flying officer.
CB: Right.
RM: He got his flight lieutenant when we was actually on the squadron at Fiskerton.
CB: Right. Ok. At Fiskerton.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
RM: That’s where we started our ops. Fiskerton.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And from Fiskerton we went to Fulbeck. And then from Fulbeck we went to Syerston and I finished my tour at Syerston.
CB: Ok. So what did you do after your tour ended?
RM: They said, right, I went to a place near Stratford upon Avon as the station warrant officer which was the absolute it was, it was nothing because it’s only a little one. It was all German prisoners of war and things like that. So that’s what I was looking after. And I stayed there until I left.
CB: When? When were you demobbed?
RM: December. Everything [laughs] everything finished up in December.
CB: Fantastic.
RM: Yeah.
CB: ‘45 or ’46?
RM: December ’45. And I got three months leave.
CB: But it was your demob.
RM: That was my demob. I did sign on. I thought about signing on actually because they said that we’d be able to continue flying. But they’d got too many so I didn’t get it.
CB: Oh. You applied but they didn’t select you.
RM: Oh yeah. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: I didn’t get it because there was too many lordships around and there was, that was definitely a fact. That if you were an ordinary person the officers got preference.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Naturally. Because that was the RAF in the old days wasn’t it? And I suppose it still is now. I don’t know.
CB: So you were the SWO at the prisoner of war camp. Just to explain that.
RM: Yeah.
CB: SWO is the Station Warrant Officer.
RM: Station warrant officer. Yeah.
CB: At what point had you been appointed to warrant officer?
RM: Every year I got higher.
CB: Yeah. It was a staged process.
RM: It was a staged process. I went from sergeant. And then sergeant to flight sergeant. And then from flight sergeant to warrant officer.
CB: Right.
RM: And then while I was at [pause] SWO.
CB: Yeah. At Stratford upon Avon.
RM: I became a sergeant. They demoted me to sergeant and I finished up as a sergeant.
CB: Because it was —
RM: That was the way they did it.
CB: In practise as far as they were concerned you were acting warrant officer.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: But you were working —
RM: I went from station warrant officer to looking after these POWs.
CB: Yeah.
RM: That’s when I was demobbed.
CB: Demoted. Yeah.
RM: Demoted.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Because they said I couldn’t have that authority. No.
CB: Was this prison, a German prisoner of war camp, or a prisoner of war camp of Germans on an airfield or was it somewhere separate from that?
RM: Oh yeah. It was on an airfield. Yeah.
CB: At Marston was it? Or —
RM: No. I can’t remember what it was called. I know it was about four miles outside Stratford on Avon.
CB: Ok. Well, we’ll come to it.
RM: Because we used to go to Stratford a lot.
CB: Yeah. Ok. So, let’s go back to your operations.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So, your first operation. Where, what was that? Was that an exciting experience?
RM: My first one was Handorf. Handorf. And then I know where the second one was because it was a place called Karlsruhe which was in right the north. In Norway I think it was. Karlsruhe, it was.
CB: In Germany.
RM: Yeah. It’s in Germany but right at the top.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And the battlefield, the German battlefield.
CB: Battleships.
RM: The ships were there so we went and bombed it.
CB: That was Kiel wasn’t it?
RM: No. Karlsruhe.
CB: Yes, but —
RM: Then we went, my next one was Kaiser, no Kaiserslautern. That was up north of Germany as well. We got picked out because it was a good crew. And then from there I went to Düren. Then Gravenhorst. The Urft Dam. That was after the, it was a similar sort of thing as the Dambusters.
CB: Yeah.
RM: [laughs] things. It didn’t get the publicity of that, of course.
CB: No.
RM: And then I went to Munich. That was nine hours.
CB: What was Munich like?
RM: We went three times to Munich. It was one hell of a long trip and coming back from one, and this is true I phoned the skipper up. I said, ‘Skipper, where are we?’ He said, ‘We’re just over the Alps.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve just seen someone walk past my turret.’ And I swear to this day that I saw somebody walk by my, I do really.
CB: Whereabouts?
RM: In the Alps. We were flying over the Alps.
CB: No, yeah but where were they walking?
RM: They just walked past the window.
CB: Right.
RM: So that was fanciful I suppose. And that was Munich. Gravenhorst. I went there again. I think I only went to the what’s the name where all the things were. What did they used to call it? Where all the munitions and that was made. The area.
CB: What? The Ruhr?
RM: Yeah.
CB: The Ruhr.
RM: I only went to the Ruhr about, I went to [Gardena]
CB: In Italy.
RM: Yeah. Yeah. That was in Italy. They were all nine hour trips, you know.
CB: So, going. Taking the Italian trips did you do Spezia as well?
RM: Pardon?
CB: Did you do Spezia? Spezia or, anyway going to Italy.
RM: Yeah.
CB: You had to fly through the Alps did you?
RM: Yeah.
CB: So what was —
RM: We went over —
CB: What was that like?
RM: We went over Switzerland.
CB: Yes. Oh, you did.
RM: It was tiring. I can tell you that. And I went to Karlsruhe again. Ladbergen. That was in the Ruhr again isn’t it? Yeah. And then the one.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Dresden.
CB: Go on.
RM: I went to Dresden. I have never seen [pause] we went to a place called Rositz the day after which was an oil refinery a hundred miles from Dresden and we could see the flames of Dresden a hundred miles away. We were told to drop the bombs indiscriminately. Well, that’s where I, that’s what the bomb aimer said. So that’s what we did,
CB: As a crew when you were on the Dresden raid how did you actually handle that yourselves? What did you think about it on that day?
RM: Not very much. Not a lot. It’s a thousand bomber raid don’t forget. So you’d got aircraft all over and you could see some of them being hit and all you could see was the aeroplane just exploding in a ball of flame.
CB: Right.
RM: And that was nine people gone. Or seven people gone. So we made our run and then my skipper [pause] went down to five hundred feet and went down so low he said because people, fighters couldn’t follow us down there. So he knew what he was doing. He was a clever man. A clever man. We got, we got attacked three times. We got shot at three times but we were lucky. We thought we had a direct hit on one but you couldn’t, you couldn’t tell really. But the next one, not Berlin, I beg your pardon. Lutzendorf. Where is it? Where’s [pause]. Berlin. No. Where is it? Oh, it must be the last one. When they crossed the Rhine we bombed the German on the other side. And as we were going around to settle up all of a sudden de de de and the bullets, I’m glad I was only five foot because the bullets went all the way across.
CB: Through the fuselage.
RM: One of the chaps was testing his guns. He didn’t test them. He bloody well fired them and it went straight across my head and just missed my head. So that’s why I consider I’m a lucky person.
CB: So are you talking about somebody else’s gunner or your gunner?
RM: No. Somebody else’s gunner.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Checking his guns. But where was I? Wesel. Wesel.
CB: Ok.
RM: That was where that was. Wessel. Mid-upper gunner [unclear] [laughs] So we must have had a what’s the name because of course he finished his tour early.
CB: What do you mean happened?
RM: Pardon?
CB: What do you mean? Must have had a what?
RM: Well, he only did about twenty with us.
CB: And then he left.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So are we talking about LMF?
RM: Oh no. No. No. No. No [pause] No. No.
CB: What did you mean then about the mid-upper gunner?
RM: I think you did thirty the first one and twenty the second one. I’m not sure.
CB: Oh right. So he came to the end of his tour.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
RM: And he disappeared. So I got a phone call from my mum. She said, ‘Do you know Crawshaw is here?’ And he come and stopped at our house for a month. He was like that. He was really. [unclear]
CB: He’d run out of women had he?
RM: Oh boy, did he have some women. [pause] That’s funny.
CB: Ron’s looking through the squadron record for these ops. What was your last op then?
RM: The 4th of May. Now that’s, that’s wrong because what’s the name as I said we was just coming back from a training flight and Mr Williams nearly hit the bank so they stopped him and I went. And a Mr Philipson Stow [talking to someone outside room] and we went to a crew called Philipson Stow and I’m sure I took a couple or three with him.
CB: Three ops with them.
RM: Yeah. But it was only just going across and bombing German troops.
CB: Right.
RM: That was all.
CB: So what are we talking about. This was early ’45 was it?
RM: Yeah. Early ’45.
CB: Right. And daylight or in the dark?
RM: Both.
CB: Right. We’ll just pause there for a mo.
[recording paused]
Other: Did you get on with him?
RM: He was good looking and knew it but he could just go and see a woman and he’d be with her.
CB: This is Crawshaw.
RM: Yeah.
CB: A lothario you’d say.
RM: A real lothario. Yeah.
Other: He had plenty of that.
RM: Yeah. Different to me [laughs]
CB: Yeah [laughs] Yeah. So how did the other crew feel about that?
RM: Oh.
CB: Envious?
RM: Let’s put it this way. The officers were the officers and the sergeants were the sergeants. My mid-upper —
CB: What, your rear gunner? Anderson.
RM: I’m just trying to, the bomb aimer.
CB: Oh yes.
RM: Came as a sergeant.
CB: Bert Crowther.
RM: He got offered his commission.
CB: Right.
RM: So he went with, the navigator was a flying officer and so the officers were the officers. We didn’t mix.
CB: Not even socially.
RM: No.
CB: At all.
RM: No. No.
CB: So what was your main entertainment when you were off duty?
RM: Women [laughs]
CB: On the airfield?
RM: Well, we just did the normal things that we did. You know what I mean is the sergeants were altogether.
CB: In the sergeant’s mess.
RM: Yeah. In the sergeant’s mess. And we used to have. When I come to think of it I don’t drink now. We used to have a five star special which was whisky, rum and three more shorts all together.
CB: In a pint glass.
RM: And the beer was Dublin. What was it called? Guinness.
CB: Guinness. Right.
RM: So we had that and a Guinness and we’d have about five of them. Well, who knows what tomorrow was bringing? We didn’t, we never knew whether we was going back did we? And we had some nice girlfriends as well [laughs] But we had a hell of a life. I had a good life in the RAF. Yeah.
CB: What I was looking for was where the socialising took place because it was limited on the airfield.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So did you —
RM: No. Didn’t.
CB: Did they have dances at all on the airfield?
RM: Oh, we had dances.
CB: But not drinking.
RM: In the sergeant’s mess and the officer’s mess. We didn’t mix.
CB: Right.
RM: The officers didn’t mix.
CB: So —
RM: We, when we got in the crew, when we got together we was one. Soon as we got in that aircraft we were one. The whole lot. When they left the air force, the aircraft we had our own lives. My skipper as I say owned a whisky distillery in Southern Ireland and he’d got a ruddy great car and he had his girlfriend come from Ireland and stop in Newark. So all he was bothered about was whipping off in his car and that. I had a motorbike. I remember that. But that was the way it was. But we had a good life. I think so. I had, I had a magnificent time in the RAF.
CB: And going out to the local pubs was there enough beer there or did they run out sometimes?
RM: I only drank in the sergeant’s mess. When we went out all I had was a couple of pints. That was all. But when we were in the sergeant’s mess because we knew they could stagger back across into our billet which were just across the parade ground. Yes. I did have a wonderful time really. I got hit in the back of the head with a flare from a verey pistol.
CB: When? Oh, on a night out.
RM: In Syerston. Yeah. I was walking to the sergeant’s mess and this chap fired this. Fired it and it hit me on the back of the head.
CB: No lasting damage.
RM: I don’t know [laughs]. My wife said yes there was lasting damage.
CB: Made your head rattle didn’t it?
RM: Oh yes. It did. It did. Yes. I had a good life really. I did really.
CB: So going to the operations.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Then you said Munich was really difficult going nine hours three times.
RM: Yeah. Yeah. Because we had to go over the Alps and come back.
CB: So you took the route over the Alps did you?
RM: Over the Alps to the top of Italy and then come back.
CB: Oh, did you really?
RM: Yeah. Yeah. That was the worst one.
CB: What was the most difficult? Why was it bad?
RM: Then again they were only our squadron. It wasn’t like the others. Like Dresden and what’s the name because they were thousand bomber raids so you got the aircraft all around you there whereas when you went to Dresden err what’s the name?
CB: Munich.
RM: Munich. You was on your own. Just the squadron.
CB: Right.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So flying through the mountains was that the most difficult? Is that what you meant was made them difficult?
RM: Yeah. And the fact that it was so long. Don’t forget when you sit up there in a confined space for about, I think it was seven and a half hours or nine hours. Something like that. It might say it in there. How long it took.
CB: Yeah. The Munich one is nine hours isn’t it?
RM: Yeah.
CB: Because of the distance.
RM: Yeah.
CB: And then you didn’t —
RM: And all you do is just call the crew every so often to see. I had to call the crew to see whether they were alright. And then of course towards the latter end we had what was called [pause] fitted to the aircraft.
CB: Monica?
RM: Monica.
CB: Or H2S?
RM: H2S. We had H2S anyway.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then we had Monica.
CB: Right.
RM: Halfway through our tour.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Where I directed the, I had a screen in front of me.
CB: Right.
RM: And I directed, and I directed the tail bomber.
CB: Yeah.
RM: As to where he was and I was telling him I’d looked at the screen and I told him where the fighter was.
CB: So it wasn’t just showing there was a fighter behind. You could actually see.
RM: Oh, I could see it from the —
CB: Whether it left, right or up and down.
RM: Yeah. And they were, and I guided. I guided the, but not the mid-upper turret.
CB: No.
RM: Curiously enough.
CB: So, and did he engage those planes or did he ever shoot at them?
RM: Oh yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. Yes. Yes.
CB: And how many did he shoot down?
RM: Well, we think one. We think one definite.
CB: Because it disappeared from your screen did it?
RM: Yeah. Yeah. We think we hit, definitely but don’t forget my rear gunner was a pilot.
CB: Oh, was he? And what had happened to him?
RM: Nothing. They made the pilot, you know when Monica first came out they thought that rear gunners weren’t intelligent enough. This is the RAF. I mean, thought they weren’t intelligent so they took these twelve pilots and made them rear gunners. And my, my rear gunner was a pilot. So when the people saw him they’d said, ‘But you’ve got a pilot. What’s the pilot?’ I said, ‘That’s where we back the plane up.’ And they believed it. It’s true. It’s true. He was a short ass the same as me.
CB: Yeah. How did he feel about being the rear gunner?
RM: Pardon?
CB: How did he feel as a pilot about having that role?
RM: Aye, it was something we took for granted. Everything we did was for a purpose.
CB: Yeah.
RM: We had a, we had a good bonhomie if you understand for the crew. Everybody. As I say we called the skipper Willie.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Never —
CB: Flight lieutenant —
RM: Squadron leader.
CB: Yeah.
RM: As he became squadron leader.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And he became flight commander later on. But he was Willie to us and the other officers, the bomb aimer and I we were friends. He was there but of course when he first came on the crew he was a sergeant and then he got his commission while he was flying with us and we used to go out together. But the officers kept themselves to themselves in their amusement because of course we couldn’t go in the officer’s mess. We could go in the sergeant’s mess but —
CB: So as a group of sergeants although there was flight sergeant and you became a warrant officer how did you feel about the crew from a social point of view working separately?
RM: We didn’t consider it separate. What we, we had two lives. We had flying and we had leisure and they were two separate parts. Two separate items if you understand. We went our way and they went, as soon as we finished flying and that they went their way. That was the officer’s mess and we went to the sergeant’s mess. That was the way but there was, there was no disagreement. We never had an argument. We had a fantastic attitude. All of us. You know, we were really tremendous. But [laughs] as regards you were saying what we thought about the RAF I thought that the RAF was officers and airmen. There was just that was it. You were either an officer or you were an airman and they didn’t mix. We mixed in the plane because we weren’t officer and airman. We were skipper and wireless operator if you understand. That’s how we had a fantastic feeling in the crew.
CB: And on the professional side you’re talking about then to what extent was there an interchangeability of skills in the aircraft? In other words could the bomb aimer fly the aeroplane?
RM: Yes. And the, the bomb aimer and the engineer could fly the plane. They were the only two that had lessons if you like.
CB: They’d had training on flying before.
RM: They could take over the flying.
CB: Right.
RM: The rest of us, we couldn’t because we were lower crew.
CB: And the navigator?
RM: He didn’t. No. Because his job was getting us there and getting us back which he was very, he was brilliant at. The way he’d ask me. I used to take positionals. Tell him where we was as regards from the RAF, from the radio I’d get a fix as to where we were and that would confirm where he was on his maps.
CB: Right.
RM: Yes. Well as regards to doing our job in the aircraft we were different if you understand what I mean.
CB: Completely different approach. Yeah.
RM: Yeah. You did.
CB: In your direction finding your position gaining position. What was the process of finding out the, making the fix? In other words this was —
RM: I used to phone a certain number and I’d press my key and they’d take a direction finding on me and then tell me where we were and then I’d tell the what’s the name. And then I had that job and I also later on I had, this is why they made signallers because of the —
CB: Monica.
RM: Monica.
CB: And H2S.
RM: Yeah. Yeah, and I had that as well.
CB: And did you operate the H2S or was that not used a lot?
RM: No. That was —
CB: The mapping radar effectively.
RM: Yeah. I told them that. I informed this, the navigator exactly where we were and what but yeah. I did.
CB: So when you said you phoned them up you would, how would you actually get the position because you’d normally have radio silence would you not?
RM: It was radio silence over the, over the bomb.
CB: Right.
RM: When we was, you had radio silence as soon as you reached the target.
CB: On the run in.
RM: That was it.
CB: The run in to the target.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But then again you see as soon as you come out the skipper had because he, he was a bugger. Straight down. I don’t know whether the others did. That was what they did. What we did. Straight down. And he’d be flying over rooftops more or less.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then the fighters couldn’t see you because they couldn’t make an attack.
CB: But you said on one occasion you had three attacks.
RM: Oh yeah. Oh yes. We did.
CB: How was, how did that help?
RM: That was coming back.
CB: Yes.
RM: Going back we had to be in the bomber stream.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And you’d have what fifty or sixty fighters come and attack the bomber stream because we was all going together. I mean we’d have planes what fifty, fifty feet each side.
CB: In the daylight.
RM: Yeah. In daylight. Well, we did —
CB: At night you had a bigger spacing wouldn’t you?
RM: Quite a few daylight ops.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. But when we went to Munich and Dresden and the oil refineries and when we bombed the German battlefleet we bombed them. We got, the skipper got a DFC I think for getting a direct hit on the Prince Eugen.
CB: Prinz Eugen. Prinz Eugen.
RM: In Gdynia harbour.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But as I say the crew was the crew. When you went in to that aircraft you were, I was the wireless operator.
CB: Right.
RM: If you can understand what [pause] when we came out it was different again because we didn’t mix.
CB: No.
RM: Because he’d go to the officer’s mess and I’d go to the sergeant’s mess. And I suppose we had the same reaction with the ground crew.
CB: So tell us about the ground crew. How did you liaise with them?
RM: We had a fantastic ground crew. We had the same ground crew for the whole of our tour and Nobby Smith he was the man in charge and he was just the job. He was really. He knew what we wanted and he made sure that everything was right. We never went in that aircraft, never without it wasn’t perfect.
CB: And who was the person or people who liaised with Nobby about after the flight and beforehand?
RM: Well —
CB: Would you all —
RM: Before. Before the flight.
CB: Yeah.
RM: You’d go in to a room and you’d be told exactly where you were going.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And everything. And then when you came back you went in and you was interviewed by the personnel.
CB: The intelligence officer.
RM: Telling you, you know what had happened. You know, whether anything had happened at that.
TCB: So each member of the crew would be debriefed.
RM: Oh yes.
CB: By the intelligence officer.
RM: By yeah. Their own individual officer.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But you were told en masse where you were going. But when you came back you just went to your section commander.
CB: So after the squadron briefing what did the individual crews do?
RM: Went their way. We went for a good piss up or [laughs]
CB: No. After the briefing, before take-off what was the procedure?
RM: Oh, straight to, straight to your aircraft.
CB: Right. But the —
RM: Oh yes.
CB: The navigator would have to draw in his information wouldn’t he?
RM: Well, we went to our own. We had the big briefing.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Telling us. They showed us where we were going.
CB: Yeah.
RM: What was, what was happening. Whether it was a squadron raid or whether it was a thousand bomber or a two fifty. I hated thousand bomber raids.
CB: Why?
RM: It was too dangerous.
CB: What? For collision?
RM: There were some real stupid buggers they used to come right up over us and touch the wing some of them. I suppose I was frightened really. But as I say coming back we went our own way [laughs] straight down and he weren’t with the cruise or anything. He weren’t with the stream. He was a good man.
CB: So you had the major briefing. Then you dispersed.
RM: Yeah.
CB: To your specialities.
RM: Yes, to your specials and then —
CB: From a signallers point of view what was the next briefing for you before going to the aircraft after the main briefing? Was it to do with radar?
RM: No.
CB: Signals or —
RM: No. No.
CB: What was your briefing before you went.
RM: No. No. We’d already had that in the afternoon.
CB: Right.
RM: Then we went to the briefing.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then we went to the aircraft.
CB: Ok. So this chap, Nobby Smith.
RM: Nobby Clark.
CB: Nobby Clark.
RM: I don’t know why all Clarks are Nobbies.
CB: Yeah.
RM: They are.
CB: So he, would he be receiving effectively handing over the aircraft to the captain or to the navigator, to the engineer or what?
RM: Well, we had a crew. I think [pause] I think there was four in our aircraft.
CB: Well, there were seven crew.
RM: We had the same. We went straight to the same place.
CB: You had four ground crew.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: We had about four or five ground crew and each one was, he’d come up and tell me. Especially when we went on the whatever you called it. Monica.
CB: Yes.
RM: He’d come in and just see whether it was operating.
CB: Whether it was working alright.
RM: Yeah. But no. Just walked in. Went in and took off. Come back. Went to bed and that was it. That was your life.
CB: Did the crew have any rituals before getting on board?
RM: No.
CB: Like watering the —
RM: No. No.
CB: Stinging nettles.
RM: No. Not really. We each one had a knife down there for protection which when you come to think of it is a load of crap really.
CB: Did you carry a firearm?
RM: We wouldn’t have been able to use it. We didn’t carry firearms. No.
CB: No.
RM: Then you, every so often you’d go for training. You’d go to these bloody great where every station had this what’s the name of water? What did you call them? For the firemen.
CB: Oh yes.
RM: You know.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And you’d go in there and jump in.
CB: This was your dinghy drill was it?
RM: Yeah. Dinghy drill. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. We’d do that.
CB: Then you had to dry it all out.
RM: Hey?
CB: Then you had to dry it out.
RM: No. No. No. No. No. No. It was there permanent.
CB: No, you [pause] for firefighters.
RM: For the firefighters.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah, but instead of going to the nearest park they always took us in there because they said the water in the ocean isn’t warmed [laughs] So we had to go in, do our saving kits, you know.
CB: Life saving yeah.
RM: Have a —
CB: The dinghy drill.
RM: Test as to how we were going on.
CB: So you come to the end of the tour.
RM: Yeah.
CB: How many ops had you done at the end of the tour?
RM: I think it was twenty nine or thirty one because I didn’t think we went when we was on OTU we went dropping leaflets in France and some people counted that as an op. I didn’t. So I would say I did twenty nine. A full tour.
CB: After you left the RAF or the squadron, the crew disbanded. To what extent did you get together afterwards?
RM: We didn’t.
CB: Ever?
RM: No. I [pause] I tell a lie. The bomb aimer, Bert Crann and I we went together for about three or four years contact with one another and we went on holiday to Brighton and the Isle of Wight together but he got married so, and I didn’t so I went to Ireland of course.
CB: Never looked —
RM: So that was that.
CB: Never looked back.
RM: No. No, I didn’t.
CB: So you’ve no idea what happened to Crawshaw after his huge expenditure of energy —
RM: Oh God, no. No.
CB: On women.
RM: He’s probably in jail [laughs] He had his own way of looking at life.
CB: Yeah.
RM: He if he wanted to do anything he did it. He says, ‘I might be dead tomorrow.’ But none of the other crew had that attitude curiously enough but he did.
CB: One other thing we touched on earlier to what extent were you aware of the LMF system? Lacking moral fibre.
RM: We had one or two. Especially when we got to the OTU with the, when we went on to Wellingtons. I don’t know. I wasn’t frightened. No. I was never frightened.
CB: No.
RM: No. Mind you lets get this to understand I haven’t a lot of personal feelings. If you understand what I mean.
CB: Sure.
RM: I’m odd altered to a certain extent and I was then.
CB: Resilient.
RM: It was probably that that taught me to be that way and my son is exactly the same. My daughter isn’t though. She takes after my wife. She can’t understand why I haven’t got feelings sort of business.
CB: So you said you knew one or two. These were in other crews are they you’re talking about?
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So what was the situation and what did they do about it?
RM: Well, you had a feeling. You knew that they were frightened so you tried to buoy them up you know. Say, ‘Oh you’re alright. We’re coming back. You’ve been there haven’t you? You’ve come back. So there you go.’ Yeah. And they’d say to me, they’d turn around and say, ‘But Jim didn’t.’ So that was their attitude. They had different attitudes. You could, you can’t say really. I found that with my crew. They were all like me. Hadn’t got an awful lot of feelings. I don’t know whether I’m saying this wrong or not. I have got feelings of course but I’m not as [pause] the same as a lot of others.
CB: No.
RM: I look at a thing basically.
CB: So all these other ones were any of them removed?
RM: Oh yes.
CB: As a result. They were —
RM: Oh yes. You couldn’t afford to have people like that and you knew. Or I, you know, you knew instinctively they’re never going to make this and you did know because they were frightened. They just [pause] I never thought I was going to get killed. I knew I was always coming back. A load of bullshit really but still that was it. But then again you got some that, that my brother was the same. He was taciturn. The same as me. I don’t know.
CB: We’ll just stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
RM: Right.
CB: Now we’re restarting.
RM: It was too heavy.
CB: Well —
RM: Too big. I was only five foot one.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Don’t forget. When I went in the RAF. That’s two inches lower than I am now. I’m five foot three.
CB: Right.
RM: So —
CB: You had a stretch.
RM: Yeah.
CB: We’re —
RM: What [laughs] did you say?
CB: We’re restarting because I had to change the batteries.
RM: Yeah. Ok.
CB: I’m not quite sure how far we’d got.
RM: Yeah.
CB: But if we could pick up on some of the things we talked about.
RM: Yeah.
CB: The first one is what rituals did the crew have before getting into the aircraft like the tail wheel.
RM: Not really. I used to pee on the wheel.
CB: Right. The tail wheel.
RM: What did the others do?
CB: I didn’t notice. They probably had their own idiosyncrasies.
RM: Yeah.
CB: But I didn’t notice them. The skipper. He wouldn’t. Everything had to be so with Willie. The only one thing is when he handed me the empty bloody bottle and I had to go down, walk down to the chute and drop, drop the empty bottle. So he’d drink the bottle whisky on a raid.
RM: Would he really?
CB: His own whisky.
CB: That he, yes, his distillery. This is the Irish skipper.
RM: Yeah.
CB: What age was he?
RM: Oh —
CB: Old meaning twenty five.
RM: Thirty.
CB: Thirty. Oh right.
RM: No. Don’t forget I was only eighteen.
CB: Yes. Had he been in the RAF —
RM: He had gone, no. Don’t forget he came from Southern Ireland.
CB: Yes.
RM: I don’t know how he got in the RAF I’m sure. But he came from Tullamore in Southern Ireland. I never did find out how he came to be —
CB: Well, there were a lot of Southern Irish people.
RM: A lot of Southern Irish. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: In the British forces and regiments that were —
RM: Yeah.
CB: Made up of Southern Irish people.
RM: He was taciturn.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Very quiet. Very.
CB: But professional.
RM: But professional. Oh, definitely professional. If he spoke to you he spoke to you as the skipper and you listened to what he said and you did what he said. I think probably that is why we were such a good crew because everybody was the same. If the, what’s the name was doing something that appertained to him so say the rear gunner was talking about what’s the name you listened to him. He was in charge and that’s, that’s how we were. And then of course when we get, ‘Have you seen your new air gunner?’ ‘No. Where is he?’ This little chap. He was about the same size as me. About five foot. He comes walking up the road. He’d got bloody —
CB: Pilot’s wings.
RM: Pilot’s wings on here. So that’s where we used to get a lot of fun out of saying this, ‘Oh, we’ve got a pilot both ends.’ Because if we want to go backwards he does it and they believed us. Believe it or not they believed us.
CB: Going back to the rituals.
RM: Yeah.
CB: People have done all sorts of different things and some would have a lucky charm.
RM: Oh yeah. They’d probably have their own rituals when they got to their areas but don’t forget you see they were up there.
CB: Up at the front you mean. Yeah. So the wireless operator —
RM: I was —
CB: Your position.
RM: I was about halfway down the boat.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Down the plane.
CB: Yes.
RM: In a little area with a what’s the name and two things there so I didn’t see what the majority of them were doing.
CB: No.
RM: I was similar to the rear gunner. The mid-upper gunner you know you’re isolated.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And all you have in contact is the headphones. The skipper was, ‘Righto, we’re ready.’ Or what’s the name or the navigator turning around, ‘Oh we’ve got, we’ve got to take a turn.’ So you knew that in the next minute the plane was going to turn right or left. So we did talk a lot on the, you weren’t supposed to really.
CB: On the intercom.
RM: No. But we did talk on the intercom.
CB: In the event of fighter attack then what would the pilot do?
RM: Well, the, all I did was just sit there because it was all to do with you kept quiet because you’d got the skipper talking to the rear gunner or the mid-upper gunner. He was in charge and that was it so I, and they did do a, ‘Corkscrew port. Go.’ And you know.
CB: So the corkscrew manoeuvre was —
RM: Yeah. Until later on when the Monica come on of course and I’d be telling. I’d be looking at the thing and telling the rear gunner —
CB: The screen.
RM: Where the opposing aircraft was coming. So that changed halfway through our tour really.
CB: And did they procedures change when it became clear that the German night fighter could lock on to Monica?
RM: Yeah.
CB: So what happened then?
RM: They still used it. And we, we had one what was called fish, fish —
CB: Fishpond.
RM: Fishpond. We had fishpond. That was it. A ruddy great thing on the bottom of that and that was to help the, I think it was to help the navigator because that sent signals down and told him where we were and that. But as I say all I was interested in was I did very little sending messages.
CB: What was your role? As the signaller what was your, what was the regular task you had to do?
RM: The majority was taking messages from headquarters. If they’d sent as I say all of a sudden there was a big load of fighters coming, they’d tell me and then I’d inform the skipper. That wasn’t until later on of course. Not, not in the early times because they hadn’t got that.
CB: And when you were going on an op to what extent did you feel you needed to psyche yourself up and what did you do?
RM: I didn’t do anything because as I say I was [pause] I hadn’t got a lot of emotion.
CB: No.
RM: If you understand what I mean?
CB: But did you talk to yourself?
RM: So [pause] No. I never talked to myself. No. I didn’t. No. I never did talk to myself. No.
CB: And as you walked to your position —
RM: No.
CB: Did you —
RM: I’d just go and when I got there just did the job that I was supposed to but I never did talk to myself.
No. You said you kicked the box on the way.
RM: Oh, you used to hit it.
CB: Hit it on the way —
RM: Yeah.
CB: To the seat.
RM: I don’t know why but as I was going up bang. And then you think to yourself what did I do that for?
CB: Yeah.
RM: You know. But it’s something I did.
CB: Now when you were on the raids. On the ops, and you’re closing on the target then the aircraft is being steadied straight and level for the last —
RM: Yeah.
CB: So how did that work and how did you feel about that?
RM: Well, I was here. That’s the window and there’s a window there.
CB: Next to you. Yeah.
RM: Yeah. And I looked out the window. I’d look out the window and see. I couldn’t see an awful lot [laughs] I could see the other planes. Especially when we were on a thousand bomber raid. You could see all these bloody planes and then you could see others being attacked. You could see that and think, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake don’t come over here,’ sort of business, you’d say to yourself. I don’t know really. As I say I wasn’t very emotional.
CB: But it’s slightly nerve wracking to have to do straight and level.
RM: The worst part was coming home. Especially when you’d been to Dresden. Not Dresden. Munich.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And you were coming back over the Alps and you felt very lonely then because it was such a long time. So you’d done your target. Everything’s gone smashing. Well, you couldn’t come down so much. So he’d have to go with the flow and, but when you was coming home it was so lonely. And I think that was when the loneliness turned around and that’s when I said I saw that chap walking by my window. But I swear to this day I saw a man walk past my window. I swore to it.
CB: Is he walking on air? Walking on the wing?
RM: Yeah.
CB: Or walking on the mountain?
RM: Just walking. Just walked past.
CB: Right.
RM: So it must have been imagination of course.
CB: Atmospherics.
RM: Yeah. I don’t know what it was.
CB: And thinking of atmospherics how did you deal with the temperatures? Because what is the temperatures at, you’re flying at what height?
RM: It was normally twenty five, thirty. Thirty thousand.
CB: And what was, what did it feel like in temperature?
RM: Well, you got your flying suit and everything so I was never cold. Never cold.
CB: What about the others? Did they feel the cold?
RM: I don’t know [laughs] I didn’t ask them.
CB: Were they —
RM: That was the thing that never, we knew what the temperature were. We knew. We knew we were cold.
CB: Well, it’s minus forty.
RM: It wasn’t something that we talked, curiously enough there was very little talking. Very little talking. The skipper and the mid-upper gunner talked more than anybody because he could see. He could see more because he could see all the way around so they had more talk. All I had was talk with the navigator telling him whether, if he wanted a fix from somewhere. Apart from that I didn’t have any communication with the others.
CB: Would you say you were quite busy on a flight?
RM: Coming back, no. Coming back it was bloody, it was boring. That’s why I say coming back it was boring. Going it wasn’t because you’d got, they attacked us more going. Although I tell a lie there because we got attacked on our aerodrome when we were landing three times and we got shot at. Shot at when we were landing.
CB: On the same occasion or different occasions you were shot at?
RM: Three different times.
CB: Yeah.
RM: We got shot at.
CB: And did they hit you?
RM: Didn’t hit me [laughs]
CB: No, did you get —
RM: I don’t know. They did. They did hit the wings and things like that but we didn’t get anything serious. As I said the only serious thing was when that bod, when we were going to Wessel he was testing his guns and our own air gunner and it just went straight across. That was the only time that I got really [pause] That was the nearest time any bombs came to me err bullets came near to me. We didn’t get hit. The plane didn’t get hit at all.
CB: It didn’t. Right.
No. No. The rear gunner got very near hit. It went to the side of him. But apart from that we never got hit. Somebody was looking after us.
CB: Yeah.
RM: No. We never got hit.
CB: So when you were returning from an op you come, you’re coming back and there are lots and lots of airfields. Literally hundreds of airfields. How did you find your own airfield?
RM: I was stationed at Fiskerton.
CB: In Lincolnshire.
RM: Which had FIDO.
CB: Right.
RM: So we knew. You see sometimes when you was coming back you’d be, we finished up in Scotland. You’d be diverted to land at Scotland because the weather conditions on your own aircraft weren’t, weren’t good. So we finished up at Lossiemouth and that’s the farthest you can get in Scotland and, but as I say when I was at Fiskerton we had this FIDO and you could see. When you was coming in you could see the flames at the side of you. You knew exactly where to be.
CB: This was the fog dispersal.
RM: Where you were landing.
CB: Yeah. But under normal circumstances how would you pick out your airfield as opposed to the others?
RM: I didn’t. He did [laughs]
CB: Ok. So how was that done?
RM: Well —
CB: Because there was a beacon flashing was there?
RM: I think there was. Yeah. Now, of course that was the pilot’s job.
CB: Yeah.
RM: He did that. He knew what he was doing.
CB: But —
RM: The navigator would tell him to go, to a certain extent where to go and I didn’t. I didn’t talk to the skipper about where we were. I talked to the navigator and the navigator talked to the pilot.
CB: But there was no radio signal coming out.
RM: No.
CB: For you to —
RM: No. No.
CB: Focus on. And what about the situations where some airfields had searchlights shining up?
RM: It didn’t make any difference.
CB: No. Did that, did that happen on, was that a —
RM: No. I don’t.
CB: At Fiskerton.
RM: No. We [pause] where did we have that? You remember me telling you that incident about the Queen Mary?
CB: Yeah.
RM: That’s the only time we were ever illuminated with searchlights and they definitely put it on the aircraft and they definitely shot up. They weren’t near us but, bloody get off. Away.
CB: Right. What would you say was the most memorable event in your experience in the RAF?
RM: Dresden.
CB: What was it about that that was, was it the next day or that actual day itself.
RM: The next day we went to Rositz.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Which was a hundred mile away.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But we could see the flames a hundred mile away and then we had to go very near and when I saw that Dresden you have never seen anything like it in your life. When people turn around and said there was what thirty thousand people killed in that one night and you think that you contributed to it. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve ever thought about actually is the fact [pause] none of the others meant anything but Dresden to me was a terrible terrible thing.
CB: Was, was that at the time or in retrospect?
RM: At the time. Even when we were bombing it because it was the first time that we said, ‘Drop your bombs on the town.’ So we knew what we were doing and we did. And coming back as we banked to go away I saw Dresden.
CB: Yeah.
RM: You’ve never seen anything like it. Flames was absolutely everywhere and I’m not talking about isolated incidents. The whole town was all on fire.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Oh, and the flames were terrific. There’s no describing it. Honestly. No describing it. It was the most awful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
CB: What was the best recollection you had of the Air Force?
RM: Looking under my hat and seeing the sergeant’s stripes and the S brevet. That was the best thing I ever had.
CB: Achievement.
RM: Oh yeah because I knew I’d done it, you see because I knew I was going to do it because I’d come top. So, but when you lifted it up and you saw the S brevet and the first, I thought what the hell is this S? What does that stand for? And we had to go and ask because we thought we were going to get an AG.
CB: Because it used to be a wireless operator/air gunner.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Which —
RM: We’d got, we’d got the thing there. The sparks.
CB: The brevet.
RM: That you put —
CB: Yeah.
RM: On your arm.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then you got your brevet with AG but what, what’s that S? So we told everybody it was the shithouse [laughs] because we didn’t know.
CB: No.
RM: We didn’t know that it was signaller. We always said, if it was anybody asked the S stand for? Steward. We always used to say it was steward. Not signaller. No. And then of course they became regular. Everybody had them but we were the first.
CB: You said early on about your inspiration to join the RAF or motivation was the loss of your brother.
RM: That was the reason.
CB: And —
RM: No. I went, when Reg went in the Air Force I joined the Cadets.
CB: The Air Training Corps.
RM: The Air Training Corps. That’s why I was, when I went in the RAF I could do thirty words a minute already.
CB: Right.
RM: That’s why I was always coming top because I’d studied it in the five years that I had from fourteen to eighteen. Four years at the Cadet Corps.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And so wherever I went I was competent if you understand what I mean. So I never had any thoughts that I was going to fail. I knew damned well that I was going to pass and I was going to get it.
CB: Right.
RM: The only other experience was we didn’t bomb, we were a specialist squadron and we didn’t bomb the Ruhr an awful lot but my brother died bombing the Ruhr. So the one time that we did bomb it I was able to say, ‘That’s for Reg.’ And that was the only other time that I thought like that. Thought like that. I’d done my bit. I’d bloody well dropped bombs on [pause] Now, of course, my son, my grandson’s married to a German and she didn’t know. She don’t know that I bombed Germany or anything like that because we don’t discuss it and of course she come through one of the places that I went to originally. Was that somebody knocking?
CB: No. We’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, let me just ask you the question.
RM: Yeah.
CB: We talked an awful lot about what you’ve been doing but what about people close to you? You didn’t meet your wife until after the war but to what extent did you ever discuss your experiences with your wife?
RM: I didn’t. I did not.
CB: And why was that?
RM: I don’t know. That was, it wasn’t part of my life with her. My life was [pause] was with Mary and my Mary was fantastic to me. We got married sixty three years and she’s, she’s fantastic. She was. She was really.
CB: Did she ever ask you?
RM: No. No. That’s, you see how can I put it? She was Irish and it was the Irish that was her life.
CB: Northern Irish.
RM: Northern Ireland. Yeah. So, the fact that I had been in the RAF, she knew I’d been in the RAF and she knew that I’d [pause] it didn’t mean anything to her that I’d done thirty ops. I went and joined the —
CB: RAF Association.
RM: RAF Association.
CB: Yes.
RM: At our local pub.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Which, well it isn’t local it’s up. And the things that I did with the what’s the name she would see to it that that was part of what I wanted and so it never, it never interfered. I could do what I liked with the RAF as long as the RAF was with me.
CB: Didn’t come home.
RM: You follow what, you understand what I mean.
CB: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
RM: Yeah.
CB: What about your boys? To what extent did they want to know?
RM: My younger boy, he died when he was eleven he was more interested than my eldest son. As I said my eldest son is like me. Very much like me if you understand what I mean.
CB: Stoic.
RM: Yeah. He’s more interested in his family and, you know the fact that I would bomb Germany in the war didn’t mean anything to him. He knew I was in the RAF. Yeah. Whereas my younger son they both went to High Pavement. They both went to High Pavement and he took it more if you understand what I mean but neither of them took it to an extreme. They knew that if they went to the RAF, ‘Oh he was in the RAF.’ And that’s it. I was in the RAF but what is this if different to that?
CB: What made, what made you join the RAF Association?
RM: Because I thought, with not discussing it with anybody else I simply thought I wouldn’t mind. And not only that but one of our next door neighbours was a rabid RAF Association and you know he was really RAF and he got me in to it sort of business. But no the, they never thought of anything like that. He’s in the RAF. He’s going to be RAF. Yeah.
CB: When you look back at your experience in the RAF how do you feel about it? Do you feel a sense of pride?
RM: Yes.
CB: Do you feel any —
RM: Yes.
CB: Reservation about your experiences?
RM: I thought it had to be done. As I said the only reservation I ever had was when I saw Dresden. I didn’t appreciate that. I knew that it had to be done. Well, I thought about it later on. In actual fact it didn’t ought to have been done because all it was doing was making the English get to Berlin before the Russians. That was my idea. And I think that’s what it was for. Because I didn’t think that it was necessary.
CB: Did you ever —
RM: Never thought it was necessary.
CB: Did you ever meet people in the RAF Association who’d been involved in the Hamburg raids?
RM: Never. Oh, I went to Hamburg, I think. Yes. I did one trip down to Hamburg I think. Because that’s the time I said, ‘That’s for my brother.’
CB: Right.
RM: When I went to Hamburg because that was in the Ruhr, wasn’t it?
CB: Well, it’s outside the Ruhr but it’s North Germany.
RM: Yeah. No. As I say Dresden altered my opinion I think. That it was not entirely [pause] Not until a long time after that when I was, people started talking about Dresden and the implications of what happened then. About, I think it was about twenty or thirty year ago weren’t it? Dresden suddenly came into being didn’t it? I hadn’t thought the implications of it as to why it was done and that and now I realise that that’s what it was about. That it was to stop, to get to Berlin before the Russians did. And that’s my opinion. That’s why it was done.
CB: It seems curious in a way that the RAF and Britain take the flak as it were and the emotional flak for Dresden.
RM: Yes.
CB: When the RAF did the first, the night bomb then the Americans did the day bomb.
RM: That’s right. They followed.
CB: The Americans never get any adverse comment.
RM: No.
CB: Why do you think that is?
RM: They don’t do they.
CB: Why do you think that is?
RM: I think the reason is that there was so much damage done on the first raids that when the Americans did all they were doing was just adding to it. Do you follow what I mean? Because if you’d have seen when I looked out that window and saw Dresden it makes me shudder now. True. I can see it now. And then to go the next night to Rositz which is only about a hundred miles away from it and to realise that the flames that I kept seeing was Dresden. And I thought oh God. That’s awful.
CB: Well, because the RAF bombed the second night as well.
RM: But that’s it. Apart from that my life in the RAF was brilliant. It was the four and a half years the best part of my life.
CB: And you —
RM: Apart from the sixty four years that I had with my wife.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Or sixty three years I had with her.
CB: Yeah. So Ron Mather thank you very much for a really fascinating conversation.
RM: Well, I hope I’ve satisfied your—
CB: It’s really good.
RM: What’s the name? Your memory sometimes goes and you can’t think of it.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Taking everything in the what’s the name I thought my life in the RAF was absolutely fantastic. It was really. I couldn’t half get [laughs] some women.
CB: But even on a serious note you gave a payback for your brother.
RM: Yes. Yes. I went to, very near the same place and yes, I think that it was it was a good thing. It was a good life.
CB: Thank you.
[recording paused]
RM: It was my attitude I think. I think it was enjoy yourself. I enjoyed myself. I never got serious with a girl though until I was thirty. Until I got married. But I was never seriously attached to a girl. I went out with many but they were, I’ve got here sort of business. No. I wasn’t, it wasn’t like that but you could pull women with a, if you were in the RAF and in Nottingham.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Because there were so many. You went to the Palais de Danse and three quarters of the people at the Palais de Danse were airmen. All the rest were women. So I mean it didn’t help matters the fact that you were but it did help if you’d got sergeant’s stripes and a brevet [laughs]
CB: Yes. The ground crew weren’t so keen on that particular aspect of —
RM: Yeah [laughs]
CB: Service life [laughs]
RM: I’ll tell you something. I used to go, we used to go when, when I was stationed at Syerston I’d come home regularly of course and we’d go at 8 o’clock or 7 o’clock on a Saturday morning at Trent Bridge thumbing a lift and I’m talking about twenty or thirty people. All RAF men thumbing a lift to get back to camp. And we got plenty of lifts.
CB: Did you?
RM: People stopped.
CB: Yeah.
RM: They did.
CB: Lorries as well? Trucks?
RM: Lorries. Everything. They all stopped because well the RAF were good weren’t they? Conceited [unclear] aren’t I?
CB: We’ve met your type before.
RM: I know. I know. Mind you I will say I have never used my RAF career to help me in any way. I hadn’t thought it was necessary. I’ve got a skill. I was a baker and one of the best in Nottingham as it happens. And I was a manager so I was happy enough.
CB: On the flip side of that though after the war did you ever get an adverse reaction to the fact that you had been flying in Bomber Command?
RM: Not really. No. No. I’ve never mentioned it you see. I mentioned it to his, people like his dad and him.
CB: Darren, yes.
RM: But I wouldn’t, I never mentioned it to anybody else.
CB: No.
RM: That was just something I’d done.
CB: Yeah. A long time ago.
RM: A long time ago. I was just thinking I didn’t go into the RAF until I was eighteen/nineteen in the last year of the war so anybody that’s bombed during the war has got to be ninety three. So there isn’t many of them is there? Although people are living a lot longer now, aren’t they?
CB: I’ve interviewed —
RM: I think so.
CB: I’ve interviewed four people aged one hundred.
RM: Yeah. I’m not surprised.
CB: You keep going Ron.
RM: You have to be a hundred to be in the war at the beginning wouldn’t you?
CB: Absolutely.
RM: Yes. They would. And that’s what I was thinking the other day and I was thinking when we went to, where was it we went down south?
CB: Duxford. Flying legends.
RM: The only people in the RAF suits was the soldiers and me. So and I thought to myself there can’t be many of us left then.
CB: No. No.
RM: Yeah. No. I never talked to my wife about it at all.
CB: You didn’t feel the urge to do so?
RM: With her being not only that but with her being Northern Irish and we’d go to Northern Ireland and we’d get trouble there. When I first went to, when I first went there we landed at Belfast and a chap with a rifle had a look at my luggage. So that’s how the situation was at that time there. And also, the fact that the two people Catholic and the Protestant were so different to one another. I mean nowadays when you go it’s as different again. You don’t notice. I know it’s started up again hasn’t it but up to when I went about four years ago it was, it was lovely. Religion meant nothing or anything. It’s just got a bit nasty just lately I notice.
CB: Well, let’s have a look at your pictures and things.
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 Ronald Mather
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
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
2017-12-29
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
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Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMatherR171229
Format
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01:58:30 audio recording
Language
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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
Description
An account of the resource
Upon leaving school, Ronald was employed first as a pawnbrokers assistant, followed by butchers assistant. In 1943, upon reaching the age of 18 he followed his brothers footsteps and enlisted in the Royal Air Force. After initial training, he attended radio school at RAF Yatesbury where he was taught Morse code and the 1154/1155 radio. Flying training was carried out in a Proctor aircraft operating from RAF Bishops Court in Northern Ireland. On one occasion, flying over the Irish Sea, they were shot at from the Queen Mary. Following qualification, further experience was gained at RAF Husbands Bosworth on Ansons, at RAF Winthorpe on Stirlings, before completing his training at No. 5 Lancaster Finishing School, RAF Syerston on Lancasters. Posted to 49 Squadron, Ronald operated from RAF Fiskerton, RAF Fulbeck and finally RAF Syerston, completing his tour of 30 operations just before the end of the war. He describes the concern he used to feel on the 1000 bomber operations because of the closeness of surrounding aircraft. On one occasion a nearby gunner accidentally strafed his aircraft when carrying out a gun test, the bullets passing inches above his head. He recalls one experience when atmospherics of flying over the Alps affected him to the extent he firmly believed that the figure of a person walked past the outside of his window. Having taken part in the Dresden bombing, he describes how he felt and also witnessing the flames from Dresden still being visible the night following when they were on a operation some 100 miles away. Following the completion of his tour, Ronald was posted to an airfield near Stratford Upon Avon as station warrant officer where German prisoners of war were being billeted. He was finally demobbed in December 1945.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Germany
Germany--Dresden
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Irish Sea
Poland
Poland--Gdynia
Italy
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-04-05
1945-12
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
49 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
perception of bombing war
Proctor
radar
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Fulbeck
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Syerston
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
superstition
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1029/11401/AMearsCE170921.2.mp3
edf2f184d73bf03b40c1c7f7b746d032
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
Mears, Charles
Charles E Mears
C E Mears
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Charles Mears DFC (1923 - 2017). He flew operations as a pilot with 218 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
2017-09-21
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
Mears, CE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Alistair Montgomery, Monty, and the interviewee is Flight Lieutenant Charles Mears, Distinguished Flying Cross. The interview is taking place at Charlie’s home in West Kilbride and his son in law, Jim Ferguson is present. Charles, good afternoon. Tell me a little bit about your family background and where you lived.
CM: Yeah.
AM: Prior to joining the Royal Air Force.
CM: Yes. Well, I was born in Manchester. My parents had an off licence and grocers in a place called Hulme. H U L M E.
AM: Right.
CM: And I I was born on the 9th of December 1923. And my father was a Scot. He was born in Edinburgh but emigrated to Canada. And he joined the, during the First World War he joined the Canadian Army with his brother George and they were both in France and they met my mother’s brother in France. And my mother’s brother invited them over to their home in England and at that time they were in Manchester because my grandfather was a tunneller and he built the first, well he didn’t personally but he was the foreman ganger on the first tunnel under the Clyde. And they’d moved to Manchester because in the Victorian era they were building all the sewers in, in Manchester. And my Uncle Jack, which is my father’s brother he was also a tunneller and in fact I think they were in the tunnelling company in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. And they obviously, that’s where my father met my mother in England and that’s why I’m here. And we lived there. I went to school at Princess Road School which was just famous for, for footballers really. And then the war broke out in in 1939. Oh, I wanted to go in the Royal Air Force and I wasn’t, my schooling wasn’t, it was only an elementary school so that I needed, I needed to have experience in English, maths and science. So I went to night school as we called it, evening school if you like, for three years with a view to going in to the Royal Air Force as an aircraft apprentice at Halton. But of course the war broke out in 1939 and me and my pal, which was a Welsh boy were determined to, to join something. And we first of all went to join the Navy and I didn’t know much about it and I said to John, my friend, ‘Well, what do I do? What do I say we go in as the Navy?’ He said, ‘Well tell them you want to be an artificer’s mate.’ I said, ‘What the hell is that?’ So he said, ‘Well, I don’t know but tell them you want to be.’ So, anyway we joined up and they gave us a form for my father to fill in because I was fifteen when the war broke out. Anyway, cutting a long story short my father threw it in the fire and said, ‘You’re not joining the Navy.’ I think because he’d been in the Army in the First World War and told me stories where he never had his boots off for three months and horrible things about the war. Anyway, we then said, John my pal, said, ‘Well, we’ve got to join something.’ So we’ll join the, we’ll join the LDV which it was then. The Local Defence Volunteers. That was before the, before the Home Guard. And he said that, ‘But they’ll ask you. You’ll have to have some experience of shooting.’ So, he said, ‘Tell them you’ve, you’ve experience of rabbit shooting,’ he said, ‘Because I used to shoot.’ He came from Wales and he said, ‘I’ve done a bit of rabbit shooting.’ So we went to this place and I said, when they asked me I said, ‘Well, rabbit shooting.’ So, they said, ‘Well, where are the bloody rabbits in Hulme?’ And so we got kicked out of that. So we said, ‘Well, we’ll join the Army. We’ll join the cadets.’ So there was a place called Hardwick Green Barracks in, in Manchester. So we, we went there and there was a big door and a little door going in to the big door. And I opened this little door and there was a line-up of lads with just a cap on, with a peak cap, all with one rifle stood in a line and must have been a sergeant or somebody shouting all sorts of things at them. So I closed the door and I said to John, ‘We’re not doing that. I don’t like the look of that at all.’ So he said, ‘Well we’ve got to join something.’ He said, ‘The only thing left is the Air Force.’ So he said, ‘But the Air Force don’t have a cadet force.’ The Army did and the Navy did but the Air Force didn’t. So he said, ‘But they’ve got what they called the ADCC,’ which was the Air Defence Cadet Corps. So he said, ‘We can join that.’ He said, ‘The only trouble is you have to buy your own uniform.’ he said, ‘And it’s, it’s five pounds.’ Or four pounds fifty. I forget now which. Well, that was equivalent to a man’s wage in those days because where I was working, ‘cause I started work at fourteen that was in fact I remember them taking a guy out to a for a drink who’d just managed to be awarded five pounds a week. So anyway, surprise surprise my father said, ‘Well, that’s alright. I’ll pay for it.’ So we bought this uniform and I joined the ADCC. Well, that in in due course became 1941 ATC Squadron. That was, as far as I know the first ATC squadron there was. And during that time the, the three officers used to come periodically and interview people to go in for the forces. To go in the Air Force. Well, you could be, you could be called up at, at eighteen then. That means conscripted when you were eighteen. But you could, you couldn’t be, you couldn’t be conscripted into aircrew. You had to be a volunteer. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about this. I knew you had to be conscripted because my brother was three years older than me and he’d been conscripted in to the army. So these people, I used to be, I used to march the cadets in to see the officers for this selection board and they said why aren’t, have you, ‘We haven’t seen you sergeant.’ I was a sergeant then in the ATC. So I said, ‘Well, I’m not old enough, sir.’ They said, ‘Well, we’ll do it now anyway.’ Anyway, they interviewed me and then about, it must have been a few weeks afterwards surprise surprise I got papers, a travel warrant to go up to Cardigan. So I went up to Cardigan and went through various tests. And then I was taken into a room and swore my allegiance to King and country. That was in October ’41 and I was in the Air Force. So, so they couldn’t call you up until you were eighteen and a quarter so, so I was duly called up and went to ACRC Air Crew Receiving Centre in London. And from there you did a few, you did various things. Got your uniform and what have you. But we went to, we were ACRC in, for us, for me was at Lord’s Cricket Ground and they, the first of all you went into the place and, and they said, they asked you where you, what’s your name and address and what school did you go to and what newspapers did you read. And I made what I later realised in later life a mistake because I said, which was true Princess Road Elementary School. Well, that wasn’t the answer really that I should have given. I should have said a High School or something. And they, they sort of sized your gas mask that you’d kept very religiously all, well from being fifteen from the time war broke out until 1941 you’d sort of treasured this thing and guarded it with your life. It was taken off you and thrown into a heap. This was, oh I don’t know, a mile high of all gas masks. And then a guy weighed you up for a uniform and he seemed to be able to just look at you and weigh up what, what you required by just a glance and he gave you this uniform and underwear and the rest of your kit and off you went. And we were put into, which are now we know are quite expensive flats in St John’s Wood. And you had little few exams and if you passed them alright you went to ITW. Yes. Initial Training Wing. And if you didn’t you went to Brighton for more maths instructions. And funnily enough I wasn’t. We’d never done algebra or those things at school so, and one of the things we were asked was transposition of formula which is what it was called. So I said to a colleague I’d joined up with, Bernard Hall, I said, and he was a university boy from Hawarden. Hawarden, I think you pronounce it. In Cheshire. And he said, ‘Don’t worry, Chesa. I’ll show you what to do.’ So he showed me and anyway, I must have passed. But strangely enough he mustn’t have passed because he was sent to Brighton for extra maths and I went to ITW at Cambridge at what was then New Clare College.
AM: Right.
CM: And then, then from there we did twelve weeks at ITW and then I was posted to Manchester to, like a big holding centre where they put all the people waiting for, for movement. Funnily enough it was a place that my, my father in law had been, it transpired later on, had been to in the First World War. Anyway, I was there for I think about a couple of months at which time I was billeted out. Lived at home at the off licence and grocers I told you about. And then one day we were told would you, asked, ‘Would you like to go to Communion because we’re going, possibly going overseas?’ So I said, ‘Yes. I would,’ because I’d always been brought up to, to go to church. I went to Communion and then we were marched to the railway station at Heaton Park and we were put on the train up to eventually ended up at Gourock in, well not very far from where you live. And we were put off the train in to I think it was called a lighter and I don’t know how we, we obviously arrived at the side of this huge piece of steel it looked with just a big hole in it. And we got off in to it and went up this beautiful staircase. And later on because of a plaque that was on the wall we found out that it was the Queen Mary and apparently the, we were on the way to going to America. And on its trip before this one we went on it had cut through a destroyer and the bow was all stove in and filled with concrete. And anyway we sailed. I think it took about three or four days and the weather was very rough. We went well north because the Queen Mary didn’t have a, it was considered too fast for the U- boats so we didn’t have any escort at all and we ended up in, in Boston Harbour. And then we got off at Boston and were put on the train and went up to Moncton in Canada which is in New Brunswick. And I just wondered how far it was from Montreal because I thought perhaps I could visit some of my relatives if I knew where they were. Anyway, we were in Moncton for only possibly a couple of months I think ‘til November because I think because we were in, we were in an Armistice Day Parade in Moncton. And then we, we got on a train in Moncton and then —
AM: So what were you doing in Moncton? Were you doing any more training?
CM: No. I didn’t do anything.
AM: Right.
CM: We just did a bit of marching and that was it. And I know a fellow used to come around who was a bit of, he used to come in the morning and shout out, “Hands off cocks and put on socks, any sick laymen’s lazy,’ and then you reported sick. I remember that. And we put on this train in Moncton and we were apparently going down to Florida for, to join 5 BFTS, British Flying Training School. And I think navigators went to, to Rivers in Manitoba but we were on this. And we went down through New York first and we were got off the train in New York and we were invited and taken to the Stage Door Canteen which was a famous place where apparently all the troops went. And the main, main artist on at the Stage Door Canteen was Larry Adler at that time. The well-known harmonica player. And a lady took my name and address at the door and said, ‘We’ll send a card. We’ll send a card to your mother and let her know how you are.’ Well, later on. Many, many years later my sister I have a well I had a brother and I still have a sister but she’s thirteen years younger than me. My brother was well was three years older than me. He’s dead now. Been dead some time. And my mother had the, still had the card from that they’d sent. And it was a Jewish lady who’d sent it and said, “We’ve seen your son and he’s alright,” and that. That was the first word she’d had of me. So she was very pleased to get that.
AM: Oh aye.
CM: Yeah. So then we never got off the train after that. We went down through, through Georgia and I marvelled at the, I mean America was so vast and we were miles and miles of peanut stacks in Georgia and things. The first stop we came to in Florida was a place called Sebring, which I believe was where the five hundred miles road races are or something. Sebring. And they greeted us with a silver band and two big sacks of oranges. And we hadn’t seen oranges or anything, you know for a long time. So that was nice. And then we arrived at Clewiston which is right at the bottom of Lake Okeechobee which is the big lake in, not very far. And went up to, we went to, came to our camp and we couldn’t believe our eyes when we arrived there and saw this big swimming pool and all the billets were all like little apartments were around the swimming pool. And I was, we were put in, apparently it was Course 12 and it was the first course that had Americans with us. Apparently the, we heard that the Americans had decided that our navigation was probably superior to theirs so they trained, because they’d all trained with us they were Army or Air Force armaments instructors but the American instructors and your ground duties were American. The Meteorological fella was a fella from New York who used to talk about the turning and turning of the, of the clouds for the, in the cumulus and cumulo nimbus. And they were, most of the Americans were already or some of them, there were seven. The course was a hundred. A hundred people total and seventeen were Americans and eighty three of us were British boys. So they, and they’d come from, from some sort of university to, to 5 BFTS because they used to talk about, they had lots of sayings which when you’ve seen American fellas on the television they’re marching left right and singing their songs and this but they said, superiors used to say to them, ‘Stand to attention. How many wrinkles have you got under your chin?’ And when you were on the tables for your lunch they’d say, ‘Pass the salt and don’t short stop it.’ They meant you couldn’t, if you were a junior then you couldn’t stop the salt being passed down. It had to go from one to the other so, so they had what they called a, they appointed one cadet from, from, from the British side and one from the American side to be what they classed as a senior under officer and he was like the commandant of you, and any complaints and so on he was the one who had to direct it to the authorities. And they called it the honour system. And they used to say, well the Americans have got the honour and the, and the British have got the system because we didn’t take any notice much of things that were going on. And I had four, well not I, we had four Americans in our billet and they astounded us at first because they all had different smelly stuff, you know. Sprays and stuff. Well, we didn’t have any of that. We had, we used to perhaps a bar of carbolic soap or something. But they had all squeeze under your arm and whatever. Anyway, we were chatting around and they said, the two boys I was with were a fella called Harold Wilkin and Jack Hough. And Jack Hough was an elderly bloke. He was married. Well, elderly to me because I was eighteen. I don’t know, he was twenty something. And Harry used to, I found the, some of the ground subjects quite difficult because I hadn’t been that well educated and Jack used to, I had the top bunk and he had the bunk underneath me and he didn’t seem to do any studying. He said, ‘You do all the studying. I’ll be alright.’ And then he’d, he’d try and copy off me if he could. So, but it was, it was unbelievable to have this beautiful swimming pool. Anyway, we were there until, and I, they said, the boys said, ‘Well, the first thing to do is Palm Beach can’t be far away.’ Well, Palm Beach to me the words were just something you heard on, on the films as we called it, you know. Or the pictures. But they said, ‘Well, so we’ll hitch a ride to Palm Beach.’ Well, we, we did one weekend. When the first weekend came up we, we thought we’ll hitch a ride. Well, it turned out to be ninety miles to Palm Beach. And so we saw a truck coming by and it had all melons on the back and there was a couple of what we used to then say coloured fellas driving it and we, we gave them the thumbs as you did when you were hitching and got on the back of this wagon. And we eventually got to Palm Beach. What we thought was Palm Beach. But we were expecting to see the water and the beach but there wasn’t. There was just this strip of water and nothing. Well, apparently that is a place. The water at, is not Palm Beach when you’re there. Its West Palm Beach. Palm Beach is across the strip of water which they called Lake Worth. It isn’t a lake but it’s a strip of water and a bridge over to, to the other side which is Palm Beach proper. The proper beach. So, anyway we, we asked somebody at, the Americans have a thing called the PX which is the equivalent of like our YMCA. So we went into this PX and asked them and they said, ‘No. Well, if you want Palm Beach you’ll have to go across the, across the Lake Worth.’ So we stayed. We said, ‘Well, where can we stay?’ They said, ‘Well, there’s a nice little inn just, just around the corner.’ So we stayed there the night and the next morning we went across this bridge and we noticed like black men peddling these like big bassinette affairs, carrying a couple of white people over the bridge. Apparently this is how they, they travelled around. And we got to the end of the road and it was a road called Coronation Road and we went down to the bottom. There was a little picket fence. And then we saw this lovely beach and then the ocean. So we climbed over and we settled ourselves on the beach and lo and behold there were there were which I now know were coconut trees on and some coconuts husks. Well, I now know they were coconuts husks on the, on the ground and these trees. So I said, ‘Oh, look at those.’ They said, ‘Yes. We’ll bag those up.’ And so I said, ‘What are they?’ He said, ‘They’re coconuts.’ So I said, ‘Coconuts?’ Well, the only coconuts I’d seen were the ones that are on a coconut shy. So they said, ‘Oh no. That’s the coconut’s inside those. We’ll show you what to do.’ And they broke open this thing so I learned now the coconut was inside the shell. I didn’t know that. So we settled down there and had a swim and then suddenly a black fella arrived out of the, and came along the beach and said, ‘I’m afraid you can’t stay here. You’re on private land.’ So I said, ‘Private land?’ He said, ‘Yes. This belongs to, to Waikiki,’ which was, he said, ‘But I’ll have a word with the mistress and see what she says.’ So anyway, this lady came down and her name eventually we found out was Mrs Nesmith. N E S M I T H. And she said, ‘Oh, where are you?’ And we explained and of course she knew nothing about the British boys at 5 BFTS or anything else. So she said, ‘Oh, come up,’ and she said, ‘You can change in our, in our bath house here,’ she said, ‘And then come in.’ So we chatted to her and she said, ‘What are you going to do?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ll get, hitch, hitch a ride back.’ She said, ‘Well, no. You can stay the night’. She said, ‘We can fix you up alright,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you some of Isla’s pyjamas.’ Well, Isla must have, well is her husband and apparently he had been a banker but there were a lot of private banks prior to the big crash of whenever it was. And a lot of these little banks had all gone bust so they’d, they’d taken to be estate agents and they had this big, big house called Waikiki and they said, ‘You can stay here,’ and she gave me this thing. Nice pyjamas. And she said, ‘Well, if you get a chance you can come here anytime and just, just help yourself.’ So anyway, cutting a long story this lady befriended and treated me almost like my mother. She was elderly and I was, well seemed elderly she was probably fiftyish and I was, I mean I was only eighteen so she really treated me very well. And she eventually she actually set up a Cadet Club at Clewiston and she also arranged, she said, ‘Well, I want to arrange for you to meet some, some girls and some of the wealthy people of Palm Beach.’ Well, I thought well if you’re not wealthy I don’t know what is because they each had a car. She had an Oldsmobile and he had a Plymouth and they had this lovely place. Well, that actually that was one of their letting places. That wasn’t their, their home. Their home was at I think 206 Pendleton Avenue if I remember rightly. And eventually me, Harold Wilkin and Jack Hough were the first people she’d ever befriended and as I say she, she eventually set up a Cadet Club in Clewiston and she also befriended over two thousand RAF boys. And she was awarded the, I think I’ve put it in the papers there. I think it was the King’s, the Kings Medal for, not for bravery. For something. And she was given it as an honour on a battleship in, in Miami. But she were a fantastic lady and, and she actually after, after that part of the war she still corresponded with me and my parents and, well mostly my mother and my little sister and sent us all sorts of, I think the first Christmas cake we’d had, and was a really wonderful lady. But funnily enough we, we didn’t want to chance hitchhiking back because we had to be in camp by 23.59 you know. Like a minute to midnight on such and such a day. So we decided to go on the bus. And they said, ‘Well, you can get a bus straight to Clewiston from here.’ This is, this is where, she showed us where the bus stop was and we were standing there and some black people came and stood behind us. And apparently, we found that the black people couldn’t get on the bus until all the whites were on and they couldn’t sit with you. They had to stand or they could sit on a seat with them but they couldn’t sit. And there was a pregnant lady who stood by the side of me and I, I got up and said, ‘Sit down.’ So she said, ‘No. I can’t.’ I said, ‘Just sit down.’ And anyway, apparently, I didn’t know but apparently when I don’t know who did it, whether it was somebody on the bus or one of the driver or what but I was hauled before the coals the following day and said, ‘You’re a guest of the American nation at the moment and irrespective of whatever your feelings are you will obey what they do.’ So I said, ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ He said, ‘They’re just not allowed to be with you.’ And when you went to a cinema they went in one part of the cinema, the coloured people as I call them, I apologise if I’m using the wrong expression but to be honest I’m at a stage where I don’t know really. It’s a different world to me. I don’t mean any disrespect to, to any nation but I just, just instinct with me. So it was, I mean in those days apparently there was, was just complete segregation. They weren’t allowed to. The black or coloured or whatever you call them people were not allowed to mix with you. And even when if you were fishing anywhere, they and you actually, I remember catching some, I think it was cat fish or something and I asked the fella who was showing me the fishing, I said, ‘Can you eat these?’ And he said, ‘Niggers do.’ Well, I mean it’s just a completely different world altogether, but in 1942 that seemed to be the way things were but anyway —
AM: What was the, what was the flying like at Clewiston?
CM: The flying?
AM: The flying.
CM: Well, the flying was strange because we were, we were in Stearmans which were open cockpits, twin wing aircraft and, and it was on a grass airfield and at night when we were doing night flying you had to wear snake boots because there were, there were rattlesnakes in the grass. And in fact Milton Steuer, one of the American boys who who had come to join us he was like a famous literary person because he could, he wrote like a brochure afterwards of, of our course, Course 12 called, “Listening Out.” And he, he had a, he had a what I then learned afterwards he had a prize Harley Davidson motorbike. Absolutely beautiful thing. Most of the boys. The American boys all had, some had their wives with them and some had their motorcars and everything. And they, they had the uniforms made weeks and weeks before the graduation. They were all commissioned. And beautiful material. You know, pink trousers and olive green tops. Really lovely stuff. And they, so he shot one of these rattlesnakes and we had, he skinned it and we used to have the skin on the, on the barrack room wall. And Mrs Nesmith arranged for us to go on a deep sea fishing trip with one of the guests of one of her houses and we, we were fortunate. It was a beautiful yacht where there were two seats at the back where you sat with these big rods doing the fishing. And we caught what we called, it was a sailfish but it’s like a swordfish and it had a bill that was about, well the whole thing, the whole, I don’t know whether Jim sent you a picture of it and it was on and it was over seven foot long.
Other: A Marlin.
CM: Yeah. Well, we call it a sailfish. And it had, it had this bill and they used to put the bill on the wall of the billet as well. And you flew a pennant if you’d caught one of these. And this fella whose yacht we were on said, ‘Damn me,’ he said, ‘I’ve been fishing twenty years and I’ve never caught one of these,’ and he said, ‘Here you are your first trip and you catch one.’ So that was, that was a thing I remember. So then when, when you graduated oh well you did your Wings exam as they called it. That was your final examination and I didn’t know whether I’d done any good or not because I studied like hell but I was at a disadvantage from the beginning because some of the boys, one boy in particular used to, well when he went to the examination he had three different bottles of ink and used different colours to write the answers in. And I think he became top of I don’t know how many people but I had a trouble with, with meteorology at first. I couldn’t. I mean like if I’d had, and I had the misfortune to have one of these strange minds who made fun of everything and like Buys Ballot’s Law. I learned that and it’s like stand with your back to the wind and low pressure’s on your left hand. Well, I, I joked with this so often I actually put in in the answer in the first one. I put, “Stand with your back to the wind and the wind’s behind you.” And the Met Officer, Harold C Cowleyshaw his name was. A real New Yorker. And he said, ‘I suppose you think that’s funny.’ So I said, ‘Well, I didn’t,’ I said, ‘It’s like Newton’s law of motion.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘A body is at rest and it continues at rest until it moves.’ So he said, ‘Oh, get off.’ So, but these things happen and you make these mistakes. But I was, Mrs Nesmith had said, ‘Well, you boys can come to, to me at Christmas,’ she said, ‘But one of you will have to do the cooking,’ she said, ‘Because Ida,’ that was her servant, who was a a black servant, ‘Goes to Canada in, in the summer because, and normally I go,’ she said, ‘Because it’s too hot in Florida. And also the termites come and they have to treat them. Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m not going.’ So, she said, ‘One of you will have to. Not you son.’ She wouldn’t let me do a thing. So I must have been looking miserable. She said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m sweating on, on my exams.’ She said, ‘Oh, I’m not having that,’ and picked up the phone and phoned the station and asked for the CO and wants to know how I’ve done. So she came back and said, ‘Nothing to worry about. You’re fifty fourth.’ So I said, ‘Well, that’s better than being a hundred.’ [laughs] So, so that was alright. But, but she was a lovely lady and that’s my, my highlight of being with 5 BFTS. Well, then I, we trained up and I got bitten by a horsefly on the leg the day of the passing out parade when you got your wings and I had to go into a hospital and so I missed the graduation dinner. And then when we got on the train they arranged for an orderly to come on at every halt to come and drain my leg from this horsefly bite which was quite, quite a nasty thing. And we trained up back to Moncton and then we were on the Louis Pasteur which was one of the ships that were plying backwards and forwards to, to England. And we came, came into Liverpool and I was posted up to Fraserburgh for a conversion on to twin engine aircraft because what had happened is the Battle of Britain had finished. And therefore although we’d actually trained and learned all the fighter manoeuvres in fact two of our boys were killed on simulation of tight turns for fighters, and there was a few accidents of boys getting in to a stall because you had to be tighter and tighter and tighter. So they said. And you did it with fighter affiliation you do, you call the exercises. And they all, they nearly all the boys are buried at a place called Arcadia and the people of Arcadia where they, we went to a few of the funerals of the lads who were killed and the people of Arcadia looked after their graves ever since, and they’ve done a fantastic job. And 5 BFTS have sent them paintings of, of the Stearman and the Harvard together as an acknowledgement of the help they’ve given us. And the 5 BFTS was, Association was formed and it went on for well it only finished not last year it would be the year before. We had a letter we no longer had to give subscriptions. He said they’ll still, they’ll use the money sending out the, the yearly bulletin until the money run out and then the last one out was [unclear] That was it because they, I mean I’m, I’ll be ninety four in December so nearly all of them are no longer with us. But yeah. It was. So I was posted to Fraserburgh. Which was a shock because I’d never been to Scotland. Only once. Although my father was a Scot. My mum and dad with them having the shop never had a holiday together and he brought me up in 1934 to Glasgow to the Empire Exhibition which was in 1934 at Bellahouston Park. And that’s the only time I’d been to Scotland. He went to see two friends. One was in Cathcart I think and, where my father had lived. And the other one was in what I first of all said Milngavie but he soon corrected me and said Milngavie see. So, but Fraserburgh when we came up in ’43 they had to feed us by air. It was, the winter was that bad. And, and the dances which I thought we would be going to an ordinary dance there you didn’t get a ticket you put your arm through and they stamped it, “Paid,” with a, with a indelible stamp on. And every, every dance was a Eightsome Reel. And I could neither dance, I couldn’t, well I could dance. I couldn’t dance the Eightsome Reel. And I couldn’t understand a word the girls were saying. And in fact, this morning I was singing they’ve, they’ve got a song which everybody knew but me and they said at the end, ‘Well, what song would you like to have now?’ So I said, ‘Well, any song you like as long [laughs] as long as it’s in bloody English.’ Anyway, that’s by the way because the only songs I’ve got are, are Scottish songs were ones my father told me but they were either by Will Fyffe or —
AM: Harry Lauder.
CM: Harry Lauder but —
AM: So what was the flying like there?
CM: It was alright. Fraserburgh was, we did and I loved the, the Airspeed Oxford. It was a lovely little aeroplane. And we went to different places along the coast. Dallachy and one or two others on BABS flights or SBA flights. Did those. And, and did all the night flying all around.
AM: Because the weather must have been quite a factor.
CM: Oh, it was dreadful. Dreadful weather. But then from there I was posted to Hooton Park which is now the —
AM: Yeah.
CM: Vauxhall Motor plant. And I was there for about seven months on, on ASV. That’s Anti-Surface Vessel training with, they were wireless operators who were being trained to, in the Liverpool Bay to look for U-boats and you flew from from Hooton Park anywhere between our coast, our west coast out as far as the Isle of Man and around about. And fortunately because you, I mean you didn’t know where the hell you were going and I could navigate in, I’d only navigated in, in America and that’s where all the loads of north and south are and the, my instructor seemed to, he seemed to, he said to me he could tell where he was by the colour of the soil. But I don’t think he, that was the main thing because he used to fly quite low and we’d fly around the water towers, and all the water towers have their name on them so I think [laughs] he was reading the name. But I found the navigation was, was fairly I could do that alright but in in Scotland or England it’s not quite the same.
AM: No.
CM: So, we did that and then I was at Hooton Park as I say for about seven months and what I found that I’d fly around because you didn’t know where you were going. They just guided where they went and they were looking for whatever the instructor was teaching them. So then if the time was up which I think was about an hour or an hour and a half I used to fly, fly east until I hit the coast. If I could see Blackpool Tower it was alright. And then I’d, I’d turn right and there were two rivers. There was the River Mersey and the River Dee. So, I knew it was the second one and then fortunately there was a railway line. It isn’t there now. But there was a railway line that went right from like from West Kirby right the way through to Hooton so I just followed the railway line and went in. So that was easy enough to find. It was a bit disconcerting sometimes if, if there was a clamp on and the visibility was quite low. But then I was posted from there to, to OTU. Operational Training Unit at Desborough on Wellingtons. So we did, did fifty hours on Wellingtons and one of the, they used to have if they had a thousand bomber raid or whatever they, they seconded, all training units as well flew. Generally with aircraft that were not exactly top notch because they’d been used for training for a long time. And they obviously had a number of what they called nickel raids which are dropping leaflets instead. And either the Germans couldn’t read them telling them to give up like but either they didn’t read English or they didn’t take much notice. And I, I went to Brest for my nickel raid and it was one of the worst trips I had. It’s because that’s where the U-boat pens were and it was very very well defended. And when we came back we were diverted because it was fog bound and we were diverted to Boscombe Downs which was a grass airfield. And I remember you’d, when you land you open the bomb doors first to see if there’s any hang-ups presumably. And when I opened the bomb doors of course all the shower of leaflets fell out which is — so I had the boys scampering all over trying to pick up all these leaflets and I realised afterwards they really needn’t have bothered. They didn’t worry about a few. I mean they wasn’t the English people weren’t worried about them anyway. So, but that fortunately I found afterwards that actually counted as an operation anyway so, which I was glad it did because it was a pretty hairy target, Brest. So, then from, from that I went to Shepherds Grove I think it was called in in Suffolk for a Heavy Conversion Unit on to Stirlings and then from Shepherds Grove we went to, to Feltwell which was a Lancaster Finishing School.
AM: And was that where you crewed up?
CM: No. No. You crewed up at OTU. But the crewing up was a strange thing because I’d, I was coming from, from I think it was from Dishforth to, to [pause] I don’t know if it was Dishforth to Feltwell but as I got off the station, out of the train on to the platform this young navigator came up to me and said, ‘Are you crewed up, serg?’ Because I was a sergeant then. Either a sergeant or a flight sergeant, I forget because I’d been a sergeant over twelve months. And then, so I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He said, ‘Well, can I be your navigator?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ I mean I said, ‘Yes, certainly.’ So I’d already got then one crew member and then we went in and when you go to a station you have to go to, to all sorts of departments you know. Well, you’d know. Well, you did then. You went to the sick quarters and went to the bike shed and God knows where. So I went to the sick quarters and I’m sitting there waiting to see somebody and then a gaggle of blokes came in and slumped on a form of chairs and [unclear] and all these blokes were sort of lolling asleep and this one fella was quite awake. And apparently they were a load of bomb aimers who’d come from Morpeth I think where they’d been doing, it was a Radio School, I think. And a fellow who everybody called Dick, and I called him Dick once I’d been introduced to him he, he came. He was only a livewire. Well I’d found out then later that they’d all just come from, all the way from, from Morpeth in the North East so they were tired. But he seemed quite chirpy. And I found much later on in life that his name wasn’t Dick. His name was actually Bob but his surname was Turpin see. So he was Dick. Like everybody who was White was Chalky White. Anyway, I thought, I said, ‘Are you crewed up?’ So he said, ‘No.’ So I said, well he was what we called a flying A, A haul because he wasn’t a, he wasn’t a navigator he was an observer. And he was both a gunner, a wireless operator and navigator as well. So he was the best of all works. And eventually he was one I, I became closest to and I actually taught him enough to get the Lancaster down because I thought it was, was stupid for say if I got shot or killed and there’s all the crew, I mean. You know they didn’t know anything so, so he could at least put it, I don’t say it would be a good landing but he could put it down. So that was he was fixed. That was, the navigator was fixed. And Bob was, or Dick was fixed and he was a sort of back up navigator if I needed it and he said, ‘Have you got any gunners?’ So I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got two Geordie gunners,’ he said, ‘And one of them wants to be a rear gunner,’ he said, ‘Which is unusual. So,’ he said, ‘Should I ask them’? So I said, ‘Yes. Fine.’ So then I got the two gunners. So I was fixed up apart from the wireless operator. Well, we were going to, I forget which station we were at now but I was passing the, where the wireless op was being, where the wireless operators were being trained and this circle of people were there around this one bloke and they were all laughing their socks off. And I thought well he’s a livewire whoever it is in the middle so I said I’ll have him. Well, I didn’t realise they weren’t laughing with him so much as laughing at him because he was, he was the most well intentioned bloke but he really wasn’t that well clued up because twice he [pause] well once on the Wellington he nearly gassed us all to death because he, it was his responsibility to turn the ground and flight switch on to flight when, on the Wellington when you took off and he’d forgotten. And suddenly the cockpit filled with fumes you see. And it was only Dick who said, ‘You bloody well haven’t switched the thing on,’ see. So the battery was going. And he also, he when the wireless wasn’t working once he stripped it all down. He said, ‘I’ll fix it.’ Well, he couldn’t put it back together again, so [pause] But, and he and the navigator who was we called Titch because he was only five foot one and he had a, a motorbike and used to, we used to joke, if you see the a bike coming along and there’s nobody on it that’s Titch. So that was, that was quite funny. So then I was fully crewed up and they truthfully were, were a good bunch of lads. And my rear gunner could turn his hand to anything if, he used to do all my sewing for me. Darn my socks. And whenever I got any increase in rank or what he’d sew it on. And if you lost anything he would get you another one. He would acquire one from somewhere [laughs] Whether it was a bicycle or, or a gas mask or whatever it was he would get it. ‘Don’t worry about it, skipper. I’ll see to it,’ he’d say. That’s right. But they were really a good bunch of lads. And that was it. I was fully crewed up. But apparently what they did they was, if you read the stories they shoved everybody in a hangar and they had to sort theirselves out. Well, that didn’t work for me. Mine came like I told you and I never had any trouble. And the only thing was you didn’t, you didn’t want your crew flying, flying with anybody else. You just, but they all, one of the snags was one and it’s funny how I, how I got my commission I think because at Ched, I didn’t, from Feltwell LF Lancaster Finishing School we went straight to the squadron which was at Methwold which was in Norfolk. And that was the first time I ever realised they were on ops because prior to then you just wanted to get on the squadron you know. You desperately want to get on the squadron. But when we drove through the gates because it’s only a few miles from Feltwell to Methwold there were ambulances pulled up at the outside. They’d been to, I think to Homberg they’d been to and they were lifting some of the people out and putting them in the ambulances. They’d been shot. They’d had a particularly bad trip and of course I would see it at the time but funnily enough it was strange because after I’d done this, when I’d seen these, all the bomb aimers and got crewed up you went to the bedding store, that was the last place you went to to get your blanket. Well, your three blankets and two sheets. And the fella looked at me and said and must have been when I spoke, he said ‘You’re a Mancunian, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘So am I.’ He said, ‘Now, don’t worry son,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen hundreds go through here,’ he said, ‘And I can tell you now you’ll be alright.’ You’ll see things through. So I don’t know why he’d sort of gave me and the strangest thing out. I’ve told this story many times. Later on. H came from Blackley. As we called it Blackley as it’s spelled. A lot of people call it Blackley who don’t know Manchester, Blackley and we corresponded with each other for only by Christmas card but for must have been twenty odd years until the Christmas cards stopped and presumably he’d gone. But when I was back in civilian life my wife and I were walking down Cannon Street in Manchester and there was a ladder up against the wall and I was just going, I said to my wife, ‘Don’t walk under the ladder. We’ll walk on the outside,’ were just walking round the outside and then suddenly somebody pushed, pushed us both to one side and a coping stone fell off the roof and crashed right down by the side of us. And I turned around and looked at the, who’d pushed us out the way and who should it be but Wilf Brennan. The fella who had seen me at the, at the station and said I’d be alright. And I thought, well what a coincidence you know. Just, but he must have I mean obviously he was quite a bit older than me. Well, nearly everybody was. So that was that. And then we’d only done one op from, from Methwold when the whole squadron was posted to Chedburgh and I found out it was what they call a GH squadron. Which was mostly daylights because we had, we were fitted with Gee which was, which was a radar scheme to, but it was only, it was only accessible as far as the Ruhr. That’s the farthest distance it had and and I was, the way the aircraft were were differentiated was they had two yellow bars on the fins of the, of the Lancaster. And I used to take off from, from Chedburgh and rendezvous over Ipswich and we would either communicate through the Aldis lamp or with, on the RT for, to give your call sign and they would formate on me. So we’d fly all the way to the target in what we called vics of three. I would be the leader and one on either side and it was formation flying all the way until you dropped your bombs and then, then virtually they were supposed to fly back with you but frankly it was every man for himself after that. Didn’t work. We didn’t do that at night but daylights and the, I mean I did I did twenty two day trips. I only did I think about eleven nights and then a nickel raid and that. I think I did thirty six altogether. But I think the trouble with the night flying was the searchlights because you, with GH the thing was it was only accurate if you flew straight and level for about forty miles going into the target and the navigator used to complain bitterly if you, you went off slightly off course because he’s, he’s sat behind his curtain thing and once or twice we had words because I’d say, ‘Get the bloody hell, get your head out and have a look,’ I said, ‘And you’ll see why I’m diverting a bit.’ ‘Cause as you would know you always say you don’t just say left or right you always say left left and then right to differentiate between the two so he can’t mistake what you’re saying. But you’ve got to be forty miles absolutely straight and level and not deviate so that the thing is accurate. And the trouble is you’re susceptible to fighters on daylights. The FW190 was the one we were worried about. Daylight it was. Night time it was searchlights because we were briefed that the ordinary searchlight wasn’t too bad but then they had what they called the master beam and if that, if that got you in his sights then all the beams came on you. They must have coordinated somehow and you had I think they had, you had, they had sixteen seconds in which to replot the actual position you were in from the time the searchlight, master searchlight got on you. So you had to be quick. But what I developed over the, over the time which wasn’t particularly brave but I used to ask the, I asked the two gunners, the mid-upper and the rear gunner, I said, ‘Look out for another Lancaster or Halifax or Stirling or whatever you can and if you see one let me know.’ And I used to dive over the top of it if I could with the idea being that if the searchlight was following me and if I went over the top of him the light would be on him for a short period of time and then if I was able to get out of the way very quickly hopefully they’d have lost me and be on somebody else. And I for daylights I used to tell the lads, the gunners, I said, ‘If you see what you think is a FW 190 or a Stuka or whatever it is,’ I said, ‘Don’t fire at it in case one of three things. A — he might not have seen us. B — he might have seen us but be like me and want to stay alive so he doesn’t want to get shot down.’ And I said, ‘Those are two things you must take into account because I said there’s no point in drawing attention to yourself,’ you see. And our, my mid-upper gunner was at first on the first three trips were, very first three night trips were very gung ho. He wanted to go down and have a go at the searchlights. But I politely told him I don’t think that’s on. Not in those words.
AM: And did you ever have to do a corkscrew at night? Or —
CM: No. Yes, I did. On the really shakiest trip I had was I’d gone to a place, well I didn’t get there. I was going to Dessau which is about, I think it’s about a hundred miles southwest of Berlin. And it was a night trip and we were, I was going there and suddenly the port outer had a runaway prop and I tried to feather it and it didn’t feather. And then to my consternation it burst into flames. So I thought, oh shit. What the hell am I going to do? So I, you had in the Lanc you had what they called four graviner buttons. One for each engine. So I pressed the graviner button and it, it didn’t seem to to put the thing out. So I thought oh I’ll have to do something. So I resorted to a manoeuvre I’d learned early on in, in my flying days, sideslipped. So I, I sideslipped it left to try and, I thought one of two things. It would either help to extinguish the flames or else it will increase the, the chance. I don’t know which. But fortunately it went out but the trouble is the prop hadn’t, hadn’t feathered and it was windmilling like the clappers. And obviously immediately I lost, I started to lose height because I was at, I’d started at twenty, about twenty one thousand feet and it just started to drop like a stone so I said to, to Bob, or Dick as he was, I said, ‘Just jettison.’ So he jettisoned and that sort of arrested the fall for a bit but I didn’t regain control until about I must have been about nine thousand feet and I said, we had piles of Window stacked in the back which we were supposed to shovel out. So I, I got the boys shovelling this stuff out as fast as they could. And I’ve read many books since where what we thought we was, was helping to jam their, their radar, in point of fact was doing just the opposite. They were, it was helping them more than not. So then I was, said to Titch, ‘Well, just give me a course as far as you can. As near as you can to, to get to base.’ I said, ‘But you’re better not to go in to base because I haven’t got any hydraulics. So you’d better go in to Woodbridge,’ which was the nearest. There was Woodbridge, Manston or Carnaby were the three emergency. But I don’t have to describe those to you. You know what they are. Three runways of different calibres. So there was a battle line and then the bomb line and they’re two different lines because you had to be sure you were over the bomb line before you dropped any bombs because of your own troops being in the way. Anyway, Titch said to me, ‘You’re alright now, Skip. You’re over the, over the sea. You can let down.’ Because I was over nine thousand feet and I was struggling to, to hold the thing because as you can see I’m only five foot and my, I’d got as maximum trim as I could on but it was still a struggle for me. So he said, ‘Ok, you let down now.’ Well, when I came out of the cloud instead of being over the sea I was met by a load of tracer and very heavy anti-aircraft fire. So I, I did a corkscrew as you say which was not, it’s not very pleasant for the crew. Not very pleasant for me. But it seemed to, seemed to do the trick and we sailed on over the North Sea and then, then I don’t know whether what aircraft there are now, whether they [unclear] but on the Lanc you had what they called a star wheel which is the trimmer which, which altered the trim. A little piece of strip on the back of the elevators to, to for fine tuning and I’d got it obviously full, full on for, for, from my left leg. And I had on, because it was cold as well because the boys, actually you were you were given Kapok suits first and then, then on top of the Kapok which is like a thermal material. It’s called Kapok in those days. Then you had, you had your underwear first. Your silk underwear. And then your Kapok suit and then like a gabardine suit. This is what you had on your what they called you flying kit. But as far as I was concerned certainly my crew and every other crew I’d know didn’t, didn’t wear that stuff. The gunners.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Actually, especially the rear gunner they wore electrically heated suit. A bottom and a top which the boys said didn’t always work. Either the top of it or the bottom worked. But we just wore our thermal underwear, well not, it wasn’t thermal then. It was silk worn in two layers. And then your ordinary battledress with a fisherman’s, what I called a fisherman’s sweater and fisherman’s socks and then, then your escape boots which which had a little section in the side where you could put a, which was a pseudo strip of Wrigleys chewing gum. A long strip but it contained a hacksaw blade. And I had every single button on my uniform was a compass. If you took the top off the button then there was a little like pin on it and you could put it on the top of the thing and there was a little yellow dash which pointed to north. That was on every button. And I also had, because I was friendly with the, one of the intelligence officers and I had the cigarettes, not a tobacco pouch which you broke open the lining and it had a silk map of Europe with Spain and so on. And I had pipes that either unscrewed and there was a compass inside one end of the pipe or pencils that you could break and there was a compass inside that. I said, ‘If the Jerry’s ever get me I’ll run a [unclear] over the stuff’ [laughs], but I had every, every aid there was and our plan was, which wasn’t very good, Titch, the navigator had done a little German at school so we were all too, if we were to bale out we were to all get together which is being possibly impossible anyway and he would be able to talk his way out. He’d be able to talk his way out. I don’t think he would.
AM: Yeah.
CM: But that was the plan. So, as I say we, we had all this so coming in to land obviously as you start to throttle back then you have to take the trim off. But with three gloves on I got my fingers stuck in the bloody star wheel see. So I’m sweating cobs that I’ve got to get my hand out of this so I could get both hands on the stick. And anyway we got in alright and just ran to the end. And I’d, you were issued with what we called wakey-wakey tablets which were Benzedrine, I understand. And I never used them. The boys used them a lot for forty eight hour leaves. They used to use them and then they could stay awake all night and you know get pissed as a rat and stay in London or whatever. But I never used them but this time I thought well I’d better take these wakey-wakey tablets because it was, it’s a long way back from, from Dessau to, to base. And it must have been about four hours I think. I know it was a long way. So I’d taken these bloody tablets and the affect it had on me. That was the only time I ever used them but you sort of wanted to go to sleep but you couldn’t. And you had to go into the Watch Office first and sign your name on something. I said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t. I can’t sign anything.’ I didn’t, I just didn’t couldn’t do. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t write. Anyway, I went in and it seemed to be alright. And that’s, that’s the worst trip I’d, I’d had. I’d had one or two bits of scrapes but that was that was the one that was the worst one for me. And —
AM: What about the losses on the squadron? Did it affect the crew or you?
CM: Well, no. What happened is, you didn’t. They were, we used to refer to it as getting the chop and what happened when there were no number thirteens on anything. On the lockers or anything. And if, if a crew got the chop, if you were all, I don’t know how many of us there were in the nissen hut but there wasn’t just our crew. There was another crew. Or at least one crew and if they got the chop they didn’t fill those beds until another intake came in. And the, I don’t know whether he thought it was the right word but the, the normal way of things was if there was a girl on the station who’d gone with somebody let’s say a pilot from another crew and had got the chop she became a chop girl. So that was taboo. You didn’t, you didn’t go out with her at all. And there was one poor girl I, I know. This was on Wellingtons. Not not before I got on Lancs but she had lost. This had happened to her twice and so she said, ‘I’m not going out with anymore aircrew fellas.’ And she went out with a ground staff sergeant and he walked into a pillar. I mean, and superstitions were absolutely rife. I mean my, my crew Dick always wore a pair of his wife’s cami knickers as they called them in those days. Which was like coms, but with, with three little buttons which fastened on the crotch. And he always wore those. And his wife Mary because he was the only one married in the crew and she travelled with him wherever she, wherever we went and played the piano which was good. So she was, you know friendly with every one of us. Well, she gave me a scarf. It was a paisley scarf. A lovely one. And Dick came to my home sometimes when, when we were on leave and more often than not I came up to Blyth because it was a better atmosphere. And so I’d ask my mother to wash this scarf which of course it got dirty after, you know. So she said, ‘I haven’t seen this before. Whose is it?’ I said, ‘That’s Mary’s.’ So, she said, ‘That’s, that’s Dick’s wife isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘You’ve no right to be wearing some other man’s wife thing.’ I mean that’s my mother all over. So I said, ‘Well, I do and that’s it. So if you don’t mind just wash the bloody thing.’ Well, that was him. Now, my, my flight engineer always wore a white towelling shirt. And he never washed it. But he always wore a white towelling shirt. And my mid-upper gunner always carried a kukri in his flying boot. You know a big kukri. And I think it was the, I think he was the rear gunner who had a rabbit’s foot. And you found, I don’t know whether it was just coincidence or what but one of the fellas, fella I remember his name, Marley because he had a Riley car as well. A Riley sports car. He went and he lost his life on take-off on one operation and they found his rabbit’s foot in his locker and they said, ‘There you are,’ you see, they said, ‘He didn’t bloody well take it.’ Well, we also had a stuffed cat. Which was not a real cat but it was a stuffed cat called the Mini the Moocher and we always had it tied to the, the stem of the loop aerial. In the Lancaster there’s a little bubble behind the pilot’s cockpit where the loop stands. And Mini the Moocher was strapped to that. And when you used to take off you’d come along the peritrack, all lined up taxiing and then they’d signal you to go on to the runway and you’d sit on the end of the runway and there was the dispatcher’s hut and they would shine an Aldis lamp with a green for you to go. And always at the side of the runway there would be the padre, and the CO, and possibly two or three WAAFs and maybe one or two of the ground crew. And you would sit there until you got the green and then you’d open the tap and off you’d go. Well, one day we had, we’d forgotten Mini the Moocher and suddenly one of the ground staff came peddling up like the clappers and waved to us and stopped so we could, we could have Mini the Moocher and strap it to the thing. Yeah. They were very superstitious. But you do. I mean when you think about it now it didn’t make the slightest difference but it did in your mind, you know. So that was that so —
AM: You mentioned going home to see your mother when you went home to Manchester.
CM: Yeah.
AM: During the war.
CM: Yeah.
AM: What was it like for you? An operational pilot.
CM: Well, my mother didn’t know I was on ops. Only the boy I told you about John, John Fowkes the Welsh boy who’d been with me, who’d been with me throughout. He had joined the Air Force and he was in Bomber Command but he was actually at, at Mildenhall which was only a few miles from Chedburgh and he, he used to come over and see me. Well, his parents were greengrocers. Nearly all my friends when I was at school were the son of street corner something or other. Greengrocers or chip shop or butchers or whatever so, and he was on ops and he was before me. I didn’t know this but he was on a squadron and his mother had met my mother on some occasion and she told him. Oh yeah. ‘I see your Charles is doing the same as John.’ Well, she didn’t know see. So the next time I came on leave she gave me a pile of stamped postcards all ready to post. And she said, ‘Now, we hear on the radio,’ she said, which they did. They’d say ‘Last night our aircraft bombed — ’ whatever. Frankfurt. And so many of our aircraft of are missing or they all returned safely or whatever happened. Or Lord Haw Haw would tell them. So she gave me all these cards and she said, ‘Now, post them to me as soon as you get back so I know you’re alright.’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ So what I used to do is I used to tell her I was safe and that before I went and posted it, you see so she didn’t worry about anything. And if I wasn’t, I wasn’t so that’s [pause] But the first time as I say she’d ever heard from me for all the months before was that card she had from the Jewish lady in New York. So she didn’t know. But what we used to do is when we came up to Blyth which they were much, beer was, was rationed completely and Mary was also loved by everybody because she could play the piano see. So she came because she was with Bob, Dick and she would, she would play the piano and we’d sing. Have a sing song. And when, when we came to Blyth the one song that we all used to stand in a circle and we’d sing was, “With someone like you,” altogether, “A pal good and true, I’d like to leave it all behind.” You know the song. And I introduced the same thing at home so we all had a, had that song and a bit of a, possibly a bit of a weep together like I’m doing now and but there was songs seemed to have a, you know a special something about them.
AM: Resonance.
CM: But that’s, that’s how it was and —
AM: Tell me about the day the war ended.
CM: Well, we were on [pause] what happened when, I finished early on in April. The war finished in April, May. VE day was promulgated I think on the 8th of May. But we finished in April. I forget what date it was now. I’ve got it here somewhere. I did, I did my last op on [pause] this incidentally I don’t think. You can have a look at it. This is when I came back from any of the ops there was always a cutting, or not always, generally a cutting in the newspaper. Like this stop press news, “Our bombers new route. Daily Sketch correspondent. People in the north east saw for the first time last night something which the south has seen many times before. The organised might of Bomber Command proceeding on a mission. The concentration of aircraft was the biggest ever seen over the north east.” And this was Kiel.
AM: God.
CM: We sank the, and I used to write, I used to write what I’d thought about the trip. And they used to put the bomb load in. The one five hundred medium capacity. “Another master bomber effort and very impressive. A good way out at two thousand feet. Really good. The target itself was beautifully marked and though the flak was intense it was well below our height. Searchlight gave us persistently little trouble. I’m pretty sure it was a grand prang.” That’s the word we used. “The only thing that marred the trip was the long delay in getting us down.” And then this was where we sank the, the I think that was the Admiral Scheer.
AM: The Admiral Scheer.
CM: Yeah. So that’s, that’s I’ve got a record there of every trip I did so that it starts right at the very front page with the details of the Lancaster. I don’t know whether you’ve —
[recording paused]
AM: What did you do after the war, Charles?
CM: Well, as I said to you at the beginning after the war when I was on the Berlin Airlift they had, they had a, they had a lot of small aircraft. Freddie Laker had some of his aircraft and Blackburn Aircraft Corporation had a lot of aircraft and they were I don’t know how it I was seconded or whatever to help the war. To help the Berlin Airlift. And I met a pilot. We were actually talking over the intercom and he recognised my voice and I spoke to him and I met him at, we used to go to a place called Bad Nenndorf for r&r because the, it was quite a strain on the Airlift because we were flying twenty four hours a day seven days a week and we didn’t, we didn’t always get back to the billets to go to sleep. You slept in the watch office. So you had to go to a place for a bit of rest. And we often used to meet up there and I met with a bloke called Takoradi Taylor who was called Takoradi Taylor because he’d been in Takoradi before the war with the Air Force and he, I’ll show you later on. But I used to play a lot of golf when I first retired and we were playing at Haydock one day. We had, with the veterans you went to different, different Golf Clubs to play in the Veteran’s Association and I walked out on the tee and there was this fella with, and there was this bag he’d got and he looked as if it was made of sort of snakeskin and I said, ‘That’s a wonderful bag.’ So he said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘My brother got it for me,’ he said, ‘From Takoradi.’ So I said, ‘Oh, that’s a name that rings a cord,’ I said, ‘I knew a bloke on the Berlin Airlift. Takoradi Taylor,’ I said, ‘But unfortunately,’ I said, and he, I said, ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard that word Takoradi for a long time,’ I said, ‘But unfortunately,’ I said, ‘He flew for a firm called Flight Refuelling,’ which was one of Cobham’s people. And I said, ‘Unfortunately, they were,’ I said, ‘He was a friend of mine and I last met him at Bad Nenndorf and he recognised me from, we were at OTUs together. At Operational training Unit.’ So, I said, ‘I hadn’t seen him from that day,’ I said, ‘And I met him at Bad Nenndorf and I said, I said to him, ‘Well, we must have a drink together.’ So he said, ‘Yes, so he said I’m flying back now with the boys,’ he said, ‘All the, all the pilots from Flight Refuelling are flying home to Tarrant Rushton,’ which is near Southampton, he said and, ‘That’s where, where I’m going for my rest. But when I get back I’ll give you a buzz and we’ll get together.’ And I said, ‘Fine.’ Well, apparently the whole of them. All the pilots flew into a problem at Tarrant Rushton. Whether they flew straight into the ground or what but they were all killed. And so we never did get together but I told, we had a magazine at the Golf Club and I told them this story which went in, you know. So that was that. But what I’m saying is when we were talking over the intercom and I talked to this fella called Des Martin who lived on the Wirral and afterwards we got together. He’d been at Clewiston with me on 5 BFTS. So he was flying for Blackburn Aircraft Corporation and he said, and he said he was getting a hundred and twenty pounds a week, you see. Well, I was a flight lieutenant in the Air Force. I was getting sixty pounds a month. So he said, ‘Well, you’re stupid to stay,’ he said, ‘You’re doing the same bloody job.’ He said, ‘Just apply for your, you’ve just to apply to them and,’ he said, ‘You’ve got all the qualifications. You’ve been flying the route for God knows how long,’ he said. ‘You’ll have no trouble,’ So I did but they said, ‘Well, what you need is a course at Tarrant err at Hamble. Well, by the time I got my compassionate release because I told you Margie was ill the course had finished. And you had to have a hundred and twenty hours on type which I couldn’t afford you see. So instead of going to fly, I hadn’t decided to emigrate then I thought well I’ll see what they have to offer me. I’d worked before. I’d worked for a firm call Lec Transport and I was happy but it was only a mediocre job. So I went to what they called the Appointments Bureau which was supposedly for officers. Like the Employment Exchange but a bit of higher up. He said, Mr Green was the fellas name, so he said, ‘What’s your name?’ So I said. He said, ‘Well, you’ve got a good war record son,’ because he had my details, he said, ‘But the war’s over.’ I mean, I knew that. So, he said, ‘And what I can offer you, I can, I can fix you up with a job down the mines or, or I can fix you up with, with you can go into a cotton mill.’ So, I said, ‘I’ll find my own job.’ So my brother had, he was in, he worked for Milner’s Safe Company and he had been selling steel furniture which Milner’s sold to different firms in Manchester. And one of the firms was an office equipment company which had furniture and adding machines and calculators and typewriters. So he said well, ‘I’m sure he’d give you a job.’ So, so I I went to see him and he said, ‘Have you got a briefcase?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ So he said, ‘Well, I’ll show you what these machines are. Typewriters and so on. He gave me a little bit of instruction on how to use them and he gave me a load of leaflets. He said, ‘Well, just go out and sell some of these.’ Well, cutting a story short I did that for about, I don’t know, maybe twelve months. Hated it because well after being an officer and being used to eating off linen and all nice things it was a shock to, to come to what was reality. And anyway I, I stuck at it and eventually became the sales manager and then I became the general manager and then he was the director of the company and then he made me a director as well. And then I’d, we had a fall out which I don’t need to go into but it was, it was a case of misinformation in various areas. And I’d met a fellow who was in a similar line of business. He had a stationer’s shop in amongst other things in Liverpool and he’d always said, ‘If you ever think of changing your job give me a bell.’ We got on well together. So I did and I started work with him and they were [pause] he didn’t want me for stationery. He wanted me for a new branch of his firm which was called Industrial Stapling and Packaging. So I eventually got to be the admin manager of this company and we were taken over by a firm called Ofrex who manufacture stapling machines and tackers and all sorts of different machines. And when they took us over they also had a stapling machine called, stapling company called IS & P Industrial Stapling and Packaging which was based in Aylesbury. So the head of the company, the director and the only director of the company said it was silly having two companies. One in Liverpool and one in Aylesbury. So he decided to merge the two into two called British Industrial Fastenings. And he took the whole thing down to Aylesbury. So, they, they obviously wanted me to go to Aylesbury. Well, I had a word with the managing director of the company down in Aylesbury and he wouldn’t meet my terms. I said to him, ‘I, first of all I want a house equivalent of the bungalow I’ve got here. And I want pay equivalent to the sales manager’s because,’ I said, ‘I’m the manager of the whole of the thing.’ Anyway, he wouldn’t meet my requirements so I said, ‘Alright. Well, I’m not coming.’ So I saw my boss back in Liverpool and he said, ‘Well, don’t worry Charles.’ Now, we’d started to buy some machinery and some strapping which was plastic strapping from a company in America. So he said, ‘Get your ass over to America and learn all you can about all the machines and how they make the strap and everything and then come back and see what you can do here.’ So I went over there for about three weeks and I had to learn about all the different machines and how they made this what was then polypropylene strapping. And cutting up a long story short I, I took a twenty year lease on a building which belonged to the Coal Board in, in, in Ellesmere Port on the other side, on the Wirral. And I arranged for the, for the factory, the extruder and the drawer stands and all the rest of it and we set up this company called, we just called it Laughton’s [unclear] Strap. That’s the name of the strap the Americans were making.
AM: Right.
CM: But we started. I said, ‘Well, we won’t make money being the last in line. We have to manufacture the straps.’ So we bought these extruders and we bought all this stuff and I had to take a twenty year lease out on this place in Ellesmere Port. But anyway we set it up. Within, within twelve months we were, we had a turnover just over a million quid. And it went from strength to strength and we eventually we then were taken over by Gallagher’s which not only had tobacco companies like Benson and Hedges and so on. They also had, they owned Dolland and Aitchison, the opticians. They owned Prestige Pans and a lot of other companies. But they in turn were taken over by the fourth largest tobacco company in the world called American Brands who then got themselves into litigation about cancer. So they decided, this was after I’d retired. I retired in ’86, but after I’d retired they decided they weren’t going to get into this litigation about cancer so they sold everything back to Galla. Well not, they sold it to Gallagher’s. And Gallagher’s and American Brands not only owned the tobacco side which was Lucky Strike and God knows what. They also owned Pinkerton’s, the security people, they also owned Titelist Golf Balls they also owned Jim Beam Whisky. And what they did is they sold all their tobacco business to Gallagher’s and Gallagher’s sold all their stuff off to, back to American Brands and, and everything but so then American Brands to divest themselves of all the tobacco stuff and they sold out to a firm called Acco Europe. Which is probably one of the biggest firms. They first of all started out in what I call continuous stationery which is if you look at machines going it prints all sorts of loads of different stationery. So that’s who the company belongs to. But Laughton’s was a business on its own which didn’t fit in to anything so it’s now gone kapput. It no longer exists.
AM: Right.
CM: So, but that’s the way it was. But I, I was appointed to the board on that company as well because I had a number of quite good ideas. One of which has come to fruition but not with me. But I, I dreamt up the idea of a thing called, ‘Call and Collect.’ Which was people phoned up the company, and on the phone with our computers which I’d put in. Then you keyed in what they wanted. You had to have a code and all that which was very different from these days when everything’s [unclear] and I bought a place next door which had a big door at one end and a big door at the other end. I had different stalls put up and we put a lot of our stock which was the main big seller down in this, this warehouse. And the idea was for people to phone up. This would be processed and they would be picked by people and then the car from the company would drive in one end, load it up and drive out the other. But it didn’t take off at all. But this Click and Collect at Tescos and God knows where.
AM: Yeah.
CM: But it just didn’t work.
AM: Did you, after the war Charles keep in touch with any of your crew members?
CM: Bob, or Dick. Yes. I did. We used to, they used to come and stop at my house and I used to go up to Blyth and stay with them. We, we stayed together for right until Bob died. He’d be about seventy one or seventy two.
AM: Right.
CM: And then Mary, his wife died. And I still, I still keep in touch with their daughter. And one of the boys I was with at ITW, Initial Training Wing, the one who I told you how I met the wife when she was dancing around. Well, I kept in touch with the daughter for quite a years when they didn’t know he was killed or what. He was just missing. So I kept in touch with her. She died and her husband saw some of the correspondence so he asked if he could keep in touch with me. He still keeps, well he stayed in touch with me until he died. And then his daughter found this correspondence so she’s still in correspondence with me today. And my sister who I told you he thought the world of she always puts a cross on in the arrangements for us in the Arboretum in Staffordshire somewhere. Yeah. So I do. My, my other crew. My Bomber Command crew I kept in touch with them until they, they all passed, so there’s no — as far as I know my mid-upper gunner went as a tea planter in Ceylon and I lost touch with him. And the flight engineer. I wrote to him. He’s from Glasgow. I had a couple or three letters from him and then that died off. And Freddie Collins, the wireless op I’ve never heard or seen anything from, from the day we went on break up leave. And my navigator I told you got killed on his first trip. So that accounts for the crew and the, the other crew that I kept in touch with was the York crew. But they’re dead now so I don’t keep it going. I can’t keep in touch with them. So, there’s, there’s virtually nobody left.
AM: So is there anything else that you’d like to tell me of your time in Bomber Command?
CM: No. I don’t think so. As far as, as far as I know. I mean if there’s anything you think of and I’ll try and tell you. I mean all I can say to you that it was a traumatic time but at the same time I made friends that I, I was, I’d been never been closer to anybody in my life. Just one of those things and, and it taught me an awful lot. The Air Force really [pause] the Air Force in general, it made me feel that I want something better out of life than I was, was having. And I mean the very fact that I got commissioned was, was quite an uplift for me really. I never, I mean I never dreamed that I was ever that, I was never university type. But at the same time it also taught me that as far as I can tell I’m good at what I do. And I’ve been fortunate in that the two private companies I worked for were individuals who were able to, there must be many many people who are working for firms that just either it’s so remote that they don’t see anybody. But these two fellas were, they owned the company. And like there’s one guy now phones me, has phoned me religiously every month since I’ve known him. Forty odd years. And he has a, he has a, he owns a huge paint factory. Got factories all over the world and a multi-millionaire. But he phoned me only a few days ago just to see how I was. And never, never fails. And he said, ‘We’ve been friends for so long,’ and he, he hasn’t got a ha’pence of side on him at all. I mean, you wouldn’t know. I mean when, when I took him out for a meal at Formby we just went to an ordinary meal place and he said, which I can hear him saying, he was a real Lancashire lad, he said, ‘Anybody having pudding?’ I mean and they all seemed, and given the chance I’m pretty certain whatever I’d have done I’ve made a success of it.
AM: Yeah.
CM: It’s just worked out that way. And I’ve been, I’ve said in all my papers I have been very, very lucky. I had a, had a wonderful childhood. And I can truthfully say I never had a day when I got up and said, ‘I don’t want to go to work today.’ I’ve always been happy in what I’m doing. And I think it’s, it reflects really what you are and to the people that you meet you know. And even all the girls who come. The carers. I get on like a house on fire with them. I mean. And I say to them, which is true I don’t know how anybody can criticise the —
[recording paused]
AM: Charles Mears. Flight Lieutenant Charles Mears, Distinguished Flying Cross, 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
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Interview with Charles Mears
Creator
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Alastair Montgomery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-21
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AMearsCE170921
Format
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02:12:50 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Charles left school with no formal qualifications and was undertaking further education when the Second World War commenced. Being too young to enlist, he joined the Air Defence Cadet Corps and - upon reaching 18 - he eventually was able to join. He was detached to the United States for training. Upon boarding the Queen Mary, he was aware of damage to the ships bow which had been repaired with concrete. Training was carried out at No. 5 British Flying Training School in Florida. Mixing with Americans, he experienced things like deodorant. Charles also came across discrimination: having given his seat on a bus to a pregnant black lady, he was interviewed and told that being a guest of America, he must respect the American way of life. Upon return to the UK, he was posted to RAF Fraserburgh to convert onto Oxford, followed by anti-surface vessel training which involved flying trainee wireless operators over the Irish Sea. After several months, Charles was posted to the Wellington operational training unit at RAF Desborough. Whilst here, he was involved in a leaflet drop over Brest. Following conversion to Lancasters, Charles was posted to a squadron operating Gee H radar. This was mainly daylight operations. On these sorties, it was necessary to fly straight and level for 40 miles to the target, which led to many arguments between him and his navigator. At RAF Methwold he saw a row of ambulances taking injured aircrew away after a particularly bad operation. On one occasion he had to make an emergency landing at Woodbridge. He was told by the navigator he was over the sea and since he was struggling to control the aircraft he dropped below the cloud straight into a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. He performed a corkscrew manoeuvre and managed to get out of trouble and successfully land at Woodbridge. On the only occasion he took the wakey-wakey pills he found them so disorientating he couldn’t even sign off the aircraft on landing and although he desperately wanted to sleep he just could not. Superstition was rife amongst the crews. He describes his experience as traumatic but worthwhile. He met so many friends that he has remained in contact with throughout his life.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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United States
Florida
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
Scotland--Aberdeenshire
France
France--Brest
Atlantic Ocean--Irish Sea
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
Atlantic Ocean--Irish Sea
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
218 Squadron
5 BFTS
African heritage
aircrew
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
crewing up
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
navigator
Oxford
pilot
propaganda
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Desborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Fraserburgh
RAF Methwold
RAF Shepherds Grove
RAF Woodbridge
searchlight
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1034/11406/AMinnittPB170314.2.mp3
de81edc494e14a67df6220d791edcd59
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
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Minnitt, Bruce
P B Minnitt
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Bruce Minnitt (1923- 2020, 1232347 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 211 and 244 Squadron Coastal Command and with a Ferry Unit in the Far East.
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
2017-03-14
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
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Minnitt, PB
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. I’ll just introduce myself. So, this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Bruce Minnitt on the 13th of March 2017 at his home. If I just pop that down there. You'll see me keep looking down.
BM: Well, I'm not familiar with all these modern gizmos.
DK: No. I’m not [laughs] I'm not either to be honest. The technology hasn't let me down yet but there is always a first time. So if I keep looking down I’m just making sure they're both going. It says one’s going there. So what, what I’d like to just ask is just a few questions and whatever and just sort of get a bit of background. First of all, what I would like to know is what were you doing immediately before the war?
BM: Thinking that the war started in September 1939. Well, let's getaway a little bit in so far as our age is concerned. I was born in 1923.
DK: Right.
BM: So that made me when war broke out in 1939 I was sixteen.
DK: So you were still at, still at school.
BM: No.
DK: Ah. Right. Ok.
BM: I left school fourteen days after I was fourteen years old.
DK: Right. Ok.
BM: So my education has been sadly neglected during my lifetime and as it happened upon leaving school I was very fortunate because fourteen days after leaving school I had a job.
DK: Oh right.
BM: But my grandfather owned the local village shop and my father of course was part of that concern and I got a job. Ten shillings a week. It was wonderful for the hours that were put in.
DK: And that was working in the shop was it?
BM: And I was working in the shop as a —
DK: Yeah.
BM: A lad with an apron around me and I was [pause] I enjoyed it and the experience did me good because after a couple of years my father arranged for me to go to Lincoln and I got a job as a sort of an apprentice working for the best grocers in Lincoln. I used to think they were the best grocers because they had a couple of nice little vans and I used to drive around Lincoln. I was only sixteen —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Years old. I didn't have a licence of course. We used to drive all around Lincoln. No problem. Never, never got bothered by anybody and so I had a couple of years of experience in that and then I went back home and very soon I joined up. I actually volunteered, myself and another friend when we were both [pause] How old would we be? Seventeen and three quarters. I joined up in February.
DK: Was there any, any reason why you chose the RAF? Was —
BM: Well yes of course. I mean it was so glamorous, wasn't it? I mean, we were always going to be Tail End Charlies. I joined up as a, at least I thought I joined up as a tail gunner.
DK: Right.
BM: On bombers. I mean, in 1940, ‘41 rather they were looking for bombers because the high point of the fighters had gone. I was trained as, as a fighter.
DK: Right.
BM: On singles.
DK: Right.
BM: And I did, then I did a navigation course on Ansons and, in Canada whatever. And then we came back from Canada to this country and the first thing of course that I had to do was a conversion course.
DK: Just, just stepping back a bit your, by this time you’ve, you’re a pilot then are you?
BM: I was. Yes. I got my wings in Canada.
DK: Right.
BM: But it didn't matter really whether I was a fighter pilot, bomber pilot or whatever.
DK: Right.
BM: I think they used to move us around as and when required. I mean the fighter era really —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Was in 1940.
DK: So, what, what was the first type of aircraft that you were trained on?
BM: The first one that I actually went and did my original training on and got, went solo on was a Magister.
DK: Right. Ok.
BM: Now, I don't whether you've heard —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: Of those.
DK: I know the Magisters.
BM: Magisters. A lovely little —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Biplane.
DK: Monoplane. Yeah.
BM: Monoplane. And we did that at Reading.
DK: Right. Yeah.
BM: Woodley.
DK: Yeah.
BM: At Reading. And it was just about deciding whether you were fit to be able to fly an aeroplane or whether you’d got the confidence to, to do it.
DK: So were there sort of aptitude tests?
BM: That's what it was.
DK: It was. Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And we had to be able to, I think the basic test was you had to do your solo in the maximum of twelve hours.
DK: Right.
BM: I think that was what happened. Well fortunately I think what was I? Eight and a quarter or something like that. I had a little bit of an aptitude for it but I always remember my instructor. I thought at the time, well he was a very brave man. How old was I? Eighteen. Sending me off in this plane on my own up there and I always remember thinking, ‘My God, I've got this bloody thing up here. How am I going to get it down again? [laughs] And —
DK: Were they, were they very good, the instructors?
BM: Well —
DK: What were, what were the instructors like?
BM: I think they had to have a lot of faith.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And —
DK: So can you, can you remember how many flights you had with the instructor before you went solo?
BM: Well yes, I did about seven and a half, seven [pause] I haven't unfortunately I think it was about seven and a half I think.
DK: Seven and a half hours was that?
BM: Hours.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
BM: Dual flying.
DK: Right. Yeah.
BM: Before they said, ‘Right.’
DK: ‘Off you go.’
BM: ‘Off you go.’
DK: So what was your feelings then when you went off by yourself for the first time?
BM: Well, I thought what a damn fool I am [laughs] going up with this aeroplane on my own up there. Nobody to help me. No radio. Nothing like that. I couldn't shout, ‘Help.’ You know, ‘What do I do now?’ And I thought I’ll just try and remember what he told me. All the different checks you go through.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Had I got them all right? And I came and landed. It must have been reasonably alright because he said, ‘Off you go again’ so off I went and did another circuit and bump and came around and he said, ‘Ok.’ And that was that. Still did a little bit of flying. Only a time or two after that before we got moved on.
DK: Right. So you got moved on from Reading then.
BM: We got moved on from Reading.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And our, our first EFTS —
DK: Yeah.
BM: I'm not going to try and confuse you with letters.
DK: That's ok.
BM: Elementary Flying Training School.
DK: Right. Ok.
BM: Which was in Newquay.
DK: Right. Ok. So, Reading and then Newquay.
BM: I went to Reading.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And then Newquay. And it was an Elementary Flying Training School but we never did any flying. It was all, you know pounding the streets of Newquay and that.
DK: Square, square bashing.
BM: I did the six months down at Newquay and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And well it was some hard work but I still enjoyed it because the weather was decent. We used to play a lot on the sands and that sort of thing, you know.
DK: Yeah.
BM: We enjoyed that. And then we went from EFTS. I’ve missed some out. My memory is I can’t remember what my own name was.
DK: Don't worry.
BM: I’d moved to Canada then.
DK: Right.
BM: We’d done our ground stuff. I think actually they got a little bit fed up of me because we got moved up to Heaton Park near Manchester.
DK: Right.
BM: It was sort of a transit camp. You go there before you get sent here, there and everywhere and I used to break out of the camp at night and I’d come out on the train and that sort of thing. I remember no one occasion I went back after a weekend at home which I shouldn’t have been because I had no passes and I jumped straight into the arms of the military police. I went through the wall in the, in the park at Heaton Park. A lot of lads had found that out. We jumped through this hole and there were four or five of blooming military police stood on the other side.
DK: Did you, did you get into trouble over that then?
BM: Well, ‘Report to the adjutant 8 o’clock tomorrow morning.’. So I got a week confined to camp for that.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Well, what they used to make us do you put a heavy pack on your back and you had to run around the blooming park. The perimeter of the park.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Which wasn't funny. And then probably have to go back to the orderly room and polish the floors and all that. Well, I went, I saw some leave passes on this adjutant’s table while I was there. I thought, oh, you know he might not miss a few of those. So, I put some of these leave passes in my pocket and while I was there I got, he’d got the old stamp. You know, they used to stamp them. That's fine. And I got a mate of mine he could sign them for me.
DK: Yeah.
BM: His name was Squadron Leader Fred Bowls or whatever his name was [laughs] and it was all very nice but unfortunately one of these weekends I went home using this pass [there was nothing to do] we were a few weeks at Manchester. It was a bank holiday weekend. Well, that was the worst thing I could do because all military traffic, leisure traffic was stopped for the weekend. The civilians were all very much in need of all this traffic and I went home on this weekend and of course again the military police, ‘Where's your leave pass? What are you doing?’ Well, I’d got a nice little leave pass there which I showed them it. ‘There you are corporal.’ ‘Very good. Carry on.’ I said my grandmother wasn't very well so I had to go home and see her before she died.
DK: Oh dear.
BM: I had to. There were a lot of poorly grandmothers around in those days and it was a bad weekend to go. And as I’ say there were other weekends. The last weekend I got the opportunity was when I went and jumped through the wall in to the loving arms of the military police. Anyway, shortly after that we got posted and we went off to Canada.
DK: Do you remember much about the trip over to Canada? Were you on a, can you remember which ship you were on?
BM: Well, I don't remember. But I do, what I do remember it was, it was amazing really we had two battleships.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And we had four cruisers, and we had ten destroyers and that was going the other way. And it took us three weeks to get to St Johns, Newfoundland.
DK: Right.
BM: From Glasgow we went actually and we went right across Canada. Saskatchewan, Manitoba and all the rest of it. Lovely people the Canadians.
DK: What did, what did you think about Canada when you got there?
BM: Oh, it was fantastic. Absolutely fantastic because you see you must remember that this was 1941, the beginning of 1942 when we got [pause] and everything was rationed of course.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And we didn’t have white bread. It was all this stingy old brownish bread and everything like potatoes and milk. Poor old milk were about ninety percent water. I know there is a lot of water in it anyway but most of it was water and it was miserable old stuff. We got across to Canada full cream milk, the food was fantastic. Lovely white soft bread. We thought we were in heaven. And every station that we stopped at and it took us a long time as we were going across Canada there was always a group of lovely ladies came out on the platforms to welcome us and give us fruit and I mean, we hadn’t seen an orange or a banana or anything like that for, for years. And all of them made these wonderful offerings and eventually we ended up at a little place beside the Alaska highway in [pause] north of Calgary. Alberta.
DK: Alberta. Yeah.
BM: And about a hundred miles north of Calgary and it was a real old-fashioned place. There was no roadways or anything like that but it suited us and what we liked about that place which we hadn’t experience in England everything was laid out in, you know in lateral squares.
DK: Yeah. Yeah
BM: So you had a job to get lost.
DK: Right.
BM: Really, I mean it was —
DK: The grid system.
BM: We had a wonderful navigator. Unless, of course and we did have it happen one young fella he was going north when he should have been going south and [laughs] of course he ended up, if he’d kept on going he would have been at the North Pole but of course he ran out of fuel very easily. Then he had to walk back to get back but that was all part and parcel of the experience —
DK: So what —
BM: Of learning.
DK: What sort of training did you then have in Canada?
BM: Well, we went onto Stearmans in Canada.
DK: Right.
BM: That was our first one. This little place called Bowden, and a very very very very safe stable aircraft. I don't know whether you’ve ever seen the, sort of realised the make of aeroplane that there were but these Stearmans were like a big Tiger Moth.
DK: They were biplanes. Yeah.
BM: Biplanes.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Very stable. Very very safe. And you could, you could drop them in from a fair old height and, you know they would just bounce. Well most aeroplanes would, you’d buckle the undercarriage up. That was the biggest problem you know with would be pilots was the judgement in landing an aircraft.
DK: Right.
BM: I mean anybody can take an aeroplane off. You’d open the throttle and keep it straight and off you go. It’s a different kettle of fish when it comes down to judging that height.
DK: Right.
BM: Just get it down and drop it in nicely. And there were more people I think got failed for that particular fault.
DK: Not being able to land.
BM: Couldn’t judge the distance.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: To drop it in. And —
DK: So –
BM: Failed because of that.
DK: At this time are you flying solo again or have you got —
BM: Oh, we, oh yes we got so we were flying solo. And I did quite a lot of hours. There was a statutory number of hours.
DK: Right.
BM: Whether you were good, bad or indifferent you had that to do. And when you reached a certain standard than the whole lot of you, fifty bods usually in a, in a flight would get moved on to the next stage and we went on to the SFTS then.
DK: Right. Yeah.
BM: Yeah. And —
DK: SFTS. Yeah.
BM: You did [laughs]
DK: Yeah.
BM: And at that point we went on to Harvards.
DK: Right.
BM: So we were still training to be fighter pilots. We were still on singles. Now, the Harvards were a wonderful aircraft and we then did a full course on the Harvards. Funnily enough it just made me remember we went to Zimbabwe for a holiday several years ago with a cousin and we were going around Zimbabwe and we went into a museum in Bulawayo.
DK: Right.
BM: One day. A little museum with a few aeroplanes in it and there was a beautiful Harvard in there.
DK: Oh right.
BM: They’d had, they had this Empire Training Scheme.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Which was really —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Out in South Africa. Rhodesia as it was then. It wasn’t Zimbabwe and they did the same course. A lot of the lads went out from this country out to South Africa did the course there and then moved up to the Middle East.
DK: Yeah.
BM: It was much easier for them to get posted in to some sort of military unit in the Middle East. Either in the Western Desert or —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Wherever they went. And it just reminded me that Harvards were, were in South Africa just as much, well not as much they were so very busy with training aircraft in Canada. They did a wonderful job and the Canadians are forever in my heart and I have always wanted to go back full for a holiday.
DK: Right.
BM: To take my wife back after the war. We never got there. Anyway, we came back when all this was over. Well, I’m jumping a bit before we got there. When we’d done the training on the Harvards a group of us got moved from there to Navigation School.
DK: Right.
BM: On Prince Edward Island. PEI as they used to call it. And it had got a job to [pause] it was alcohol free. You know, it was like the old what's the name that they had in New York, didn't they? The —
DK: Oh, the prohibition mission. Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And they had the same thing on Prince Edward Island. The only way we could get any decent drink and that was invariably it was rum, good thick rum. And we didn’t cope with it [phone ringing] and we could buy this in the mess.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And we had to get a licence to buy any alcohol off service premises.
DK: Right.
BM: You know, because there were like alcohol stores where you could buy stuff on licence.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: But you wouldn’t just go in and, ‘I’ll have a pint of beer missus,’ or whatever you know. You, you had to buy it on licence. But we got all we needed anyway.
DK: Yeah.
BM: So we did this course and then we came back when it was over down through the eastern side of America. I forget the name of the States now down north of New York. Then came back to New York and we came home from New York.
DK: Right.
BM: Actually.
DK: Did you actually stop off at New York. Or not —
BM: We got on at New York.
DK: You got on at New York. Yeah.
BM: Yeah, because we came down by train.
DK: Right.
BM: From Prince Edward Island. From Philadelphia, was it was one of them.
DK: Right.
BM: New England.
DK: Right.
BM: It doesn't matter. Anyway. And we got on at New York and came back from there to Liverpool in seven days.
DK: Right.
BM: It took us three weeks to go out.
DK: Yeah.
BM: The same journey. Well, it wasn’t the same journey really because we were just over. We still lost one by the way. We still lost a troop ship going out. With all these ships looking after us we found more escorts than we had people to go, bods on them because we were going the other way.
DK: Right.
BM: And of course, at that point then the Americans were in the war. They joined up pretty well straight away in 1941. Well, December ‘41 is when they came in didn’t they?
DK: Yes. Yeah.
BM: So it would be ’42. And we got the Empire, Empire Air Training Scheme going and we were going the other way. Anyway, we came back and it took us a week and it was said, now we’ve no way of knowing whether it’s true or not there were twenty thousand troops on that boat.
DK: Wow.
BM: On the Princess Elizabeth. And it was the first time, not the first time that we came in but it was, it was used for civilian traffic before it was actually launched as a passenger vessel.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Because it was launched at the beginning of the war, wasn't it? The Queen Elizabeth.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And interesting really. We slept in the swimming pool. There was no water in it. We got these palliases and it was plenty warm enough even in winter. And —
DK: So was the convoy attacked at all on the, on the way back?
BM: Do you know it didn't have one escort.
DK: No.
BM: Not that we saw anyway. If it did it kept out of sight.
DK: Right.
BM: We’d no escort whatever with the Queen Elizabeth and it was, it was forever never, never took a straight course. But it was said and of course everything we got was all rumour. We didn't know whether it was true or not that it was doing about thirty knots all the time and it was too fast for a U-boat.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
BM: You know, there was no way they were going to catch it unless, you could get four or five of them like a pack. And it was maybe difficult to get away then but whether it actually got attacked I don't know but it certainly did fire its guns. It might have been in practise I don't know. It had got some massive, massive guns on as big as a warship.
DK: Right.
BM: And also they’d got dozens, literally dozens of anti-aircraft guns. I mean the Elizabeth was a big ship.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: There was a lot of space there to look after and they did a wonderful job. They got us back but of course we went back to a bit of nice English food having had all this wonderful food all the time we were out in —
DK: You had a bit of a shock then, was it? Coming back to this.
BM: Oh yeah. Coming back to this. So then we did [pause] from there we went, moved on to training on Oxfords.
DK: Right.
BM: Twin engine planes.
DK: Can you remember where you were based then? Flying the Oxfords?
BM: Well, you know my first place really was South Cerney in Gloucestershire.
DK: Right.
BM: There was South Cerney and there was Bibury. We did different sort of out-stations like we, one was at Lulsgate Bottom. I remember that one because it, it actually became Bristol Airport.
DK: Right. Yes. Yes.
BM: Eventually.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Lulsgate Bottom. And it was, it was a bit tight because the A5 ran right alongside. You know the way Scampton does? You’ve got the A15 pretty well right —
DK: Yeah.
BM: At the end of the runway. You’ve got the A5 there at Bristol and I remember on one occasion I was awaiting my turn to take off because invariably you flew on your own even in a twin engine aircraft and he came in to land and just touched the top of a furniture waggon and the furniture waggon went past on the A5 road and the runway was just over the hedge and he just, he just touched it. But he, and I was stood there waiting and he carried on and landed OK but I should think the driver of the vehicle had a —
DK: A bit of a shock.
BM: An enlightening experience.
DK: Yeah.
SM: Has he mentioned about the Americans when he was in Canada? Flew in to —
BM: No.
DK: No. No.
SM: There was a flight of Americans came in. They all crashed didn’t they? Couldn't land.
BM: Oh, well this was in Canada.
DK: Canada. Yeah.
BM: Yeah.
SM: With the frost.
BM: Oh, we had a few experiences. We were, at that period we were going through part of the winter.
DK: Right.
BM: Well, Canadian winters were rather strong —
DK: Yeah.
BM: And one weekend, over one weekend while we were there we actually had eighty degrees of frost. It was [pause] I've got to get this right. Fifty degrees below zero was eighty two degrees of frost.
DK: Right. Yeah.
BM: It was cold.
DK: Right.
BM: It was. And bearing in mind we were flying Stearmans which were open cockpit.
DK: Oh yeah.
BM: And we used to have a, some chamois leather face masks with three pairs of gloves. Silk gloves, woollen gloves, leather gloves. All of it and you are only allowed to fly for twenty minutes.
DK: Right.
BM: That was it. Because of frostbite. You could easily get frostbite.
DK: Yeah.
BM: You were wrapped up like a Chinese monkey and when your time was up you had to come back and land. Get out. Otherwise you would just freeze up.
DK: Right.
BM: It’s sensible I suppose really. And of course, everything was frozen up. You didn't know where the runways were. It was just solid snow and that. On one occasion, this wasn't of course public knowledge but the Americans were supplying the Russians with aircraft and, because we had a photograph of a Flying Fortress with a Russian Star on it. We had, we had 5 Airacobras. Do you know what they are?
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BM: Yeah. They —
DK: Single engine fighters.
BM: One of the early [ tricycle ] undercarriage planes.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And five came in one after the other. Coming in for re-fuelling on the way up.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Up to Alaska.
DK: And to Russia that way presumably.
BM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And we were right on the Alaska Highway. The side of the Alaska highway and it would take them up to [pause] I forget the names of the places now. Anyway, they’d go up to Alaska and then over the —
SM: Bering Straits.
BM: Bering Straits.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And come down in to America that way. They didn't have to fly them across long stretches of water. Long stretches of snow instead. But these five Airacobras they came in and they couldn't pull up because it was on a shortish runway with a fair amount of wind and the brakes wouldn't, they wouldn’t, I don't know, they just, I mean we could see them doing it. You slid right down the blooming runway such as there was and, on this occasion, came down, landed and there was the old Alaska Highway such as it was but it had all snowed up. But we did have a hedge. The first one went straight through the hedge and the other four followed him just boom boom boom. So we had, we ended up with five Airacobras in somebody's field.
DK: Oh dear.
BM: But they didn't do an awful lot of damage.
DK: No?
BM: Really. They did some damage obviously.
DK: Yeah.
BM: But didn’t do such a lot of damage.
DK: Nobody, nobody hurt then.
BM: They weren't very popular. But I mean, you couldn't blame the pilots. They’d absolutely no chance and I mean once the wheels were on the ground that was it. They just kept on sliding.
DK: Yeah.
BM: They’d no grip. But just another [laughs] funny incident. Not quite on the same day but we, we had one or two lads up doing navigation exercises in Ansons. Well, they weren’t flying them. They were there navigating them. Learning how to navigate. And this, as I say this little runway they couldn’t get the aircraft down. It wasn’t a case of getting it down and making it stop down. They couldn’t get it down.
DK: No.
BM: Because an Anson just used to float on the wind you know. Like a butterfly when it was coming in and you’d get down just a few feet off the ground and you couldn’t get it to come down and stop down. You cut the engine off about somewhere at Dunham Bridge and you could [laughs] you’d come drifting in and in and in. And it went around and around. I’d seem one of them. I don't know how many times it went around but it went around a few times before it did eventually get down. And I think he was actually landing at Lincoln and then coming in [laughs] It was, it was a funny incident really watching them. But anyway we were on about these Airacobras. That was quite interesting. They’d all got the Russian Star on them.
DK: Yeah.
BM: I think if the English public had known that they’d got the Russian Star there really it would, it would be after. It would be after Russia actually came in officially.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
BM: In to the war but not all that long afterwards.
DK: 1942 wouldn’t it when the Americans supplied.
BM: It wasn’t that that long after.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Because they’d actually got to get all the aeroplane [pause] well they weren’t converted. You had them all prepared.
DK: Yeah.
BM: With the proper markings on and all that sort of thing. All these Russian aircraft and the, but they weren't, we didn't see any that I can remember Russian transport. Land transport, you know. Big heavy armoured vehicles and all that sort.
DK: Yeah.
BM: But we did get the aeroplanes. But anyway to come back to where I was we were watching these aircraft do aerobatics at the end of the A5 at Lulsgate Bottom.
SM: Before you say that dad have you mentioned you lost your leave as well didn’t you in Canada? Which wasn't your fault.
BM: Lost me what?
SM: Leave. When someone had been smoking. Can you remember? You had to stay in camp and everybody went in to America.
BM: Lost my leave.
SM: Yeah.
BM: We don't talk about such things as that, Simon.
SM: Yeah. That wasn't your fault, was it. Can you remember?
BM: There was all sorts of things were my fault. I was forever getting myself locked up.
SM: It doesn't matter if you’ve forgotten.
BM: I have. I have.
SM: But he did. He lost his leave.
DK: Lost his leave.
SM: Somebody had been smoking and everyone [pause] they didn’t own up.
DK: Yeah.
SM: And —
DK: You got the blame for it.
SM: Dad got the blame for it and they all went on to, into America on their leave and dad had to stay on.
DK: Oh dear.
SM: On the camp.
BM: Anyway, I did this. This training.
DK: Yeah.
BM: At two or three different small aerodromes you know that —
DK: Yeah.
BM: That were where the main aerodrome had sort of landing grounds and there was, Bibury was another one.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Near Gloucester that we did a bit of training. Oh, I think we did, that one was blind landing, you know.
DK: Yeah.
BM: You had to, without having any visual you had to come in. I don't know whether anybody has ever told you how they do it. Or did it. I mean there are all these modern gizmos today.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: I mean, they can do it but in those days you did it with like Morse Code. A series of, you’d got a dit dit dit dit dit on one side. Then on the other side of the landing as you were coming in da da da. And then you had to get them to join up. You were doing this totally blind. You were just seeing the instrument and you could —
DK: You’re hearing the noise in your ears.
BM: Yeah, we were hearing it.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And it had got a constant sound so you got the dit dit dit and the da da da. You could [daaaaa] and when it all —
DK: Came together.
BM: Came together then you knew you were actually on the line. It was very simple but it, it worked, you know. You’d get people down. It didn't tell them how high they were but at least it got them in. Got them down. I mean later in the war they got all sorts of gizmos they were using for landing. There was one system called BABS. It used to amuse us because my wife's name was Babs and they’d got this —
SM: Still is dad.
BM: They’d got this landing. Anyway, we did all this series of different training. When it was all completed then of course you got together. You got navigators, bomb aimers.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Pilots and all the rest of it and you went too [pause]
DK: The OTU.
BM: You've got it, you know. Yeah. And we were sent as a group up to —
DK: Can you remember meeting up with your crew and how that happened?
BM: Well, it was at, that was the way it was done. They would put in a big room I suppose the numbers, equal numbers that they required so many bomb aimers, so many wireless operators, this that and the other all and you just sorted yourself out. I mean if you saw somebody looking a bit like a lost sheep and you’d know what, what job he had whether he was an observer or an air gunner you’d got a —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And then say, ‘Ah, we want, we want an air gunner in our crew.’ Or, ‘We want a navigator.’ Or whatever. But even sort of —
DK: Did you think that was a good idea of getting your crew together because it seems a bit random?
BM: It was very much random but [pause] how else would you do it? I mean you wanted so many bomb aimers. You wanted equal numbers bomb aimers, navigators, pilots. You wanted more air gunners.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Because most aircraft had got at least two —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Lots of air gunners on.
DK: You've got, you’ve got no idea how good they are at their —
BM: No.
DK: Jobs though, have you?
BM: They might have been bloody useless. And in fact, some were.
DK: Yeah.
BM: I suppose that did happen but once you’d got them you’d got them.
DK: Yeah.
BM: They formed part of your crew and —
DK: Can you remember which OTU you were at?
BM: Yeah.
DK: Or where it was?
BM: Number 6.
DK: Number 6.
BM: Silloth.
DK: Right.
BM: Near Carlisle.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And you see Coastal Command flying Wellingtons I never told you that had I? Anyway, you didn’t have a lot of choice it was a, we were Wellingtons —
DK: So you were, you were literally posted to a Coastal Command OTU.
BM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Yeah. It wasn’t until that point we’d got away from being trained as [pause] Oh yes it was. Of course, it was because we had to do a conversion course as pilots from singles.
DK: Right.
BM: On to multis, you know. And we did that —
DK: So was this —
BM: Through Oxfords and —
DK: Was it a bit of a shock then that you weren't going to be the fighter pilot? You were going to be put on bombers?
BM: Well, I mean everybody —
DK: Or larger aircraft.
BM: Everybody realised that basically the fighter’s war was over. I mean a lot of the lads were lost. By that stage of the war they were then getting they were wanting bombers.
DK: Right.
BM: Fighter bombers. They did want fighter aircraft but more or less working in safety situations.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Really, you know guarding other bombers and being —
DK: Not being, not being offensive then.
BM: No.
DK: Yeah.
BM: No. No. Not —
DK: So you met your crew then. What did you think of them personally? Did you, were they a good crew?
BM: You know there’s a more reliable statistic.
DK: You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to [laughs] I can soon turn the recorder off.
BM: I think that’s the easiest way.
DK: If you want to something [laughs] Ok. Fair enough.
BM: Yeah. You get, you get a mixed bunch really.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: You’re bound to do and there weren’t many crews and I did know one that, there was one crew which they, all of them seemed to be smashing fellas.
DK: Right.
BM: You know, they really were and they all appeared to know their job. But they were very decent fellas. But you see you got such a mixed bag. I mean, we had an Australian navigator for instance. We had a, a second pilot who was a Cockney. A Londoner. Another one who was a Cockney who was a wireless op/air gunner. We had a radio, w/op from Belfast. They were from all over the blooming place you know. They were such a mixed bag. Well, you usually used to find that people coming from similar areas you know would gel —
DK: Yes. Yeah.
BM: A lot better. You know, like two or three northerners for instance.
DK: Yeah.
BM: But again they would stick together. Which may not have been a good thing in some things. It didn’t help mix everybody up but they were. Anyway, we did that. I had one little incident where we was a little bit alarming in the course of doing this. Way out in the Atlantic there’s a little rock. Nothing else. It’s an island made of rock and seagulls and it’s called Rockall.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
BM: You’ve heard of it.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: It was quite a long way out in the Atlantic and it was used as a navigation training exercise.
DK: Right.
BM: You had to, a good training point for the navigator because he was the one who was responsible for it. Make sure you got to the right point and you, and you had to photograph it because we all carried a big —
DK: Prove you’d been there.
BM: So to prove that we’d actually been there.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Some would say, ‘Well, yes, we got there boss.’ Alright. No, you had to prove that you’d actually —
DK: Yeah.
BM: And we got a little bit under fuel, the shortish side and we came back and we knew we weren’t going to get back home so everybody, well the navigator sketching out as fast as he could the nearest convenient place that we could get down on and we got down. We came in to land off the coast of Scotland. A little place called Port Ellen. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of it but —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: All they’d got there was a few sheep. Didn’t even keep any aircraft there. It was an emergency place for anybody who was in trouble for any reason and then there was a hut in there.
DK: Yeah.
BM: We, we put in there for the night. We got refuelled. Had a night there listening to the flaming sheep bleating all night [laughs] And then we filled up and went off again the next morning. But it, it can be a bit hairy being out in the sea there.
DK: Yeah.
BM: It would be a bit wet if you —
DK: Finding out you were running low on fuel.
BM: If you didn't make it. You get back. You quite a long way to come at that point down the West Coast of Scotland around the sort of northern tip of Ireland.
DK: Right.
BM: And then came in and up to Solway Firth.
DK: Yeah. So was, was it at the OTU then you first flew the Wellington?
BM: Oh yeah.
DK: Right.
BM: You wouldn’t get any opportunity to fly it before then.
DK: No. So that was —
BM: That was the first time you ever flew as a, as a crew.
DK: As a crew. So how did you feel about the Wellington then because it was quite a bigger aircraft than you'd been used to up until then?
BM: Oh, yeah. Well, they were actually discarded ones from the, that had been on bombing.
DK: Right.
BM: So you could imagine that they —
DK: So they were a bit rough.
BM: They were a bit rough alright. One particular occasion we were doing a training exercise and we came in and landed and we’d no brakes at all. We couldn't. There were no way we were going to pull up before we’d go through somebody's chimney and we came down towards the end of the runway and all you could do was accelerate a lot.
DK: Right.
BM: On one side. I think it was on the portside and swing it around. Nothing to hold it back on the other side, you know. You was —
DK: Yeah.
BM: And then eventually you’d run out of steam but if anybody got in your way it was really awkward but they were such a clapped out blooming aircraft. They really were but they weren't as bad as we had on in many respects as we got on Ferry Command. There were some dodgy ones.
DK: So from the OTU then were you then posted to an operational squadron?
BM: No.
DK: Right.
BM: We did the, we did the OTU and then we got, we got sent back. We got sent to Haverfordwest.
DK: Right. OK.
BM: So that was one end of the country to the other nearly and we got down to Haverford West and it's a long way down there you know to Haverfordwest in those days because you had to come to London.
DK: Oh right.
BM: Out of London and then oh —
DK: Then back out again.
BM: Blooming heck. Anyway, we got down to, and we were just getting off the train down at Haverfordwest Station. A little old station down there and there were some MPs out on the platform. ‘What's gone wrong now?’ And they were giving us out forty eight hour leave pass and a warrant for the train.
DK: Right.
BM: They said, ‘Well, you've got forty eight hours leave.’ And we’d just come all that blooming way from God knows where. So I had to get back on the train, back to London, back up, well to Newark as far as I was concerned. Two lads were able to get off at London because they came from London.
DK: Yeah.
BM: But, and another lad, I’m moving on a little bit but we came back. Got back to Newark and I actually walked home to my wife. She wasn't my wife then. My fiancé. Just down the street here. I walked home from Newark station.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Quite a fair old walk. Got in at 8:00 o'clock in the morning. I walked in and said, ‘If you want to get married we're going to get married tomorrow.’ And that’s the first —
SM: He did. Yeah.
BM: It was the first she ever knew about it. We never discussed it but —
DK: That’s the way to do it.
BM: And I was —
SM: Yeah, but you knew you were going to be posted dad, didn’t you? You knew you were going to be posted away at that stage.
BM: Oh, aye. I know. Anyway, we fixed this up we were, we were going to get married. Well, a lot of pandemonium and all the rest of it. We had at that stage my wife’s house. In those days it happened quite a bit where you got service people were billeted —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: On somebody who had substantial accommodation. My wife was a farmer's daughter so they considered that they had enough square space to accommodate a couple of senior officers and they had a Wing Commander —
DK: Right.
BM: Who was the CO of the engineering outfit. Engineering officer at 5 Group.
DK: Right. Yeah.
BM: On Lancasters. And he was billeted up there. I used to get along with him like a house on fire. I didn't call him Bill and Fred and all the rest of it but, and this he treated me you know with respect and of course I did him. I mean a senior officer. And he said, my wife and the family were obviously going down to Nottingham to do some shopping. He said, ‘I'll take you to Newark.’ I mean, I had a wing commander, you know, I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ And he took them all off to catch the train at Newark Station. All the way there apparently because I wasn’t there, all the way there he was trying to persuade her all the time, ‘Now, are you sure you want to get married? You’re a bit young,’ and all this, that and the other, you know. She said, ‘Yes, we’re getting married.’ She wasn't twenty one of course, I wasn't either and anyway off they went to Nottingham and they came back and it was arranged that we would meet the officer and train and he got back to the train. And then of course in the meantime I think it was realised we didn't have a licence to get married and they’d got forty eight hours. So, and Saturday was already on its way. They kept the train waiting on Collingham Station while they went and hunted out my mother and my wife's mother to get their written permissions —
DK: Right.
BM: On the, on the licence application to be able to get married. So I went to, all the passengers on the train were enjoying this bit of drama. So I did that and then we carried on on the train. I went up to Newark. To Lincoln trying to, of course this was late in the day. This was teatime to get the rest of the particulars and we had to get a licence. Seven and sixpence and of course it was sod’s law it was Saturday and these sort of bods don’t work on Saturdays. But we went and hunted them up my sister and me and we got this blooming chap. Registrar of births, deaths and marriages. He was very good actually. We got him fairly late on in the evening and I said, ‘Well, I’m going abroad in a couple of days.’ I mean, this was happening all the time obviously.
DK: I was going to say I imagine it so—
BM: And he was, he was —
DK: It was quite common.
BM: So he fixed us up with a licence. Seven and six pence and that was, that was that. We got married the next day on the Sunday.
DK: Right.
BM: We’d got the vicar primed. There were no banns. Nothing like that. And my wife did a wedding breakfast. Wonderful for her. There were sixty people there present. All these had been notified in the previous twenty four hours.
DK: Yeah.
BM: My own father didn’t know, you know. I thought we’d better ring him up and tell him his son is going to get married. Anyway, we got married and had a sort of wedding breakfast and then off we went to Nottingham for a honeymoon and we came back on the Tuesday morning and we were back to London and back to Haverfordwest and that was our wedding. And two and a half years later I saw my wife.
DK: Right. So you did know you were about to be posted overseas then at this point did you?
BM: We did but we didn’t know —
DK: Where?
BM: Until actually we were on the train on the station.
DK: Right.
BM: At Haverfordwest.
DK: Right.
BM: We didn’t know.
DK: And that’s why you got the forty eight hours leave then.
BM: Yeah, we had the forty eight hour leave pass.
DK: [unclear] leave. Right.
BM: They didn’t give you much did they?
DK: No.
BM: Forty eight hours and —
DK: You had, you had no idea where you were going. Just that you were going overseas.
BM: Just that we were going.
DK: Right.
BM: That was it. And of course, a certain number of days and you were back. So —
DK: Can I just ask what rank were you at this time because you mentioned you —
BM: Oh, I was an air marshal or something like that, I think. I was a Sergeant.
DK: So you were a flight Sergeant then at that time.
BM: He’s there look.
DK: Ah. Oh right.
BM: That’s me. Good looking fellow wasn’t he?
DK: Yeah.
BM: Well, the woman was a good looking girl.
DK: Good looking lady.
BM: Yeah.
DK: Ok. So you were a flight Sergeant at that point then.
BM: Well —
DK: Sergeant. Yeah.
BM: I suppose so. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Ok. So you’d gone back to Haverfordwest so you're now going overseas. So where did you —
BM: Yeah.
DK: Where did you go then?
BM: But we didn't know where.
DK: Yeah.
BM: They didn't give you a lot of information out and they said, ‘Well, you will be taking a new aircraft to Morocco.’
DK: Oh right.
BM: Rabat in Morocco. So we had to fly —
DK: And this was a Wellington was it?
BM: That was a Wellington. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Brand new. And of course what happens next? We were waiting for this and somebody went and smashed it up. They were doing an air test on it and smashed it up so they held us back. Not very long. Three or four days or something like that they kept us back. Until another one became available.
DK: Right.
BM: We got that. Took it down to Southampton and gave us all the instructions to get it to Rabat.
DK: Right.
BM: Which was a circuitous route to say the least because we had to go out to, we had to try and avoid France.
DK: France. Yeah. Spain.
BM: Spain. Portugal. All the, because we hadn't any ammunition.
DK: Right.
BM: They sent us out with his blooming brand new Wellington. We got all the guns we needed on it.
DK: [unclear]
BM: But there were no ammunition. We’d no ammunition because we had to load the thing up with as much fuel as you could get.
DK: Right.
BM: You know, you needed all that. You couldn't be wasting space on bullets.
DK: Right.
BM: And but allowing though if you happened to see a few Focke Wulfs come on you, on your tail but anyway we flew through the night and it would be —
DK: Did you go direct to Morocco then or —
BM: Did we —?
DK: Did you go direct to Morocco or stop on the way?
BM: No. We flew, oh sorry we flew direct from Southampton. We went out over the Channel Islands.
DK: Right.
BM: And we were alright being fairly closer in to France but we never went over any, any land.
DK: You didn't stop at Gibraltar or anywhere.
BM: No. No.
DK: You went all the way to Morocco.
BM: No. We didn't. We very nearly did but it was accidental. We came in towards, we thought, the navigator thought we’d got to Gibraltar and we did and then we suddenly realised Jesus better get out of this or else. They were a bit handy with the, with the loose cannon you know if they didn't have proper warning.
DK: Oh right. You weren't expected.
BM: Turn around quick.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And head out to sea to get a few miles behind us and then we went down, turned to port again and went further down across Northern Africa.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Morocco to Rabat.
DK: Right.
BM: From, that’s where we parked the plane and —
DK: So were you officially with the squadron now?
BM: No.
DK: Oh right.
BM: No. We were in transit.
DK: Ok.
SM: You had an incident didn’t you when you landed?
BM: We were, well actually it was rather interesting. We knew we were, we were getting dangerously short. We were living, or were flying on fumes pretty well.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Jesus. Keep paddling on and we got, we actually came in to land and we looked down and we ran out of fuel. It was cutting it a bit fine but the coincidental part of this was that a corporal came out in a little fifteen hundred weight truck to the end of the runway. We couldn’t get any further unless somebody was going to push us and he said, ‘What’s the problem?’ We’d no fuel and I looked at him and bloody hell. I went to school with him.
DK: Yeah?
BM: Yeah.
DK: The corporal who had just pulled up?
BM: I went past his, he was a farmer’s son.
DK: How strange.
BM: I went past it yesterday funnily enough. At Leverton. And he was, he was there, he wasn’t there but I don’t know whether their still, the family are still there now up to this day or, I don’t know.
DK: Did you both immediately recognise one another then?
BM: Oh aye. He recognised me and I recognised him because you’ve got to bear in mind that.
DK: Strange.
BM: This was in 1942.
DK: Right.
BM: Would it be? No. It was ’43. The end of ’43. We’d have not been from school long either him or me, you know.
DK: Yeah.
BM: It weren’t, we weren’t talking sort of years back so we hadn’t got to remember far back and he was, he was at school with us and there he was.
DK: How strange.
BM: Shepherding aircraft at this, on this blooming runway at Rabat. Anyway, we parked the plane up there and then we got instructions to move on via American transport plane I think.
DK: Right.
BM: We went sort of down the coast of Morocco and Algeria. We went to, stopped at an American aerodrome at Algeria and it was all sort of in transit.
DK: Right.
BM: And from there we moved around again and we moved across to Italy. To the heel of Italy.
DK: Right.
BM: Near Taranto. What were we talking about?
DK: Right.
BM: Yeah. No, it’s Taranto isn’t it? Right down in the coast. Grottaglie they called it.
DK: So, what were your thoughts about North Africa then when you got there and —?
BM: North Africa?
DK: Yeah. What was it, what was it like?
BM: A bit dry [laughs] but we didn’t really see a lot of it. I mean and unfortunately of course in those days we didn’t have much money to go out and buy cameras.
DK: Right.
BM: If we could have got cameras we couldn’t, we couldn’t buy film.
DK: Yeah.
BM: You couldn’t get the blooming stuff. I’ve got very few aircraft, very few photographs taken really of wartime and that sort of thing. But anyway we got across to Grottaglie.
DK: So the Americans were flying you across then.
BM: The Americans actually you see they landed on the west coast of Africa.
DK: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And they attacked it from —
DK: Operation Torch.
BM: The west and we were coming up from —
DK: Yeah.
BM: The Tobruk area. And [pause] Montgomery’s lot were meeting with the American.
DK: Yeah.
BM: What was his name? General, was it Mark Clark?
DK: [unclear] Yeah.
BM: Anyway, they went coming from, we were behind the Americans at that stage. They were moving into Africa and we only had to have a couple of spots in our squadrons and there was really no need to have done that if they could have found an aircraft with sufficient bods on it to fill it up to —
DK: Yeah.
BM: You know, to take it to —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Exactly where you wanted to be.
DK: So having arrived in Italy then, the heel of Italy are you, had you been allocated to a squadron at this point then?
BM: Yeah. We were on, we were on route right from our transport instructions. Our transport officer right from where we landed in Rabat.
DK: Right. Ok.
BM: But then sort of under the control of a transport, you know a designated transport officer.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And he would just move us on from place to place and we were on 221 Squadron.
DK: Right. And 221, they were, they were flying Wellingtons again I assume.
BM: Yeah.
DK: And they were part of Coastal Command.
BM: Yeah.
DK: Or Middle East Air Force.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Coastal Command.
BM: I mean I've never actually been on any other aircraft until I got to Ferry Command.
DK: Right.
BM: It was always, my operations were always on Wellingtons. I did a tour of operations except one.
DK: Right.
BM: I was one short of completing.
DK: Right. So, and these were all from Italy then.
BM: Yeah.
DK: All these operations. So how many operations did you actually do?
BM: I should have done thirty and I did twenty nine.
DK: Right. Ok. So for Coastal Command then what what sort of form did those operations take?
BM: What?
DK: What were you actually doing on those operations for Coastal Command? What was your role as it were?
BM: Well, I suppose to a large extent it was reconnaissance.
DK: Ok.
BM: Shipping and troop movements and that sort of thing. But we always, we carried bombs and guns and pretty well every time we came back we’d line somebody up with a few bombs. But across and Greece —
DK: Right.
BM: Yugoslavia. Albania.
DK: So most of, most of your operations then they were actually were over land.
BM: Yeah.
DK: Rather than over the sea.
BM: Oh Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
DK: Right.
BM: There were very little operations actually constantly over water. We were over water but I mean we were, we were attacking, if we knew they were there E-boats and that sort of thing and light armoured boats. We never encountered any heavy stuff.
DK: Right.
BM: And our biggest commercial boats would be about what? Six or seven thousand tonnes?
DK: Right.
BM: They weren’t massive big things you know because they were on basically on, on transport. On coastal transport you know.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Port to port and that sort of thing.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Right around back by Trieste and Venice and back down the Italian coast but on, on one occasion we went across to Greece. We pretty well got through our designated number of trips to different places. Some of them were interesting, some of them were a bit sharpish but we never flew very high.
DK: No.
BM: We never did any of this twenty, twenty five thousand and stuff for it. If you knocked off the five it would be nearer. We [laughs] we had about —
DK: So what sort of heights were you?
BM: Five. On average about five thousand feet.
DK: Oh right.
BM: So we’d get a good view of what was going off down below. You know when you think about it we did a fair bit of chasing e-boats and that sort of thing. How do you tell a difference between an e-boat and an MTB for instance?
DK: At that, at that height.
BM: When it’s dark.
DK: Yeah. At that height or dark, it would be difficult.
BM: I thought at the time well I’m damned sure that wasn’t a blooming German. I reckon he was a Navy man that we just dropped some stuff on but it happened because we couldn’t tell one from another. If they didn't, if they didn't put up a rocket —
DK: Right.
BM: Or anything to warn us that you know that —
DK: You dropped a bomb.
BM: It’s a wrong place to do it or whatever.
DK: So you didn't have necessarily specific targets you just flew out.
BM: Yeah, and —
DK: Saw what was there and —
BM: Dropping them on, we were taking photographs.
DK: Right.
BM: Of what there was and where because obviously the military ones at that moment and used our own discretion.
DK: Really. So that your main role then was really intelligence.
BM: Basically.
DK: Reconnaissance type of thing.
BM: You know intelligence and reconnaissance.
DK: And if you saw something —
BM: Yeah. And if there was something which was obviously —
SM: Bomb it.
BM: Foreign.
DK: Yeah.
BM: You know you would, you’d just line them up. We did this on [unclear] I mean [unclear] is a lovely place to go for a holiday.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: But not if somebody is dropping some unpleasant stuff on top of you. And it was, it was summertime so short nights and that sort of thing. Getting broad daylight when we left and we came back. You had to bear in mind that nearly every time we went we went on our own.
DK: I was going to ask that. Were you just flying singly?
BM: We didn’t go as part of a group.
DK: Right.
BM: Two at the most.
DK: Right.
BM: You know. There was never big numbers of aircraft involved and we set off from Greece to come home and all of a sudden we were getting [pfft] coming past us [pause] And the rear gunner had said nothing about anybody chasing us or anything like that and we’d got two ME109s coming up behind us giving us a belt up the rear. And they actually shot out the port engine and the fuel. They did the, with doing the engine they did the hydraulics because the flaps, the undercarriage, the guns, everything was driven by that port engine.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: With hydraulics.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And if they did that that was goodbye Mary and they shot all this lot up and we ended up without any flaps, without any guns really, and we before we even knew anything was happening to us. You know there were guns, bullets were coming into us before we realised what damage was being done. Anyway, we put one engine out. Had to do. Stopped it so we were lucky the other one didn’t stop as well because the fuel was, you know floating backwards and forwards between one engine and another. But the, we had a, an American Marauder.
DK: Right.
BM: I don’t know whether you’ve ever —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: They were one of the early tricycle undercarriages.
BM: Yeah. Twin engine plane.
DK: Fighter bomber.
BM: Yeah.
BM: Twin engine thing. But the Americans apparently didn’t like them because they were stuffed full of guns. They’d guns coming out of them in all directions.
SM: You mean the Germans didn’t like them.
BM: But they were —
SM: Yeah.
BM: Very strongly armed.
SM: Yeah.
BM: And he’d seen this because there had been a number of aircraft had been on this exercise and he’d seen it so he told us afterwards and he came up and the, these two 109s didn’t hang about then. They don’t like Marauders because Marauders have got .5 guns on them.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And we were all 303s which were like a, like a blooming peashooter. Anyway, the [pause] he came up with us. We’d no radio. Couldn’t talk to each other so he got busy flashing with his aldis lamp.
DK: Yeah.
BM: What the hell was he talking about? It was a job to understand what was, what was going backwards and forwards. Anyway, the gist of it was, ‘Are you ok?’ You know. Well, fortunately we were very fortunate indeed the navigator had just been nicked a bit but other than that nobody else got hurt and ok, so we carried on and eventually we got back to Bari, on the coast of Italy.
DK: Right.
BM: We headed for the nearest one that we could likely to get down at and it happened to be an American occupied station.
DK: Station. Yeah.
BM: And it’s only got a shortish runway on it and we came in to land on one engine, flaps down, undercarriage down. You’re not supposed to fly on, ought to be able to fly on one engine with all the hydraulics down. It won’t do it and it did. And we came around over the harbour nearly taking the masks off some ships which were in the harbour. It was really close to because you can’t do an overshoot with a lot of space. We came around again and came in a little bit slower and I think we were sort of trying to make sure that we got in the first time but we didn’t because we were halfway down the runway we were still airborne on a short runway. We tried to get around again and we got in. We came in to land low, lower and a little bit slower and we came in and damn me we put down and both tyres had been shot out and we didn’t know it. You can’t tell when you’re flying the blooming thing.
DK: No.
BM: If you looked out of the, you know but you weren’t bloody looking out and doing a bit of window gazing but both tyres and damage to the aircraft. Both tyres had been, we were told this when we got down but it was too late then because we’d no radio. You couldn’t, you know they couldn’t talk to us which was unfortunate and strangely enough when we came in the second time there were several blood waggons, ambulances, fire engines and that sort of thing lined up on the side of the runway so they were expecting somebody to have a bit of a bump. And the American, and as we came past where they were parked up on the end we could actually hear them. I could hear these, these blood waggons. You know they started up [whirr] As we were going down the runway they were behind us and of course the aircraft just went [pfft] That was it. The tyres were a bit empty. So it rather, apart from other damage that had been done by the bullets and that sort of thing it smashed it up a little bit.
DK: Did it remain on the undercarriage or did you —
BM: No. It collapsed.
DK: It had collapsed. Right. Ok.
BM: Yeah. You know, with flat tyres —
DK: Yeah.
BM: It does tend to do that.
DK: Yeah. It collapses on to the belly of the aircraft.
BM: Yeah. On to the rims.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And then I think the wheels went so we didn’t stop to hang about and have a look. Anyway, our CO —
DK: So you were all, you were all ok then when you got out.
BM: Oh yeah. Yeah. We got out as fast as we could get out. Get the lid open and get out and let them sort it out.
DK: Was the aircraft on fire at this point? Or —
BM: Well, I expected it to be.
DK: Yeah.
BM: But I realised that it was unlikely because you could smell petrol. It was unlikely to happen.
DK: Still didn’t want to hang around though did you?
BM: Because they were right behind us.
DK: Yeah.
BM: You know, they were going as fast as we were down the runway so, and a number of them as well. They’d got foam. I got hit with the blooming foam, with some foam as I was getting out. I didn’t mind that but couldn’t get out the top. Anyway, our CO he got in touch with the authorities on this aerodrome and he said, ‘I’ll come and fetch you.’ So he came down in his Wellington to pick us up. Oh, I didn’t tell you we’d moved up to Foggia.
DK: Yeah.
BM: From Grottaglie. Only on a sort of a temporary posting. We weren’t there many weeks because it was nearer a target point of view from Foggia than it was from Grottaglie. It was halfway up the country.
DK: Right. Yeah.
BM: And the Army were just moving further up. They’d got up to Rome and were moving slowly up. So we got moved back again to Grottaglie after that but we went back, they flew us back to Foggia. We’d one more operation to do to complete a full tour of operations and they gave us a weeks leave. A bit odd but I wasn’t going to turn it down because we, it was a weeks leave. There was a pass but we had to make our own way, our own transport. We had to hitch it. Oh, I am, I’m so sorry. Would you like a cup of tea or a cup of coffee?
DK: No. I’m fine thank you. Yeah.
BM: Really?
DK: Seriously I’m fine.
BM: I’m sorry about that.
DK: No. Don’t worry.
BM: My wife —
DK: I had one before I came out.
BM: My wife’s got dementia but, she’s very very deaf as well. She likes to keep out of the way. Very difficult for her.
DK: Ok.
BM: Anyway, we hitched across the country from Foggia to Sorrento and of course the roads were up, the bridges were up.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Italy is a country with a lot of bridges and a lot of rivers at [pause] We got there. We got to Sorrento eventually. Had a weeks leave. A lovely place Sorrento and [pause] have you ever been?
DK: I have. Yes. Yes. A few years ago.
BM: Been up in the Blue Grotto?
DK: Yes. Yeah.
BM: Lovely place.
DK: Yes.
BM: To go swimming there. Anyway, same sort of trip back and after a week got back to Foggia and we were, at that point we were billeted in tents. We were always in tents. All the time I was in Italy we were always in tents and we were in amongst a lot of grape vines. You know everywhere there was blooming just coming, just coming eatable.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Well, barely eatable really. They were still very green and I got a lot of diarrhoea. Not a good thing to be flying an aeroplane when you’ve got diarrhoea.
DK: No.
BM: At all. Anyway, we —
SM: Was it your navigator that did the same thing?
BM: No. No. I was, I was the only one who got —
SM: Right.
DK: Diarrhoea.
BM: The wireless op got a bad cold but I don’t think the others were affected really. In fact, I never even saw them eating grapes. They maybe thought they were too sour. They really were very sour. They weren’t ready. They weren’t ripe. I got this and I had to go to the MO because we were down to — [ chiming clock] — Shut up you. It did you see when you talk to them right, you know.] And I had to go to see the MO because we were all down for an operation that night. The last one. I said, ‘I’m not fit to fly. I can’t fly. I’ve got the screamers. No good at all.’ He said, ‘Right. I’ll stand you down.’ And the wireless op said, well he’d got a very bad cold and he weren’t fit. You can’t use oxygen or anything like that when you were —
DK: No.
BM: It was unfortunate. So we stood down and got a replacement pilot and wireless op. Sent them off. They went off and that was it. I never saw them again.
SM: They didn’t come back.
DK: So all of your twenty nine operations then they were all with 221 Squadron.
BM: 221.
DK: Right.
BM: And that was it.
DK: And that was, the twenty ninth was the only time you were attacked by another aircraft then.
BM: That was all. Yeah. This was all due to being attacked by these —
DK: Yeah.
BM: FW 190s coming back from Greece. It all developed from that.
DK: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And —
DK: So, so at that point you’ve come back to the UK have you? Or —
BM: After that?
DK: Yeah.
BM: No. No. I finished and it was obvious they couldn’t trace the aircraft. That was the main thing. They were trying to trace it and there was no trace of it whatsoever and in fact, I’ve got a letter from the, from the War Office Records saying that extensive searches had been done for this aircraft and there was no sight or sound or record of where it was. What had happened to it.
DK: So this was the aircraft you should have flown on then?
BM: Yeah.
DK: And and the rest of your crew were —
BM: All down there.
DK: So —
BM: So there was two of us alive.
DK: Right. So your crew went out with a different pilot and a different —
BM: Different wireless op.
DK: Wireless operator.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: And they were just never seen again.
BM: And they were never seen again.
SM: Maybe they were lucky grapes.
BM: How lucky can you be?
DK: Yeah.
BM: But another thing I’ve never mentioned either was that the air gunner went home on a forty eight hour leave when I did.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Same thing. He got married the same weekend, on the Sunday. Never saw his wife again.
DK: Right.
BM: After he went back.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: After the forty eight hour leave was up.
DK: Yeah.
BM: He went back and that was it.
DK: So as the —
BM: That was the length, sorry, that was the length of his marriage.
DK: Yeah. Blimey.
BM: One weekend.
DK: So at this point you, you knew then that the rest of your crew was missing.
BM: Yeah. And in fact, their names are inscribed on the War Memorial at Malta.
DK: Right. Yeah.
BM: And also at Runnymede.
DK: Runnymede.
BM: So the Middle East Air Force run the Malta one. I don’t know why this was done twice but I had no control over it. That’s where it is. I haven’t seen it at Malta but I have seen it at Runnymede.
DK: Do you know where they were flying too? What the operation was to or [pause] When they went missing?
BM: Yes. I do. I do. I’ve got it on a letter. I’ll give it to you in a minute.
SM: Ok.
BM: Will you go and fetch it for me, Simon? If you would. It’s in the kitchen. In a red book.
SM: Ok.
BM: On the table.
[recording paused]
BM: So we’d some, interesting I suppose is not quite the right word.
DK: You didn’t know this other pilot then that they flew out with.
BM: I’d never met him before in my life.
DK: No.
BM: I didn’t know who he was but he took my place and if he’d been a regular crew member —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Thank you. Thank you.
[pause]
BM: So, after that of course I was without a crew and they [pause] they sent me back to Egypt.
DK: Right.
BM: I came back by train down to Taranto. Then by boat. Came by boat over the water to [pause] I think it was Alexandria we came to.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And from there I went and did another OTU. Started that again with another new crew in Palestine.
DK: Wellingtons again.
BM: Wellingtons again.
DK: Again. Yeah. Yeah.
BM: I tried to get a transport, a transfer on to Hurricanes.
DK: Right.
BM: I wanted to go back to —
DK: Fighters.
BM: Fly the [pause] But they wouldn’t let me. Actually, I’ve started doing a bit of a journal. Memoirs. There’s still a lot to do at it but —
SM: Yeah. I‘ve given David, it’s just a brief summary of that.
BM: I’ve got about, I was hoping to include about fifty photographs. Yeah. I must tell you this that my father did a memoirs.
DK: Right.
BM: In the First World War and he actually won a Military Medal and a Military Cross.
DK: Oh Right.
BM: On the Somme.
DK: Right.
BM: He got a Military Medal as a corporal at a place called [unclear]
SM: [unclear]
BM: Eh?
SM: [unclear]
BM: Oh, was it?
SM: Yeah.
BM: His French is better than mine. And then a year later he was back on the —
SM: No, it wasn’t a year dad. It was two years later.
BM: Two?
SM: Yeah. He got his first one in 1916.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Yeah.
SM: As —
DK: As a corporal.
SM: As a corporal.
BM: Yeah. Corporal.
SM: And —
BM: He got commissioned in the field.
SM: And then he went to Italy and he came back. Within a mile of where he won his first medal he won the second one —
BM: He got, he got —
SM: As an officer.
BM: No, he got a Military Cross.
DK: [unclear]
BM: And he was an officer then.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: He won the Military Medal and the Military Cross.
SM: He was lucky to survive.
BM: Yes. And he wrote at the age of eighty five something like this.
DK: Oh right.
SM: Well you’re ninety three and you’re doing —
BM: In fact, its yonder on that stool Simon. By the looks of it.
SM: Have you found that letter yet?
[pause]
BM: Look at that fella.
SM: I know. Are you looking for a particular letter dad?
[pause]
BM: There you are. Look. “Christmas Greetings and good wishes from the Royal Air Force Middle East.”
DK: Middle East. 1944.
BM: 1944. I’m looking for this blooming letter [pause] I’ve got it somewhere.
SM: Well, do you want me to look for it while you carry on chatting?
[pause – rustling papers]
BM: That’s your mother.
SM: Yeah. Let me have a look, dad while you carry on talking.
BM: There’s a, there’s a, there’s a letter from the —
SM: The War Ministry.
BM: Yeah.
SM: Let’s have a look then.
BM: Whether I’ve got it in the right book.
SM: Maybe not.
BM: Might be another one.
SM: Let’s have a look.
DK: So you’re at, so going back you’re now in Palestine.
BM: Oh I went to Palestine.
DK: You’re back in Palestine with another OTU.
BM: Hello.
SM: Hello mother.
DK: So you’re getting another crew together at this point then are you?
BM: We got that and when that course was complete we we went down from Port Tewfik at the end of the Suez Canal down to Aden.
DK: Right.
BM: In a troop ship. A lovely quiet gentle journey that was. We enjoyed that. The best part of the war up to that point and I learned to play Bridge as well.
DK: Oh right.
BM: The three fellas could play Bridge and they wanted a fourth. I could play cards but I couldn’t play Bridge. I’d never played Bridge. Anyway, right. Three days then. Very enjoyable. We got to Aden and then I got sent from Aden by Dakota, had to get up to Aden and then go up in a Dakota to a little island called Masirah which is just short of the Persian Gulf.
DK: Right.
BM: It’s up the Indian Ocean off the coast of Oman just before you go around the corner and go up the Gulf. That was 244 Squadron.
DK: Right.
BM: And we posted there and we got basically the same sort of job. Shipping reconnaissance in dhows, you know [laughs] you know, watching for smuggling but fortunately they didn’t shoot back at us.
DK: How many trips did you make with 244 Squadron then?
BM: I only did four.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
BM: And then that was it.
DK: Right.
BM: Because the way that came about I got a rather nasty dose of sinus. I’d been in Palestine, and in hospital in Palestine rather, in Tel Aviv. I had about ten days in hospital with sinus. I used to get it pretty badly but anyway I had another dose and got to Queen Elizabeth Hospital In Aden and it was a thousand miles from where I was in Masirah to Aden and they laid on especially converted Wellington again to fly from Masirah down to Aden.
DK: Right.
BM: Especially laid on to take me a thousand miles.
DK: Oh right.
BM: And I was in there again ten days in this hospital and when I was better I had a call to the adjutant and he said, ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you.’ He said, ‘Which do you want first?’ I said, ‘I’d better have the bad news first.’ He said, ‘Your squadron’s being disbanded.’
DK: This was 244. Yeah.
BM: He said, ‘Its just been disbanded,’ and he said, ‘You’ve been posted. You been posted to 36 Ferry Unit in [ Allahabad ] in India.’
DK: Right.
BM: And he said, ‘Your crew has been disbanded. Gone.’ They had apparently gone back to Cairo. To Egypt apparently. And he said, ‘The good news is you’ve been promoted to warrant officer.’ I said, ‘Oh well.’ Which do you want first? [laughs]
DK: So you were sent then to 36 Ferry Unit.
BM: So I got posted to 36 Ferry Unit.
DK: Right. Based in India.
BM: From the hospital in Aden. I didn’t go back to Masirah.
DK: Right.
BM: Flew straight there.
DK: To India.
BM: To India. Yeah. And I spent the next, what, eighteen months on 36 Ferry Unit in India. That’s alright because we didn’t spend much time at our own base. We were all over the place. You know, you’d maybe get sent back to Cairo or Heliopolis or —
DK: And what sort of aircraft were you ferrying about then?
BM: Well, as it happened I was in Dakotas but not as first pilot. I was the second pilot.
DK: Right.
BM: I was actually on Liberators.
DK: Oh right.
BM: They were four engine.
DK: Yeah.
BM: I liked flying those because in America everything was spot on.
DK: So you, while you were with the Ferry Unit then you were always as a second pilot.
BM: Not always as second pilot.
DK: Pilot. Yeah.
BM: It all depended on the availability of people to fly any particular —
DK: Right. Ok.
BM: Aircraft. And their ability to fly in any particular aircraft.
DK: So the Liberator was the first four engined aircraft that you flew.
BM: They were the first four engine that I flew. Yeah.
DK: And what did you think of the Liberators?
BM: For many things I liked them. They didn’t have the, they didn’t have the power that Lancasters and Halifaxes would have on two engines. You’ve got two engines you could nearly say well it’s goodbye Mary. They didn’t have, if you’d got any weight on at all you’d no chance.
DK: Right.
BM: But —
DK: So were you delivering new aircraft for the units then?
BM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
BM: That was our main job was taking, moving new aircraft from MUs, service delivery points.
DK: Yeah.
BM: To say we’d go down to Ceylon with a new one and bring an old one back to Calcutta. Now that was all very well but some of these aircraft had never flown for several weeks or even months but stood out in the hot Indian sun didn’t do them a lot of good.
DK: Right.
BM: And [good morning. She keeps coming and having a look at us.] We had, early 1946 we had a stop put on Mosquitoes. I never actually flew a Mosquito. I always wanted to do but I never got the opportunity to. And there were two instances apparently where wings had fallen off. They reckoned it was because of the extreme heat that they’d been subjected to.
DK: Yeah. Like the glue.
BM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And they were just stationed. Sat there in the sun and it subjected to a bit of extreme, you know, if they were doing a bit of manoeuvring and that sort of thing perhaps. A bit of extra strain on them. I don’t know what the reason was but anyway apparently two aircraft wings fell off and they put a stop on all movement of Mosquitoes.
DK: So at the war’s end then you’re in India still ferrying —
BM: Yeah.
DK: Aircraft about.
BM: Yeah. I mean the war ended, what was it? May 1945.
DK: Yeah.
SM: You’ve not mentioned about meeting up with your brother have you? While you were in India.
BM: Sorry?
SM: You’ve not mentioned about dad’s brother —
DK: Right.
SM: He was in the Army.
DK: Right.
SM: Flew out to, was it [Jahalabad] and you, he got him to impersonate RAF personnel. So he was, he stayed a week with my father.
DK: Yeah.
SM: And he was flying different aircraft all through the week. In fact, my father, this is my uncle told me that he went with dad was it on the Friday and were you in a Liberator at that time?
BM: Yeah.
SM: Dad took off and everything.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
SM: My Uncle Robin was next to him and dad said, ‘Right. Ok. You can take over now.’ He said, ‘Just follow the Nile.’ And they all went back in to the back to play cards.
BM: Well, they did —
SM: And this was an Army officer.
BM: They needed the experience.
SM: Oh, he’d flown that week with different people.
DK: Oh, that’s ok then [laughs]
SM: And he was impersonating an RAF. He’s not flying a four engine aircraft.
BM: He’d just been promoted. He’d done a course as a promotion from an NCO.
DK: Yeah.
BM: He was a sergeant then to a second lieutenant and he came and had this week with me at Karachi because I wasn’t very well. Not Karachi. At [Allahabad] and I couldn’t do a lot in those days but he, we finished up with several different trips in different aeroplanes. Dakotas and Corsairs, Liberators.
DK: So you put him in Air Force uniform as well then.
BM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Yeah. We dressed him up as a navigator. Well, it made it easier you see as we were walking around the aerodrome. He didn’t get stopped. If you were a young Army officer they’d say, ‘What are you doing?’
DK: Yeah.
BM: And if you were a navigator he could walk in the mess and go and have meals and everything. It was —
DK: Wasn’t his own unit missing him or —
BM: Was he?
DK: Was his own unit missing him at all?
SM: He was on leave wasn’t he?
DK: On leave.
SM: That’s what was commented in the first instance his brother I know it was a big place.
DK: Yeah.
SM: Where everybody was flying in and flying out from but —
DK: Obviously, [unclear]
SM: This always amuses me. My father has told me this but he hadn’t told me the bit about the playing at cards bit and its only until I saw my uncle Robin a few months ago.
DK: Yeah.
SM: That he told me the other side of the story. That on this one occasion he went up with my father.
BM: That’s life isn’t it?
DK: Oh yeah.
SM: He said, he was trying to fly this four engine bomber.
DK: Yeah.
SM: Because, he said during the week he’d been flying two engine ones which manoeuvred a lot easier and he said he was all over the sky with this four engine because every movement he made was so slow.
BM: ’Keep, keep it level. What the hell are you playing at?’
SM: Yeah. Dad came back and said, ‘Oh, that was a rough ride.’ [laughs] But you know at that age you think bloody hell. The risks they took. Yeah. Didn’t give a damn.
BM: He enjoyed it. The little incident though that took place while he was there. Our CO, we had a bit of a scheme where good watches were in short supply. You know, you couldn’t just go and pick up a nice —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Omega watch or something like. A decent watch and he had a scheme where just once a year he would raffle off half a dozen. I don’t know whether the the NAAFI part of job organised the thing. They bought a half a dozen Omega watches.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Omega, you know were decent watches and he’d buy these and he would raffle them off. Well, anybody who wanted to go in the raffle it didn’t matter whether they were an officer, NCO, whatever they were they could put their names down and have it drawn it out and you’d get to get, you had to pay proper price for them but at least you had the privilege of getting one.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Which was even difficult to do that. So my brother Robin and myself both put our names down for a blooming watch and damn me if we didn’t get one. Out of six watches and hundreds of people who actually —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Put their names down for to get the raffle he and me got one.
SM: You both got one.
BM: Both got one.
BM: And we’ve still have them today.
BM: You still have them. Oh wow.
BM: I don’t use mine but the last time I had it it was it was going but it was losing a lot of time and he said he’d still got his.
DK: Oh right.
SM: I didn’t know that.
BM: That was 1946.
DK: Right.
BM: And they’re still going. Omega watches.
DK: You might just need it serviced.
SM: Yeah. I’ll get dad to do that.
DK: It would be worth doing.
SM: Yeah. It’s worth doing for nostalgia, isn’t it?
DK: Exactly. Yeah.
BM: I ought to write to them.
DK: Yeah. Hopefully a watch —
BM: I might get a free watch from them.
SM: We’ll get that sorted.
BM: Yeah. I’d do well to get a free watch didn’t we? We got two of them. Not one. We’ve got two circulating. I’ll tell you what though. A little tale of it it just reminded just recently Lord Mountbatten was Viceroy of India of course and we used to hear about him circulating and different things and on one occasion he came as a trip of inspection. He came to our unit to inspect not just us I mean we were only a very small unit and we got a, unless actually in Charingi in Park Street in Calcutta probably about twice as big as this room and that was it but it was ours and you know it was a very quiet little place. Anyway, he came to visit us on this particular occasion and he flew in, he had this own private Dakota. He flew in and a guard of honour was all out there on the Parade Ground there and called them to attention inspecting them and away he went. Job done. Half an hour later another one flew in. Another Dakota. Looked like an identical aircraft and it was his wife, Lady Mountbatten. She flew into this. Have you heard this tale before? I should doubt it. Anyway, she flew in and the same thing. Got the same guard of honour. Three rows of troops all out there, sort of thing and she inspected the first row and as she walked down the second row her lady in waiting walking at the back of her with our CO at the side of her and she suddenly bent down and picked up something and dropped it in her handbag and carried on down the next row and back. At the end of the third row off she went. The lady in waiting. Nicholas.
SM: Her pants had dropped off.
[laughter]
SM: She never batted an eyelid from what dad said.
BM: It’s true this is. She, she actually walked off that parade ground knickerless. Well, we’d have had a titter about it and her lady in waiting there I don’t know what [laughs] I was too far to see. I saw it happen. There was a few of us there who were watching the parade but we didn’t know actually, I couldn’t prove it was a pair of knickers that she actually dropped but it was. She’d dropped them off.
DK: Oh dear.
BM: And she never batted an eyelid.
DK: No. Well —
BM: She went up and down those three rows. Never said a word. Funnily enough about two days, three days later the [unclear] got the same incident in mind and I happened to be appointed the officer of the guard. All the lads would take it in turns, you know. We’d do a weeks duty. Officer of the guard and that sort of thing and being a warrant officer I had the same job to do as a, as a commissioned officer.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And as I said there weren’t many of us.
SM: He did turn his commission down by the way.
BM: I called them all, called all the guard to attention and turned around. Saluted the flag. All the guard pulled it down but the blooming thing didn’t shift. I stood looking like a fool looking at it waiting for it and it still didn’t. I looked at the bottom and there was nobody there to pull it down so I said [laughs] I had to turn around and say, ‘Carry on Sergeant.’ And off I went. I had a bit of a red face I can imagine. I had to spend the rest of that week on, on guard duty. Well in charge of the guard every so often. I mean we, we were a bit security conscious.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And we used to go shuffling around in a, you know a jeep around the perimeter of the aerodrome and looking at different units seeing that you know they were all at different places out on guard with their rifles.
DK: So, how long were you in India for then?
BM: Well, I left in India in the end of June ’46.
DK: Right. Ok.
BM: And I came back.
DK: Back to the UK.
BM: By train to Karachi.
DK: Oh right. Yeah.
BM: And then by boat. I didn’t fly back.
DK: Right.
BM: I came back by boat from Karachi. Crossed the India Ocean and the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean and then all the way back to Liverpool.
DK: So did you spend much more time in the Air Force after that or were you demobbed?
BM: No. No. No. You see I was married.
DK: Right.
BM: I had a very quick fire marriage. I got married and it was two and a half years later when I saw my wife.
DK: Yeah. So you left, you left the Air Force at that point.
BM: I left the air force and went to, Cirencester I think was the DPC or the, you know the unit where they disbanded the [pause] I’d had five and a half years in the control of the RAF because I joined up in February 1941.
DK: Right.
BM: And actually I left the control of the RAF in August 1946.
DK: Right. So what did, what did you, what was your career after that then? What were you —
BM: I, well I became actually a retired peasant.
DK: Right [laughs]
SM: He was offered the chance to fly for the Canadian —
DK: Right.
SM: Not the Air Force. The civilian.
DK: Oh right.
SM: Which was a big honour.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
SM: Because everyone wanted to do that.
DK: Yeah.
SM: And mother wouldn’t go out. Not Canadian. Australian.
DK: Australia. What? Qantas.
BM: Qantas.
SM: Yeah. That’s —
DK: Right. Yeah
BM: Yeah.
DK: So you didn’t. You didn’t carry on your flying then after that.
BM: [clock chiming] It’s your fault. Yes. My wife didn’t want me to go and do it. I communicated with her and she said, ‘No.’ I’d been away a long time. ‘You want to come back and get some work done.’ I came back and I joined where I’d left off.
DK: Right.
BM: With my father’s little village business.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
BM: You know, as a —
SM: You did, you did rent a light aircraft for several years though didn’t you? You did fly again. You still flew.
BM: Well, yeah, I got a private pilot’s licence.
DK: Right.
BM: That’s a year. I think he reminded me because he came a time or two and —
DK: So you carried on flying for a few more years then.
BM: Yeah. I did a bit of private flying in an Auster.
DK: Right.
BM: As a friend of mine had kept it up at —
SM: He still has been flying until —
BM: Say what?
SM: I don’t know. The last two or three months.
DK: Oh right.
SM: My son flies.
DK: Oh right. Ok. So he’s still going up then.
SM: He’s still going up.
DK: Excellent.
BM: His his son is all over the blooming place. He went to Le Touquet not very —
SM: He was up in Scotland near Cumbernauld yesterday.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Where?
SM: Cumbernauld. In Scotland. Near Glasgow.
BM: Did he? He’s all over the blooming place his lad.
DK: Ok. Well, I’ll finish there. I think that’s really good. Thanks for that. I’ll just ask one final question. All these years later how do you look back on your time in the RAF? What’s your feelings now?
BM: Well, in some ways obviously there are some regrets. I mean I regret the opportunity to go to Qantas. They reckoned I had the experience, you know in the different aircraft.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And this, that and the other. And you know probably capable of doing it. But I didn’t do it and I’ve always regretted that.
DK: Yeah.
BM: I mean, talking about the experience. When we were out in India we got a signal from Air Headquarters which was in Delhi. Headquarters for our lot anyway. No. The Far East Headquarters were in Delhi. I got a signal, or my CO did. ‘Warrant Officer Minnitt is to go take the unit Expeditor.’ You know what they are?
DK: Yeah. Twin engine plane. Yeah. Yeah.
BM: Lovely aircraft. ‘And go to Delhi, pick up a senior officer and fly him to Munich.’
DK: Right.
BM: Which is a fair old way. Had to fiddle with fuel a time or two but the CO said, ‘You, you can’t do it.’ No. Let’s get this right. The MO said, ‘You can’t do it.’ Because I’d not been very well. But the CO said I could. You know, he said, ‘You can go and do it.’ And as I say we were more or less on personal terms. We were, we were such a small unit.
DK: Yeah.
BM: I mean, little instances crop up from time to time that you think about it but you said, ‘What are your feelings about it?’ Well, I enjoyed my time in the RAF I must admit. There were many instances which was, you might think well they were a bit rough but it happens. I mean one night for instance we, when we were at Grottaglie it was a bombed out hangars aerodrome. No roof or anything like that on them. If we wanted to see a film we had to wait until it was dark and then we would take our own petrol tin, a five gallon petrol tin and that was our seat.
DK: Yeah.
BM: You could sit on that and you could watch a film. It was alright. Better than nothing.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And we were doing that one night and looking at a Wellington take off and it was one of ours and he got to near the end of the runway and he just, he got airborne, he went down again and [pfft] Fully laden. Fully fuelled up. And we ran across to it and all we could find was a boot. Something like that you know.
DK: Yeah.
BM: There was nothing. With four thousand pounds of bombs and full tanks you’ve got no choice. And we don’t know why. He just didn’t have enough speed.
DK: He needed to take off.
BM: To get up. And we saw it happen. Just, I mean, these sort of things did happen. That’s part of, I wouldn’t say it was part of life but I mean it, they did happen and there you go. You live with it.
SM: Well one of your very first experiences dad was, if you remember —
BM: Eh?
SM: When you, before you joined up the RAF you joined the [pause]
BM: Oh aye.
SM: Not Dad’s Army. They didn’t call it Dad’s Army then.
BM: I joined the ATC.
DK: The ATC, yeah
BM: Artillery training. Was it auxiliary training?
DK: Air Training Corps.
BM: Something like that. Anyway —
SM: There was an aircraft wasn’t there crashed at Laneham.
BM: Yeah. It did.
SM: And you were the first there. Only as a young man.
DK: Yeah.
BM: This was the, well it was a squadron actually based in Lincoln. What was it? 1265 or something like that. I forget the squadron. And they’d got, they’d got this which I joined and I was in the Home Guard at the time. I was always in blooming uniform. From the Home Guard right from 1940. But a Hampden came around the river at Laneham where I lived and I was talking to one of my, the other side of the road and this big bang and we got on the bike and went to have a look at it and it had come around the river at Laneham very low and didn’t make the bend.
DK: Right.
BM: And it was a Hampden from Scampton. They bunged us in and again that was all little bits and pieces and this pal of mine I mean we went to, we thought we were good you see. We were in uniform. Home Guard. And we went to keep the spectators away from it all.
DK: Yeah.
BM: And all the rest of it and it was still bobbing off fireworks. Bombs, not bombs, bullets kept going off. Aircraft tanks exploding and that sort of thing. It was a right old mess. So eventually the RAF fire brigade turned up and some other I think there were one or two police came and didn’t need us around any longer so we just packed in and came home. But that was my first experience of flesh. Burned flesh. You get used to it you know. It happened from time to time. And so —
DK: Yeah. This this incident then obviously didn’t put you off joining.
BM: No.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Not at all.
DK: No.
BM: I mean, it was rather when that time came we went to what were the new barracks at Lincoln and, ‘What have you come for?’ ‘We’ve come to join up.’ We were seventeen when we did it, he and I. ‘What do you want to join up as?’ ‘An air gunner.’ ‘You want to join as an air gunner. Right.’ Filled in all the paperwork and I don’t know whether it was at that point that I said we actually went to Cardington. You know where they made the old —
DK: Yeah. The airship hangars.
BM: Airships.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And that sort of thing. And we did the actually, the joining procedures. You’ve got the filling in —
DK: Yeah.
BM: Give you your numbers and that sort of thing. My number is nearly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. It’s 1 2 3 2 3 4 7.
DK: And you still can remember it now.
BM: You see, very close to it. And he said, ‘Well, why don’t you remuster as a pilot?’ and I wonder sometimes wonder why. Why was that?
DK: I find that quite unusual actually because other sort of veterans I’ve spoken to they nearly all wanted to go in as pilots.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: But they crashed out for some reason.
BM: Yeah.
DK: And then remustered.
BM: Yeah.
DK: Under a different trade.
BM: Yeah.
DK: It’s unusual to hear somebody —
BM: Yeah.
DK: Who wanted to go in as an air gunner and ended up as a pilot. Yeah.
BM: We thought to be an air gunner you know it was all very glamourous and we were going to shoot them all down. Bang bang bang. They said, well that was, we don’t shoot them down but the, we went the other way. I’ll be honest with you. I left school at fourteen. My education wasn’t wonderful in those days and I finished and that’s basically is the reason why I wasn’t commissioned.
DK: Right.
BM: Because I was, you never found anybody commissioned who hadn’t been to a secondary school at least.
DK: Right.
SM: But didn’t you turn your commission down because you were going to be worse off?
BM: Oh, but that was later. That was when I was out in India. I was offered the opportunity to take a commission. That was in 1945. I thought well the war would be over by the end of this year.
DK: Yeah.
BM: No point in having it because I’m better off now as a warrant officer in the uniform I was wearing. The type of uniform, the perks I’d got.
DK: Yeah.
BM: The money I got and I was getting an extra bonus and that sort of thing. I was better off than I was as a flying officer never mind a pilot officer so I, you know I didn’t have any mess fees to pay and all that sort of thing.
DK: So you think then as you left school no qualifications at fourteen the Air Force was good for you in that respect.
BM: It was. It was good for me.
DK: Helped you learn and that —
BM: In that, in that respect. It must have been. I mean, as I say my education was, left a lot to be desired but it was made up in a way with the experiences that I’d got.
DK: Yeah.
BM: In different things and different parts of the world and that sort of thing and that I should never possibly have got in civil life. And I went around the world quite a bit. I mean, I went across the world that way. To Canada. The other side again.
DK: Canada. And then —
BM: Then came back the other way. Right across North Africa. Italy. Middle East. Palestine. Into Aden.
DK: Yeah.
BM: Masirah. India. [Allahabad] and then flying. I did quite a bit of flying into Burma and the war was still on then but places like [Agatara] [unclear] and delivering aircraft in to their places. Into their units and flying their old crap out back to the Mus. We used to go down to Ceylon quite a bit. We enjoyed it. I mean, it was like I just missed out on that opportunity of going to Australia but there we are. These things happen.
DK: Yeah. Ok then. Well, I’ll stop it there I think. Thanks very much for your time. That’s been very interesting. Thanks.
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
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Interview with Bruce Minnitt
Creator
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David Kavanagh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-14
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AMinnittPB170314
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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02:02:47 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Bruce Minnitt served in the Second World War flying Wellingtons on maritime reconnaissance in the Mediterranean and B-24s in India. When war started Bruce joined the Home Guard, and in 1941 when reaching 18 years of age, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force. He actually wanted to be an air gunner but was assessed as suitable for pilot training. His flying training was carried out in Alberta, Canada. After over two years of rationing, he enjoyed the improved diet he received in Canada. Flying in an open cockpit through a Canadian winter was particularly challenging. On his return to Great Britain, he was posted to No. 6 Operational Training Unit near RAF Carlisle to fly Wellingtons. He was then sent to RAF Haverfordwest, from where he was sent on leave for 48 hours before being sent overseas. Arriving home, he proposed, and married by special licence before returning to his unit. It was to be over two years before he saw his wife again. On return to his unit he was tasked with delivering a Wellington to Rabat in Morocco. From here, Bruce joined 221 Sqn in Southern Italy. He flew 29 maritime reconnaissance operations, but before what would have been his final operation, both Bruce and the wireless operator became ill and had to be replaced. His crew failed to return from their final operation. He describes one sortie when his aircraft was attacked by two Me 109s. With no radio or hydraulics, they were forced to divert and upon landing they discovered both main wheels had been damaged. Luckily, the airfield was aware of their plight and were able to dispatch immediate assistance when they crash landed. Allocated with another crew in Egypt, he carried out four further operational flights on 244 Squadron, and following its disbanding, Bruce was posted to 36 Ferry Unit in India. He spent the remainder of the war delivering B-24s to operating units throughout South East Asia. Bruce finally returned in June 1946 and having declined the opportunity to remain a member of the RAF, was subsequently demobbed. Whilst in India, Bruce met up with his brother, a serving army officer who was on leave. By disguising him as a RAF officer, Bruce was able to smuggle him on board to enable him to accompany Bruce on a delivery flight.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales--Pembrokeshire
England--Cumbria
Mediterranean Sea
India
Canada
Alberta
North Africa
Morocco
Morocco--Rabat
Italy
Egypt
India
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1942
221 Squadron
244 Squadron
aircrew
B-24
civil defence
crash
Home Guard
love and romance
Me 109
military discipline
military living conditions
military service conditions
pilot
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Silloth
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1052/11430/POatleyK1701.2.jpg
be795ca0b07853007aa77c562bfeb00c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1052/11430/AOatleyK170321.1.mp3
9f337a41a3840e6e82e8841355f9d0a1
Dublin Core
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Title
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Oatley, Ken
K Oatley
Description
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An oral history interview with Ken Oatley (b. 1922). He flew operations as a navigator with 627 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-21
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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
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Oatley, K
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DK: I’ll just introduce myself, so, this is, this is David Kavanagh introduce, interviewing Ken Oatley at his home [file missing] borne, 21st of March 2017. So, I’ll just put that down there.
KO: Surely.
DK: Hang on, If I keep looking down I’m just making sure it’s still working
KO: Still functioning,
DK: Still functioning, yeah. It’s, it can be a bit temperamental at times, that looks, that looks ok. [unclear] that. I’ll just like to ask so first of all, what were you doing before the war?
KO: I was going to be a professional violinist.
DK: Really?
KO: My father, I won a scholarship to the Royal Academy when I was fifteen,
DK: Right.
KO: But I had no one to live with in London so I had to put it off for another year, then I had to take an examination that year to get the exhibition the year after that which actually brought me up too far close to the war and, even then, I had a year to go before I could get into the Air Force so I joined the Home Guard, did my duties as far as I could from then, and at that time, it was the 13th of September I think of ’39 that I was in headquarters and the phone rang and call out all the home guard, we’re anticipating the invasion immediately, so that passed over of course and October came and I thought, well, really it’s time and I just was old enough then to volunteer so I volunteered for aircrew in October of 1940.
DK: [unclear] back to me, when you were in the Home Guard, what were your sort of roles then? What were you actually doing, were you guarding anything or?
KO: No, I was in headquarters most of the time, but I had to take out messages or anything that required, you know, but I was there nights and so forth.
DK: So were you mostly young men there waiting to be called up or sort of [unclear]?
KO: No, no, they were all a lot much older than me.
DK: Alright. Alright, so you applied then to the Air Force, so
KO: Mh.
DK: It was always your intention then to,
KO: I always wanted to fly.
DK: Alright. Yeah, so did you actually go into pilot training then?
KO: Yes, in, I started flying in April of ’41, it was April so, anyway. And did the usual six weeks at Blackpool and then waiting for a course to come around they sent me to Northern Ireland guarding an auxiliary airfield there against the IRA and then in Maytime they sent me over then to Scone, that Scone, there was at, oh God! This is, my memory is, north of, in Scotland,
DK: Ah, ok.
KO: On the east coast top, anyhow that was the biggest town north. We were there prepared to go down to ITW then at Scarborough, by, by June then I was flying from Sealand on the wirrell
DK: What type of aircraft were you flying?
KO: Tiger Moths.
DK: Ah!
KO: Which I did, I loved flying and I had the aptitude for it and I really thoroughly enjoyed my time there, it was wonderful.
DK: What did you think of the Tiger Moth?
KO: Oh, I liked it very much and I, our last hour or two that we had on the course, my friend and I, we were supposed to be going out for three quarters of an hour flight at night in the evening, come back and report and then go back and do another three quarters of an hour so I said to my mate, well, this is a bit of a waste of time, I’ll meet you over the river Dee and we’ll have a dogfight, which we did. When time came to, to come back to report in, he disappeared and I thought, well, I don’t know where the heck I am [laughs], we wandered about somewhat for three quarters of an hour so I had, eventually I had to give up and I saw a farm with smoke coming out of the chimney and I decided, well, that looks alright so I made a forced landing into this field, knocking out a host of surveyors posts on the way down and a ditch that was half way across which I hadn’t noticed. Anyhow I landed there and a motorcyclist came in and I got out and spread my map on his handle bars and asked him where I was and he gave to, I was in the middle of Lancashire so I flew back and,
DK: You’ve gone that far south?
KO: Yes. So, anyway, I was up for the wing code the next morning,
DK: Were you able to take off out the field then?
KO: Yeah, I did, half the field
DK: Yeah, so that was
KO: It was,
DK: Damaged the aircraft?
KO: No, no, it was a bit dodgy, there was a wood at the end of the field and I just caught the width to the corner of it and I managed to get through, anyway we landed there and the next morning I was up in front of the CO and charged which it was going to be a court martial but he let me go on [unclear] cause I was the first one to solo [unclear] thirties so I thought, you know, I’m made for this and so I was taken off the Spitfight posting and ended up in Canada flying Oxfords. We were on the Oxfords for some while and then there was, Bennett was just do the Pathfinders setup and he had no navigators, only map readers really, observers, don’t tell him I [unclear], but he had no navigators so he took five pilots off of every pilots course in Canada, brought us home to do the Middle course on the navigators, then go onto flying,
DK: So, you were actually on a pilot’s course in Canada.
KO: Yeah, yeah.
DK: Got called off by Bennett,
KO: Yeah,
DK: Because he needed navigators,
KO: Yeah,
DK: How did you feel about that at the time?
KO: Not very happy, I must admit, but anyway.
DK: How were you chosen, was it almost a lottery or?
KO: Well, I don’t know, I think probably I wasn’t landing them very well. I came down [unclear], the approach was hundred percent, I touched down on the wheels, nice and quietly, as soon as the tailwheel had dropped, which off the runway we’d had, my instructor never once told me that I should be doing three point landings, never mentioned, then when the CFI took me up, I did the same thing and he then asked my instructor whether he’d taught me three point landings, of course he said, oh yes, of course he has, and so I was one of the five that got tucked out.
DK: So, it might have been poor training on the trainer’s part, not I suppose, [unclear]
KO: Well, I mean, it seems simple enough, things say you should be doing three-point landings. I landed quietly and smoothly, you know, and,
DK: And this would have been the Oxford, would it?
KO: Yeah, yes. Anyhow I came back home, nearly torpedoed on the way home.
DK: Can you remember which ship you came back on?
KO: [unclear] Dam and just out of Halifax I was on my sway hammock and there was an enormous bang, I thought, my God, we’d been torpedoed, and I bet, I was four flights down and I bet I was, tops of that before anybody else [laughs]. However, there happened to be a torpedo, a destroyer had come alongside and for no apparent reason, and he happened just to take the torpedo and the thing was sunk with all hands and we just carried on, there was fire
DK: You can’t remember the name of the destroyer that was lost?
KO: No, no, no.
DK: No. Did you actually see it go down or?
KO: No,
DK: No.
KO: But we were told.
DK: Yeah.
KO: But you see, we were in two passengers, well, one was obviously a passenger ship and we were in a sort of half and half but there were five hundred aircrew on board ships, then we had several destroyers flying around us all the way back across the Atlantic. It took three weeks coming home cause we went all over the place and got back to England and put me on the navigation course which we did one course at Grand Hotel, oh, Eastbourne,
DK: Right. Yep, yep.
KO: Six weeks and then we were sent off on a ship again, I thought, we are going back to Canada again, which I didn’t like cause I got engaged to a girl in Canada while I was out there. Anyway, we went to South Africa and I was, from start to finish it was nearly eight months, wasted out of my flying time, going down there, doing the course and coming back again and we spent three weeks at Clairwood race course in tents. Then they moved us to East London and we were there for another six weeks and while we were there I met somebody there quite out of the blue, he asked me what we did, what our hobbies were, said well, I played the violin, oh, he said, I know somebody who’d be interested in you so he took me up the road to this gentleman and he said, would you like to play me something? So I played him one of the better class pieces that I used to perform and he said, would you like to play with the municipal orchestra on Sunday? This was Thursday, so I did that and did that the following month, so that was the virtually, the last time I played the violin at all, really.
DK: So you never played it since then?
KO: No, not really, no.
DK: No, no.
KO: So, anyway we got back and messed about for ages and I did,
DK: How did you feel when all this was going on, you were going to South Africa [unclear] was there a certain amount of frustration or?
KO: Yes I, you know, it was very enjoyable,
DK: Yeah.
KO: But it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Anyway we got back and there was so many aircrew trained here messing about Bournemouth was full of them all the time, they didn’t know what to do with us, anyhow we ended up at Harrogate, we were sent off on a commander course to start with at Whitley Bay, six weeks and then they sent me up to Scone to sit in the back seat of a Tiger Moth with a [unclear] recently qualified pilot in front and I was another six weeks messing about there, well, that was barely started the navigation course properly so I don’t think I was gonna get there.
DK: Was navigation something you took to easily, was it?
KO: Oh yes, I was, no worries about that, and then I was onto OTU and from what I understand I was, uhm, was the top of the class in both flying and ground subjects and,
DK: Can you remember which OTU it was you went to?
KO: I can never remember the name of it, was north of Oxford.
DK: Right. Is not in there, in the logbook.
KO: It would be, I suppose. It’s more likely in the back of my pilot’s, pack of pilot’s
DK: That one.
KO: But in the back,
DK: Oh, right, ok. So, what year are we talking about now then? It’s,
KO: That’ll be ’42.
DK: ’42, alright. So that’s the Oxford, so that’s ’41, ’74, you are still flying in ’74.
KO. Oh that’s, that’s flying here.
DK: Right.
KO: It’ll be very, very close to, no, but it wouldn’t be in there, yes, on the back, on the back page, I got all the
DK: Ah, right.
KO: All the,
DK: Ah, right, ok, so ’40,
KO: In, here, up here.
DK: [unclear] ’43.
KO: And here.
DK: 16.
KO: 16.
DK: Ah, right, so, I’ll just say this for the benefit of the tape so it’s 16 OTU Upper Hayford. So you were there from the 10th of August 1943,
KO: Yeah,
DK: Yeah.
KO: Then we went onto Scampton and then to Swinderby.
DK: And that was,
KO: On Stirlings
DK: 16
KO: We did Wellingtons at
DK: 16 OTU
KO: 16 OTU,
DK: Yeah,
KO: And then we went on the Stirlings
DK: And that was at Swinderby
KO: Yes and then the Lancs
DK: Right, so, at 1660 Conversion Unit, Swinderby, that was the Stirlings.
KO: Yes.
DK: Yeah, and then at Syerston,
KO: Yes,
Dk: That was 5 Lancaster finishing school.
KO: Yes.
DK: So, at Upper Hayford was the Wellingtons?
KO: Yes.
DK: Yes, so what was your feeling about the Wellington then as an aircraft?
KO: Oh, fine and my pilot that I had there, although he hadn’t all that many arrows in, he was fine and we got on very well, our crew was first class and everything we did, we were quite well appraised for.
DK: So how did your crew get together then?
KO: Oh, we all, they put us in a hangar and said, I’m sorry, sort yourselves out, so to speak, you know.
DK: You just found yourselves a pilot,
KO: Yes, from
DK: Do you think that worked well?
KO: Yes, it did in our case.
DK: Yeah.
KO: I had an excellent crew and I was very sorry that we went on from there to Metheringham,
DK: Right.
KO: With Gibson squadron.
DK: 106 Squadron.
KO: And my pilot went on a Second Dickey trip with his, with a crew that were on their last operation,
DK: Right.
KO: And failed to return. So, we were sent back to Scampton again in to be recrewed. If they’d given us another pilot, which would have been more sensible, they split the whole crew up as far as I can [unclear] gave us another crew of odd bodies that they had and he wasn’t too bad, he wasn’t as good as my other pilot, you know, they were a little bit lumpy, but see my trouble was, my navigator’s seat was well back from the front and as I remember it seems I had a little office of my own now, the only,
DK: This was the Wellington,
KO: Stirling.
DK: Stirling, right, ok.
KO: And my only chance of talking to the pilot was on the intercom.
DK: Right.
KO: So I never was anywhere near him. It was when we got on to Syerston to the Lancaster, I was sitting right behind him as you realised and he had the most dreadful body odour that you could ever imagine, it really was out of this world,
DK: Oh dear,
KO: And so I took the crew up to the wing commander after we’d just sort of finished the early stages with the Lanc and I said, I can’t fly with this bloke, we all agreed, nearly court martialled, I [unclear] go for, go for a [unclear] you know and anyway we sent back to Scampton again and,
DK: So, you’ve gone back to Scampton for a third time.
KO: Yes, yes.
DK: Alright. When you, just going back to 106, you never met Gibson then, did you?
KO: No.
DK: I, just for the, slightly confusing that for the tape, just for the benefit of the tape, what I’ll say here is where you were, so initially it was Upper Hayford with 16 OTU from the 10th of August 1943, then it was Scampton 15th of December ’43, then 1660 Conversion Unit at Swinderby from the 8th of February ’44 on Stirlings,
KO: Yes.
DK: Then 5 Lancaster finishing school at Syerston,
KO: Yes.
DK: from 28th of March ’44, obviously on Lancasters, then 106 Squadron your pilot went missing as a Second Dickey, so back to Scampton again, then Swinderby,
KO: Yes.
DK: Then 5 Lancaster finishing school, Syerston again,
KO: Yes.
DK: Then back to Scampton because it’s problems with the pilot,
KO: Yes. On 106.
DK: On 106, and then on, I’ve got here, then onto 627, so that was, that’s the next question,
KO: Yes, yeah.
DK: Yeah, ok. So, you’ve complained about your pilot then and what happened then?
KO: Oh, they didn’t do him any harm or anything, I’m just, my memory gets so bad at times, other times I can go with, like, you know, what was the question?
DK: It was, you’re back at Scampton and you complained about the pilot, cause of the body odour,
KO: Yes.
DK: So what happened then?
KO: Well, straight away I was sent to Woodhall Spa from there.
DK: Right, ok. And that’s with 627 Squadron.
KO: 627 Squadron, yes.
DK: Yeah, ok. So, what were you flying at 627 then?
KO: Mosquitoes.
DK: Yeah. What did you think about the Mosquito?
KO: Oh, marvellous.
DK: Yeah.
KO: Yes, I, never complaints about the Mosquito.
DK: Was it a bit of a shock when you’ve gone from four engine bombers?
KO: It was lovely.
DK: Yeah. So you,
KO: Oh. Beautiful.
DK: So you never flew any operations on the four engine bombers?
KO: No, not again, no, no, no. It was all on the Mosquitoes from there on.
DK: Alright.
KO: And then of course the first, the move from Metheringham to Woodhall Spa was like chalk and cheese, you know, [unclear] it, well, every moment we, there we enjoyed the flying and the operational side of it and,
DK: Yeah.
KO: It was just something once in a lifetime, you know.
DK: What was Woodhall Spa like as an airfield then?
KO: It was big enough for what we wanted cause they were flying 617 from there as well so they had to cover the twenty thousand pound bomb weight on runways cause it was just a small camp, on the outside there was no main buildings to it at all, we were very much countryfied.
DK: Did you go to the Petwood Hotel at all?
KO: No, that was 617’s privilege that was,
DK: Ah, right.
KO: We were in the Nissen huts.
DK: [laughs] oh, ok.
KO: Which was a bit of a comedown.
DK: Did you get to know anyone of the 617 crew?
KO: I did but I can’t remember the names now. [laughs] Funnily enough, one of the well known ones that flew with Gibson on the dams, I went into the sergeants mess one day and he was playing cards with a table full of crews there for 617 and he said, can you lend me a pound? So, I lend him the pound, never expecting to get it back again, when I came out of the Air Force about four years after that, I happened to be standing in front of my restaurant in Northampton and who should come in? This chap I’d lent the pound to. So, I caught him and I got me pound back on it [laughs].
DK: [unclear] oh excellent, [laughs], well he did owe it to you.
KO: Yeah, having done the dams raid he was lucky to.
DK: Yeah. So, you can’t remember who that was then now?
KO: I, a flash came into my head, I got an idea whose name, was Monroe, was it?
DK: Les Monroe? Yeah, Les Monroe.
KO: Yeah.
DK: The New Zealander?
KO: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, yeah. He owed you a pound [laughs].
KO: Yeah. He just walked in the shop, not knowing I was there.
DK: Yeah.
KO: I just recognized, I said, hey you.
DK: I actually met Les a couple of times when he came over to UK, last few years. So, you’re now on a Mosquito squadron, so what was your actual role then as 627 Squadron, what were you?
KO: We were at 99 percent for marking, for main force.
DK: Right.
KO: And we were the only squadron that did what we did. We were way ahead of everybody else, and we had to dive, we introduced dive bomb marking which was not heard of before 627 Squadron was formed. But they started off the first two or three months joining in with the, flying backwards and forwards to Berlin in those days and then when we moved up with 617 Squadron, we started doing what we did, that was our thing, and that was flying ahead of main force and being there three minutes before the actual time we needed to be there because that was ten minutes between, let me try to explain it a different way, the flares, the target was illuminated by one or two squadrons of Lancasters from our station to drop thousands of luminating shares over the target area and five of us went out separately to the target and stood off until the first markers went down illuminating, lights went down and on the, dead on the spot, they were there ten minutes before the time for bombing and we went in, in that ten minutes under the flares, dive bombed the marker onto the target for about, well, anything from three, two, three hundred feet, from fifteen hundred feet and it was purely up to the pilot because he dropped the bomb, the had a china graph pencil mark on his windscreen and he, that was his only guide he had to drop his markers, and they used to put that according to how they saw it in height and that sort of thing that needed to be very careful and then we would drop off the markers at about two hundred feet, something like that.
DK: Two hundred feet.
KO: Well, we, we flew round Dresden at three or four hundred feet, probably five hundred feet for nearly ten minutes.
DK: Yeah, yeah. So, the illuminators went in first,
KO: Yes.
DK: They illuminated the target area.
KO: Yes.
DK: So you could then see where to drop your
KO: That’s right.
DK: drop your indicators by
KO: Yes.
DK: [unclear] moving on the target.
KO: Yes.
DK: And then the main force came in.
KO: After that, yes.
DK: Yeah. So, how was that controlled then? Was it?
KO: Just on timing.
DK: Literally on timing, so there’s no one there.
KO: No, no, no, no, we had to be there three minutes before the, ten minutes if you like,
DK: Right, yeah.
KO: Thirteen minutes, three minutes we had to get in our track in to go in and do our dive in.
DK: Right.
KO: That was just for error, for coming from, over from Holland down to Dresden, we had that little margin of difference, so at ten to the target, the Lancasters then came in, they had ten minutes to bomb on the markers that we had laid.
DK: So, can, just stepping back one bit, can you remember where your first operation was to then?
KO: Uhm, Bremen.
DK: Bremen. And how many operations did you actually do then?
KO: I, we did twenty-two operations altogether.
DK: Twenty-two.
KO: They were spread over a little bit but, see we only did, we had enough crews that we only did one every five.
DK: Right.
KO. We had thirty crew, thirty crew men on the, for fifteen aircraft and we only ever sent five aircraft out on an operation, so we had, there was, sort of,
DK: It’s quite a long period between flight then,
KO: Yeah, yes.
DK: So, can you remember when the tour started and when it ended, how long it was for, roughly?
KO: The first tour?
DK: Yeah.
KO: I’m having a particular bad day today, I don’t know why it is, but, oh Jesus! [laughs] I’m lost.
DK: Is it, will it be recorded in here anywhere?
KO: Yes, it was about, the middle, the middle of June-July of forty
DK: ’44.
KO: ’44.
DK: Ok, here we go, yeah, so, that’s 627 Squadron
KO: Yes.
DK: At Woodhall Spa.
KO: Yes.
DK: So, on the 25th of July
KO: Yes.
DK: ’44, so that’s all practice
KO: Yes. Our night operations were in red.
DK: Right.
KO: So, we did, only did one in every three.
DK: Ok, that way we’ll, so, that’s all practice so, uhm, cross country, practice.
KO: We practiced at least five times for every operation we did.
DK: Alright. Ok, so we got off ways to see if we got Gladbach, that’s Monchen Gladbach presumably.
KO: So, that was where Gibson got lost,
DK: Right, alright, ok.
KO: So, that was his own fault.
DK: [laughs] We’ll come back to that in a minute. Ok, [unclear]
KO: Yes, I think we did four in one week, which was an exceptional.
DK: Right.
KO: My first op was a day run to L’Isle-de-Adam, a bomb dump north of Paris. We had a fairly leisurely time as you can see.
DK: I see there is an awful lot of practice between the actual raids, isn’t it?
KO: Yeah, it was about five, one in five. Really, what brought that about was we had to have the aircraft on for that night, and they had to have a morning test before,
DK: Right.
KO: And we used the test to go and do a bombing run on the sands at
DK: [unclear]
KO: [unclear], yeah.
DK: So, navigation then and timing clearly needs to be very accurate.
KO: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
KO: But we didn’t do anything really, we flew, normal thing was that we flew out to Holland and turned from just over the coast of Holland, turned down to the, wherever we were going, from there it was, we had no troubles [unclear], we went more or less our own way, we knew what time we had to be there and that but.
DK: So, I think this is your first operation the 6th of October ’44 to Bremen.
KO: That was the first time when we used our dive bomb technique.
DK: Right, ok.
KO: It was, they didn’t know really what it was gonna be like and they told the CO that he wasn’t to go on that operation.
DK: Oh, alright. So, then you got the Mittelland Canal on the 6th of November ’44.
KO: They were easy.
DK: So, it’s got bolted flares over [unclear]. And then you’ve got, 21st of November the Dortmund-Ems Canal.
KO: Mhm, there were two or three of those.
DK: And then I’ve got here the 13th of December ’44, the Cologne and Emden ships cruisers.
KO: Yes, that was in, that was in the Oslofjord, but they moved them by the time we got up there and it was a wasted trip.
DK: So, this is [unclear] called off by marker one.
KO: Yes, well.
DK: So, it was a
KO: I can, this, as I was saying to my friend today, I’ve worried about that ever since and I cannot understand because I was absolutely dead on track all the way up there, I said the only thing I can excuse myself in is that the pilot was running ten miles an hour, he was on three hundred and twenty instead of three hundred and thirty and he would jump down my throat if I suggested that but I couldn’t find no other reason for being late cause we were dead on course for everything.
DK: Yeah, [unclear] this, that’s [unclear].
KO: That’s, that was stacked down for a purpose. Probably made a mess of it so.
DK: So, then we got 14th of January ’45 and it’s oil refinery at Mersberg. So, that’s and it’s got here two times one thousands, so that’s two one thousand pound bombs.
KO: Yeah.
DK: And the red target indicators. So that’s [unclear] what you’ve dropped and. So, then it’s 2nd of February ’45 Karlsruhe. It says target obscured by cloud. Sky marking only.
KO: Yes.
DK: So then, 2nd of Feb, Dortmund.
KO: Dortmund.
DK: It says one target marked.
KO: I’m doing well, aren’t I? [laughs]
DK: And then, 8th of Feb, Politz-Stettin, oil refinery. Stettin oil refinery, yeah. And then the 13th of Feb ’45, ops Dresden. Marker two. And then backed up, one one thousand pounder, red TI. So, just talking about that then, what actually happened on the Dresden raid? Was..
KO: Well, the, there was a trade wind blowing to start with and normally, starting off from home, we would climb to the operating height, going out and we would take a fix every three minutes and find an average wind which we would calculate to fly us on from there to Dresden. But this MIG wasn’t working particularly well and when we got to the turning point, it was a question of hops and choices to how you carried on from there. So I part guessed well I could [unclear] what I’d got already to choose from and then I realised that the thing that we had installed in the aircraft which I’d never used before, I’d never been instructed on because it was introduced while I was on leave, I thought, well, I’ll give it a go and see if I hadn’t have the charts with me and so, I took him, took him down on that, bearing as it was, there was a line running straight through Dresden that I could put up on the machine, that was terrible cause on a Gee box you had to two stroves running like that, but on this particular case, when I went on to the LORAN, it was like that and right across the thing as you couldn’t tell which was which, you had to take a guess at it and fortunately I guessed right and I didn’t navigate all the way down there. I just kept on one line and then I could, guide him down along this line all the way down to Dresden and then there was a one, there was another line crossing the second line there which went through Dresden and as soon as I kept switching backwards and forwards to that, and when that line came up, I said, right-oh Jock, we’re here now. We were three minutes early and doing the right one turn, another one [unclear] the arrival and then the main force came, we had the, the uhm, the squadrons that were dropping in there, illuminating flares came in at ten to eleven and we were just on the edge of the city, sitting there, waiting for them. We had to put those down and then we went in and dived in and we were just, just about to call out marker two, tally-ho, and number one tally-ho didn’t just in front of us so we had to go round again and
DK: So you, so marker one got his markers in first
KO: He was the flight commander anyway,
DK: Right, ok.
KO: So, couldn’t, he couldn’t
DK: Right. So, your markers then were the second to go.
KO: Yes.
DK: Right.
KO: Btu we were the most accurate.
DK: Right.
KO: On that.
DK: And how low would you’ve been when you dropped the markers?
KO: About three hundred feet.
DK: As low as that.
KO: Well, we were so low, that as we flew away from there, my pilot was looking back to see if he could see where they’d dropped and I had a shout at him because we were just gonna hit the spires of the cathedral, so I had to pull him up on that one. And then we just circled around Dresden for three or four minutes at five hundred feet and then we came home.
DK: And did you see much of the main force bombing then in that five minutes?
KO: They just started to bomb,
DK: Right.
KO: And I think they let a couple of four hundred, four thousand pounders off as we weren’t all that high and we could feel the, [unclear] get out quick now
DK: I just, for the benefit of the tape, I just read what it says here, so, 13th of Feb ’45, you took off at 2000 as, Mosquito F, so your pilot was flying officer Walker and your navigator so it says, ops Dresden, marker two, which you mentioned backed up, so is that meaning you backed up marker one?
KO: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
KO: Well, we got in, it was a football stadium
DK: Right.
KO: We got our marker in the football stadium.
DK: Alright, ok.
KO: And the others were in a bunch, nearly [unclear] a hundred yards,
DK: Yeah.
KO: Way but,
DK: So, your second ones down was actually the more accurate and then it’s got one thousand, so you got a thousand-pound bomb and red
KO: They were a thousand-pound flares.
DK: Oh sorry, so you dropped one-thousand-pound red target indicators
KO: Yeah, yeah.
DK: Sorry, yeah, so one thousand red target indicator. And you
KO: And the others all backed up after that.
DK: Yeah. So, you arrived back at 0540?
KO: I know my, my history today to you doesn’t sound very much but on my claim for a commission, my squadron commander and the camp squadron commander both put down that we were the best crews, one of the best crews of the squadron.
DK: Oh!
KO: We did do well, I mean, we felt that we, if we dropped our markers that was bloody well close on it and of course the last operation we did was at Tonsberg oil refinery at the
DK: Right.
KO: The, first up towards Oslo and
DK: So, were all the operations with Walker?
KO: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. And was he a good pilot?
KO: He was a good pilot and he was good at dropping the bombs too. We were the best on that one as well. But, I know it sounds terrible, our successes and that sort of thing but sometimes they went right and sometimes they didn’t and sometimes if our radar wasn’t working up to scratch, we
DK: So, when you were briefed for Dresden then, it was just an ordinary briefing
KO: Yes.
DK: And an ordinary target.
KO: Yes. When I was allocated onto a new job I’d only been on the squadron about six weeks, two months when I was sent to RAF Wyton 1409 Met Flight
DK: Right.
KO: For a two week crash course on wind reporting then I found myself that we were doing a big operation in south Germany and we had to stop at Manston to refuel and my job then was to decide two hundred miles from the target whether it was gonna be satisfactory for the main force to continue on to attack the target and if I didn’t think it was gonna be satisfactory, my job was to call them out and send them home.
DK: So, you’ve gone out and checked the weather in effect then.
KO: No, that was all we were supposed to be doing,
DK: Yeah.
KO: But fortunately the fog came down and we were, the thing was called off. It was never reinstated again but I think that somebody up a loft had said, well, this is a bloody silly idea in the first place.
DK: That, was that with 1409 Met Flight?
KO: Oh, that was where I was sent for those two-week crash course.
DK: Right, ok. Ok, so you’ve done the training at 1409 Met course.
KO: What there was there of it.
DK: Yeah. So, you, did you get?
KO: I was
DK: Did you get back to Manston then or?
KO: Oh yeah, yes, well we uhm, I think we came in that night, I think we came into, probably into Woodbridge.
DK: Alright. Cause there’s one here you’ve been here the 12th of October ’44, it says from Manston, yeah. You went to Manston the day before. So that idea of going out early and
KO: Cause we used the wing tanks up, you see, we needed all the petrol that we could carry to get there and back so we’d use the wing tanks up going down to Manston until we had to refuel then and while that was being done, we were a little bit early, the fog came down and the whole thing was scrubbed.
DK: Alright. That’s what it’s saying here that you remained at Manston. Yeah. So, just going on here then, 16th of March ’45, Wurzburg, ops to Wurzburg.
KO: Wurzburg.
DK: Yeah, so you’re marker two. So, one thousand [unclear] red target indicator, one one thousand yellow target indicators,
KO: That’s what we carried.
DK: Right. But we carried a red, yellow and a green, as the Germans had a funny act of if the red ones went down they’d light another red one up somewhere away from it, you see, to distract it, so we’d have to go back in again and drop the green beside the red or whatever and
DK: Is this when you’ve got the master bomber’s there then that were telling
KO: Yeah, the master bomber’s up there.
DK: Yeah. So he’s then telling who, the rest of the main force who, which coloured markers to bomb. Has he mentioned you on the same operation that Gibson was lost on
KO: Yeah, yes.
DK: You didn’t know him cause he flew a 627 Mosquito force [unclear], didn’t he?
KO: Yes, yes.
DK: You didn’t meet him there then?
KO: I’ve met him on several occasions but, you know, not sort of personally, we were, [unclear] had social occasion or on one occasion he tried to, he came into our little bar, as you can imagine, we were in Nissen huts and they were all posh in and they came down to our officer’s mess and we, that was an airman’s hut actually, the whole mess, and the kitchen that was all part of it but we had no bar arrangements or that, so we had a builder of one of the boys in the squadron, so he built the bar and built a fire in there for us so we could have an officer’s drinking area. And one night my pilot and three Australians were in there having a drink and the door opened and Gibson appears and nobody sort of moved and he came, don’t you normally stand to attention and when a senior officer comes in? And they looked at each other, said, no, no, no. So, anyway, he created such a fuss, they grabbed hold of him, took him outside, took his trousers off and told him not to come in again. The next morning, there was an officer’s parade which he officiated, went down the line and of course the Australians all six foot something in their dark uniforms and my pilot who was a real dural Scotsman,
DK: This was Walker, was it?
KO: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
KO: He was standing at the end of the line and he got him and he put him in the glasshouse for three weeks. So, he didn’t remain very popular with our crowd.
DK: Alright.
KO: So I was flying odd bits with anybody who was needing it, the navigator, flew all that three weeks when he was
DK: Well that, I mean, that meant you had another pilot you had to fly with then that. So you, you weren’t too pleased about that then?
KO: Well, we didn’t [unclear]
DK: Alright, ok. They were just
KO: I might have gone on a night flying test.
DK: Alright, so you didn’t do any operations while he was in [unclear]
KO: No, I mean, I had a very, very nice round of it really, I mean, some of the ops we did, we, yeah, you had to have your head on and I was, I was considered to be one of the better navigators although it didn’t sound like it. You know, you don’t know the circumstances of how things go.
DK: So, what was it like then if you were, you know, you are flying the Mosquito there, you’re over enemy territory, what does it feel like, it’s very dark and you’re being shot at?
KO: Well, we weren’t being shot at, that was just the point you see. Everybody else, the main force went out on allocated circuit. We went out, there was only five of us, we went out and more or less did it the way we thought we would, we didn’t stick to any plan as long as we were there sort of three minutes before the flares went down
DK: Right
KO: Thirteen minutes before the bombers came in. So rise up and up and when cross sort of thing on the machine I said right-oh, Jock, we’re here now and three minutes early, do a right one turn, wind off three minutes and that should bring us on time, that moment in time, the flares started to come down and we turned to going to find the thing and the number one saw it just as, we were just, there’s a story in my book there, he pressed the [unclear] just at the same time my pilot was just going to so we had to go off and go round again. And that happened several times and on one, where we had to bomb Wesel, because the commanders had taken over, they crossed the river there and they were outside of Wesel, we had to mark Wesel and we went, there was five of us, we went in and we had to put our markers on the, uhm, the, what’s, I don’t know what you call it, uhm, on the stone part of the pier sort of thing
DK: Alright, ok.
KO: On the river
DK: Yeah.
KO: And both our pilots [unclear] at the same time, both pressed the button, that cut out transmission then we couldn’t hear anything else. We went in, they went in, and we went in, dropped our markers at the same time and they landed in the same, virtually the same place at the same time so how far we were apart where we dived in there, we couldn’t have been more than twenty feet apart, never saw them and they didn’t see us.
DK: I’m just reading there from your logbook, so, that’s the 23rd of March ’45 and it’s ops to Wesel, army support. And you’ve marked with a thousand-pound red target indicator. So, you both dropped at exactly the same time.
KO: And exactly the same spot.
DK: Onto a pier.
KO: Yeah.
DK: On the river.
KO: Yeah. We didn’t realise what had happened until we got back.
DK: So then just going on here, I’m just reading this out for the recorder here, so, you then got the 10 of April ’45 ops the marshalling yard near Leipzig. So, backed up number two, thousand-pound red target indicator, carrying a thousand-pound yellow target indicator.
KO: Yes.
DK: So that probably would have been your last operation then, would it or?
KO: [unclear] read, read.
DK: Oh, ok.
KO: I know that [laughs] I found out that since that my sister married a family in Northampton, they’re apparently of Jewish extraction and they came down to the grandfather had had property in East Germany,
DK: Oh, right.
KO: And nobody knew where it was or anything and it wasn’t until after the war that they set the wheels rolling and apparently there’s two blocks of very luxury apartments and we’d blown one block up and so they only got reparations for the one, who’d been getting the rent for the other one [unclear] up until that time nobody came to the fore.
DK: Oh, hang on, there’s another op here, so, uhm, so Norway, so 25th of April ’45 Tonsberg, Norway.
KO: Yes, that’s the last one I did.
DK: That’s the last one, yes, so [unclear]. So at that point the war’s ended, how did you feel then?
KO: Well, that was about the first or second op I did from commissioning.
DK: Right. So you were commissioned at this point. Yeah.
KO: But I didn’t, I didn’t bother, we didn’t know what was going to happen to us though, where we were going to go, and what happened, what happened then lot of the Ozzies were sent home and we brought in some new people because there was the Far East war and we were going to take part in that and so we were going out there to mark for 5 Group, was only 5 Group that was going out there and we were the Pathfinder Force for 5 Group but we weren’t going to do our dive bomb marking there, somebody got the bright idea of using H2S and we would fly over the target two thousand feet straight and level for two minutes and drop our markers out. You know, that was a ridiculous idea, we wouldn’t even know where the bloody markers had gone and we would’ve much rather continue what we were doing previously and knowing where it was but.
DK: This would’ve been part of Tiger Force then.
KO: Yes, this was Tiger Force and we were supposed to be leading it.
DK: So, the atomic bomb’s dropped then, how did you feel that you weren’t now having to go out to the Far East?
KO: I was a bit disappointed in some respect because I rather looked forward to the exploratory flight out there really but on the other hand, see, there was a five hundred miles from Okinawa to the landfall in Japan,
DK: Yeah.
KO: And we didn’t have that great deal of overlap of petrol to do that, so we were waiting for Mark 40 Mosquitoes to come, which were pressurized and we were flying at forty thousand feet out, taking the trade wind to blow us there, then we go down and do our marking role for drop our markers whatever to do there and then we were gonna come back at sea level because the trade wind would,
DK: Yeah, yeah.
KO: Well that was what the theory was anyway, that would blow us back, blow us there and blow us back. Which we weren’t particularly thrilled with the idea.
DK: Oh, I can imagine.
KO: As you can imagine, sort of being dropped in the sea in the middle of the Pacific there.
DK: [unclear] Get blown back [laughs].
KO: [laughs] No, some people spark ideas, I don’t know.
DK: So the war’s ended then, what were you
KO: Yeah.
DK: You carried on [unclear]
KO: What happened then was, I was supposed to be leaving the [unclear] and they started sending the Ozzies back then because the war was,
DK: Yeah.
KO: Virtually finished then and they started importing a few other crews to come in, to go on the Okinawa job and [unclear] I was gonna say now, I lost the thread or something.
DK: So, the war’s ended, you’re [unclear] not going.
KO: Yes, so a lot of the new boys that they’d brought in were dispersed amongst other stations and so forth and we were just left to [unclear] we were the only crews that were taken out of the squadron and sent firstly to Feltwell and then, I can never remember the other airfield and then ended up at Marham,
DK: Right.
KO: On a bombing development unit. Now we were supposed to think up different ways of attack for future things, well, that was a waste of time really but that was all we were doing. All the rest of the them, down the squadron as it was left, cause they’d imported a lot of aircrew, and sent the Ozzies back, and they were sent to uhm, 19th Squadron, something like that,
DK: Right.
KO: And within months it was, they were all released from it.
DK: And what happened to yourself, then you, did you leave the RAF at that point?
KO: I was still on bombing development unit.
DK: Right.
KO: We just, from there we just five crews of us there.
DK: Yeah.
KO: And I stayed on till June and I was then pat to hand in me notice so to speak.
DK: So that would have been June 1946.
KO: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, yeah, you’re at Marham. So, you’ve left the Air Force in ’46 then. Yeah. So, what did you after that then?
KO: Well, it’s a bit of a long story really, I wanted to, I wanted to get engaged to one of the WAAFs in the squadron who was a parachute packer.
DK: Right.
KO: And I wanted to get engaged, this was at Christmas time, and I went home that weekend, took a photograph and my father said, no, you’re not marrying that girl. So, I sort of, I [unclear] a little bit, he said, no, you’re not going to marry that girl, if you do, he said, we shall sell the business up, we shall go back to America cause my parents were American born.
DK: Alright, ok.
KO: So, I said very briefly, well, that’s what you want to do, that’s what you left to do. Anyhow, they didn’t go back, the father bought a bungalow outside the town and I left myself thinking that this was the route I was going to take, that he changed his mind about being awkward and he bought two limited companies in Northampton and when I came out to take on the businesses which was a great help to me because I only had one other option which was to stay in the Air Force.
DK: Yeah.
KO: But that wasn’t very good because they really didn’t want anybody else in the, in there but that’s. So where I went and I was in Northampton then for five or six years working on the family business and then we divided up from there into the different companies and so forth.
DK: [unclear] The family business actually involve?
KO: A restaurant and bakeries.
DK: Oh, alright, ok. So, so looking back now, after all these years, several years, how do you feel about your time in the Air Force?
KO: I mean, for good or bad?
DK: Both [laughs]
KO: I thoroughly enjoyed it.
DK: Alright.
KO: No, it was a great experience, I learned a lot really from it, you know, and I wouldn’t have missed a day of my experiences there I mean [unclear] fly in the Air Force, when I came home and joined the local flying club and I was flying several hundred hours [unclear].
DK: So you did eventually get your private pilot’s license, then.
KO: I got my private pilot license, yes.
DK: Yeah. And, one other question I’ve got, did you know anything about the controversy of 627 Squadron moving from Bennett’s 8 Group to
KO: Oh, it was a bit of an argy bargy about that.
DK: Yeah.
KO: But, no, that’s what, what came away and that’s what we accepted.
DK: So, when you initially joined 627, you were part of 8 Group, were you, under Bennett.
KO: Yes. And 6
DK: And then moved to 5 Group under Cochrane.
KO: Yes. And 617 Squadron were on the same station with us.
DK: Right.
KO: So, it was quite a nice association really.
DK: Yeah. And you got on well with 617 Squadron.
KO: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah, yeah.
KO: Was a really good arrangement really.
DK: So, that controversy then, you just accepted you were going to another group.
KO: Well, that was all you could do really.
DK: Yeah.
KO: Hadn’t got a great deal of option [laughs].
DK: Ok. Well, absolutely marvelous.
KO: I’m sorry I’ve been so
DJK: You’ve been absolutely wonderful, brilliant, don’t worry, it’s useful having the logbook here cause we’ve gone through the various
KO: My memory seems to be worse at times than others and
DK: You’ve been absolutely marvelous, no, it’s been good
KO: Good. It’s been absolute rubbish from my point of view.
DK: That’s been good. Right, I’ll turn that off now.
KO: Ok.
DK: Ok, 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 Ken Oatley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-21
Rights
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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
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AOatleyK170321, POatleyK1701
Format
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01:03:33 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Initially too young to enlist at the outbreak of war, Ken Oatley served in the Home Guard until he was able to enlist in October 1940, when after initial training he undertook pilot training. After basic flying training he went onto Canada training on Oxfords. It was whilst there Donald Bennett was forming the Pathfinder Force. Five pilot trainees were taken from each course to retrain as navigators and Ken was selected for transfer. Eventually posted to 627 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa on Mosquito aircraft, Ken flew a total of 22 operations. He describes how 627 Squadron operated within Bomber Command operations, explaining how their role was to arrive and illuminate the designated targets for the following bombers. This included the operation on Dresden in February 1945. At the end of the war, Ken served with the Bomb Development Unit at RAF Marham, before being demobbed in 1946.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-10
1945-02
1946
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Germany
Germany--Dresden
England--Lincolnshire
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
106 Squadron
16 OTU
1660 HCU
617 Squadron
627 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
civil defence
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Master Bomber
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Manston
RAF Marham
RAF Metheringham
RAF Scampton
RAF Sealand
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Woodhall Spa
Stirling
target indicator
Tiger force
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/PPayneG1701.2.jpg
b039d51b699a66b9cdfd0a9ed039e2d9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/APayneGA170528.1.mp3
4f2ec096b73aad4bee119f3e1be46588
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
Payne, Geoff
Geoffrey Albert Payne
G A Payne
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Geoff Payne (b. 1924, 1584931 Royal Air Force) and his memoir. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 115 and 514 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Geoff Payne 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
2017-05-28
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Payne, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BJ: So, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Brenda Jones. The person being interviewed is Geoffrey Payne. The interview is taking place in Mr. Payne’s home in Cumbernauld on the 28th of May 2017. Mr. Payne, thank you for agreeing to talk to me today. Could you tell me about your life before you joined the RAF?
GP: Well, my life was a bit raggedy, I was an apprentice to Sheet Metal Work and worked in a company in the centre of Birmingham and we were manufacturing spats for Lysander aircraft and making fire pumps, things like that and more interested in sports than anything else [laughs].
BJ: And how did you come to join the RAF?
GP: Well, I joined the Air Training Corps, which I was one of the original members and it was the Air Training Corps was at Birmingham was the Austin Motor Company Squadron which was 480 and 479, there were two squadrons in the, ATC squadrons, and that’s why I started to get involved with the, with the Air Force, thinking a lot about the Air Force at the time. We went to camp to RAF Weeton, which was a Pathfinder Squadron, 7 Squadron, which were flying Stirlings and the most funniest part about us, we wanted to go into St Yves for the evening and we had to know a password to go out of the place because there was operations on that night and they said the password was WATER, which was this, I think they were pulling our legs or something like that, they said because the Germans can’t sound the w’s is wasser, so that was the sort of thing, that gave me a great interest in the Air Force.
BJ: OK. And when did you come to join the Air Force?
GP: I joined when I was seventeen and a half and I went to Vishyde Close in Birmingham to get assessed and I was assessed as a pilot and I was given a number and then sent back to work again because they wouldn’t call me up until I was eighteen but in the meantime I had a letter from them saying that it would possibly take far too long for me to become a pilot and that they’d had other vacancies in the Air Force which was an air gunner so I decided to do that.
BJ: And what year was this?
GP: 1943, yes.
BJ: And what happened when you started with the RAF?
GP: What happened?
BJ: Yes, what did your training involve?
GP: The training, we went to London, to Lord’s Cricket Ground and then we were put into high-rise flats and then we had our meals at the London zoo and used to march there every, for breakfast those [unclear] and tea and there’s one occasion there when there was a heavy air raid and at Lord’s Cricket Ground there’s the Regent’s Park and [unclear] anti-aircraft comes and we had to move out and go to another set of flats which was a hospital, which the RAF hospital, and carry all the patients down from the high floors cause they wouldn’t, couldn’t go down in the lifts and carry the, down in stretchers into the basement and back up then and then after that initial training, I went to Bridlington for ITW and that’s a nice seaside place, enjoyed it there and then off we went to Air Gunners School which was in the Isle of Man, just outside Ramsey, a place called Andreas and then, after three months of training, we were sent to an ITW, which was in Banbury where we were crewed up and flew in Wellingtons and from then we, we had to go to Heavy Conversion Unit which was a Stirling set-up, a place called Wratting Common in Cambridgeshire and we did that and then also we moved to, did an escape course at Feltwell and which was hilarious and then.
BJ: What did they teach you there about escaping?
GP: Unarmed combat and this sort of thing but it was, it just became a laugh actually [laughs] so, but we were there for the week and then we went back onto Wratting Common on Stirlings but at that time the Stirlings was being phased out from operations in the, for the main force in Bomber Command and we were transferred to, onto Lancasters which were radial engines Mark II, Hercules engines and from then we did a couple of weeks training there before we were put onto the squadron.
BJ: How did you find the Lancasters compared to the Stirlings?
GP: I didn’t like the Stirlings at all.
BJ: Ah!
GP: No, they frightened me because whilst I was converting onto Stirlings, I had to go to Newmarket to do a short gunnery course there and in the meantime my crew then crashed one of the Stirlings at [unclear] market so and but I, they phased these Stirlings out and that’s why I went on to Lancasters and then from Lancasters on Waterbeach we moved to a squadron which was RAF Witchford.
BJ: Ok. What happened when you got to Witchford?
GP: [laughs] We arrived at Witchford and then the following day we had to go round, signing in, which is a normal thing, you go to all the various sections and sign in and so forth like that and you get your billets and that and I went to the gunnery leaders office to sign in there and he says, ah yes, he says, you’re on tonight and that was the second day I was there [laughs] and I was, I said, what for? He says, well, there’s a rear gunner taken ill and you’ll have to, you’ll be flying with Lieutenant Speelenburg who was South African.
BJ: How did you feel about that?
GP: Terrible, it was, it was, to do a first op with a sprog crew which, the crew was a, they hadn’t done any operations before anyway and I hadn’t done any operations so they obviously bloodied with a new crew and that was one of the most horrendous air raids I’ve been on and that was to Augsburg, in southern Germany which was an eight hour journey, it was the most frightening experience I’ve ever had in my life so.
BJ: What happened on the mission?
GP: Oh, we got attacked over the target by a, by two Messerschmitt 109s, well, we got through that alright but it was, I never in my life would have expected to witness such a melee which was over the target, and I thought to myself I’m not coming out through this loss.
BJ: Do you remember what the target was?
GP: Augsburg.
BJ: Yes.
GP: It was the MAN works.
BJ: Ok.
GP: So that was, it was a night trip, eight-hour trip.
BJ: And did you stay with that crew then after?
GP: No, no.
BJ: No. So, how did you get assigned to a crew?
GP: I’d already got my crew,
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: From, from Banbury, from Chipping Warden. I’d already got my crew, my crew were there but they were doing cross country south. So that was me doing me first op and I thought, I’ll never gonna get through this. So, that was my first operation and in the morning I couldn’t get off to sleep so I decided to, I walked into Ely and the Oxford and Cambridge boat race was on there so that was the, because they didn’t have the boat races in London because of the bombings, so I saw the boat race there.
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: And came back, that’s it, so I said, no, that’s it, you can’t, you got to, maybe get through this alright but just forget about it and take it as it comes.
BJ: Ok. So, what, what was, can you tell me a bit more about some of the other missions you flew from Witchford?
GP: Well, I only did, I only did five operations from Witchford and I got frostbite, because we got attacked by a night fighter which destroyed all the communications and heating in the aircraft, but we managed to get back ok. So, that was alright and that was me put away from frostbite to Ely hospital for some time and then I was transferred to Waterbeach for recuperation and then I picked up another crew at Waterbeach which is Ted Cousins’s and I finished my tour of operations at Waterbeach with that crew.
BJ: What were you flying in at Waterbeach?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What planes were you flying in from Waterbeach?
GP: Lancaster IIs.
BJ: Lancaster IIs. Ok, right, and can you tell me as what it was like on the base there, day to day life?
GP: Base was good because Witchford was a wartime place and everything was so dispersed you could walk miles for meals and things like that. But Waterbeach was a pre-war station and everything was on tap and there were nice billets and cosy, not like the Nissen huts that we did have, so these were brick-built, brick-built buildings and quite comfortable in a way.
BJ: And what did you do in your time off?
GP: Just going home [laughs].
BJ: Really? Aha.
GP: If you could get home. [unclear] the time off just mainly drinking [laughs].
BJ: What was it like coming home after being on operations?
GP: It was very strange and it’s a funny thing, I haven’t been away from home until I went in the Air Force. It’s a very strange feeling when you come back home and see that, it was a good feeling, but it didn’t last long so I had to go back again and that was it.
BJ: And what did you tell your mum and dad about your life in the RAF?
GP: I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t think it was fair.
BJ: Ah.
GP: Because my brother, my brother was a navigator wireless operator on Mosquitoes, he was out in Burma so there’s both of us, there were three boys in the family and just my elder brother and myself were in the Air Force and the younger brother, he went in the army, just after the war. It was, it was quite strange because all your friends were away and we just had to nosy around, just going to the pictures or something like that. It wasn’t all that pleasant, it’s nice to see your family but as I say, it was quite boring.
BJ: And what sort of missions were you involved in, when you were at Waterbeach? Where were the targets?
GP: The targets, Witchford was, the targets were German targets, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg and one or two others. From Waterbeach there was quite a variety of targets which are sometimes daylight raids and night raids, sometimes were French targets, and then all of a sudden you’d be onto a German target at night, which is [unclear] sorted it out.
BJ: What did you have a preference for daytime or nighttime missions?
GP: I used to like to rather go at night time, I didn’t like daytime [laughs]. You could see too much.
BJ: Right. Were there any particularly memorable missions that you flew on?
GP: Actually, most of them were quite memorable, we did a raid to Beckdiames which was in Southern France and that was an eight hour trip and this was a daylight raid and we went out at under a thousand feet all the way and until we got to the target, the target was a port actually and we climbed up to the bombing height, bombed and dropped down to, under a thousand feet again because of the radar, that was the idea of it but it was a long trip, it was an eight hour trip and it was quite a dangerous trip because the Bay of Biscay it was the, the Junkers 88 used to wonder around there quite a lot, you know, so. And then, there was another one which was to Stettin which was in Poland and that was another long trip, under a thousand feet all the way, this was a night time raid and we flew over Denmark and we could see the lights of Sweden and the anti-aircraft fire was coming up from Sweden, things like that [laughs] and then we went to, got to Stettin which we got to the bombing height and came back down again and what [unclear], we just lost one, one squadron, one aircraft on that squadron. So, and there was, there’s quite a few things which, one of the most scary attacks that we had was my last operation really to Duisburg. And that was the, the squadron went out early to bomb Duisburg, there was over a thousand aircraft to do it, and then, as soon as we got back, over the target the air was black with flak and it was the most frightening experience, I was in daylight did not expect to go to a German target in daylight and then it gradually settled down then but when we got back, we were sent down to, the air gunners were sent down to the bomb disposal place to help to load bombs up again for the same target and then the following day the German, the Americans bombed the same place, that was a disastrous place, terrible. That was about it, you know, but most of the trips were rather scary cause you never knew what was gonna happen there [unclear], you could be attacked by fighters any time.
BJ: What was it like being up in the turret?
GP: Very cold. Very cold [unclear] with ice all the way down there because we didn’t have any Perspex in the turret, we had it taken out because you can just imagine if you are flying at night and you can get attacked by a fighter and if you get any dirt on your Perspex you wouldn’t, it would be a, you wouldn’t know whether you got a fighter coming through, you see but where I got frostbite was around about forty degrees below but you see, your oxygen mask you had a lot of breath dripping down you know, froze up and all that.
BJ: What were you wearing to keep warm then?
GP: Well, I had a heated suit actually, the first time was one of these urban jackets and trousers which were all [unclear] and things like that. Eventually they got full heated suits which you’d plug into your boots and plug into your gloves, they heated up all over so you, you weren’t so cumbersome in the turret so, so that wasn’t too bad. It was when, the one time I said when the, the heating got shot up but it was cold.
BJ: Ok. And anything else that you remember about your time in the two squadrons?
GP: I’m just trying to think about it now. I was involved in athletics with the squadron so I did [unclear] got plenty of time off, things like that, apart from my flying, I was excused duties because I was, I got involved in football and things like that, I didn’t have to do any guard duties and things like that so.
BJ: Ok. Did that involve you going around to other bases?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: Did you go to other bases doing that?
GP: It was just the odd at lib sort of things, you know, you compete against the Americans or something like that, you know and,
BJ: Ok, how did you get on?
GP: We weren’t as good as the Americans, I tell you.
BJ: [laughs]
GP: No, we weren’t as good as the Americans, no, they got far greater facilities and that sort of things like that, you know.
BJ: Ok, and what did you do at the end of the war? What, you know, how did you get demobbed and that sort of thing?
GP: Well, when the, as I finished mature, I was sent up to a place in Northern Scotland, place called Bracla and that was for time expired men, aircrew you see, had [unclear] virtually offices and things like that, and my, my flight commander was up there as well, Lord Mackie, he ended up as Lord Mackie and we just had to march about and things like that and then we were selected for ordinary jobs in the Air Force you see and I wanted to become a PTI which is a Physical Training Instructor because I would’ve had the opportunity to go through to Loughborough and take sports right the way through and then that’s what I wanted to go for but they put me down as a driver [laughs]. So I moved from there and went to driving school at Weeton in Blackpool which was quite good actually, it was quite enjoyable and then from then I was, I went to various camps in this country and then my final camp was in Germany where I was with a microfilm unit taking microfilm documents of all the machine tool drawings and things like that and that’s,
BJ: Where was that?
GP: That was at Frankfurt, Frankfurt but we wondered around Stuttgart and other places, went round all these factories and taking these microfilms of these documents and things like that, that was the, that was my end, I ended and came back to Weeton where I was demobbed.
BJ: So, what was it like being in Germany, down on the ground, this time?
GP: It was, it wasn’t too bad, we weren’t allowed to fraternise at all, you know, we did play football against the Germans and things like that and got thrushed.
BJ: Oh, alright [laughs]
GP: So, I played for the army when we were in Frankfurt and we played a game against the Germans, select team which is if we really got thrushed and that was the first time we realised what sort of football the continentals played as compared with our football but anyway that was, I enjoyed my time in Germany and I learned to speak German quite fluently and which stood me in good sted with my civilian job so that was good and
BJ: How did you learn to speak German?
GP: Well, I had to speak German [laughs].
BJ: Yeah?
GP: Well, I mean, if you were driving around and things like that and you lost your way, you had to talk and things like that so that’s how it went [unclear] I wish I had kept it up actually, which it would have been useful to me but it was useful anyway because I dealt with the Germans, a German company in me civilian life more so than anything and of course was a strange thing that the fellow that I dealt with in Germany, he was a Luftwaffe pilot [unclear] [laughs] and something I know quite well actually.
BJ: Did you tell him you’d been in the RAF?
GP: Yes, yeah. So, I mean it was no end to the, not at all, not with service people [unclear] so they got a job to do, we got a job to do and that was it but
BJ: So what did you do after you were demobbed then?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What did you do after the RAF? After you left?
GP: I went back to my old company and I gradually progressed there, we were manufacturing cars, Standard, the Triumph and the Triumph Spitfires and these sort of things, and but there was so much, so many problems down in the Midlands with the car industry of strikes and all that sort of thing and I just got married and we bought a new house and things like that, it’s becoming very difficult because we’re going on short time, even when you’re on staff you’re on short time so, I decided to make a move and come up here and that was that.
BJ: What did you do up here, in Scotland?
GP: I ended up as a production director at Carron company in Falkirk and but I set up a, came up and set up a plant for manufacturing steel bars and that sort of thing and then I did twenty-three years there and that’s it.
BJ: Ok, and how do you think being in Bomber Command affected the rest of your life?
GP: It did affect me because the, the people, the people that you met in Bomber Command, they were virtually like your brothers, a wonderful set up, it was great and as I say, it was still, we’re still getting involved with reunions and one of the addresses, the two addresses that I gave you, these are the people that I flew with, so, it was, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Really.
BJ: Ok. Alright, anything else you’d like to add, Mr. Payne?
GP: No, I don’t think so. I think that’s about all, that’s, I summarised quite a bit.
BJ: Alright. Thank you very much.
GP: Ok, thank you. [file continued] I’m trying to fill it all in you, you can’t.
US: I know you can’t [unclear], I just.
BJ: Right, this is the interview with Mr. Payne continuing.
GP: Right, one of the most horrendous trips that I did was to Frankfurt. And after the target, we were coming back, we were about half an hour away back from the target when I spotted a aircraft with about four hundred meters behind below and it turned out to be a Messerschmitt 109 and I wanted, I tried to warn the, I tried to warn the pilot but the intercom had frozen up, my mouthpiece had frozen up and I tried to Morse coding with the emergency light and the emergency light wasn’t working so that was it, there was actually nothing I could do about it and as the aircraft came closer to me, which was below at about a hundred meters, I opened fire on it and the guns jammed so therefore I was completely at a loss, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t warn the captain or anything about cause I’ve no intercom and no emergency lighting so I just had to hang on a bit and then after a minute the aircraft came underneath us and opened fire and blasted all the centre of the aircraft and the smell of cordite was amazing and then the aircraft started to manoeuvre all over the sky doing very violent evasive action or I thought that we were out of control, completely out of control so I got out of my turret and walked back and found that the main door was swinging open and then I got up to the mid upper turret and the mid upper gunner had gone, he’d bailed out and there was all cannon shell holes all around his turret there, so eventually I thought, that so quiet I thought the rest of the crew had gone, now I walked up, gradually I got through into the main cabin and found the rest of the crew were ok and so forth and that we went back to the sit in the turret, well, I couldn’t do anything anyway, so we were coming in to land, but we got back home ok, coming in to land and I started to smell cordite and I, I looked about at the back in the, in the ammunition panniers and there was a fire in there which must have got hit by an incendiary bullet and we had to land, emergency land and it was, it was an incendiary bullet, that was wedged in the bullets, so [laughs], that was that day but there was also another one, no, I don’t think I will talk about that, just [unclear].
BJ: Ok, 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 Geoff Payne
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brenda Jones
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
2017-05-28
Rights
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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APayneGA170528, PPayneG1702, PPayneG1701
Format
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00:32:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
United States Army Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff Payne has his first experience of the Royal Air Force with the Air Training Corps, at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, where he had one of his first experiences of military humour. He joined in 1943 at the age of 17 and a half hoping to become a pilot - he took the faster option because of his young age and trained as an air gunner.
Basic training was carried out at Lords Cricket ground in London. One clear memory is helping to carry patients down several flights of stairs from a nearby hospital during an air raid.
Time was spent at RAF Bridlington on Initial Training Wing before attending Air Gunnery School in the Isle of Man. Further training was undertaken at RAF Banbury where he was crewed up on Wellingtons, before moving to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Wratting Common to convert to Stirlings. During his time here he attended an escape course at RAF Feltwell and was instructed in unarmed combat, which he dismissed as pitiful.
He and his crew were posted to RAF Witchford, Cambridgeshire, where he flew his first operation in February 1944 replacing an ill air gunner. He later discovered this was an inexperienced crew. He remembers the target was around Osnabrück in Germany and it was a melee over the target where they were attacked by two Me 109s, which they successfully shook off. On his return, he remembers being unable to sleep and went for a walk into Ely. There he discovered the Oxford Cambridge boat race was being held and watched it
Target areas of Germany included Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg. On his 5th operation, the aircraft was attacked, and the aircraft lost its heating and communications. He suffered frostbite and spent several months recovering in Ely hospital.
On regaining fitness, he was transferred to RAF Waterbeach and was allocated to a crew led by Ted Cousins. Waterbeach was a pre-war airfield with comfortable facilities. Time off was spent competing in athletics and football along with drinking at the local public houses.
When time allowed, he went home, but found the experience boring: all his friends were serving away, and there was little to do except drink or go to the cinema. His elder brother was serving as a navigator in the Far East, and he felt it unfair to talk about his experiences with his family.
At RAF Waterbeach there was a greater variety of operations. Targets varied from Germany to Southern France. He also remembers one trip to Poland. This entailed flying over Denmark and they could see the lights from Sweden and anti-aircraft fire.
He has a clear memory of most of his operations but does not wish to dwell on some. On one occasion he spotted a Me 109, he tried to warn the pilot but his intercom had frozen and emergency light was inoperative. He tried to open fire but his guns jammed – the night fighter opened fire and hit the centre of the aircraft. The aircraft began violently manoeuvring and he wasn’t sure if this was deliberate evasive manoeuvres or if they were out of control. He made his way forward and discovered the aircraft door open and the mid upper gunner missing. There were cannon holes all around the centre of the aircraft. He still wasn’t sure if he was the only one on board until he reached the main cabin and found the rest of the crew in position. They made it back home where they realised an incendiary bullet was lodged in the ammunition pannier.
His last operation was one of the thousand-bomber operations in Germany, the air black with anti-aircraft fire. On his return, the air gunners went sent to the bomb dump to assist the armourers in preparing the bombs for the following days attack which was carried out by the United States Army Air Forces.
After completing his tour of operation, he was posted to RAF Brackla, hoping to be retained as physical training instructor, but ended up at RAF Weeton near Blackpool to be trained as a driver.
He served at several locations across Southern England before his final posting which was with a microfilm unit in Frankfurt. Fraternising with locals was not allowed, but he did manage to learn German. He played in a football match against a much better German select team.
After demob, he returned home and was involved in the manufacturing of cars at the Triumph factory. He married, and because of unrest and strikes in the car industry, he moved to Scotland and was employed at the Carron company in Falkirk as a production director manufacturing steel bars, where his ability to speak German became an advantage in his dealings with foreign companies. He met an ex Luftwaffe pilot and experiences were exchanged - there was no animosity whatsoever and it was accepted they both had been carrying out their duty.
Geoff looks back on his time in Bomber Command with great fondness. It was like a big family. He still has contact with surviving crew members, and still attends reunions.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Ely
England--Lancashire
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France
Germany
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Stuttgart
Denmark
Sweden
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland
Scotland--Falkirk
Scotland--Nairnshire
Scotland--Stirlingshire
Germany--Osnabrück
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
115 Squadron
514 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Me 109
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Brackla
RAF Bridlington
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Feltwell
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
RAF Wyton
sport
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1082/11540/APriceF170522.1.mp3
eee7702caebbc3a1f451279f6b0928d9
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
Price, Fay
F Price
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Fay Price, photographs and documents.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Fay Price and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Interview and copies of documents and photographs
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
2017-05-22
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
Price, F
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HD: My name is Helen Durham and I work for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. It is the 22nd of May 2017 and I’m here to interview Mrs Fay Price and the time is ten past two. Thank you, Fay. Thank you so much for allowing us to come and meet you and to interview you. To start off with can you tell me what life was like before the war?
FP: Yes. Only a little because of course I was, when the war started I was nine and well it was just we played in the street with our friends. And we walked a fair distance to school even at that age. And, you know, everything was just normal. We had our kiddie’s parties, birthday parties which of course all went when the war started but really there’s not a lot else I can think of really about my childhood.
HD: Yes.
FP: We were twin —
HD: ’Cause you were nine, you said.
FP: Yes. Yes.
HD: When the war started.
FP: My twin and I. We were the youngest in the family. I had two older sisters and two older brothers and we were the youngest and, yes. Yeah. We had an orphanage near us. A big orphanage. And the children used to come down the street. We used to watch them because it was a kind of cul de sac. It had posts and they went through. But no cars or anything. Used to come crocodile, you know from the orphanage to school. Just a little way around the corner from us. A different school to what we went to.
HD: And whereabouts was this Fay?
FP: It was in Grimsby. Just not far from the marketplace. Not far from the centre. Near the main crossings. And yes they used to go along. And we actually went for tea once and we had a banana and a piece of bread for tea. We couldn’t get over that [laughs]. No. And yet they seemed happy. Yes. So, and that actually I think that was still there quite a time after the war. It’s not there now. There’s not an orphanage now. No.
HD: So, when the war came what did your parents do?
FP: My father was a fish merchant. And of course my mother was just a housewife looking after us.
HD: And when the war came how did that change your family life?
FP: Well, we, we actually went to school at Cleethorpes. To the, from when we went from the primary school we went to school in Cleethorpes. So, I think that was perhaps a year after the war started that we went. I don’t remember an awful lot about that time. I don’t know exactly when we moved. But my eldest sister, she went to work in the Telephone Exchange for the air raid wardens and that. So she didn’t go to war because she was doing a job. She didn’t go to serve. And my other sister, she was seventeen at the time. She was just at home helping my mother look after the house. And, but I do remember spending, we had this air raid built in the garden and we didn’t have a very large garden but it used to get a lot of water in, you know. But I can remember us going down, oh many nights to sit in it when the air raids came along. And then my father always used to stand outside looking up at them because there were sometimes dogfights up above us and I remember her screaming at him to get in [laughs] in the shelter. And then this one time somebody said that a train coming in had shone a light and they said they dropped the bombs because it hit the railway station. Then it hit in a line. Four bombs in different streets. And one man sat at, stood at his gate watching was killed. And the shrapnel from one of them, when we went upstairs was on the pillow in my mother’s bedroom. You know, so that was interesting. And then my, my brother used my sister’s air raid hat and you know, we had a wall outside the air raid shelter. He used to get me to stand behind it and he had an airgun and he would shoot at the hat. But he missed the hat and hit me on the forehead. Missed my eye but he panicked and he got hold of me and he was three, three and a half years older than me, you see. He took me down the back because they were terraced houses and we had the back passage. The dustbin men used to come all the way around and take your dustbin from your garden. Then he took me to the lady up the way because it was bleeding, you see. So I was very lucky he didn’t damage my eye.
HD: Yes. You didn’t have any damage then.
FP: No. No. And that’s really what I remember about before the war. And then I think because of all the air raids my mother was worried about us missing school and not getting our sleep. So she rented this bungalow in Brigsley. Because I remember my other brother, my older brother, we were going around looking at the different places for rent and him carrying me on his shoulder. One of them was a nice big house but we didn’t finish there. We finished in that bungalow. So, there was six of us.
HD: And where was that, sorry? That was in —
FP: Brigsley.
HD: At —
FP: At Brigsley.
HD: Brigsley.
FP: Yeah. Near Waltham. Near the side of the aerodrome, you see. Waltham Aerodrome. And it seemed that the actual one that we looked at which we thought we were going to go in was actually in Waltham. Yes.
HD: Yes. Yeah.
FP: But it was, it didn’t have any running water, it didn’t have electricity. And they had, when we first moved in we had to pump it, you know, the water.
HD: Yeah.
FP: We all took turns doing twenty pumps a time to get the water. And they did have electricity put in. But there were only two bedrooms. So there was my mother and father in one. And then my twin and my sister. Eldest, elder sister and myself in a double bed. And my brother in a single bed. And then my other brother used to sleep on the settee in the room.
HD: A house full.
FP: So there was the living/kitchen with the old range. You know, where you boil the kettle on. But then there was a way out. They had a kind of conservatory through building where the oven was. Where she did the cooking, you know. We had a little pond at the side but a lovely big lawn. My father grew vegetables so that was a help. And he used to come home with things because being a fish merchant he used to do some swapping, you know. We gained because he was a fish merchant. He would give fish and they would give him something else. You know.
HD: So rationing. Did it affect you really? I mean.
FP: Only, the only thing I remember about rationing I think my mother was amazing, was that my brother Derek, he was spoiled, my brother Derek. And he wouldn’t have saccharines so he always had sugar and we had saccharines. So, I don’t know if that’s interesting [laughs] but yes, he always — I don’t know whether he, they hired a car once and he was in the back with my elder sister and us two and he fell out.
HD: He fell out of the car?
FP: He fell out the car and they didn’t know. And somebody else took him to hospital, you see.
HD: Oh, my goodness.
FP: So, because it was a big old car with the glass partition and dad and mum in the front and us in the back you see. Well, Pam, my sister Pam couldn’t control us and that. That’s what happened. But I think because she had a guilt complex she spoiled him you see. I think she had a guilt complex about —
HD: Because he’d fallen out of the car.
FP: Yeah. He, we shouldn’t have been in the back alone like that, you see.
HD: No.
FP: So he was spoiled which we resented a lot.
HD: And did he have bad injuries?
FP: No. He hadn’t but, he didn’t but my sister said his nature changed. You know. She said.
HD: [unclear]
FP: Yeah. I have got a picture somewhere. I should have got it out for us. On the beach at Cleethorpes when we were all little. But yes, so that’s what happened at Brigsley. So we used to get, that’s why we, we went for what was it? We must have been there ten. 1940. We must have gone in 1940 because we went up to Ravendale to a private house for our last year of school before we went to the senior school, you know. And then we used to catch the bus and my mother used to give us sixpence each and we’d go all the way back in to Grimsby to the Canteen. You know. I’ve forgotten what they called them but you could tripe and things in the Canteen for lunch. Which we didn’t like. But they had that Canteen during the war, you see and so a couple of days in the week we’d go on into town and get a meal and then come out again. We’d do that by ourselves. We were only ten.
HD: Goodness.
FP: We did a lot by ourselves.
HD: You were quite young. Yes.
FP: Yes. Yes.
HD: So when you lived in Brigsley you went to school in in Brigsley or —
FP: No. It was Ravendale.
HD: Ravendale.
FP: It’s the next village up on the way to Binbrook.
HD: Right.
FP: You see, because from Grimsby you went that way. The 46. Yeah.
HD: So, did you see the Lancasters taking off on their missions? Were you ever aware of the RAF stations around you?
FP: Oh yes. I did because later on I first started, I mean I was just twelve when I went to Waltham. To the dance hall in Waltham you see. And I used to dance with the airmen because they used to go there you see. And, and they used to go to Barnoldby le Beck. To the pub there. My sister, have you heard of it?
HD: I have.
FP: Barnoldby le Beck. My sister used to go there, you see to the pub. I didn’t go into the pubs but they all used to go there you see. But I used to go to the dances. And also the other one, a dance that I used to go to. Do you know I’ve forgotten the name of it. As we come out of Grimsby it was a dance hall. Darn it. It’s gone out of my head I’m afraid. Yeah. Because that was another place that the airmen used to go dancing, you see. So, and then I took my twin to this hall to a dance but I said, ‘Now, don’t tell anyone you’re my twin.’
HD: You didn’t look alike.
FP: How old I — no. No. We were not alike. And I used to put a bit of make up on. Then it was just a bit of mascara and lipstick, you know but they all thought I was older than I was. So I used to cycle then down [unclear] Lane which is quite a long way to the Louth Road. And then I used to turn left and go to Holton Le Clay. And on that, the aerodrome, Waltham Aerodrome came really quite close to that road. In fact, they closed the road through from, from the 46 to the Louth Road. They closed that you see. And I would see the bombers going. They’d be like the bottom of my garden. I would watch them take off. Yeah. I’d just park there on my bike and watch them take off.
HD: And was this in the evening?
FP: Ahum. Ahum. Yeah. When I came, because then you used to go I used to go on my bike. I used to cycle to Cleethorpes from Brigsley and go. I used to go swimming. No. I used to go to school. Play rounders in the morning and then go swimming in the swimming pool. I don’t know if you — you won’t remember it was a swimming pool will you?
HD: No. I can’t remember that.
FP: It’s the baths now.
HD: Right.
FP: You know, it’s indoor but then it was open and it was seawater.
HD: Oh.
FP: You know. Because you would sometimes get eels in swimming with you [laughs] It was quite large though.
HD: Yeah.
FP: But cold. It wasn’t heated of course. And then I would go and go there and then I’d cycle home. Have tea and then cycle to, I think it’s Waltham it was called. Not Waltham. Scartho. I’ve got it. Scartho. Have you heard of Scartho?
HD: Yes. That’s right.
FP: Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s where I used to cycle to.
HD: And what was —
FP: And then dance all evening. And then cycle home.
HD: And what was it like watching the bombers take off? How many do you think there were and —
FP: Well, I don’t remember them as an amount but I was fascinated because they were so big, you know and so close and so low as they were taking off. But I mean I used to know about the airmen but it never registered at that age about them all going missing. But there were lots, you know that didn’t come back. A lot of the airmen that I knew were trainees. You know, they wore the white because they used to train there you see and those, there were quite a few of them that I knew were trainees. Yeah. But it, and then at Holton Le Clay I used to dance and it was the army there [laughs] So I desert you there.
HD: So, going back to the bombers taking off it must have been incredibly noisy.
FP: Yes.
HD: The noise.
FP: Oh, they were. I think of my brother in law in that plane, you know. Never really, he was fairly quiet, Ron was. I never really talked to him a lot because my sister was only about seventeen when we met. There was never anyone else but him for her, you see. And he was posted from Binbrook. He used to be billeted in the back. You know. Not on the actual aerodrome. They had huts at the back and he used to be billeted there and then, and this was after the war he was posted to Hemswell. That’s where he, you know.
HD: So, tell me about Ron. Which sister did he marry?
FP: My twin.
HD: Your twin.
FP: Yeah. Yeah. My twin. Yeah.
HD: I see.
FP: And she had four children. I had four children. She had four children.
HD: And what happened to Ron? What? He was the navigator.
FP: Yes.
HD: Can you tell me a bit about him that you know about him in Bomber Command?
FP: Well, I’m not sure. He must have still been in Bomber Command because he was in for quite a few years when he was posted to Bovingdon after they were married. Yeah. I think, I think he went abroad after they were married as well because she had her first child, Simon and she lived with my mother and I in the park at Grimsby while he was abroad. But I can’t tell you where. And of course she has dementia now so she doesn’t remember anything.
HD: No.
FP: I always meant to get all these things from them, you know. Before. Even our past. What, because everybody remembers different don’t they?
HD: They do.
FP: They always remember as different. But then he finished up at Bovingdon and the Americans were there as well because we used to go and have big steak meals on a Saturday night. Bovingdon. Yes. And they were in, lived in a bungalow at Chesham which is near Bovingdon. I’m not sure if he didn’t come out of the Air Force then. He did, I don’t know if he did twenty two years but he, he then worked for Basildon Bond.
HD: Oh right.
FP: The paper people. Yeah. And so he got a council house. And that was at Chesham. Yeah.
HD: Yeah.
FP: And that’s where he, their evenings, they were different to ours. My husband and I. Their social life was going for a drink. That’s all they ever did. But we never did, you see. My husband and I. We were not ones for going out for a drink at all. But that was and they used to talk all the time, you know. When they went. That was their evenings out for a drink.
HD: Yes.
FP: And I used to think how good it was.
HD: Yeah.
FP: And my sister still likes her drink.
HD: And so can you tell me a little bit about your sister who used to go to the dances?
FP: Pamela.
HD: And how much older was Pamela to you?
FP: She was, I think Bid was, yes, she was seven years older than me and I think, because Bid was eight years older. My older sister she married an airman as well. He went to India. But Pamela, well I don’t know how to describe her. She always wore a hat. She was very outgoing. You know. You couldn’t miss her. And I’ve really I will tell you what I did used to do though. I used to borrow her clothes and I used to leave mine outside the window you see. And then when I came home at night I’d change [laughs] back. And she used to be getting so cross with me you see when I went to the dances because of course my older sister was horrified that I was going to dances at my age and meeting with airmen and that. You know. She was, because my my granny had brought her up for most of her life ‘til my granny died. So Bid was horrified and Pam used to get cross with me for taking her things.
HD: Taking her clothes.
FP: Yes. I think I vaguely remember briefly my father waiting for me one when I was late back and I got a good telling off. I couldn’t. I couldn’t change back. I was a bit of a holy terror really.
HD: Why not?
FP: Yeah.
HD: Why not?
FP: But then you want the war years, don’t you?
HD: Yes. So, Pamela. She used to go to all the dances as well.
FP: Yes. And she worked in the, that canteen. The forces canteen, you know. In town. It was actually opposite the, opposite the bus station in Grimsby, upstairs, this canteen. And they volunteered to go because she couldn’t go in because her eyesight was so bad. She couldn’t, you know do any war work but she used to do that. Go in and do that. So she also met a lot, a lot of Americans. Yes. Because that’s another story. When we went to a dance and we all came [pause] Humberston Corner it’s called. Do you know where Pennell’s is in Grimsby?
HD: Yes. It’s on the outskirts, isn’t it? Pennell’s
FP: Yes. Yes. Well, if you’re heading towards Grimsby you then come to this roundabout and you either go right to Cleethorpes where my schools were. The boy’s and the girl’s schools or left for Grimsby. And one night when we left the dance we sat there. There were seats there and we sat there and the Americans had bottles of whisky. And my twin was there this time. I can’t remember how old we were. Only about fifteen, you know [laughs] And they were passing this bottle of whisky and it was horrible, you know. Passing it around but we didn’t, we wanted to be, show we were ok and we were taking a drink of it, you see. My twin, she passed out. So my sister really got in trouble from my parents when I had to bring her home in a taxi. She had passed out. My twin was shy. She was the opposite to me you know. She was quiet and she was shy.
HD: Oh dear.
FP: Yes.
HD: There would be trouble at home then.
FP: But she was very attractive, Celia was. She was fair and blue eyed and, you know. They all liked Celia. Yes.
HD: And so you went along with Pamela and Pamela must have been very attractive. You all were, I think.
FP: Yes. Although she was different. She had her hair. She had very fuzzy hair so she had to control it and she used to put it in a kind of long bun at the back. You know. And both her and my older sister had a tendency to buck teeth, you know. But she was so outgoing. I’ve forgotten the word that describes her.
HD: Vivacious.
FP: Yes. Yes.
HD: Yes.
FP: Very. You know, as I say in after years she always wore a hat. Never went anywhere without a hat. My twin never went anywhere without stockings. I never went anywhere with.
HD: So what did, so this, the dances would take place on a Saturday evening, did they?
FP: Yes. Yes. At the Café Dansant at Cleethorpes.
HD: At Cleethorpes.
FP: Yes. Yes. It was a lovely place. I used to go from school and the Americans were there for the afternoon tea dance and they were quite, I mean you were in your uniform. Had to go in our uniform. But they were quite happy to dance with you. You know how they used to shuffle around, the Americans did and do the little twist. They didn’t care whether you were young. They didn’t date you but they were quite happy dancing and that, you know. Having partners. That Café Dansant was, was really the elite shall I say. Not like the Gaiety in Grimsby. Have you heard of the Gaiety in Grimsby?
HD: No. I haven’t.
FP: Haven’t you? Well, that was a large dance hall. My uncle had a garage right beside it. It was called the Gaiety Garage. We used to go because they were a bit strict and they wouldn’t let us in. They could see we were too young you see and they wouldn’t let us in. So they used to have the doors open with screens so we used to stand and look in at them dancing you know, there. But the Café at Cleethorpes, the Café Dansant was elite. Elite. It was a round, a round one and your tables and chairs were all around here. I always remember being there and somebody coming up to ask my sister to dance and she said, ‘What does he look like?’ Because her eyesight was so bad. ‘What does he look like?’ [laughs] But that’s where she used to go a lot. The Café Dansant. Actually, unfortunately that, that went quite a few years ago. They changed it. It’s just a Café now, you know. Chairs and tables for the public. And even the Winter Gardens opposite. Have you, have you heard of that?
HD: I have. Yes.
FP: The Winter Garden. That’s gone. Now, I used to go there. Yeah.
HD: Yeah.
FP: It was all dances you see and most of the time the men never came in ‘til the pubs shut at 10 o’clock. And the airmen and all of them that used to be, you know they’d go for their drinks.
HD: And then.
FP: And then come to the dance. Yeah. So we danced together ‘til they came in. Yeah.
HD: So you were saying about Pamela. That she had a very special gentlemen.
FP: Yes. Yes.
HD: Can you tell me a little bit about that?
FP: Because they did call her, she did have a name because they called her a Jonah. Have you heard of the Jonah?
HD: No.
FP: A Jonah was, they called anybody whose boyfriends didn’t come back. A lot of them didn’t come back. So they would say, ‘Oh, don’t go with her. She’s a Jonah.’ You see. Because they didn’t come. Because so many of her boyfriends didn’t come back. But Alan, she was very young and all I can, I can still see him coming up the garden path. Fair haired and very young. The only one. But I didn’t realise how much she felt about him. But she really did and as I say just one night he didn’t come back. But this is Pamela. Unlike us she would go off to the Café Dansant and all the dances and she’d spend the whole evening crying. I mean, we couldn’t, it horrified my older sister that she could go out and be crying you see.
HD: So, how many boyfriends did she have that didn’t return? Do you know?
FP: No. I don’t. I’ve no idea. Because it was such a [unclear] and you see she was, we moved there so if I was, I was ten she was seventeen when we moved there, you see. So she was going all that time because we came back I think in ’44 to Grimsby from Brigsley because my mother was never happy there. She was always a town lady. And she didn’t like the countryside much at all. But yes. So, she was all those years wasn’t she? Four years, you see. Going with them. She always had a boyfriend.
HD: Yeah.
FP: She even, she met some you see that she went with from Binbrook and Kelstern you see because she would meet them at the Canteen and at the dances. I only ever remember her going with one American. She didn’t go with the Americans. Yeah. It was mainly the Australian Air Force, you know because they were at Binbrook. I mean I had an Australian boyfriend. Also from Binbrook. He went [pause] he used to come to, to the house when we went back to Grimsby in ’44. Because the war was still on. It didn’t finish til ’45 did it?
HD: No.
FP: But yes, and we knew quite a few Australians. I went to a dance myself at Binbrook and it was in the summer and all the haystacks were there. I don’t know whether this is of interest. There. So we used to take our strawberries and our cream and sit on the haystacks.
HD: Wonderful.
FP: Yeah. But —
HD: Yeah.
FP: So I really can’t remember a lot. Bid, now her, sorry it won’t interest you. Her boyfriend was air sea rescue. You know. He was in the boats that went out to rescue. Yeah.
HD: Did you have an air raid shelter at the bungalow?
FP: No.
HD: So what did you do if there was an air raid?
FP: Well, we didn’t get air raids out there. You didn’t. You didn’t hear an air raid siren out there. No. You just, I mean it was very dark, you know. No streetlights. Extremely dark. But you used to hear all the planes because you’d hear them coming back to Binbrook and Kelstern. So it was noisy. But then it was lovely when the moon was out. The moonlight, you know. I always liked the moonlight because that was the only light you had. But yes. No. They did have a cinema at Waltham. On the camp. And we were allowed to go . They used to show films in a hut. You know. One of the huts. And we used to go and watch that. Films there.
HD: So you were telling me that your father was a fish merchant. So did he ever have any part to play in the war?
FP: Well, he was in the First World War. He was a pilot in the First World War and he crashed and was a prisoner. And he lost the sight of one eye. And so my mother always said he rushed off to join in the second war and she said, ‘He’s gone off to join and they won’t let him in.’
HD: And he never flew again.
FP: No. He never flew again. No. I’m sad because you know when you’re young you don’t ask your parents, do you? You don’t think, you know to ask. That I didn’t ask more about his time as a prisoner. Because he never talked about it.
HD: Do you know where he was a prisoner of war?
FP: No. I don’t know anything. But I did think and I believed that I could perhaps write up and find out, couldn’t I?
HD: I’m sure.
FP: Yeah. Because I think they’ve listed all of that.
HD: I’m sure.
FP: Haven’t they?
HD: Oh yes. Yes.
FP: I didn’t realise until I went to your meeting that perhaps I could.
HD: Oh, I’m sure.
FP: Find out.
HD: I’m sure. So did he go over to France in the First World War?
FP: I don’t know. All I know, because he used to pretend that it was a glass eye and I believed him for years. That he had a glass eye you see. But it was his own eye, He was just blinded in it. But eventually he did have to have a glass eye, you see. But for years he used to kid us that it was a glass eye, you know.
HD: So, during the war years then can you remember anything else that happened in Lincolnshire or for you in your daily lives? Any particular incident?
FP: No. I can only remember us at school going into this air raid shelters in the daytime. At school. And playing that whisper in your ear and see what it finishes up as when it gets to the end. You know.
HD: Yes.
FP: And we used to have the, they turned the playing fields into growing potatoes so we used to pick the potatoes, you know. And then at lunchtime we used to, the dining room was on the second floor, on the first floor and we used to wave to the Americans as they went back, by on their convoys. You know. They always used to be going past in convoys.
HD: Okay.
FP: We used to wave to them.
HD: And when you were in the air raid shelter did you actually have lessons while you were down there?
FP: No. No. We didn’t have lessons. No. Because they never seemed to last all that long these air raids. They didn’t seem to last all that long.
HD: And that was during the day obviously.
FP: Yeah. So it was, yes and then I used to because we used to catch the bus. The bus used to go from the marketplace to Binbrook through Brigsley you see so we had to catch the bus. And I used to run like mad from school to get to the marketplace because there was a shop there that sold jacket potatoes that they cooked there and then you see. You just used to manage to get one before the bus left. To get on the bus.
HD: The bus. Yeah.
FP: But I don’t know whether that’s, you know, of any interest. Yes. As I say I just can’t seem to remember much more about it really. Just that. Yeah. In the double summertime my friend and I when we were out at Brigsley we used to climb on the haystacks and just sit there because you would get the RAF coming from Binbrook as well going past. So we were always waving at the forces, you know. It was we didn’t realise really, you know.
HD: And how old were you when the war finished in 1945?
FP: Fifteen.
HD: And did life change again for you then when the war finished?
FP: Well. Not, not for quite a time because when we came back we used to take the buses out to all the aerodromes to the dances you see. So it seemed as far as we were concerned the boyfriends carried on you know at the camp and we were still going to school. No. We weren’t. No. I left school at fourteen. I didn’t do very well at school. You won’t be surprised. And I left. And my mother had started with Parkinson’s you see while we were at Brigsley so my sister Pam had been helping. And then I left school and I started to help. Pam had met an airman. Ken. And he and his family went to South Africa so she went with them but she didn’t last very long out there. I think the parents were too much for her because they ran a hotel out there you see. So she was soon back again and having lots of boyfriends again.
HD: Did she ever get married?
FP: Oh. Yes. Well, she married Ken you see.
HD: Ken.
FP: Then she came back. Yes. And then she married John. Now, he was in the Navy. He was a Navy but I can’t remember what year it was and she married John and then she had Kim. Her one son. That’s all. And they went. He, when he came out of the Navy they did. They went into one of the breweries. They managed pubs when people were at hotels you know. While they were away.
HD: So, how did life change for you when the war ended? You would have left school and you were helping with your mother? Did you have a job at all? Did you?
FP: No. No. My twin did. She went to Estelle’s which was the elite hairdressers in town. A Guy and Smith’s Estelle salon was. And my parents paid for her to train as a hairdresser there. They had to pay for her to train to be a hairdresser. So she trained as a hair dresser and I stayed at home and looked after mum. And I think Pamela, when she came back she was there for about a year. And then at eighteen I went into the WAAFs.
HD: Right.
FP: Yes. I was, I wanted to get away because of course it [pause] you know I’d been four years looking after mum. But I always had a guilt. Always had a guilt and [pause] of being away and not looking after her. Is it still running? Yeah.
HD: And so tell me a little about when you were in the WAAFs. When did you do that?
FP: When I was eighteen. Yes. Yes. I went in just before I was eighteen.
HD: And where did you start off in the WAAF?
FP: Well, I started off by coming, coming from my medicals to Lincoln. I had to come to Lincoln for my medical and I had to get up really early and I fell down the stairs. Yeah. My head hit the bannisters all the way down. And I had my medical and they didn’t even know that had, you know they didn’t know that had. But then I went to Yatesbury to do the basic training. That was quite horrific for me because of course you went to bed at ten and when I was at home I never went to bed ‘til midnight. You know. It was quite a shock to the system. And you used to climb through the window so you didn’t mark the polished floor for the inspection the next morning. And you put your stockings under your mattress to dry them. I know one of the WAAF officers on parade looked at me and she said, ‘What’s this?’ ‘My hair.’ She said, ‘Do something with it.’ Well my hair was always thin. I could never do much with it. Yes. So then I passed out at Wilmslow. Wilmslow it was called. That was Manchester. And then I was posted. I went in for driving. MT.
HD: And what year was this?
FP: Well, it would be — when did I get? Yatesbury I did my training didn’t I? So when did I get to West Drayton? I was only in for two years. I was the last intake that could sign as a WAAF. A WAAF. After that it changed to WRAF and they had to sign for four years. But I just did the two years. So it was the same year that I went to Yatesbury. It would in 1949 wouldn’t it? 1949.
HD: So, yes. It was after the war.
FP: Yes.
HD: Yes.
FP: Yeah. And this big hut at Yatesbury with its heater thing and about ten of us each side sleeping you know.
HD: Yes. They were quite primitive. The conditions. Weren’t they?
FP: Yes.
HD: They were.
FP: They were really. Yes. And I could never eat any of the food. Never. I used to send, spend the pittance we got on food because we didn’t get much money. It used to run out at a certain week. I think we were paid once a fortnight.
HD: And what did you do in the WAAF? What was your —
FP: I drove.
HD: Oh yes. You said.
FP: Yeah.
HD: Sorry. You were a driver.
FP: And we trained at Yatesbury and we were also on the lorries, you know. The QL s as we called them. We trained on those. Going around Blackpool.
HD: So, you were driving lorries.
FP: Yes. Yes. Driving lorries. Yes. Blackpool. And then I was posted. I had a very nice friend because I never had close friends, you know. I was too independent. Estella. She was very nice but she still wanted to tie me down, you know. I was posted to West Drayton which was not far from Heathrow.
HD: Yeah.
FP: And it was, it wasn’t, it was just a, I don’t know what exactly they did there because it was an office type camp. You know. No, no aircrew. No. Nothing like that. Though the Americans did move in after I’d been. After I went to Yatesbury. After a year there somebody wanted to exchange postings from Yatesbury so I changed with them.
HD: Changed.
FP: Because there was nothing to do. But I’ll tell you what I did do. I went on from there. I went on the Remembrance. You know the Remembrance Service. We went and stood by the Cenotaph when King George was king. He was still king then and we stood in line, you know. And we stayed at Uxbridge overnight and then I was at the Royal Albert Hall for the Remembrance Service there and I was dressed as a tennis player. And we spent two days being ferried back and forth from Uxbridge. We actually stayed in Uxbridge and ferried back and forth to — for this rehearsal. And all I can remember is the [unclear] sound of the bagpipes. It seemed to be always the bagpipes. But we, you’ve seen the services haven’t you?
HD: Yes.
FP: Yes. Well, at ours our team was sports. So different people came down those steps. I dressed as a tennis player with a tennis racket. And others came as cricketers and that sort of thing and then we were all. It was quite nice.
HD: Quite an honour. Yes.
FP: Yes. It was quite nice.
HD: Did you get to meet King George?
FP: No. But I wasn’t far from him. No way. No. We stood as kind of guards, you know. The RAF. They do it now. They have a row and then they have the Navy, don’t they? And yeah, that’s how we, that’s all we did there.
HD: Wonderful. That’s very special though.
FP: Yes it was.
HD: Very special.
FP: Yes, it was
HD: So where did you meet your husband?
FP: I met him at Yatesbury.
HD: And he was in the RAF.
FP: Yes. He was also a driver in the RAF. He’d come from Henlow. He’d been posted there from Henlow and he used to drive the RAF Band around at Henlow.
HD: That would be an interesting job.
FP: Yes. It was wasn’t it? So that’s where we met. But we were, we didn’t marry for four years. We, I came, I came out after two years and is this of interest to you now?
HD: Oh yes. Yes. Definitely. Oh no. No. No. Definitely.
FP: Yes. I came out after two years and then I took a job as a mother’s help because I don’t have any training you see. All I knew was driving. I did think — oh no when I came out Frank was still there. I forgot. I went to work at Calne. You know, Yatesbury is near Calne and they had the Harrison’s Sausage Factory there and I went to work there. I was only there two months because it was horrendous, you know. People had worked there all their lives. In the winter you got up in the dark and went to work and you came home in the dark. You know. Because they were long hours then you see. You were eight ‘til six you did. And most of the time what I was doing was putting the top on pastry. You know the paste. The jars of paste.
HD: Yes. Yes.
FP: That little top.
HD: Top. Yes.
FP: And then they go past and that’s all you were doing. And some people were doing that all their lives.
HD: You didn’t rotate.
FP: No. No. They didn’t. So I didn’t last long.
HD: I’m not surprised. No.
FP: I didn’t. But of course it was all experience wasn’t it?
HD: It was. Yes. And how did you get back to Lincoln then? How did you get back to Lincoln?
FP: I think — I’m trying to remember. I came back I think to look after mum again for a couple of years. I think I came back to look because we had moved from Manor Avenue to the park because my grandfather had died so we moved in to his house in the park. And then I went off again. Celia was there with her baby and I went off again. Left her looking after. Another guilt session. Left her looking after my mum. And I actually went in to Reading because Frank had come out and he was teaching driving for the British School of BS. Whatever you call it. School of Driving in Reading. So I got lodgings there and I worked in Huntley and Palmer’s Biscuit Factory. So this is why I always nagged my children to get trained for something so they didn’t spend their lives in factories, you know.
HD: And they’ve all done well.
FP: Yeah. They’ve all done well.
HD: Good. Good.
FP: But yes so that was another long hours because when I first started we were on our feet all day. And when I got back to my lodgings I had to sit with my feet in water for ages they were so, you know.
HD: Sore. Yeah.
FP: Not used to. But I lost a stone in weight.
HD: Even with the biscuits.
FP: Yeah. I was doing lifting the biscuits off a pallet two at a time. Putting them there and then pasting on the label. Then lifting them down.
HD: Goodness me. Yes.
FP: So you can imagine that.
HD: Yeah.
FP: So —
HD: Is there anything else you want to mention about the Second World War years? About the family or anything else that we’ve missed maybe?
FP: Well, no. Only my brother Keith. He had bad eyesight. And there was my sister, big sister Pam and then my brother Keith, you see. He had bad eyesight so he worked on the docks with my father. But he was in the cadets. The RAF. When we were at Brigsley he used to walk up and down swinging that thing. Practicing. Swinging that. That’s what he used to do with the cadets. And then my brother Derek and this was the end of the war. Then he was only just old enough. He went in to the Merchant Navy. So really they didn’t have a lot to do with it. Keith used to cycle from Brigsley to help dad because then on the fish docks they would have, they had the pontoon and they’d have a row. I don’t know if you’ve ever been.
HD: No.
FP: A row of huts for each fish merchant. They’d have these huts. And then on the main part this was a kind of pontoon you see with the huts by the water and then on the main part they’d have an office you see. And this was at Riby Square. And it hasn’t changed a lot since. No. I have driven around it to see.
HD: Yeah. And they weren’t bombed. The docks weren’t bombed.
FP: Well, I can’t remember that happening because they didn’t come for Grimsby you see.
HD: No.
FP: It was Hull all the time. It was only occasionally.
HD: Yeah.
FP: But we used to get all these sirens you see.
HD: Yeah.
FP: But it was, we did used to have, it was very handy because we would have fish twice a week. The rationing you see.
HD: So you ate quite well really during the war.
FP: Yes. We did. Yes. We ate. They managed very well. Mum and dad. Especially with the coupons for clothes because I was a holy terror tearing my stockings, you know and that. But yes it was quite hard for mum really when I think about it. And then my brother Derek, going back to Brigsley. One day we suddenly looked out of the window and he was stood there with a donkey.
HD: Had he found the donkey?
FP: From somebody. He got it from somebody. Got it from somebody and brought it home and thought he’d be able to keep it. And I went, I got friendly at a farm and she let me ride a horse. I never had any training. Because I came home to show them at home one day and I came through the fence and my foot caught and I came off it. But fortunately the horse didn’t run because my foot was stuck in the stirrup. But I did bring a dog home. A puppy home. And that one day, she was lovely, Sally her name was. Lovely little. Her whole body used to go. She used to look for me coming for school. She’d wait for me. And one day she wasn’t there. And I didn’t know it my sister my mum had got my sister to give her away you see. They said she’d been run over but she hadn’t. They’d given her away.
HD: Away.
FP: Because she was too much for my mum, you know. With the rest of us.
HD: Yeah.
FP: But that was at Briglsey but as I say there’s not a lot I can remember. But as I say I always remember those standing and watching those bombers take off. Yeah. Thinking about them in there. Pity I didn’t get really to talk to Ron more about it wasn’t it?
HD: Well, thank you ever so much for giving the interview. You’ve given us lots of wonderful stories.
FP: Well, I hope you can salvage some.
HD: Absolutely. No. We’ve, we’ve talked a lot about air raid shelters, about rationing, about the bombers.
FP: Yes.
HD: All sorts of things. So thank you ever so much. That’s really kind of you.
FP: Will you have a cuppa?
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
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Interview with Fay Price
Creator
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Helen Durham
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-22
Rights
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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APriceF170522
Format
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00:51:01 audio recording
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Fay Price was nine at the outbreak of the Second World War living in Grimsby. A twin, they were the youngest of six siblings. Her memory of the start of the war was the ending of birthday parties. Her father was a fish merchant and was able to barter: sugar is the only thing she remembers being short of. Although Grimsby was rarely attacked, because of its close proximity to Hull, there were many hours spent inside dark and damp air raid shelters. Eventually they moved out into the countryside at Brigsley, to a bungalow with no water or electricity, where she was close to several airfields. Fay describes how they used to cycle to the airfields to watch the aircraft taking off. She started to attend dances from around the age of 12, borrowing clothes from her elder sister Pam. She would creep out of the house, get changed and cycle off to the dances. She used to return and change back into her own clothes, but remembers being late back once and her father waiting for her. Fay also attended afternoon tea dances in Cleethorpes with American aircrew. Although being too young to date, the airmen were always happy to have a female dancing partner. Pamela was also a regular attendee at the dances but became known as a Jonah because so many of her partners failed to return from operations. By the end of the war the family had returned to the family home in Grimsby. Fay still attended the dances, but her leaving school coincided with her mother being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and she remained at home rather than obtaining employment. At the age of 18, she enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and trained as a driver.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Cleethorpes
England--Hull
England--Grimsby
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
bombing
childhood in wartime
entertainment
ground personnel
home front
shelter
superstition
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1085/11543/PPritchardA1701.2.jpg
665f37b1fc773d7c481a87e32db937c5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1085/11543/APritchardC170823.1.mp3
3aaf3d7ce542de333a9bec8d84eec5cd
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
Pritchard, Arthur
A Pritchard
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Carolyn Pritchard about her father, Arthur Pritchard (2206806 Royal air Force) documents and photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with with 463, 467 and 97 Squadron until he was shot down. He was hidden by the French Resistance until the liberation of Paris.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Carolyn Pritchard and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-23
Rights
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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
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Pritchard, A
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SP: This is Susanne Pescott and I’m interviewing Carolyn Pritchard today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at Carolyn’s home and it is the 23rd of August 2017. So, first of all thank you Carolyn for agreeing to be interviewed today. So, first of all do you just want to tell me about your father and what he did before the war?
CP: Yes. As he joined up on his, on his eighteenth birthday he didn’t have, after leaving school he worked for a baker’s delivering bread and that’s it really. And then he joined up.
SP: Yeah.
CP: On his eighteenth birthday.
SP: Did he ever say why he wanted to join the RAF?
CP: No. No. No. He didn’t. He didn’t mention why.
SP: Ok. So he went into the RAF and do you know what, where he went first of all? What he did?
CP: Yes. He was, he joined up on his eighteenth birthday and he was, he did his training at St Athans in South Wales. He passed out as flight sergeant and was posted to RAF Winthorpe in Lincoln where he was introduced to his Australian crew as flight engineer. And that was on the 29th of February 1944. He joined the 463 Squadron. That was the Australian squadron in RAF Waddington. They did seventeen sorties while they were in Waddington and they were Germany, over Germany, France. And on the 9th no, sorry it was the 7th of May 1944, the pilot officer Bryan Giddings and crew, that was dad’s crew, they posted, they were posted to 97 Squadron. That was the Pathfinders and that was at RAF Coningsby. They completed another three missions. Seeing action in D-Day. On their twenty first sortie, that was the 9th 10th of June 1944, on a night raid over a railway junction at Etampes, that’s south of Paris, Pilot Officer Giddings and crew failed to return. Right. I don’t know how much —
[recording pause]
CP: After releasing flares over the target the Lancaster ND764 was hit by flak and they were then attacked from below by a night fighter. Many many years later when he was able to relate his story to me he recollected the moment the aircraft was hit. The inner or outer port side engine was on fire. He wasn’t sure which one it was. The suicidal height at which they were flying, the noise, the smoke in the cabin and unable to communicate amongst each other, the cramped conditions in the cockpit, no place to wear your parachute. He always stored it on the floor. Frantically searching for it, the rush of cold air from the open back door. That was the navigator jumping out. Then he trying to prise, prise open the escape hatch at the front. Every second was wasted. Making survival impossible. The whole episode could not have lasted more than a few minutes and before he realised it was a doomed machine he, he had jumped out.
SP: So, how Carolyn, when he told you that, how did you feel when he was relaying the story?
CP: Well, a couple of years later we’d gone back to RAF Coningsby to see the Lancaster and we were able to go on board. And I could then visualise because the Lancaster wasn’t aircrew friendly at all. It was so small and cramped. And I felt so sorry for the mid-upper gunner. Where he was positioned would have been impossible for him to get out. And the tail end Charlie was, he was in this small little cockpit and again that would have been impossible for him to get out and the aeroplane was going down so fast. And eventually when they did find the bodies they were found in, in the aircraft. Yes. The three of them.
SP: So three —
CP: Were, yes it was the bomb aimer, the mid-upper gunner was, he couldn’t get out and the rear gunner which was the tail end Charlie. They are the three that couldn’t get out. The pilot had jumped out when the plane was very very low but his pilot, his parachute didn’t open. And also the wireless operator. No. I’m muddling up now. It was the navigator. The wireless operator had jumped out already and it was the navigator that had jumped out without a parachute and he was found with the whistle in his mouth. So he’d obviously survived the crash but I don’t know how long and was trying to attract attention. Yes.
SP: And how was your father when he was talking about the story?
CP: He was, he’d put the whole episode really at the back of his mind all the years we were growing up. Even though he used to talk about them. The crew.
[recording paused]
SP: So Carolyn, obviously it’s quite emotional talking about your father and the crew there so can you just talk me through what happened then after he’d got out of the plane.
CP: Yes. Because the aircraft was on fire and it was so low he’d baled out and he’d sprained his ankle. So he was hobbling around the French countryside with a damaged ankle and famously asking villagers for the way to the coast. He was trying to get back to the coast. Eventually he’d arrived at a small village, Egly and entered the local church. He’d seen a local man at the altar and [pause] and told him in broken English that he was Welsh. That he was an RAF airman. The French man couldn’t speak English and what he did he took, he gave dad a glass of water and then he took him to a café opposite the church. On entering the café dad waved a hundred franc note from his RAF kit and ordered champagne for everybody in the, in the café. There was panic as the Germans were in the village and he was hastily ushered to the back room. A young teenage boy from the village was brought in. He could speak a little English and he asked dad to explain what had happened. Dad said that his aircraft had been shot at and that he’d baled out and, but he was really uncertain with the rest of the crew and he kept asking and asking how they were. So that they could check his identity with London they hid dad in a small air raid shelter underground and if they, if he hadn’t checked out right I think they would have just left him there. Once the ok came from London the local leader of the French Resistance was summoned and put him in the care of Monsieur George Danton and his family. They risked being shot if caught hiding a British airman and he was given a new identity, well an identity and civilian clothing. His ID was a deaf and dumb Frenchman. And a bicycle. He was moved from safe house to safe house until eventually he ended up in Paris. In Antony in Paris. He was always instructed to follow a parcel tied to the back of Mr Danton’s cycle. Not Mr Danton himself. And once they had arrived at Mr Danton’s house in Paris Mr Danton went into the building without the parcel. The parcel was still left on the bicycle and a few minutes later came out, picked up the parcel, took it into the house and then dad followed. And that was the time that they could embrace each other because they knew then that they were in a safe house.
SP: So, Carolyn obviously dad’s now in the safe house. Did he talk about what life was like in the safe house?
CP: Yes. He did. He kept a diary while he was there. Life was very mundane. And there was little food. Jam and bread kind of thing. And now and again they used to try and get a cigarette for him because he was absolutely desperate for cigarettes. And then they tried to teach him. They tried to teach him a couple of French words to just to get about and whenever it was a bit safe for them to go out Mr Danton used to take him to the, some of the airfields where the German, the Germans had their weapons and aircraft and say to dad, ‘You make sure that you remember this. That when you get back to the UK and you’re debriefed that you can tell them where things are.’ That kind of thing. Yes. Yes.
SP: So, how did he actually get back to — obviously he was in a safe house.
CP: Yes.
SP: How did he get back in to the UK?
CP: He was, he was in the safe house for over two months. And then there was the liberation of Paris on the August the 24th. Right.
[recording paused]
CP: Yes. On or about the 23rd of June they tried to get dad back to the, to the UK. They were expecting a Lysander aircraft to land on, on a landing strip but they tried a couple of times but it was, they felt it was too dangerous because the Germans were still, still around. So they had to, it was just too risky so they had to abort. They tried to get him out there but eventually he hitched a lift with a war correspondent for the Sunday Pictorial. A Rex North. And they eventually got to Paris. On the way there they were, he was given a bottle of champagne which I’ve, we’ve still got today actually in the house. Undrinkable. Yes. And eventually on the 24th of August he flew back in a Dakota to the French, from the French coast to Hendon. And at that time, after that he was debriefed. He had to go down to London to be debriefed to what he’d seen. And, and that was it.
SP: Did he talk at all about the debriefing? Did he say that was like or —
CP: No. He didn’t. He remembered. He had a marvellous memory. He’d remembered everything he’d seen while he was in Paris trying to help. Trying to help while he was back. No. He didn’t actually. No, he didn’t.
SP: And what happened after the debrief? Did he, what happened to him after that?
CP: Well he, he’d, he was allowed home. One thing. One thing that struck me when I was, I had always been speaking to him over the years was how he didn’t get any counselling and everything. There were so many people killed and he kept asking, ‘What’s happened to the crew? What’s happened to the crew?’ And they didn’t know. Even the crew, years and years later after speaking to the crew’s families they hadn’t known for years, well months, what had happened to them. And he was allowed to go home. Which, he came back to our little village here and, and that was it. He had a couple of weeks here and then he was posted to Scotland as an air traffic controller. So that was the end of his war. Yes. And where he met my mother.
SP: Right.
CP: She was in the RAF as well. She was a WAAF. Yes.
SP: So, obviously they met up in Scotland and then —
CP: Yes. They did. Yes. Yes. They met up in Scotland.
SP: And came back to live in Wales.
CP: Eventually, they did. Yes. They, they got married and always lived in this little village. Yeah. My mother was from Liverpool. Yes. Yeah.
SP: And then what did your father do after the war?
CP: He worked in construction. Working for big machinery. He was offered a career in the RAF as [pause] I think in Canada. They wanted him to be trained in Canada but he wasn’t interested anymore after going through such harrowing experience during the war. He didn’t want anything to do with flying. Yes. So he took a different career.
SP: What about you? How did it affect you growing up with your father’s stories? Was it —
CP: Well, it did. He always, he always, he hid a lot. He always talked about the boys.
[recording paused]]
CP: Yes. Always talked about the boys to our families. And as we were growing up we knew about them even though we had never met them. And when my sister Shirley and her husband had got married they had gone to Europe on their honeymoon and thought they would try and trace first of all the French Resistance families to try and get back in touch again. Which they did. They managed to, to get in touch with the French Resistance. That was in 1977. I think it was 1977. And eventually my dad went over for the first time in 1977 to meet the families of the French Resistance. And ever since, all his life he kept in touch with them. They either came to our little village here to see him or he’d gone back to see them. All always visiting the boy’s graves. By that time he’d known that they perished and they knew exactly where they’d been buried and the stories. The harrowing stories that followed. Yeah. So we did know the boys. And he used to come up with some funny stories about them. Like if he had a date with a WAAF they’d all go to the pictures together [laughs] Yeah.
[recording paused]
CP: Yes. He used to talk, like I said about the boys. One was an avid reader. Always had a book. Even when they went on, on their ops at night and the pilot used to have to say, ‘Put that light off,’ because he had this tiny little light in his, he was a upper-gunner. Just in case he attracted the Germans. And I think the rear gunner used to write poetry. I’m sure dad said he did. They were well educated. Very very well educated men. I think they taught my father a lot because first of all they couldn’t understand him when he joined the crew because he was Welsh speaking all his life. Had a very big accent. Welsh accent. Could hardly speak English to be honest. Yes. And they taught him a lot of culture. Yes. Took him to London on their time off when they had time off. And a few of them used to come to our little village when they, because they couldn’t go back to Australia obviously when they had time off and they used to come to the village here. My dad’s family had met them. Yes. Lovely men.
SP: And you kept in touch you say, with the Resistance.
CP: Oh yes.
SP: Did you keep in touch with the Australian families as well?
CP: Families, as well. Yes. And that, well he hadn’t really because I’m one of eight so during, during his time while we were growing up he had a lot on his hands [laughs] So he, he didn’t have time but as we grew up and we knew about the boys I used to try and say, ‘Oh, do you remember where they came from, dad?’ And all that. Anyway, I think it was in 2004. I think it was 2004 there was a knock on the front door and a man handed my father a letter and left. So he read the letter and it was a member of the crew. It was the Webb family. And they had found out my father, where my father lived, managed to get somebody that was connected to the 97 Squadron website, Ron Evans, to deliver, who lived in Wales, to deliver a letter to dad introducing themselves. Saying that if he didn’t want to get in touch, you know, keep in touch or get in touch with them that was ok. But my father was absolutely thrilled he had their address. They lived in Sydney so, and then we, I was on the internet then so I was able to email them and say yes of course. I think it was 2006 they came over from Australia and spent six weeks in Wales with us here. And that was very nice. And then the McGill family, that was the upper gunner, they came over in, I think it was just over two years ago and we went to the Bomber Command Spire. The unveiling of the Spire. They came and we were in touch and we’re still in touch with them all. Yes. We’re still in touch with the Australians. Lovely people. Send Christmas cards every year. Have letters from them. Yes. Unfortunately, part of, well the Giddings family they’ve, they’ve died. We’ve lost touch there. The Clements family the same. But the Seales we still speak to. The Webbs and the McGills. Yes.
SP: And how important is that to you to keep that contact going?
CP: Oh, it’s very important. Yes. The boys. Memories are still, still there. And actually the, actually both families the McGills and the Webbs we actually went over to France on different occasions to stay with the Dantons and to visit the graves. Yeah. So that they could see where they were. Yeah.
SP: So, we were talking about your father earlier. You mentioned on the day of the final flight.
CP: Oh yes.
SP: For the whole crew.
CP: Yes.
SP: They had certain superstitions. It didn’t feel quite right that day. Do you just want to share that story?
CP: Yes. Yes. They used to, well they used to, you know just before they taxied off for the mission they used to wee on the front wheel. But that particular night three or four WAAFs had come down to the air, airfield to wave them off so they couldn’t carry out the weeing. So that was the night that the plane was shot down so my father felt that if only they’d wee’d. Yeah.
SP: Did you talk about that? Saying that was a superstition that they had.
CP: They all, yes. They always carried it, they did that every time they went on a mission. Yes. But not that particular night. Yes.
SP: Just chatting, is there anything else you feel you want to say about that you haven’t had the chance to say about your father or any, the impact on the family or anything like that?
CP: Well, I think, I think going back to when they used to come back from their missions and then they were always, they always were given a big breakfast. And they’d be sitting there with their cigarettes obviously. And they used to call, they used to have tablets, uppers and downers I think but he never used to touch them. But the coldness of when they used to go into the mess and the fact that their locker had been cleared and as if they had never existed. You know, the crews that had never returned. I just felt that that was very sad and he always used to feel that was very sad. Yes. And the fact that he didn’t know, while he was in France, he didn’t know what had happened to the rest of the crew and he’d asked and asked and nobody knew and it was months later that he did find out and that was so, so sad for him. Yeah. Because they were best of friends. Did everything together.
SP: That’s ok. Alright. Well, I just want to —
CP: Yeah.
SP: Thank you Carolyn very much for sharing those stories and obviously the impact on you as well.
CP: Yes.
SP: So, on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre thank you very much.
CP: Oh, you’re welcome. 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 Carolyn Pritchard
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Susanne Pescott
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
2017-08-23
Rights
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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APritchardC170823, PPritchardA1701
Format
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00:26:53 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Carolyns father, Arthur, joined the Royal Air Force on his 18th birthday. Following his training as a flight engineer, was posted to RAF Winthorpe. He was allocated to a crew consisting entirely of Australians. In February 1944 the crew were posted onto Lancaster aircraft of 463 Squadron at RAF Waddington. On the 7th May 1944, they were posted to 97 Squadron at RAF Coningsby. It was from RAF Coningsby on their 21st operation on board ND 764, they were shot down 30 miles south of Paris. Carolyn describes in detail the events, from the aircraft being damaged by anti-aircraft fire and then being attacked by a Luftwaffe fighter, to the escape from the aircraft and subsequent contact with French civilians who sheltered him up to his return to the UK after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Following his return, Arthur was granted three weeks leave. He did not return to flying, instead he retrained and became an air traffic controller. He was posted to Scotland, and it was here he met his future wife. In the 1970’s, whilst on a holiday in Europe, her sister managed to establish contact with members of the French Resistance who had sheltered Arthur. In 1977 Arthur was able to visit them and the graves of his fellow crew who did not survive and remained in contact for the remainder of his life. Carolyn recalls her father describing a superstition the crew used to carry out before each opeion. Each crew member would urinate on the aircraft wheels before boarding. Several members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force came to wave them off on their last opeion and discretion meant they were unable to carry out their routine.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Paris
Temporal Coverage
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1944-02
1944-05-07
1944-08
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
463 Squadron
97 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
evading
final resting place
flight engineer
ground personnel
Lancaster
Pathfinders
RAF Coningsby
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
Resistance
shot down
superstition
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1097/11556/ARobertsM180614.2.mp3
a1f6d2c2314f1e3dee731ad0072f2eea
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, Millie
Millicent Roberts
M Roberts
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Millie Roberts (b. 1925). She remembers Lincoln being bombed.
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
2018-06-14
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
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MS: So my name is Michael Sheehan. I’m an interviewer with the International Bomber Command Centre Oral History. I’m sitting with Mrs Millicent ‘Millie’ Roberts. You prefer to called Millie.
MR: Yes.
MS: Is that right?
MR: Please.
MS: What’s your date of birth please, Millie?
MR: 29 1 26.
MS: And we’re at your address [buzz] Also present is Joy Lancaster who is your daughter.
MR: Yes.
MS: Who is acting in your interest and Anita Sheehan who’s my co-interviewee. Now, are you happy to be interviewed?
MR: Yes. Yes. I’ve nothing to hide.
MS: Nothing to hide. Right.
MR: I’m not selling drugs or anything.
MS: Not selling drugs.
MR: Well, I’ve just had, it’s on the radio today, it’s a terrible thing. People make a living out of the things don’t they?
MS: Yeah.
MR: And these young men and children get caught up in it. It’s all awful.
MS: It is awful. You’re right. So you’re happy to confirm you do consent to take part in the recording?
MR: Yes.
MS: At the end of the interview I’ll be going through some paperwork. Get you to sign a document. But at all times if there are any questions you want to ask or you want to stop the interview or take a comfort break or anything like that or anybody else who wants to do on your behalf then just say so and we’ll do it. How’s that?
MR: Yes. That’s fine.
MS: Ok. The idea about the interview is to collect oral histories from people like yourself who lived through the Second World War both as crews and also people who witnessed things on the ground and I believe you were a witness on the ground.
MR: Yeah.
MS: But before we get going what were you, what was your life like before the war? What were you doing?
MR: School [laughs]
MS: School. Where were you at school?
MR: Well, I started school at Eastgate School. I was born in Rasen Lane. The corner of Hereward Street and Rasen Lane and my first school was Eastgate. And when you walked you walked through the Newport Arch to East Bight and then through there we walked. But then 1926 and the 30s was a bad time because it was the strike and my father lost his business, which was a bankrupt in those days was totally different to today. So we moved to a house in Reepham which had an outside loo and a pump like that ‘til they came and put water in that. Well, for us it was a happy time at Reepham because your parents had what I only knew when I was older what a worry it would have been for them because [pause] and the, and school was lovely. And the headmistress.
MS: What school was it you went to?
MR: Reepham School. I have somewhere, Joy amongst here is a newspaper. Look at the school.
MS: Was it a village school?
MR: Yes. And they won. No. It [pause] well I’ll find it after.
MS: Yeah. Sure.
MR: It’s a, it’s a newspaper and they put it, no that’s the zeppelin. I’ll come to that.
MS: Yeah.
MR: It’s, they won, what they do today it was a very good school. So I wrote but stupidly I didn’t put my address in so I never got a reply. So I described the school to the headmaster now [unclear] because when you went to school there was one big room and there was a screen which that was the Senior, that was the Junior and this small room was the Infants. There was one coke boiler and in the winter when you went with the snow the headmistress let you put them all around and you used to have this smell. You know.
MS: The smell. All schools smell.
MR: And I never drunk the milk. I wouldn’t drink the milk. But it was very happy. Well, one day we was in the playground and they said, ‘What on earth is that?’ And it was the zeppelin going over. There is something about the zeppelin.
MS: The Zeppelin?
MR: Yeah. The Zeppelin. And, yes it’s in the paper.
MS: The zeppelin.
MR: Yeah.
MS: Oh right. Got it.
MR: And we ran and we ran. It was play time. We was in playtime. We all went. There wasn’t one soul stayed behind. And we all ran.
MS: Oh lovely.
MR: Seen it. I’m not saying it was above us.
MS: Yeah. Good.
MR: We were kind of following it and I can’t remember, it must have been Fiskerton that we ended up in. And so we go back to school and we had to stay in. The head mistress made us stay in. This was in, we weren’t doing lessons. She said, ‘You would have been back in lessons part of the time. No you have to stay here. I’m responsible when you’re at this school and if anything had happened to you what do you think your parents would say?’ So we got told off for doing that.
MS: Can I interrupt you for a second? That looks like you would be about ten years of age when the zeppelin —
MR: Yes. That would be it.
MS: The Hindenburg came over.
MR: Yes. Yes. That’s right.
MS: Which was very famous isn’t it?
MR: That would be correct. Yes. So that was, that was a bit of an excitement.
MS: Yeah. It looks like it.
MR: And we had, we were doing a play once. Just a kids play. I can’t remember what it was, but we went in the cow shed and they had these cake meals piled up and we went up these steps and we was all very happily doing. All of a sudden it was dark. And we’d never heard the cowman come in and he locked the door. And the whole village was looking out for us.
MS: You were locked in.
MR: Yeah. We were locked in.
MS: In Reepham.
MR: Yeah. Locked in the cowshed. Anyway, there was a cow not very well so the farmer had come in a bit early so everybody was relieved that they couldn’t, but it was a very happy time there. It was all, all school fetes, church fetes, Brownies. What we did when we were Brownies we collected the wool. The sheep got on the fences and the lovely headmistress that did the Brownies and Guides we ended up knitting little baby’s jackets. She showed us how you could do it all. Took ages to do but it was nice. But it was a happy time. And they wouldn’t have me in the choir because I was tone deaf. So I pumped the organ. Well, I didn’t care because I did what I liked while I pumped the organ.
MS: Can I ask you a question? Did you get the wool off the fence?
MR: Yeah. Well, there was all around the hedges and that, you know.
MS: Yeah.
MR: [unclear] it wasn’t getting it like they are now that people make a living out of it.
MS: Can I ask you a question? You know, when you were thirteen in 1939. Yeah? Well, when war was declared did you hear it on the radio? Did you hear —
MR: Do you know I’m just thinking. I’m just thinking what? Where I did hear it, or even where I was at thirteen because an uncle got my father a job in Ruston’s which all my father’s life was working to feed five children really. He hated it. But he became a sergeant in the Home Guard. So with him being a Naval man that gave him something. But I can’t remember. I can’t remember where I was when the war started.
MS: Do you remember any feelings you had when you knew the war had started?
MR: Oh, but I’ll tell you something that I have.
MS: Yeah.
MR: I have my teacher’s autograph here and there was a Mr Teasdale. Maths teacher. And we did have to learn to go [pause] we was, oh we was back. I was back in Lincoln at a Lincoln school, and we were going in the air raid and that. And the, Mr Teasdale was always looking at the planes, so he was soon a teacher no more. He was an airman. And I never knew how he got on in that. But I must tell you something about today and then. I had a little sister. And there wasn’t such a word mentioned as leukaemia but the very nice doctor he was our coroner. He sat and explained to me about red cells and white cells, and I was the only one that could visit her in hospital because they didn’t take children in the hospital under four. We had diphtheria while we were [unclear] Everything was going around, you know. And I just sat in class and burst out in tears and Mr Teasdale, Mr Teasdale said, ‘What is the matter? Aren’t you very well?’ And I couldn’t tell him. He said, ‘Go to the nurse’s,’ thing which we called the nit nurse. Right, ‘And go there and I’ll see you at break.’
MS: Yeah.
MR: And he come and he took me home. Could that happen today? You know.
MS: Yeah.
MR: I mean the teacher taking you home. And he took me home. And of course she died. It was at Christmas and that would be another tale because Mr Threadgold friend of my grandparents in the Bail, the place is still there his wife was a corsetiere. Grandma went for her corsets.
MS: Where did you go for yours?
MR: We didn’t do. We didn’t go to anybody. But oh it’s so, it’s so funny when you think about things isn’t it? How far have I got?
MS: About your sister passing away.
JL: And you were in a new address in Lincoln.
MS: Yeah.
MR: Oh yeah. Oh now.
MS: Yeah.
MR: We was in Avondale Street then.
MS: Right.
MR: And he come with his horses and then the little coffin went in. So it goes down Monks Road but he could hardly, snow and ice, just before Christmas, and he could hardly get up to Newport Cemetery and he says, ‘That’s it. That’s the last of my horses.’ And he, from then it was a car. And —
MS: What year was that, roughly? When your sister passed away.
MR: Well, they took her to school because of the war at the age of four. Because a lot of women started going in the munitions. That was the start of women working. So they, so she just had started school at the age of four. I don’t know.
MS: So —
MR: I’d have to get the death certificate out.
MS: No. No. No.
JL: About 1943 wouldn’t it be?
MS: About ’43. So you’d be about six.
MR: Maybe not as late as that Joy.
JL: The war was ’39.
MR: No. I think she, I think it would be ’38 or’39.
MS: Yeah.
MR: It would be the beginning of the war.
MS: Yeah.
MR: Yeah. It hadn’t really started. It would be then.
MS: Yeah.
MR: But that’s, that’s just Threadgold’s in the Bail that —
MS: Was that, were Threadgold’s a funeral director?
MR: Yes. He was.
MS: Ok.
MR: They retired and lived at somewhere near Sudbrooke there. A house. They retired and strangely enough when we had our first house, first had, we lived near Priestley and Cockett that bought Threadgold’s business.
MS: Oh right.
MR: So I went to the funeral.
MS: It’s a circle.
MR: My, my middle daughter went to school with their youngest daughter.
MS: Yeah.
MR: And so we saw funerals and all that but that, that’s just another tale then. But then she wasn’t alive when the, when they bombed Avondale Street.
MS: Right. Can I ask you a question? You know how, when did you get the first impression that you knew that war was affecting you and Lincoln.
MR: Now, going to my grandad when he said St Peter had called him. He was a man that always had a bible there and I’ve got his bible and things have been marked in it like, and he was dying. We knew he was. And we all went up to say goodbye to him and he said, it was between Chamberlain and the umbrella and all that was going on you know —
MS: Yeah. Munich.
MR: ‘There will be a war. Look after yourselves.’ And he had, they had lived through, my mother nearly died after the First World War. She got the Spanish Flu and she was very, very ill. And somebody went that had it bad. They had greenhouses on Riseholme Road she had plants and that. And she’d got that and I never knew until recently that more people died of that than in the war.
MS: Yeah. My grandfather died of that.
MR: Did he really?
MS: Yeah. Millions more died.
MR: Yeah. They did and I never really knew that.
MS: Yeah.
MR: No. So, that was, that was when I knew there was a war. But to us, I’m saying it was a wonderful thing for teenagers. We could go, if you belonged to a youth club or anything you could go and get Air Force wool or the Army wool and the pattern and you knitted it and you took the wool back but you see if you did something for yourself you needed coupons and that. So you had something to do. We had something to do. And as soon as you was old enough we joined this Girl’s Training Corps and you could go and, and then gradually we went to the American place near the library and did things. We went to Nocton Hospital. I’ve got many an American want to see me in America. All over flipping America.
MS: Boyfriends?
MR: They didn’t know. No. They never became boyfriends. Do you know I think we, and my friend will tell you and Alma as well that you can say what you like about the books they do of the war and we knew the two hotels where everybody went for sex and they were pushing a pram the next year. We knew all that. But do you know we always said when we was talking after the men, especially men that showed you their wives or their sweethearts or their families they only wanted to dance with you and have a night out. And anyway my father knew the chucker out at one of them. I mean, I daren’t have done anything.
MS: You’d got no chance.
MR: I daren’t have done anything wrong.
MS: Which were the two hotels just out of interest?
MR: Well —
MS: It’s a long time ago.
MR: One isn’t there anymore.
MS: Yeah.
MR: One is where Pratts is. Just around there. And it had all palm trees going in. I know somebody who danced with Guy Gibson in it. In there. I never went in. Never. Didn’t go in hotels in those days. And then there was Woolworths there but that’s all gone. But the, the other one, it would be the White Hart up in the Bail.
MS: The White Hart. Right.
AS: You mentioned the American place near the library. What was that?
MR: Yes. It was near, what did they call the American places that like was our NAAFI.
MS: PX.
MR: Yeah. We used to take them around the Cathedral. Oh, we were ever so good. We learned a lot about the Cathedral. Well, I’ll tell you about one American. I can’t remember his name or anything. And we was just talking and he had a lovely family. Two children. Lovely family. And then if they come back you knew they were still alive. They get other postings and they come and he’d come back. But he was just going to go over, and strangely enough he was going to go over with those all those Canadians that got killed when they made a thing to go further down in France to avoid letting them know they were going where they were going. And all those Canadians, all those sort of things. And how he got with the Canadians going to the coast. Somebody told me after that knew. And, and there were so, there were so many. And, and we had all, there was always something that we could do, and of course things were short. I’ve seen when the snow and the thing people dragging bags of coal home to warm the house, you know.
MS: Where were they getting the coal from? Was it —
MR: From the, well it’s another thing you see because coal yards are all gone. Pelham Bridge.
MS: Yeah.
MR: Just down there was all there. There’s all sorts of things that you know about.
MS: Were they, were they stealing the coal?
MR: No. No. No. They would go and be allowed to have it if they fetched it.
MS: Right.
MR: You know, now I’m asking now I don’t know about the rations of it, but that’s another thing for us. We were now living with my grandparents and they had coke allowed for the greenhouses. So there was a lot of coke on our fire. One fire in the whole of the big house.
JL: It was on Riseholme Road wasn’t it? Where your grandparents lived.
MR: But there was —
JL: The house.
MR: But the house he built had the, a radiator in the bathroom, a radiator in their bedroom and a radiator in with the beautiful Edwardian window. I went up because I found two photos of when it was built and I thought the people that liked it, lived there now might like it. I would have posted it but I couldn’t so then they took me. Oh, I couldn’t believe the place. How the modern way. Beautiful Edwardian greenhouse was two garages. Well, well honestly it was very, very nice but it wasn’t where —
MS: It wasn’t what you remembered?
MR: But, yes one night when we went to a dance my lovely friend there that died of an awful cancer she, if I went dancing I could bring a friend home or I stayed in Lincoln with a friend. So that there was two of you in the blackout and that. And so it was one of these nights we was going dancing at the Assembly Rooms and there was these two airmen walking in the snow and we knew they had to walk to Scampton. So quite innocently we said, ‘We’re just going to have a drink. A warm drink. Why you don’t come in and have one before you’ve got to walk the rest of the way?’ Thinking somebody would be up because it wasn’t, I don’t think it was awfully late. Anyway, we got in and we had it and all of sudden my mother came in. Grandma was then bedridden in the front room and she’d come to see if she was alright before she went to bed. She said, ‘Well, alright boys you have your drink and then will you please go.’ So that was as near as we got anything committing anything wrong but we’ve never forgotten it. We’ve never forgotten that. But what that innocent things you did.
MS: Yeah.
MR: And we did. But —
MS: You lived on Avondale Road.
MR: Do you want me to say about the Avondale —
MS: Yeah. Please. If I just, have you got my phone there Anita? Just let me put it on standby for a second.
MR: Ok.
[recording paused]
MS: Ok. Right. We’re just going to continue the recording now. I’ve been sent a photograph by Peter Jones. That’s Thomas Street. The bombing.
MR: Yes. That’s right.
MS: Does that remind you of anything?
MR: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Can you tell me about that?
MR: That was, that was after Avondale Street. It didn’t go off. The bomb there. And this, this Alma, Alma [unclear] Alma, her, her aunty lived in, she lost, one of the houses was her —
MS: Yeah.
MR: Was her aunt’s house. And in Thomas, but Avondale Street the only one that got killed was he was opening the air raid shelter. Well, my father said, ‘We’re not putting our name down for that.’ We had a very big strong mahogany family table so he said, ‘We’re not having one of those,’ things you could have in the house that you all got in, ‘We’re going under that.’
MS: A Morrison shelter.
MR: Morrison. But we weren’t having one of them. We were going under this mahogany table if anything happened. Well, the only night my father ever went out to his club was Friday night. My mother went. We had this big room. Then we had a smaller room. Then you had a scullery. And she went to check on the blackout and she said, ‘Oh, my goodness me,’ she said, ‘Something’s happening.’ And they send little lights down. Something. And she come back. Brother yelling his head off because he couldn’t find the cat. He was, he was the youngest she says, and all of a sudden and this, I might not be here talking to you now if it hadn’t have happened. She said, ‘We’re going under the stairs. I’m turning the gas off.’ And that was, well everybody when I went back to work said, ‘Well Millie, that was absolutely wonderful wasn’t it?’ I said, ‘It was.’ We all come, my father he came off Monks Road and our house was the top one and you come down the passage in, in the gate to the back door. Well, he just got down here and he come in the back door and there was such a heck of a crash and that and our chimney and a part of the wall went down and the fire came out of the fire and went under the mahogany table. But it didn’t set the house on fire. It burned all under the table but the blast was so severe it sent the fire out. Well, good gracious me.
MS: If you’d been under the table.
MR: My dad heard the siren go you see for the thing so he ran home you see. And but that was two miracles. My dad could have gone because he’d, if he hadn’t just gone like that he would have been killed by the thing. Well, then we were so upset because the two houses where the lovely man died opening the so called air raid shelter and the salvation dog saved them but they lost their homes.
MS: Yeah. Was your house still usable?
MR: Well, we had to come out of it because there was no water or gas or something. So we went up to my grandmas. Well, then my grandad died. And then my grandma was worried about all these airmen and things about living in a huge house on her own. So when it was thing we, we let it to the RAF and we stayed at grandma’s ‘til I got married like. I was there. But, and that’s how we come that we used to bike up and count the planes from Scampton because you soon got Scampton there and got to know all about that like.
MS: Did you have any other experience of being bombed?
MR: Well, that was, that was then. Oh well [pause] I worked at Gilbert’s Garage.
MS: Yeah.
MR: This, you won’t think this in this day and age, but there were three offices. There were two men and me in one office. And when you go to get your petrol today and that and there were only petrol pumps mind you, but they were only not so much a lot of new cars but of course there was all the mechanics. But when the soldiers had to come out of France they commandeered all the building above the ground. They commandeered it and these Royal Engineers what they were doing up the college on Monks Road I don’t know but they were here. And I’ve got photos here. That’s two of them. That’s one of them and that’s two.
MS: They were upstairs in the garage.
MR: They were two. They used to work there and Miss Gilbert she lived in the estate at Sudbrook. It wasn’t like Subrooke now. She had, you could go and play tennis and that. She used to do a wonderful Christmas party for them and that. And these two came from up Lancashire way and they both had girlfriends and yeah, that was something different, but all they were doing was getting ready to go back. So who knows in this book how many of those ever got back to —
MS: Yeah.
MR: Or of them got back to their families and their homes or they just and they were, they weren’t much older than us some of the, some of the airmen that we danced with and that. And —
MS: Can I ask you a question? You, you got Guy Gibson’s signature. His autograph.
MR: I haven’t now.
MS: Ah. But you did get it during the war.
MR: Yeah. I did for a long time.
MS: Do you want to tell us how you got that?
MR: Well, you could, would it be best to read that, Joy. This is what my son in law did. He was a bit like you but —
MS: I hope that’s nice.
MR: He said, well he was really with the thing and anyway he said, well Pilot Officer Smith was stationed at my grandma’s before we went to live there and he, he was older. He was fine. He never flew a plane.
MS: Yeah.
MR: And like I said when you see that film and you see Wallis and he’s so upset at the loss of the men’s lives. And Guy Gibson comes and he said, ‘Get the doctor to give you something to sleep.’ And he said, ‘What about you?’ And the actor says, ‘I’ve got some letters to write.’ Well, that was, I think and he meant that that was the sort of job that he did and sending all the belongings back and that and I always think of that. But his wife. They were bombed in London so they came up to Lincoln. They had a six year old daughter so I used to baby sit and he only said to me, ‘I’ll take your book,’ all these things that had been in. ‘I’ll take your book and put something in Millie.’ And I then get it back and then he of course people, people are just being amazed. It’s so strange. The times I’ve had to get this book out to show this. And if I happened to say anything to the grandchildren, some of these names, ‘I don’t know them, grandma.’ The very first one that I got in from the theatre was Will Fyffe. Did you know Will Fyffe?
MS: It’s strange. Is that music? The music hall.
MR: This is somebody I might have married if things, if I hadn’t met Albert.
MS: Does your daughter need to know this? [laughs]
JL: [unclear]
MR: Because he was, no he was fighting in Italy.
MS: Yeah.
MR: And he won the military medal. You know, in that terrible Casino.
MS: Oh yeah. Monte Casino.
MR: Monte Casino. And he used to send me silk stocking which you wore one night and they all laddered. But when he come home my father, I really with Albert and I it was first meeting was, it was it, you know like. So I felt absolutely dreadful and he said, ‘Well, he’s coming home.’ And we’ve offered to have him because it was, I mean they all knew him. He said, ‘So you’ve got to tell him.’ Took me a week to tell him but I mean Albert had had girlfriends before anyway and but this is all 1941 time that, he won it in 1942 that. But to me there’s so many there, but they did make all of a sudden it was such a fuss of that raid but there was lots and lots and lots that we knew about the raid.
MS: Can I —
MR: Now, I can see it now. This is a strange thing in war. We had some friends, Mr and Mrs Withers that belonged the Baptist Church. His parents owned all that where the big hall is, and all that property that became a cinema and that and I didn’t know that at the end of the war German prisoners of war in Wellingore and that used to go to the football match. Have the freedom and they were, and this young man, German, Helmut. He, he went and joined the Youth Club. And Mrs Withers was so sorry for him. His mother was starving in Germany. He was just ready to go to university when he had to go into the Army. He was one that was saved in a battle. Just a few of them. He, his life changed at Wellingore. He learned better English and everything. And anyway the Withers kept friends with him and they were much the same as us. Saving for a home in Germany near Bonn. Same as us. And they had two girls and the girls, grown up and he told Mrs Withers that he was going to bring them to Wellingore and, but she’d got her mother in law staying with her. She couldn’t put four up so she came to me and said, ‘Would you have the girls?’ Because our Sandra was learning German at that time at school. So I said, ‘Yes. I’ll have them.’ So they came, so [pause] and we became such friends. We were going without the children for our silver wedding somewhere. We was picking where to go. ‘No. No. No. You mustn’t do that. You must come to us,’ and, but it meant taking the two girls. Joy was, you was married then wasn’t you, Joy? Yes because she had James didn’t you?
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
MR: And so we went and I took the girls. Oh, and then the girls came back again and we went to Coventry so I took them and told them all about Coventry and that. So they took me to Cologne. Then our Sandra had a teacher that got up. What was it Dresden that they burned it?
MS: Yeah.
MR: That was the most horrible thing to have been done and this, and our Sandra had a teacher that got up from that. Parents, everything gone. So we went to Coventry and of course we took them on to Shakespeare and everything else. That sort of thing. And we kept friends until they both died. And we said, ‘Well, girls this is war. This is what war is.’
MS: Yeah.
MR: Ordinary people. But he appreciated Churchill and that. You couldn’t, you could give him anything. Take him a book about Churchill or anything. And he was a lovely man. He was just like my husband, and we were just [pause] And do you know what she did? Every day when we were going somewhere we got down and had a German breakfast. There were greaseproof bags. We packed our own sandwiches. She had, she had a cellar that used to have coal in and then it was all done naturally for a freezer. I haven’t got a freezer like that. And she had done all these meals and then we went where ever we went and the whole day of it. And then we’d come back and she’d have this meal. It would all be in the freezer all done. And you know, you think I want to get now her story. Her father, they were near the coast and they were farmers. And her brother got killed bombing Poland at the beginning. He was in the German Air Force. He got killed. And she didn’t know until after the war that her father had saved two English prisoners of war that had escaped. And they come around and they all had to be, you know because she belonged the German, had to belong to the German Youth Club. She had to say all that she did and she didn’t know ‘til it come to her father and her father took the English persons and brought up two uniforms.
MS: So the Germans saved two English.
MR: Of the, he got two away and you hear that. I mean how that came into my life just because this because Mrs Withers took a family in but they were, they were really nice, nice genuine people you know.
MS: Can I, can I just show you a photograph? I’m just going to pause this?
[recording paused]
MS: That’s evidence of bombing on Thomas Street.
MR: Yes. Yeah.
MS: That’s not far from the Arboretum is it?
MR: Oh, no. It’s, we used to go. Just go for a stroll. Oh, it was a beautiful place.
MS: Now that got hit by bombs as well, didn’t it?
MR: Yes. It did. I think if I’m right it was one Sunday. All the beautiful, all one you went. The green house was beautiful and the nurses home got bombed. They had, they had a home where the nurses used to live and train.
MS: Yes.
MR: Going to the hospital. It all went. Another thing that happened was an English plane came and where the High School is, you know Greestone Stairs.
MS: Yes.
MR: And just on the right there where the teachers lived and that at the teachers got killed and the, the airmen in the plane and you see look how near they were too home.
MS: Are you saying that the plane crashed on the —
MR: Oh yes. Yes.
MS: Right.
MR: Well, it went in. That was in, we had little incidents like that. We had an incident on Dixon Street. Two houses there. You can see the oddity if you ever come down Dixon Street of two that are like flats.
MS: Nearly at the end.
MR: Yeah. Well, my father in law was the firewatcher. You know. Well, he was on duty and I didn’t know this that you can get fish and chips without any food coupons. But we never had fish and chips in our house in those days so I didn’t know about this. But my mother in law said to her daughter, ‘We’ll go and get some fish and chips, Rose,’ but while they were getting their fish and chips the siren went and the blackout like. So they were coming back to eat their fish and chips and the warden stopped them and he, ‘Don’t you know that the alarm’s gone? You shouldn’t be out here.’ It was only [laughs] it was only the husband and the father in the blackout. They didn’t even know each other. But Rose said she’d never forget that. Telling them off. But anyway the siren hadn’t gone. They didn’t go after the siren you know like and that and they reckon that that plane was following somebody who was signalling but that couldn’t be because you were allowed to have a torch and hold it down. And if somebody wouldn’t bother. They often used to think somebody up Westwick Drive had it. We only had oddities. I mean the one that we had at Gilbert’s, our foreman at the cycle shop he got killed. They had a fish and chip shop. The family. Near the, near the football field somewhere. And he got killed. Just a lone German plane. Didn’t want to go home with his bombs and his things and he just machine gunned him. But when you’re on the spot you know, oh I mean I’m so far, I’ve never driven a car in my life. So we always had to make sure because we had to move these blinking cars. I mean [laughs] and I’ll always remember winning two chickens. The two men that worked, why they weren’t in the forces I don’t know. Used to smoke continually and one of them was in a band so he was always ready for his raffle tickets and whatever where ever they were playing. So I got these raffle tickets and I won two chickens. All with their feathers on and everything.
MS: Alive?
MR: No. No. They weren’t alive. They were dead, thank God [laughs] I walked home with them. Well, my mother, we ate, we ate one but the other one she had to mince it because it was that tough. But she plucked it and everything. But I did, you did get, you did get some things, but it was and then going down, going down to the station when a lot of Lincoln boys got prisoners of war from right at the beginning with Norway. And Stokes’ shop as you know, the coffee shop, Major Stokes lost so many men. And we went down to the station. A friend’s brother was there and he was a prisoner of war the whole of the war and we followed him and he landed in Poland. A prisoner of war. They kept moving him and he had you could I don’t know what you’d call it. You play a thing and it —
JL: An organ. A concertina organ.
MS: An organ.
MR: A concertina.
MS: Oh right.
MR: And it was all sad. And they let him go to other camps playing. It was really and he, when he came home he said how they’d crawled out and pinched some food on the farm and they got away with it and that. But he was there the whole of the war. Then he had to leave his thing because he was on the, they marched them. Paid a potato a day if he had that and just if they died they were just there. Well, he came home and his lovely wife they’d married in ’38. Lovely house going off Monks Road. Tandem bike. And she never moved that bike out the thing and she would never go with us dancing. She never did and when he come home he had to go to St George’s Hospital through malnutrition. You know to be brought up to, and they had two babies in the pram at the same time. That was lovely. And, she’s somebody in my autograph book. Eileen [unclear] lived opposite them and we used to try and persuade her but she never would and she worked in a lovely dress shop. She went to work, she saved her money and, and he was there the whole of the war. You know it just —
MS: [unclear] Can I just ask you one, another question if you, well a couple actually. One —you were at school for part of the war.
MR: Only at the beginning.
MS: Yeah.
MR: I went to work at fourteen.
MS: Did you lose any friends at school? Any schoolfriends through war?
MR: Well, I can’t, I don’t remember because I’ve got this one friend that I kept friends with, a man friend. They were mostly girls. But do you know I don’t know of anybody. Not that was at, not that was at school. Certainly knew people that when I was at work every day. I mean you heard some awful, I mean one girl had a brother in the Japanese camp. I mean well you just took it as [pause] you know. We just said a prayer for him and that but I can’t remember. I didn’t really know anybody that, no it came different when I left. We, we had to I went to night school. I really learned more at night school then I did at school actually, and but you walked. I had to walk home in the blackout but that’s another thing. You never got all this trouble in the High Street. There was the American snowmen. There was the police. Police. You never had any trouble. And of course we didn’t go drinking like or anything so we wasn’t in that crowd that maybe they did find trouble. But I can’t think of it. Except of course the teacher, Mr Teasdale. I mean he joined up. Because you see they wouldn’t be joining up age when I left school would they?
MS: No.
MR: You see, so many at the beginning waited until they were called up. They didn’t, like the First World War go and you know get the King’s Shilling and all that carry on. It wasn’t like that. I mean, and then if you was under the age your father had to sign. I mean some got away with it I suppose but not many. You know.
MS: No.
MR: But it’s just, it’s just a thing that all the trouble today and everything you just, you just wonder don’t you? I mean.
MS: War distracts you.
MR: Yeah. I mean the man. Well, it’s true what somebody was saying. There was some people talking. I didn’t understand half of it, but how I look at it everything that’s been invented, the plane wasn’t invented to drop bombs from it. Every single thing that is. Of course Albert’s mother worked on the tank. She, you go to Bovington is it? What they call it? Near Bournemouth. You go. We’ve been to that museum and that great big thing and all the girls in front. She was eighteen working on the tank.
MS: Bovington.
MR: Yeah. I think that’s what it was.
MS: Yeah.
MR: It was a long time ago that we went. But she, that’s another story about that, and grandad, Albert’s dad he was in the end of the war but then he saw something else. He had to go to Ireland which was horrible. He was confirmed in the Cathedral in Ireland. I’ve got his, all his little things. But —
MS: That was following the First World War, yeah. That was the time of the civil war in Ireland.
MR: Yeah. Between the First World War, when it ended and that and all Ireland. And —
MS: Can I just ask Anita? Anita, have you got any notes there?
AS: Can I just ask you one thing? You mentioned about the chimney coming down in your house.
MR: Oh yeah.
AS: And then you, after that you went to live with your grandparents.
MR: Yes.
AS: Can you remember sort of how you felt when you was bombed out of your house? What you were able to take with you and things like that?
MR: Well, we had to sit. We sat in the back, the smaller room. The room that the chimney didn’t come down. We sat there because we had to wait. Everybody had to wait where they were for instructions. And all we had to drink was some ginger wine. There was just a bottle of ginger wine. Well, it doesn’t quench your thirst really. And then we were all thinking what we were going to do but when they came we had to go to the church on Monks Road for dinner. But that did a thing. A friend of my father lived in Thomas Street and he had his life savings in the mattress. And it was my uncle that was a police, special policeman that was keeping people from going. But I do know that that man did get his money out before they set the bomb off.
MS: He was lucky.
MR: I do know that. Only by listening. But we went, we went there and I went to a friend’s to just get washed and go to work. Everybody did the same. I can’t imagine what my mother did I’m sure. But now, going down was St Swithin’s School I think they called it and all these windows in these blasts of Thomas Street it’s not far away it was the windows and the man I married was working on those windows. Just starting his apprenticeship to be a plumber.
MS: Coincidence.
MR: When I walked past. Never knew him from Adam then. And then when we like, we had the lads at work used to go to these dances and Len Bradbury said, ‘Oh this is a friend come on leave. He lives down our street Millie. Albert Roberts.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, the music had started, he said, ‘Would you like a drink?’ You didn’t have alcoholic drinks in those days in dancing places. And had a drink and that was it. But I’ll tell while courting, I lived in Riseholme Road. Just imagine this. He lived in Alfred Street. So when you’d been dancing like he had to take me home. Well, he didn’t have to but he did. And then he walked back. So when I was twenty one he said, ‘We can’t keep going doing this. It’s stupid.’ So we planned to get married at the Easter which the Queen had got married in the November. I got married in the Easter. And yeah it all worked out alright because we had sixty seven years. And the only thing I envied the Queen she’s got her Phillip and I haven’t got my Albert.
MS: Oh. Sorry about that.
MR: Yeah. I am but you can’t go on forever.
MS: No.
MR: You would be sad if you lived to hundred. And I, and I dread anybody living like that. But it’s so strange, and so many things have happened.
JL: Your sister married an American didn’t she? She was a GI bride.
MR: Oh yes. Oh well, that was in the family. My father, she was a tomboy so she was always with my dad when we went out anywhere and she was kind she is. She got into trouble when we was walking when we lived at Reepham. We was walking. They used to leave the tar things at the side of the road when they used to come to do the road. Quite a lovely operation and a lovely smell. It used to clear your head. And if any child had had whooping cough or anything a mother would take them there to the tar barrels to smell in the air. And she went and she got this lovely new dress and she leant up on this.
MS: No.
MR: She was a tomboy. And yes she married, he had two it was nice for my mother because he had two postings over here. One at [unclear] and one at Fairford. We went to Fairford. It was Fairford we went to didn’t it?
JL: I stayed with the school [unclear]
MR: And she wanted to take the two elder boys to London before they went back to America. So they left the younger one to, with me. With my three. I had three girls. She had three boys. And she left me.
MS: Are you ok?
MR: Yes. Thank you. I’ve, if I have got it here these are just things that I must put some of these things in that I [pause] It brought me [pause] Oh Joy, I think it’s in the thing. I was just going to show you this.
MS: I’ll move this.
MR: Tom’s —
MS: Are you ok, duck? I’m just going to put this on pause for a second while Millie just finds something for us to look at.
[recording paused]
JL: On them.
MR: Yeah.
JL: Going off on the Queen Mary.
MR: Yes. My dad took her down to the Queen Mary.
MS: This is your sister, Adeline.
MR: Yes. And she wasn’t married until she got to New York. It was all arranged. She was going to get married in New York, and she travelled with him to all his relatives to where he had to go next. To Texas. And then they got moved a lot didn’t they?
MS: Was this during the war?
MR: She was a traveller. If she came back here she would leave the children with my mother or us and she would go. A friend that married an American could see their family in Ireland. She would go. She always was going somewhere.
JL: But during the war when you worked at Gilbert’s she was at—
MR: International Stores.
JL: Yeah.
MR: Well, there amazingly this friend that rang me last night we was saying how many places there was where Binns is. There was Bainbridge’s, there was the International Stores and then you went up and goodness knows what that place was. You went up some steps to a café when you go around the corner.
[telephone ringing]
MS: I’ll just put this on hold. Bear with me a second.
[recording paused]
MR: There was so many which might become again mightn’t they? Might it?
MS: Let me hold this a second.
[recording paused]
MR: But it was very lucky that they were here because it would have cost them a lot coming back. But one time wasn’t it that mother died and they were, but —
MS: Can I ask you a question? She worked at International Stores.
MR: Yes.
MS: Right, and during the war there was rationing.
MR: Oh yes. Yes. Weighing. Weighing everything up and that. Yes. I’ll tell you. Oh no. That wouldn’t be in the war.
MS: Go on.
MR: It would, that would be ’47 when we had the worst snow we ever had here. On Riseholme Road, now don’t, don’t think I’m exaggerating because I’m not. There was snow seven foot high. They cleared all the roads, and they cleared it and cleared it and where the Yarborough School is there it was so high it froze so it was there ‘til May. It really was. And you’ve, well I volunteered. They were trying to get food to lonely people in the country that had a long way to go to any transport or anything. And they was hearing of so many things. And it was through our Adeline that I went to help and went one day and we went to this house and the husband was either in the forces or away or something. And the little girl, she was so cold. There was no fire. No food in the house. And we took her to a farm where everybody had to go and we took her to this farm. It was like a Dickens scene. The great big table with food on. A great big fire going. And they was just bringing everybody to this better place, you know, like. That was the worst. We used to walk to work, Yarborough Road and that, with, with snow over your wellies and we never was late. You used to wait ‘til there weren’t that many vehicles but there were and if there was a big one you walked at the back of it. But it was just the thing you did because you did. And all the bedrooms. The bedrooms had frost on. Beautiful pictures but oh was you cold.
MS: I bet they didn’t close the schools.
MR: No. No. No. Well, some of them would have been grateful to be at school, I think. No. They, they had no reason because the heat wouldn’t go off and the boiler wouldn’t have been [laughs] it meant a person lighting the fire didn’t it? No. It’s very strange. You can’t. You can’t describe what. I’ve been, I’ve been so lucky. I’ve just imagined having an ordinary. Well ’63 was here wasn’t it? It was the frost and Albert, we were twenty four hour call. Well, that was something wasn’t it?
MS: Because he was a plumber, wasn’t he?
MR: Yeah. There was people coming back. There was an OP girl come back to her house. The radiators had burst and you could hardly understand what she was saying. It, it was just at a time people had gone on holidays and oh it was, it was awful. ’63. Our Caroline said, ‘When am I having my breakfast grandma?’ The first time in my life that I’d ever had a bouquet of flowers. The firm sent this bouquet of flowers because the men. Some people thought I was having an all-night party. I was having all Simons vans. All the plumbers lining up to go for a job. And the lady, the lovely lady next door, semi-detached Mrs Rimmer lent me some vases and they told, they said it was my birthday. It was January you see. But we were the only house down Sunningdale Drive that didn’t get frozen up. All the others did. I’ll tell you for why. A lovely builder friend of my husbands’ let Albert do his own plumbing and his own painting and he, and he did do. It took him from the Easter ‘til we moved in in the August sort of thing. September time.
JL: When I started school.
MR: When we moved in to our own home. We were seven years on Newport saving up. We had a tin. I only outed it when we come here. And it was just coal and food and clothes and not a holiday. We saved up for seven years. And that’s the way we got a house of our own. I’m not ashamed to say that we paid for our own wedding. Neither parents could afford a wedding. Just because I said, ‘Oh just let’s, let us go, you know’ and, ‘No. You’re having a white wedding. People don’t have white weddings then they’re sorry that they hadn’t.’ So we had all the trouble of organising this and they, and if you go to a hotel, and that horrible hotel opposite the station there that they’re not doing anything with was a lovely hotel. And we had a chicken. We had sixty people sit down with coupons because you had to give coupons if you went to a hotel. A chicken dinner. And I went over to the station and we got, we went to Bournemouth and we have got the thing. Eastergate Court. Because we got married at Easter that’s the only reason we picked it. Four pound ten. Breakfast, dinner and tea. Beautiful trees just outside Bournemouth. And, but the thing was we were just getting married, I lost my, I used to get bad throats at any excitement or anything so I just thought it was that. Going in the train I got hotter and hotter. Went to bed. Oh, went to the toilet first, and said to Albert, ‘You’ll have to go to the toilet. You’ll have to go.’ It was all Wedgewood when you pulled the chain. Never in your life. So we looked at our room. A lovely double bed and a single bed in the room. And a view outside, ‘Oh, this is lovely.’ In the morning I couldn’t eat any breakfast and we said we’ll just go for a walk and Al said, ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ Collapsed in the gutter. Near to a chemist thank goodness, and went in this chemist. He said, ‘Well, I think you ought to go along here because where you said you’re staying, that is their doctor. It would be a good idea to take your wife there.’ So we went and come home. I ummed and ahhed about getting a posh nightie because it was coupons. I didn’t make the nightie and I ended up wearing Albert’s pyjama top to keep warm. And oh gosh did I get hot. I’d got quinces. And the lovely doctor had been in the war at Woodhall Spa so there was he, I couldn’t speak a word like. I bet they were pleased. Albert went to the football match on his own on his honeymoon. And he kept going, and then he went and a school friend, they had got married the Easter Monday. We got married the Saturday after Easter and they were on their honeymoon and saw him.
MS: On his own.
MR: ‘Where’s Millie then?’ ‘In bed.’ So of course I went in the single bed and the very nice doctor, he said, ‘Could you stay another week?’ Well, when we paid everything we had exactly seven pounds between us. Nothing else in the world but seven pounds and so we can’t. And my husband and I learned from a man before I married him that work would always come first and my daughter can say this. Question this. Work first. Family next. He says to this doctor, ‘We can’t possibly stop. I’ve left a woman with a half a bathroom.’ He looked at me. He looked at me. This poor doctor looked at me. He said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something she is not going back to Lincoln unless she eats one meal.’ And that morning the lady that lived there she brought the tray to me. She said, ‘I want to see that cleared when you go.’ And there were some primroses on it and you held the bread and butter up, you could have looked through it. And there was something my husband hated and I loved. Yellow haddock.
MS: Oh yes.
MR: And I did eat it all. Well, when I got home some laughed and some were extremely sorry but poor Albert did get, he did get ribbed for that. He really did.
MS: What year was this?
MR: ’48.
MS: ’48. In the years immediately after the war.
MR: ’48, wasn’t it? Yeah. And we had our diamond wedding in 2008. 2008, and but yes. Then we had another thing when my first baby. It was near Christmas. Everything happens to us near Christmas. And in the 50s you must see the midwife programme. Well, it was like that. I couldn’t get in to the only maternity place in Lincoln. Well as I thought. I learned a lot after. You know you don’t really know a lot of things and I didn’t know. And I couldn’t get in so I was going to have it at home. So we were ten shillings a week rent. Mr Porter’s house. He was like Arkwright’s shop near the teacher’s college. A little goldmine sold everything and rations as well. And he told me grandma when the house, Kelly’s were going to go in Newport Post Office. His wife was going to do that and he was a baker. He says, ‘I know they’re leaving and I know your granddaughter’s getting married,’ and in them days it would be a marvel, ‘She can have the house.’ Outside loo and a black lead grate. Well, Albert had gone to the football match and I knew this baby was coming. Anyway, the midwife was there by the time he got home. And it was just took from me. And the young doctor came to take Dr [unclear] son’s place. He was the only one of his boys that became a doctor and he ended in a iron lung. Do you know where you, where the big water tank was in the war at the Cathedral? You know at the side there.
MS: Yes, just below there.
MR: And the, belonged the school [unclear] well he was in an iron lung there and anybody would put hand up as you were going past would put up a hand to you. And this doctor, Dr Lane came from London just, just starting out to replace him. He couldn’t get me to the hospital. And my mother with Albert sometimes or Albert on his own they expressed my milk and he took it. Nothing hygienic or anything. Just put it in something. Used to walk through Newport Cemetery sometimes to the old hospital and we didn’t have a telephone but my father, if there was anything urgent they had a phone then. He was going to knock at the drainpipe so that I didn’t hear if Albert was needed. And he’d only come the day before. He’d fed this baby and he come up the stairs. I could tell he was coming two at a time, ‘Oh we shall soon have her home,’ he said, ‘I’ve gave her her feed.’ And the next day he just went back and she’d died. And we had used Fred Threadgold for that funeral as well. But no horses.
MS: I’m sorry about that.
MR: No. It’s alright because you could walk. It was just so near. And when I’m buried where my husband is buried we’re very near to that doctor. And he was the doctor when you was all born. But he, but when we came, had the first [unclear] he said, ‘It’s silly when the children get there, and you can’t be sending for me, I’ve got.’ So then we came down here. So I thought my poor husband what on earth did he think he was going to marry? But do you know that doctor was very sensible. He said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with either of you. It’s just one of these things that has happened. Have a lovely holiday and start again.’ And we did and we went down with Albert’s mum and dad, and Albert’s sister and her friend down to Brighton and got photos of us all dressed up on Brighton Pier with handbags and a brooch. You’ve never in your life. And when we came home from that, ‘Right,’ Albert says, ‘I don’t want to talk about our mishap ever.’ And that’s why this one was called Joy.
JL: It was the doctor’s idea wasn’t it?
MR: Yes.
MS: That’s lovely.
MR: Yeah.
MS: Yes. A lovely idea.
MR: And perfect because we paid, and Albert said, ‘There you are, you see. You don’t get nothing unless you pay for it.’ And we went in the Eastholme, and then Sandra was born there. And then I had Caroline. But I wanted Caroline at home because it was so near Christmas when we got the two girls. And a lovely old midwife she only did one more after Caroline and I had the Salvation Army Band outside playing, “Away in a Manger.’ I always think, I always think that was very special. But, but you never know in life do you?
MS: No.
MR: But it was and then of course dad died at Christmas didn’t he? Bitterly cold. And that was my sister and my baby and my husband. So let’s hope it doesn’t happen again. Let’s have a midsummer for goodness sake.
MS: Have a good Christmas.
MR: Yeah. Well, there you are.
MS: We’re going to run out of time shortly on this. Is there anything else you can think of that you want to tell us or anything Joy you can remember because you may have heard mum’s stories.
MR: Important.
MS: Mainly during the war.
MR: Oh well, you didn’t know the war did you?
JL: I remember Avondale Street.
MR: Pardon dear?
JL: I remember you talking about Avondale Street and the Arboretum. And I think —
MR: Yeah.
JL: I’ve always been fascinated with Auntie Adi being a GI bride.
MS: A war bride.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
JL: I don’t think she had ever left Lincoln before and then to travel to go on the —
MR: But she was like that.
JL: Yes.
MR: You see, Adeline was one that when you went to [Whisby?] you could put your name down to pick strawberries in your school holiday. Or you could, and she was the one and International Stores. She went to relieve at other places. I’ve got my dad and her walking to where she was going to stay when she went to Skegness. She was just like, to tell you the truth she was three years younger than me but somebody said one day, I can’t remember what it was, ‘Can’t your sister speak for herself?’ Well, you see me talking now. Because she was always older than me and she was always in to anything more than me. She always knew things better than me.
MS: Did you say she was a bit of a tomboy?
ML: Yes. She was a tomboy.
JL: Where did she meet Tom?
MR: I’ve no idea.
JL: Right.
MR: Well, there you are. She could only go dancing if she went with me. Well, we [pause] that was awful for me because she always had somebody she was going to see. Maybe it was a girlfriend but at that time, half this time she was meeting Tom.
JL: And she went on your bicycle.
MR: Oh yeah. Oh, and I had my stockings were gone where you took great care of them. And yes she was, she was a toughie but where we slept underneath was the Edwardian greenhouse. The garage was over there with this lovely old car that in the war there’s a garage there. There’s a photo of it. When you sat in it we children, believe it or not had, our Betty had the stool and you travelled to the seaside with your back on the door sort of thing. But if you were sitting good and posh there was like a cord to hold and a blind to pull down and very oh you thought you were somebody there. Anyway, she wasn’t there where she said she would be so I come home. Everybody was asleep and there was these pebbles going up the window and she said, ‘Come and unlock the door.’ I said, ‘I can’t.’ I don’t know why I couldn’t get the door open. And so she got in the garage and gets the ladder out, puts it over this greenhouse top and comes in. So I said, ‘Now what are you going to do?’ She said, ‘Well, I’m going to get up early and get rid of the ladder.’ Which she did. Nobody knew. I wouldn’t have told of her. But I said, ‘I’m not going, you’re not going to use me like that Adeline, you’re just not.’ And I wouldn’t have anything more to do with it. And when she went to America like that and I wrote and I knew somebody, a friend in Lonsdale Road when she got out she found out that she’d married, she’d married over here. So that was Irene Toogood. That was who —
MS: Adi had married here?
MR: No. This friend had found out that he was married when she got married.
MS: Oh.
MR: You know. Well, I knew that. So, I wrote to Adi and said, “Don’t write to mum and dad if you’re in trouble. Write to us and we’ll see what we can do for you.” Gosh you ought to have seen the letter I got back. You know, “What do you think I am? I’ll fight my own battles and you fight yours.” So she was like that wasn’t she?
JL: Yeah.
MR: Yeah. But I don’t know where I’ve put the, I don’t know where I’ve put it Joy. It’s in, it’s in a thing like this but it’s not, it’s only got, but its marked. It’s as old as Caroline.
JL: I’ve seen some pictures of you.
MR: No. It won’t be.
JL: Early wartime.
MS: Oh right. Who are these then?
MR: This is Albert. This is me in [unclear] Yard. It poured with rain and we went in for shelter really. That was my husband’s sister and her husband. And that’s my husband and, but he’s [pause] Oh that’s when we went to London.
MS: And meeting Churchill.
MR: Yeah. Well that’s a laugh. At the museum.
MS: Oh right. I was just going to say it’s a waxwork. Right.
MR: At the bottom he’s put, “I told him I played for Boultham Park Rangers” They formed a football team. I’ve got a photo of it somewhere. Oh, there’s all the lads that, the messenger boys that joined up.
MS: Yes.
MR: That’s the football team. See how they dressed. And Albert’s dad was manager and his cousin was something else and they used to play where the university is now.
MS: Yeah.
MR: And this is when we was in London after we lost the baby and Rose, she laughed her socks off. They weren’t used to going to London so you know when the train comes on the Underground? I jumped on thinking they’d all jump on. Nobody jumped on. They’d never been to London before. So when we got to the next station I got off and said, ‘What can I do?’ It was different from today. There was always somebody there to help. And they said, ‘I’ll ring through and see if they know.’ But they had very wisely said, ‘We’re going to stay put.’ We were going to see Ivor Novello in London and they did stay put. So I said I’ll go back on the train again but the, that’s unusual. That’s my husband in his toy car.
MS: Right.
MR: And this is two of Joy’s grandchildren in, look at, look at that.
MS: Similar.
MR: That car. Very similar isn’t it?
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
MR: But I don’t know where —
JL: [unclear] this one.
MR: It won’t, no that’s not it. That’s —
JL: That’s an older one.
MS: Which one are you looking for at the moment?
JL: [unclear]
MR: I was just looking.
JL: Of Auntie Adeline.
MS: Oh right.
MR: She’ll find it after. I don’t know where it’s gone.
MS: No. Is there —
MR: Anyway, I don’t know. The trouble is I could go on and on. One or two of these grandchildren say I’ll go on about things but I just don’t know why.
MS: Well, can I just sort of take you to the end of the interview if that’s alright? Unless — if that’s ok with all of you?
MR: Yes. Thank you.
MS: Are you all happy with that? Anita is there anything from you?
MR: If you’ve got it all. If it’s any good.
MS: What I need to do now is go through some sort of bullet points here. Can I just check that you confirm that you consented to take part in this recording?
MR: Yes. I did.
MS: You’re happy. Yeah.
MR: Yeah.
MS: And they’re asking you to assign to the university all copyright in your contribution for use in all and any media. So what, they’re asking you to let them use it.
MR: Oh yes. They are welcome to anything.
MS: Film or video. Ok. And you understand this won’t affect your moral right to be identified as the performer in accordance with the Copyright Design and Patents Act. it’s complicated. It sounds complicated. It’s actually very simple.
MR: Yes.
MS: You just allow them to use it.
MR: Yeah.
MS: But you will be always recognised —
MR: Yeah.
MS: As the person who made the recording. Now, are you happy that your name will be publicly associated with the interview? So what that means if they play it at the IBCC Centre it would have your name there. If they put it into any written form.
MR: That’s alright isn’t it?
JL: Yes. There’s nothing. As you say we’re not drug dealers are we?
MR: You ought to answer that. I mean I might not be here but —
MS: You will be.
MR: Oh please.
MS: But all your personal details will be stored under strict confidential conditions and will not be shared with any third parties. So basically what it means is that we’ll store your information but it won’t go out anywhere.
MR: No.
MS: And they’re asking you to grant your permission for me to take a quick photograph on my phone which will be put, associated with the archive.
JL: Yeah. That would be nice.
MR: Yeah.
MS: Are you happy with that?
MR: Yes. I’ll let you.
MS: Yeah. Ok. And do you agree to your interview being available via the internet? Online. So if somebody wants to hear part of it they’ll be able to hear you talking.
MR: Well, I’m not online am I?
JL: Yes. No. No. But yes.
MS: Other people. Yeah
JL: Yeah. Just if any, it’ll only be through.
MS: The university.
JL: Through the university website. Yes. Yes.
MS: Yeah.
JL: So it won’t be like a Facebook type thing.
MS: No. No.
JL: Kind of think. It would just be very small.
MS: Anybody who goes to the IBCC.
JL: Yes. Then if they wanted to know more they could.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. But they wouldn’t, wouldn’t get your mum’s personal details.
JL: No. No.
MS: Or anything like that.
JL: No. They would just —
MS: Ok?
JL: They would just hear about.
MS: Yeah.
JL: Avondale Street.
MS: That’s it.
JL: And bits.
MS: Yeah. The interesting bits.
JL: Yes.
MS: And do you agree, sorry this agreement is governed by and then there’s in accordance with English law and the jurisdiction of the English courts. It always sounds really formal when we’re saying this. It’s just making sure that your rights are maintained and that the university is able to use the interview literally just to let people in the future know what it was like.
MR: It’s amazing they need it.
MS: I know. No.
JL: You’ve got some good memories, mum of Lincoln.
MR: That’s what everybody says.
JL: [unclear]
MS: You will. You know the older you get the further back you go.
MR: Well, you’ve done so much. You do so much now that I haven’t. I haven’t done a lot like you.
JL: Well —
MR: I mean all three of you have done much more than me. I mean I’m really I was just a plumber’s mate and a mother really at the end of it all.
MS: No.
JL: Well, you were the reason dad achieved so much. You were there with his hot lunch every day.
MR: Yeah.
MS: Ok.
JL: Once we were in town and you looked up at the cathedral and you said, ‘Your father’s lunch,’ and I didn’t see you for dust. You know you always had that hot meal ready for him and his shirts ironed.
MR: Oh the day I put it to warm in the fridge instead.
MS: In the fridge.
MR: In the freezer instead of the oven.
MS: [unclear]
MR: He only had so much time but his boss said, ‘You’re first on the job.’ He had to make sure —
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 Millie Roberts
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Michael Sheehan
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
2018-06-14
Rights
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ARobertsM180614
Format
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01:23:11 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
Description
An account of the resource
Millie Roberts has lived her life in and around Lincoln. Her early memories include watching an airship fly overhead from the school playground at Reepham, getting locked in a cowshed and knitting baby clothes from wool collected from hedgerows. Having joined the Girls Training Corps, Millie helped out at RAF hospital Nocton Hall; and the American post exchange which was situated near the library in Lincoln. She had first hand experience of bombing when her home in Avondale Street was hit by blast damage from a nearby explosion. The family were sheltering under the stairs when the blast brought down their chimney and part of the wall. Millie recalls her experience of the blackout, coupons and arriving home with two chickens she had won in a raffle.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
love and romance
RAF hospital Nocton Hall
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1108/11567/ASaintM180212.2.mp3
d50a04b190401f0290fb7cfb8961c2e0
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
Saint, Margaret
T J Saint
M Saint
Meg Saint
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Margaret Saint (b. 1922) as well as her husband Trevor's flying logbook and his diary/memoir. He flew as an air gunner with 514 Squadron in 1944.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Margaret Saint and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
2018-02-12
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
Saint, TJ-M
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 12th of February 2018, and we’re in Marlow talking to Mrs Meg Saint about her experiences in life and what she did in the war. So Meg, what are your earliest recollections of life?
MS: I suppose being a, a child of a miner in Wales. I can’t remember much about that, but we lived in a valley with slag heaps at the end of the valley but a lovely mountain. We had foxgloves behind us and being taken to school, when I was four, by the boys across the road, four brothers and I remember very little about that school, and when I was four my maternal grandfather found us a funny little house in the Cotswolds at Birdlip and we came to live there, a little two bedroomed house with three children. A mile from the village down a track and I went to school there until I was eleven, and then I went to the, the technical college in Cheltenham until I was fifteen. That was school.
CB: And what, what did you specialise- What, what were your main interests when you at school in Birdlip and then Cheltenham?
MS: I- At, at Birdlip?
CB: In Birdlip?
MS: Oh yes, well that was very countryfied and we had a lovely headmistress who was mad about Shakespeare, so I know most of the Shakespeare’s stories. But yeah, that was the village school, and then I did a commercial course at the technical college. That was interesting, but I think my father didn’t think I did much education there because I was captain of all the sports [chuckles]. So that was, that was that.
CB: What was your favourite sport?
MS: Well, I won the tennis cup every year I was there. I was captain of tennis, cricket, hockey [chuckles].
CB: Cricket as well ey?
MS: Yeah, cricket. Yeah, well in Gloucestershire we played- Women played cricket, great county for cricket.
CB: For women.
MS: So that was my schooling.
CB: Yeah, and what, what was the composition of the technical course?
MS: Well, it was a general- The three R’s, but then you did shorthand and typing and bookkeeping which was useful later on, very useful later on.
CB: And- So you left at fifteen?
MS: Yes.
CB: What did you do then? What, what was your ambition?
MS: I went to, I went to work for a publisher in Cheltenham, they did topographical work, but quite soon- 1939, I was invited to join the office of the RAF Volunteer Reserve and worked there, and when war really started, we were drafted to- What was the name of our- To the airfield-
CB: To Staverton?
MS: Staverton, yep and-
CB: What was your role? In the RAFVR?
MS: I worked for the CO’s office and had to detail the fire people and the people who- For the lights and things and one day I forgot to put the fire [chuckles] duty people, to put- Issue their orders and- So the aerodrome was a blazing light, so I got into big trouble. But, yes I worked in the CO’s office there, and worked there until 1942.
CB: But what were the main tasks? As the commanding officer, he was running the place but-
MS: General, general office work really and I did daily routine orders and personal report- What is it called? PR’s? Personal report things, and the first Fortress for America landed at- On that airfield
CB: Did it really?
MS: In the war, yeah.
CB: B-17?
MS: Yep, mhmm. Yes, so that was that.
CB: And what was the accommodation that you had there?
MS: Well, I, I lived with an aunt in Cheltenham.
CB: Why were you a civilian and not-
MS: Sorry?
CB: Why were you engaged as a civilian?
MS: Well, because I first of all went- Worked in the ordinary office of the RAFVR and you were just civilians working there.
CB: So, when you changed, to go to Staverton and work for the-
MS: CO.
CB: -CO, they didn’t change your status?
MS: No, no.
CB: Were you working for a private company in practical terms, or were you working-
MS: Airwork Limited.
CB: Airwork Limited right.
MS: And they, they still, they’re still running aerodromes all over the world, I think.
CB: Yes.
MS: Airworks Limited.
CB: Yes.
MS: Yes, worked for them right throughout the war until I got married in ‘45.
CB: So, they paid you-
MS: Yes, they paid us, yeah.
CB: And, did they also decide where you were to go?
MS: Yes, well, we had a choice when we had to leave Staverton, when it became military operated, we had a choice of three places where they trained glider pilots, and we were recommended to come to Booker and that was very successful, as- So that’s where- And we lived in digs, as you called it in those days, I came with my best friend I’d been to school with and worked with.
CB: Where were the digs?
MS: Here in Marlow.
CB: Right.
MS: And, of course at Booker we were training glider pilots, when it was in the EFGS, they had to do hard flying before they went onto gliders, and of course all the glider pilots were- They volunteered, they- For the special job, and they were from the army or any of the forces, really.
CB: And they, they were accommodated on the airfield, were they?
MS: On the airfield, yep, yes, on the airfield.
CB: Right, so they were all military people, but you were still-
MS: They were, either air force or- I don’t think we had any naval people, but certainly army people and RAF.
CB: Well, in those days the glider pilots initially were all army, weren’t they?
MS: No.
CB: Oh, they weren’t?
MS: No, the glider pilots were volunteers from the air force, or, or- Well, or they army, yes, yes.
CB: Right.
MS: Yep, that’s right.
CB: And what was your role there at Booker? Who were you working for then?
MS: I still worked, I still- I worked on the airfield which was lovely, so we used to see the boys go solo and we worked, worked for the chief engineer I suppose wasn’t it? On the airfield. That was very interesting[?] until a bit later, for my sins, the CO secretary left and I had to go and work for him which wasn't so much fun [chuckles].
CB: She didn’t come back?
MS: Sorry?
CB: She didn’t come back? So, it was a permanent role for you was it?
MS: It was a permanent job then, till I left in ‘45 to get married.
CB: Right, so you moved to Booker in 1942?
MS: That’s right, summer of.
CB: Summer, ok, and you’re soon working for the station commander.
MS: Yes.
CB: What was the difference between working for him and working for the man at Staverton?
MS: The engineer on the- Well when I was in the watch office, so that was interesting, very interesting.
CB: Before you took over with the CO?
MS: The CO, yes.
CB: How did you communicate with the flying people from the watch office? Because Tiger Moths weren’t on radio, were they?
MS: They used to come in and they- I can’t remember really. They had five station- The airfield, the different scot[?] would it be Scotland's[?]?
CB: Oh, did they? For different flights, oh right.
MS: Different flights, yeah, and we had so many incredible people who kept visiting Booker, being near London and everything, flying in but, I didn’t expect you’d be interested in that.
CB: Well, we’re interested in anything that was going on. Yes, thank you. So, in the watch office, what did you do in the watch office? ‘Cause that’s the pre, pre-
MS: I suppose it was- The boys used to come in with their [unclear]-
CB: With their log books?
MS: Some of their paperwork.
CB: Yes.
MS: And things, I can’t remember really-
CB: Ok, keep going.
MS: I can’t, I can’t really remember what we did in the watch office.
CB: No, that’s ok.
MS: But we were there for long hours too, and when they weather was bad and you have to hang about.
CB: Was there a shift time? Or a number of hours you’d do?
MS: We used to- We lived in Marlow and we had, we had the army truck come and pick us up to take us to the airfield, and I imagine we went about half-past eight in the morning and got back whatever time at night, but it was dark in the winter and late in the summer.
CB: Right.
MS: Yes, so that then- I worked there until 1945.
CB: Was it the same CO all the time or did that change?
MS: No, it was the same CO all the time there, I can’t remember his name, live in Pam Lane[?], I can’t remember his name. He was Wing Commander- Oh O’Donnell.
CB: Oh, he was an RAF man, was he?
MS: Yes.
CB: Ah right.
MS: Yes, Wing Commander O’Donnell.
CB: And he was a pilot?
MS: I don’t know what he was in the war, I can’t remember.
CB: No, ok.
MS: The CO at Staverton he’d been- It’s rather sad, because he’d been a pilot on, on the ships.
CB: Oh, had he?
MS: But he had to give it up ‘cause he had sinus trouble, he was a very interesting man.
CB: But he was an RAF man, was he?
MS: Yes he was.
CB: Yeah.
MS: Pilot.
CB: Yeah.
MS: [Coughs] ‘scuse me.
CB: Do you want to have a break?
MS: Yeah.
CB: We were talking about you in the watch office and the hours you worked. So what sort of hours did you work?
MS: Well, I, I just wouldn’t remember, but in, in winter it was until dark, when flying stop, unless I- When I was in the CO’s office and that would’ve been I expect normal office hours, and in the summer it was- If they were flying and they needed to go solo they wouldn’t just stop at six o’clock, they’d just go on till it was dark or- You just didn’t stop, like office hours, you just worked while you were able to do that, and being at Booker, near Bomber Command headquarters and Danesfield where the photographic place there, we used to have- They [unclear] a proper runway at Booker, but we’ve even had Lightning’s come in with really emergency pictures to rush to Danesfield on a motorbike to be processed, so it was really interesting there.
CB: This is the twin-engined American-
MS: Yep.
CB: -reconnaissance plane called Lightening?
MS: Well, it was ours, wasn’t it? A British aircraft?
CB: Ok.
MS: Yes, it was.
CB: And then the pictures had to be rushed off?
MS: Yep, rushed up to Danesfield to be processed.
CB: Right.
MS: It was things like that and lot- Oh and one interesting thing about Booker is that Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands learnt to fly there and I used to zip his flying jacket up for him, and his family lived nearby, they, they lived at Lane End.
CB: Did they?
MS: Yes. Been evacuated there, and his nieces used to do the tea wagon round the airfield.
CB: You mentioned people used to pop in?
MS: Yes.
CB: So, what sort of people?
MS: Silly I didn’t write it down.
CB: They would be people who were going to Bomber Command headquarters would it?
MS: No, no. Famous world people.
CB: Right.
MS: Oh, dear I've [unclear] now. Don’t know where I've got that, lost track of-
CB: I’ll just stop that for a mo. So just to clarify that there were people needing to go to Bomber Command who would pop in, but you’re saying that other notable people used to arrive in various aeroplanes?
MS: Yes, yep, fly in and to go to Danesfield, where have I got that? His aircraft used to fly in some times for urgent photographs to be transferred to Danesfield by motorcycle. On one occasion a Lightening aircraft landed, oh dear, not there. Oh, that’s a shame, isn’t it?
CB: So, they were being taken from the aeroplane for delivery?
MS: That’s right.
CB: For processing?
MS: By motorbike up there, yeah.
CB: ‘Cause they had to develop the film.
MS: Yeah.
CB: It’s interesting because the American unit was flying from Mount Farm which is relatively close as well, which is where they’d operate from normally.
MS: Oh right, yeah.
CB: Yeah, next to Benson which- Both of which are close to Danesfield.
MS: Yes, yeah. The war became very real to us when boys who’d been at Arnhem came to visit us. One of the boys who’d been a super dancer lost his leg, and of course many others lost their lives.
CB: These are the glider boys?
MS: C. A. Lewis, who’s a- C. Day-Lewis is a famous auther but there’s also Cecil Lewis who’s a famous author, and he was a flight commander, he was in the Great War flying those funny aircraft. He taught Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to fly, and the tea van was manned by King Zog of Albania's nieces, not Prince Bernhard, it was that, King Zog of Albania who lived at Lane End and his family came here.
CB: Oh right.
MS: Got that bit wrong. Where else have I written down things about? Nope [unclear]. They’re in the flight office, yep.
CB: Did you work with any famous people in the watch officer? Or, notable people?
MS: Actually, in the watch office? No, but we got an awful lady who was in charge [chuckles] Miss Latham.
CB: Was she a civilian, or air force?
MS: She was a dragon and we didn’t get on very well together, but I expect that’s why she sent me to work for the CO [chuckles].
CB: The instructors though were all air force?
MS: Well, yeah, very famous instructors.
CB: Did they tend to be older people?
MS: Yes, I suppose they were a bit. One of them lived at Lane End and had a traction engine up there outside his house, but the- Yep, he- This chap, Cecil Lewis, he was- He’d flown in the Great War and he was a, a flight commander.
CB: Right.
MS: Yeah, got little, little letters in here.
CB: You’ve got the book there? So, he was too old to be on operational flying?
MS: Yeah, he would’ve been, yeah.
CB: Yes.
MS: Because he’d been in the first war.
CB: Yes, cause we’re talking more than twenty years later.
MS: [Unclear] writing books I should think, and I've got them here, gave them to me. It weren’t military operated as such, only the CO, and the flight commanders of course.
CB: Yes, as an airfield it was mainly run by-
MS: As an airfield it was run by civilians, by Airworks Limited.
CB: Right, so the engineers in the hangers, maintenance people, they were all Airwork?
MS: They were all civilians, as us office people, there weren’t any- Apart from the CO, he was the only-
CB: But the instructors-
MS: And the instructors, they were the-
CB: So how many instructors- There’d be quite a lot of instructors.
MS: There were four, there were four flights.
CB: Yes.
MS: Yeah.
CB: And all the instructors were air force?
MS: Yeah.
CB: Right, but all the ground staff were civilians?
MS: Were civilians, yep.
CB: Yes, and did- How did that work?
MS: I think it worked very well. There was such camaraderie in the war, everybody helped everybody in every way, you know, transport [chuckles], girls going to parties, we swap clothes [chuckles] if you hadn’t got any stockings, ‘Have you got any stockings? I’ll be very careful with them’, and it was so difficult not to- It’d- You were much better off if you were in the forces, you had your uniform and- But when you’re civilian’s it was jolly difficult. I know mum had to give me coupons for my pyjamas and things like that, and we were lucky ‘cause we had our main meal at the- On the airfield, and- But people who just had their rations, it- We didn’t kind of think about it, but they were- They had a problem. My parents lived in the country with a big garden and chickens, and apart from needing bread and milk they could- They were ok. But I didn’t know really much about the war here, we only had bombs down by the river and up the hill, killed somebody up the hill, but only- I remember about twice.
CB: This is Marlow?
MS: In Marlow here, well I was living here after ‘42. Yep.
CB: So the entertainment, that was set up, what- Was there a fairly active social life actually on the airfield?
MS: Yes [emphasis] we’d have dances.
CB: Right
MS: Oh yes, very exciting. Yeah, we had- But like, I would say I had a fun war really.
CB: But there weren’t WAAF’s as such on the station?
MS: No, we- No.
CB: Right.
MS: I don’t think we had any WAAF’s, there was- We had the RAF boys, you know, doing the flight, the flight- The CO.
CB: Yeah, and training?
MS: And the training people.
CB: So, there weren’t resident WAAF’s, so when the dances came, how did you rake up enough girls?
MS: Plenty of us girls right on, and the local girls from down here
CB: Yeah.
MS: Yeah, we- I think we used to have good fun really.
CB: Now, flying training can be dangerous, so were there- What- How were the accidents handled?
MS: Oh yes, I used to have to do those horrible, what are the called? P something-or-others, the accident forms. We had several fatal accidents, and we had a satellite place at Denham field as well, and one in Wales, near Llanbedr from Booker, yes, I'd forgotten all about that, you’re jogging my memory you see.
CB: So the, the training at Booker was powered training, the gliders were elsewhere? Is that right?
MS: Yes, we did- Yes, gliders elsewhere. Seem to have had a glider there at some time, but not for training. Wonder why we had those in the field.
CB: Where would you- ‘Cause Tame[?] they had glider training, where did you- Where did they new train- Newly trained pilots, where did they go to fly gliders?
MS: Do you know, I can’t remember, I can’t remember, I think we were No.3 EFTS at Booker.
CB: And what about medical facilities and other health-
MS: Don’t think we had- I never- I don’t think we thought about medical facilities.
CB: Didn’t have a, didn’t have a sick bay as such?
MS: I can’t remember one, or I can’t remember a medical officer really, I can’t remember that. No. Yes, it’s so bad I can’t remember these people who visited [unclear] famous people.
CB: I’m just going to stop for a mo.
MS: Not really- Oh, well we used to have the dances down here in Marlow, the dance hall is now- The Sea Cadets have got that place. Really, we only had things like dances, but we had those quite often, yeah.
CB: Ok, and what was the food like?
MS: The food at the camp was good, we used to enjoy that, but otherwise- Well, I mean we had our main meal there so we were the fortunate ones, but I don’t know about other people, the rations were very difficult. I expect- Well, people started growing their own vegetables and keeping their own chickens, so that was sensible really, but if you were in London, you couldn’t do that could you?
CB: No.
MS: Not really, no, so here in Booker- In Marlow, I think we had quite a comfortable life really, and not a lot of trouble. We could see London, the bombing in London, the sky lighting up but- Especially when you’re courting up in the hills [chuckles] and seeing, seeing the bombing there, but we did- Weren’t affected here greatly.
CB: One of the reported difficulties that WAAF’s had in the RAF was forging relationships with aircrew in Bomber Command particularly, with the variable expectation of their return.
MS: Oh well that- Most of us got married when we were quite young, twenty- Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-two. You didn’t really think about that because people say, like Trevor the flying, the flying people being scared, and Trevor said he was never scared, they were so busy doing their job, you weren’t scared when you went off on a mission, and I never- There was a film a little while ago and it was- They took you on a mission and it seemed so real and I thought god, I couldn’t imagine it would be like that, you know, with aircraft above you and aircraft below and the- Being fired at and the sky all alight and everything, it was an incredible film which I hadn’t- Don’t really think we thought about things like that.
CB: People just got on with things?
MS: Yes, just- Well, there was camaraderie that you- It was wonderful, that it can’t- I suppose it helped you because everybody helped everybody else, and you helped people out if- Of course transport was difficult ‘cause petrol was rationed so that was another difficulty. When you used to go home on leave and [unclear] and she had to get four miles from the coach from Oxford to Cheltenham, she had to get that four miles, when I went to Cheltenham I had to get- Wait for the bus to take me to the village, never- Where I lived at Birdlip and- So transport was difficult, very difficult. Had to plan those kinds of things. We all had bicycles.
CB: So, from a clothing point of view, you mentioned earlier-
MS: What?
CB: The clothing point of view-
MS: Oh yes that was very difficult, yeah.
CB: Could you go and buy clothes? But you had to have coupons?
MS: Yeah, I remember ‘cause you had to buy shoes, that was important, but we used to make clot- Make our own clothes. I know I did. Yeah, so clothing was difficult, food was difficult, and transport was very [emphasis] difficult ‘cause people, you know, they had to keep their petrol rations for things important, for themselves, so they- You couldn’t- Except that we- Where were we? Oh, it’s when I was at Staverton and when we were going to be moving from there, we had a lovely night out, the boys took us, somebody had got a car, we all piled into it and went off into the country using the last of their petrol, and another occasion I wanted- Mary wants to get back to- This is from Cheltenham, Mary wants to get to Cambridge, where she lived and because she was going there, I wanted to go and see relatives in Bedford and so some boys took us, but the car broke down half way and we left it there with the village boys who mended it and delivered it to the, the chap who was going to Cambridge as well. I mean, things like that, would you dare to leave your car with the village boys to repair it, to deliver it somewhere? These days, you wouldn’t do that, would you? I don’t think so. But, that’s the kind of thing that might happen.
CB: What about trains? Did you use trains much?
MS: Not- They weren’t any use from-
CB: Booker?
MS: Cheltenham to here, no.
CB: No.
MS: No, we used to see the boys off, got pictures of that, I wonder where they are, I had pictures of waving the boys off on the trains from, from Cheltenham VR, the beginning of- The very beginning of the war, pictures in the local paper of Madge and I waving the boys off on the train, wherever they were going, and I had a friend who was a boy, a Spitfire pilot and he got shot down over Sancerre[?] when he was twenty-one.
CB: What happened to him?
MS: Well, he, he was shot down, he died, he was killed, and I thought his name would be on the- What are big monuments here? Where- What’s the big monument here-
CB: What in High Wycombe?
MS: No.
CB: Runnymede?
MS: Runnymede.
CB: Yes.
MS: I thought it would be-
CB: Is he not at Runnymede?
MS: There were- But his name was- No, and Bob who our connection is, his wife looked it up on the thing and found that his grave is actually where he was shot down, Sancerre[?], I suppose they did that sometimes [unclear] bring them back, or perhaps there wasn’t enough of him to bring back or something, but his burial place is out there.
CB: Well generally, the fallen were buried where they fell.
MS: Is that so?
CB: British policy.
MS: Oh, I see.
CB: But the name could well have been-
MS: It wasn’t on that- On the monument
CB: At Runnymede?
MS: No.
CB: No.
MS: But Chris found it out and I’ve got a whole lot of writing about it.
CB: Yes, had you known him for a long time?
MS: A lot, yeah, well I would’ve called him a boyfriend, used to go to town hall, tea dances with him and things in the war, beginning of the war.
CB: So, how did tea dances work?
MS: Oh, they were lovely ‘cause they were in daytime and yeah, they were fun and there was one boy who had a white rat and he used to take it to the dances, you imagine what fun that would be at the Cheltenham town hall. Yes, we had good times.
CB: It was quite a fat rat?
MS: We had fun when we could but we did work very hard, life was hard, long hours.
CB: How did you feel about the loss of your boyfriend, the Spitfire pilot?
MS: Well, I was really upset about that because his mother lost her husband three months later and she soon died of a broken heart after that, her son of twenty-one, and when you went to the house there was one of his uniform jackets on the back of a chair, he’d left it there when he went the last time. It’s all very poignant really.
CB: And she died soon after?
MS: Yes, very soon after.
CB: Did you lose any other boyfriends the same way?
MS: No, but we were very close to a lot of them because if you go dancing, if you go dancing with people, you go dancing with them, you get very fond of each other and if they would be here- I wonder how long the course was at Booker, I don’t remember that, but it would be more than three months, wouldn’t it? If- An EFTS training time, you’d want at least three months to go solo, wouldn’t you?
CB: It was a seven-week course.
MS: Oh, seven weeks, oh right.
CB: Yes, so it was- They had seventy-two Tiger Moths and Manchesters at Booker.
MS: Really [emphasis]?
CB: And-
MS: Wow.
CB: And they trained one-hundred-and-twenty pilots on a seven-week course.
MS: Right.
CB: Which later became eleven weeks, this is just a printed over a brief-
MS: That’s fascinating, I'm interested in that. Yes, you got, you got very fond of, you know, each other really, and interested in your family life, and so it was very sad when they didn't come back.
CB: Of course.
MS: Like that boy who was the best dancer who came back without a leg, that was very poignant.
CB: What had happened to him?
MS: I can’t remember, he was a glider pilot.
CB: Oh, was he? Oh, he was- He’d been at Arnhem, yeah, right, a bit restricting when you want to dance with a prosthetic leg then [emphasis].
MS: I can’t- I don’t think we’d got to that stage.
CB: No, now what about going to the pictures, did-
MS: Oh, pictures was wonderful, that was your main thing, that was your main pleasure, well dancing and the pictures, and we had a lovely cinema here, very modern one, they did away with it after the-
CB: In Marlow?
MS: Yes, yeah, we had two cinemas but we had a very lovely, modern one and they used to bring films here to show them for the first time. Yes, that was really, big pleasure.
CB: What sort of films did they show?
MS: I can’t remember.
CB: But they tended to be a mixture of British and American, did they?
MS: I just don’t remember at all.
CB: No.
MS: Don’t remember at all.
CB: We’ll pause there for a mo, so you can have a drink of water.
MS: [Unclear] road, I can’t remember the details about that but I know that it was wonderful and he- We saw him again, but I don’t- Can’t remember whether he was a prisoner of war of whether he’d been posted a long way away, I don’t know.
CB: So, what was the reaction of people when he did return?
MS: We were all- He was very handsome, it was, it was lovely to have him back but I can’t remember what stage of the war that was.
CB: This is at Booker?
MS: Yep, yes, Marlow boy.
CB: So, this is a time of rationing, as we talked about just now.
MS: Yep.
CB: What did you do for breakfast and evening meal? ‘Cause you’re civilians and you’ve got to make your own arrangements.
MS: Well, we for a lot of the time we lived with a local family and, the wife was just a magician, she used to make lovely meals for us and made our breakfast, I expect, I expect we’d only have cereals or something, but she used to feed us as well as she could, she had two sons so- Younger than us.
CB: So when did you-
MS: Had to learn how to fire a 303 and I didn’t realise what a kick it had-
CB: [Chuckles]
MS: Did I have a black shoulder?
CB: So, when did you join the Home Guard? At Staverton, or did you do it at Booker?
MS: No, here in, in Marlow.
CB: In Marlow? Right.
MS: Yeah, Marlow.
CB: And what were your duties?
MS: [Chuckles] I can’t remember.
CB: On the river?
MS: Anyway, he was a very nice chap, I spent most of the, most of the duties with. But I don’t think I had to kind of stay on guard or anything particularly, but I had to learn how to fire a 303.
CB: How did you get on with the target?
MS: I can’t remember, pretty good at archery though later, and I still play-
CB: Ah, quiet assassin.
MS: [Chuckles] and I still do indoor bowling by the way.
CB: Oh, do you? Brilliant.
MS: Yeah.
CB: So how often did you fire this rifle?
MS: I can’t remember.
CB: I’ll look up by the squadron for the Spitfire man.
MS: My dad worked on the [unclear] on the prototype of the jet engine, Meteor.
CB: Oh, did he?
MS: My sister as well, until she joined the police.
CB: At Staverton? Was he based at Staverton-
MS: Yeah
CB: - or Gloucester aircraft works?
MS: Gloucester aircrafts.
CB: Yeah. What was your father’s trade?
MS: My dad? Well, he was a miner and then he- So, I- The engineering, I don’t know how that came into it, but he worked at- Because he’d been a miner, of course we had to move because it was the depression, twenty- I was four, ‘24, 1924.
CB: Late twenties, yes.
MS: In the twenties, early twenties.
CB: Well, ‘28 it really hit didn’t it? ‘29, ‘30.
MS: Yeah, here we are, disembarked in the wild somewhere, that’s when he came by coach and had the transport problems.
CB: What, what getting around anyway you mean? ‘Cause the busses were fairly limited as well.
MS: Well, they were, very limited, yes. I suppose it’s a lot to do with the fuel, wasn’t it? [Paper rustles] no, can’t find it-
CB: ‘Cause Marlow’s on the river, so did you get many boating trips?
MS: Oh, we didn’t used to go on the river much, Trevor used to row and he was at the local runners [unclear] but not really. We had our own little boat [emphasis], we used to leave- There’s a development down in Marlow now, Portland Gardens, and we lived there, right at the centre of Marlow for twenty-three years, and we were very near the river and we have- Had a little rowing boat, we used to take on pram wheels down to the river as a family.
CB: You mentioned earlier that you kept a diary, what sort of things did you put in it?
MS: Mostly, the fun things we did. September ‘44, a bright morning, Trevor called for me, Cadet parade plus their band. That was a Sunday.
CB: This is Air Training Corps cadets, is it?
MS: [Unclear] sorry?
CB: Air Training Corps cadets, were they?
MS: The cadets, yes, they- I expect so. Yeah, they would’ve been. Did enjoy the day. Then [unclear].
CB: [Chuckles] this is your husband-to-be, Trevor?
MS: Of course, there were some very interesting- Down at the bottom of, it says, we are in Holland exclamation mark, what does that mean? That was September ‘44.
CB: Well, there’s an area of Britain called Holland, which is South Lincolnshire.
MS: Don’t think it was that.
CB: Perhaps the tulip- What day- Time of the year? What time of the year was that?
MS: September ‘44.
CB: Oh yes, so it’s not the tulips, is it?
MS: Oh, I don’t- I really didn’t put things in about-
CB: It was probably a code-
MS: Not important things, no.
CB: No.
MS: Caught a train to Wales, to meet Trevor I suppose, no. Spent day by the river, bathing, cycled to somewhere. Yes, it’s only very personal things, really.
CB: Ok.
MS: Nothing, nothing-
CB: But important at the time.
MS: Nothing- No, I don’t, I don’t think I went into all that. No.
CB: Is a diary something you looked back on-
MS: Just-
CB: -in later years?
MS: -my own personal things.
CB: Yes, did you look back at it in later years?
MS: No, never look at it [chuckles]. Looking at it because you, you got me looking at things.
CB: Yes, ok. Stopping there for a bit.
MS: The accountant worked in the CO’s office, brook[?], and I suppose he would’ve been- Have some authority.
CB: Yes, I'm just interested at- If most, if most of the people were civilians, then the- Technically the station commander, wing commander in this case, wouldn’t have control over them directly.
MS: No.
CB: So, who was controlling the civilians Airwork?
MS: That’s very interesting, yes.
CB: But you said the senior person was the accountant?
MS: Yes, and Miss Latham, who was in our watch office, she- I suppose she would’ve had some jurisdiction.
CB: And she was a civilian?
MS: She was a civilian, the dragon.
CB: Yeah [chuckles].
MS: [Paper rustles] you might as well have those bits because-
CB: Now how did you come to meet Trevor, your future husband?
MS: By going on- Into the pub on a wet night which nice young ladies never did in 1942, 1943 probably, in a pub on a wet night.
CB: And who was in the pub?
MS: He was in the pub with a friend that- Shooting whatever what they- What these airmen-
CB: Shooting a line?
MS: Shooting a line.
CB: Was he?
MS: Yes.
CB: I can’t believe that for aircrew.
MS: Curly haired boy.
CB: [Chuckles] and what was your parent’s reaction to meeting Trevor?
MS: Well, they liked him, his parents were Christians, we were Christians and yes, it was very ok, yes.
CB: How did they feel about frequenting-
MS: Sorry?
CB: How did they feel about frequenting hostelries?
MS: [Chuckles] They would’ve been horrified, horrified in those days, in the early war, well the whole of the war time I expect, young ladies didn’t go in pubs, for sure.
CB: They didn’t beforehand but-
MS: Certainly not before, no.
CB: No.
MS: No, it was later on.
CB: So you met him the pub.
MS: Met him in the pub.
CB: Then what?
MS: Oh, and then it all went wrong ‘cause he wrote me a letter and sent it to the wrong address [chuckles] so I didn’t- We didn’t get together for some time.
CB: Oh, where did he send the letter?
MS: Sorry?
CB: Where did he send the letter to?
MS: To the wrong address in Marlow.
CB: Oh, I see.
MS: Yes, got the wrong road or something.
CB: Right, how did you get back together then?
MS: I can’t remember really. Anyway, we hadn’t- We had mutual friends, I suppose it would be through that really. Did you see our [unclear]?
Other: Lovely, isn’t it?
MS: It is very nice, we used dancing classes and went to about four and then I became pregnant, but we had been married seven, six years, so [chuckles].
Other: Ah, lovely.
MS: And I thought it was such a shame to miss out ‘cause dancing is such fun.
Other: It is, yes.
MS: And such lovely exercise and eventually I got him to, to come to dancing classes, that was that.
CB: And he picked it up ok?
MS: What, in about three months and then I became pregnant-
Other: And that was that.
MS: -so not long afterwards we had to give it up [chuckles].
CB: Right.
MS: I don’t think, I don’t think it was his scene really.
CB: Right, which isn’t for a lot of people.
MS: Yes well we- Well, in the village and in the war, dancing was one of the great pleasures really.
CB: Yeah, and most people could dance?
MS: They could, yeah, you’d dance when you kids, well, I was brought up in the village and village life is lovely, and dancing and that kind of thing is what we did, and play tennis with the village boys, that’s why I was good at tennis at school, because I'd be playing with the village boys.
CB: So, we were talking about you getting back together with Trevor because of mutual friends, so what happened there?
MS: Oh yeah, I can’t remember, I don’t know.
CB: Where was he stationed at the time?
MS: When I first knew him, where did he start off?
CB: Well, what was his role in the aircraft?
MS: He was mid-upper gunner, but before that he was waiting- He was- What was he? He was a lecturer at some point, oh that was after. He was waiting to go to Canada to be a pilot and he was at Ludlow under canvas in the mud, and somebody said, ‘We’ve got these air- These new aircraft, Lancasters, and we need gunners, and if you volunteer to be a gunner, you can be out of this in three days’. So that was it, he and his friend they volunteered to be gunners.
CB: It’s not an unusual story actually ‘cause there were occasionally blockages in the system, so pilots had to wait longer and some of them became gunners.
MS: Yep, yes, well that’s why he volunteered, got fed up with waiting to go to Canada.
CB: But nevertheless, you met him round here somewhere?
MS: Yes, I met him here in Marlow.
CB: ‘Cause he came from Marlow?
MS: Yes, he’s a Marlow boy, born here and he joined the RAF in September ‘41, went to Penarth, what are we talking about now?
CB: Yep, so we’ll just stop there for a mo. So, shall we, shall we talk about your husband-to-be, when he joined the RAF? So that was 1941, so where did he go? So, he started off at Penarth for that-
MS: Reported to Penarth, and- RAF Penarth, he wasn’t there very long, was he?
CB: No.
MS: And then he got posted to Bournemouth from there, didn’t he?
CB: Right, yep, yep.
MS: And after a few weeks, we were on a train again, this time going to Wendover to RAF Halton.
CB: Yep. Then he started training there for a particular reason, didn’t he?
MS: I don’t know, would that be [unclear]-
CB: So, he did an armourer training there-
MS: Yes, he was probably doing that just to begin with.
CB: Yeah. But it was to do with guns, rather than bombs.
MS: Yes, so I suppose to do with his air gunner thing, he’s already had some training, hasn’t he?
CB: No, no he hasn’t had any, he hasn’t had any bomber- Any air gunnery training yet, has he?
MS: No, just armaments.
CB: Yes, and it seems that he was then posted to Henley[?] for a bit and then onto Swinderby.
MS: This is incredible ‘cause it- In Spring ‘42 I was with a gang of armourers preparing Hurricane fighters, which had arrived in kit form in huge crates from Canada, amazing. Yeah, so that’s-
CB: So-
MS: When were they at Lords Cricket Ground?
CB: Mhmm, yeah.
MS: Y3[?] court.
CB: Yeah.
MS: By the zoo.
CB: Yeah.
MS: And then Scarborough.
CB: That was the initial training unit.
MS: Right, Heaton Park.
CB: So, he’s three or four months at Scarborough by the look of it.
MS: Right, and then to Heaton Park, where he met Dicky Bird from [unclear].
CB: Oh right.
MS: From the school-
CB: And this was in preparation to go to Canada?
MS: What’s he talking about Ludlow?
CB: Yeah, so this was in preparation for going to Canada.
MS: Oh, I see.
CB: But you said that there was a hold up-
MS: Yeah, that’s right.
CB: -in-
MS: Got fed up with waiting.
CB: - pilot training so-
MS: Yes, they were at Ludlow, in- As I recall, under canvas, in mud and very fed up with waiting.
CB: Yes, and so that got him- He unexpectedly posted there, as you said under canvas, ‘cause he volunteered for training as an air gunner I gather.
MS: That’s right, yeah, to get away from that. They could see that it was going on a bit.
CB: So, his gunnery training was at Morpeth?
MS: Yes, that’s right.
CB: What did he do from there?
MS: ‘Cause Morpeth was an OTU.
CB: He went onto an OTU?
MS: Operational Training Unit.
CB: That’s where he went onto. So, the gunnery school was Morpeth.
MS: Oh right. Why was he at Little Horwood?
CB: That was- That’s the OTU.
MS: Oh I see.
CB: So, he’s flying Wellingtons there.
MS: Right.
CB: So in his log book, it says he’s flying Anson-
MS: Oh yes, Wellington.
CB: - then Wellington.
MS: Right.
CB: And it would seem that he then went to Stradishall to the Heavy Conversion Unit, is that right?
MS: Oh yes, that’s right. Here it is. Not far from Bury St Edmund’s, the aircraft at Stradishall was short Stirlings, they were enormous four-engine bombers. Stirling wouldn’t go above fourteen-thousand-feet, and would only- Wouldn’t take the eight-thousand-pound bombs they needed to. About the crew-
CB: What did he say about the crew?
MS: The flight engineer and I made up, made the crew up to seven.
CB: Right.
MS: But he talked about them before I suppose. But, he-
CB: And then-
MS: Does he talk about the crew in there?
CB: No, it just- Has he got comments about the crew, perhaps at the earlier stage, at the Operational Training Unit and Little Horwood?
MS: Um, yeah.
CB: We’ll stop just for a mo.
MS: Somewhere he writes all about them-
CB: About what?
MS: But I don’t- About the crew.
CB: Yeah. The crewing up process?
MS: But I don’t, I don’t think that that would’ve been back here somewhere. Met up with others-
CB: Could you just start again with that, what was that?
MS: The normal procedure was to put all the different airmen in a hanger to sort themselves out, I didn’t have to do this as I said that I had met up with others straight away. Ah, the crew, Sergeant Wishart, pilot, Canada Dave Grey, the navigator, Thorburn, the bomber, Turner, wireless operator, Fairburn, air gunner, and myself. There was one more member, Cartright, flight engineer, to come later, we stayed together for eleven months.
CB: Right, long time.
MS: Yep.
CB: So the flight engineer would join- ‘Cause that was initial- Operational-
MS: Why would he be crewed up later?
CB: Right because the operational training unit had Wellingtons and they didn’t- They only had six crew, whereas the Stirling and the other heavy bombers would have seven.
MS: But when they came to the Lancasters-
CB: When the flight engineer would join. But often, an extra gunner would join as well.
MS: Oh I see, yeah, and Wishart we- He became friends, but sadly they all disintegrated but Wishart- Trevor’s father’s family business was in Queensway in London, and one day he was walking in Queensway and met Wishart.
CB: Really?
MS: He’d just been for a medical because he was flying for Italian airlines or something and they just bumped into each other, and he lived in a lovely house in Wales and his wife came to Halton to have an operation, so Wishart came and stayed with us while the wife was at Halton having the operation. Yes, I'm glad I've found that. Crew to seven [unclear] was nineteen, and at great delight to all the girls in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, but he had a problem with air sickness and they had to cover for him all the time he was operating, otherwise they’d have got rid- You know, he wouldn’t’ve been allowed to fly. Stirling’s were huge aircraft with room for a billiard[?] table in the middle, the disadvantage was a short wingspan which stopped them flying high enough.
CB: Right. Ben is his grandson? Your grandson?
MS: Grandson, yeah.
CB: So how did that come about that he was telling the story?
MS: I think- Well it was Ben is younger as- There’s a picture out there, he was a teenager, might have been a school project or something, I don’t know.
CB: So, what did they do? They just sat down?
MS: Sat down and- Well there’s just a picture of them there with Ben and his mum, my daughter, and Trevor talking to them. I suppose Ben had asked him questions, I don’t know, I don’t expect- I’m not- Maybe I took the photograph, I expect I did, but I would’ve left them talking, probably getting the dinner at this time or something.
CB: Yes, it has emerged that many veterans found it easier to talk to their grandchildren-
MS: Yes, [unclear]
CB: - than to their wives and their own children. Was that an example of it, would you say?
MS: Yes, I would- You’re probably right there.
CB: How often did he tell your daughters about it?
MS: I don’t- They, they think he’s wonderful but I don’t remember him talking about the war really to them, not going back, you know, bit of history. No, I don’t remember.
CB: So many veterans wouldn’t, to their wives or anybody.
MS: No, no, for their own family, just the grandson pinned him down.
CB: [Chuckles]
MS: Yep. I-
CB: So what happened was, that he went from the heavy conversion unit at Stradishall on Stirlings, he then it appears, went to the Lancaster finishing school at Feltwell, where they converted from Stirling to Lancaster.
MS: Would they have gone straight onto Waterbeach?
CB: Then, they went to Waterbeach, yeah. So Waterbeach, then he went on his operations and those are in his log book but then separately there’s an intriguing diary type narrative of his, which covers a number of parts of his operational tour with 514 Squadron. Was that something you were aware of? Did he talk about his flying in the war? His operations?
MS: Not really, I don’t remember, I don’t remember.
CB: That’s not unusual. It’s just intriguing that one of the entries is 19th of May 1944, bombing Le Mans[?], the master bomber and his deputy collided, the master bomber was directing the main force over the air, in other words on the radio. So, by the time the flying training and then the full training and the operations started, then Trevor wasn't anywhere near you after the OTU?
MS: No.
CB: So how did you keep in touch?
MS: Well, whenever he could get away- They used to hitchhike, and he’d come home and- Ridiculous times and come home and if they- He was flying at night, so as long as he got back in time for the briefing, people probably didn’t realise he was away from the camp, so it was a bit horrendous if you were hitchhiking and had a problem getting back, but he- That’s how he usually used to get home. Quite frequently really, wherever he was is amazing, catching milk lorries and-
CB: Oh really?
MS: All that kind of- Yes ‘cause they travelled in the night, didn’t they? The milk lorries.
CB: Oh yes, yeah.
MS: Or got him to camp.
CB: And how did you keep in touch?
MS: By letters, used to write letters nearly every day to each other.
CB: And the postal system worked for you?
MS: For us, yes, yes- Not telephones, we hadn’t got telephones available like that, he certainly wouldn’t.
CB: He, he finished his operations- Operational tour with 514 in July ‘44, he then moved further away, didn’t he? Up to, to Manby.
MS: Oh yes.
CB: In Lincolnshire.
MS: Yes, yes, and we- I was living in- Near Ternhill, where he had been lecturing, no-
CB: That was later, was it?
MS: That was later.
CB: Yes.
MS: Yes, so that was further away.
CB: But when he was further away that was a bit of a challenge in itself.
MS: Yeah, well that would be letters, letters definitely.
CB: Yes, and at what stage did you decide to marry?
MS: [Chuckles] When we told his parents we were going on holiday together, and you weren’t allowed to do that in that- At that time, so, ‘Ok, if we’re not allowed to go on holiday together, we’ll get married’, and that was, that was it, and we got married three months later in a lovely little Norman church in- At Brimfield in the Cotswolds, and so-
CB: And that was on the? When was that? The date?
MS: 14th of June, 14th of June ‘45.
CB: Right.
MS: Yeah.
CB: And then did you get on honeymoon?
MS: We did- We couldn’t have a honeymoon ‘cause he was due back, but he didn’t go [chuckles] and luckily, he had a- He was absent without leave and he had a message, or a telegram saying that his leave was extended, and so it covered that, so he wasn’t in big trouble, so that was, that was that, but we didn't have- Our honeymoon was much later, we went to stay with friends in Cornwall. I still here from the family in Cornwall, although the parents are dead, our friends, their son is still runs the farm he- I had a card at Christmas. That was nice.
CB: In Cornwall?
MS: Mhmm.
CB: The war finished just before you were married-
MS: Exactly.
CB: - what was the general reaction? Your reaction?
MS: I think everybody was jubilant, except us because we knew that worse things were to come probably, so we weren’t doing any great rejoicing.
CB: So VE day was 8th of May 1945, what were you expecting to happen next? For his career?
MS: Well, he was still lecturing by then, wasn’t he? At Ternhill.
CB: No, he- Right.
MS: And so, yep.
CB: But he’d been up to West Freugh in Scotland
MS: Oh yes, so he had, yeah. Was that before or after Ternhill?
CB: So, that’s in the middle of ‘45, early part of ‘45, March to May when the end of the war occurred, that’s why I'm asking you the question really.
MS: He was actually here on the day that war- That- The actual day we celebrated, so- The end of the war in Europe.
CB: In Europe?
MS: He was here.
CB: But where were you expecting him to go next?
MS: I can’t remember.
CB: That was to the Far East, wasn't it?
MS: Yes, oh yes, we thought that was a possibility, that was on the books.
CB: Yeah. Were you originally planning- You said that you got married because of the holiday, were you originally marrying- Intending to marry when the war finished?
MS: Oh, we intended to marry, yes- Oh I don’t think we were thinking of any specific time, but we were engaged.
CB: Yes.
MS: Yeah, we were engaged to be married, so we said, ‘Ok’.
CB: Yeah.
MS: If we couldn’t go on holiday together, we’ll get married.
CB: Right. So, the war finished in August 1945, he was demobbed, Trevor was demobbed in the Summer of ‘46, a year later almost. What did he do then?
MS: He, he couldn’t follow the career he wanted to, but his father had a tailoring business in Queensway, London, making clothes for very important people like Sir John Betjeman and lots of film producers and the skaters, like Christopehr Dean, he made all his, all his clothes while he was doing Olympics and things, and so he- And had to join the firm and become a tailor, and it must be in his genes because, I suppose architects and master tailors, same kind of background, because they’d been tailors for time out of mine[?] and in the science museum in London there’s a sewing machine designed by Saint, so we think that it must be the same family. So that’s what happened to Trevor, and then he- So he became a tailor, his father died young at sixty-two, so he had to grow up, grow a moustache and look, look grown up and become a master tailor [chuckles] but he, he was very clever, he wasn’t a business man sadly, but he was an excellent tailor. Working all sorts of interesting people.
CB: What happened when he came to retire? What did he do? Did a member of the family take it on or did he sell it?
MS: Well, he- No, no. The, the premises in Queensway became so expensive and four of his staff needed to retire, so he stopped tailoring in London and he’d a coat maker in Hayes[?], another tailor- Not- Nearby and so he decided to work from home, thinking that it- He- Nobody would want his work, but he got more and more popular because people preferred to come here than go to London, so he then had a very busy time being a tailor, until he-
CB: With new premises? With premises here?
MS: At home.
CB: Yeah. Oh, at home?
MS: Yes ‘cause we had- The children had left home by then and we’d got a spare bedroom. So, we entertained all sorts of interesting people, like the skaters and- John Betjeman didn’t actually come here, but we used to go to him, and I've drive him around London in my vehicle. He was a wonderful character, John Betjeman, and various other people, yep. So quite a colourful [unclear].
CB: Well, I think we’ve covered a wide range of topics, thank you very much indeed. So, Meg Saint, thank you very much-
MS: Thank you.
CB: - for all your contribution.
MS: Thank you for coming Chris, and there’s a lot more work to done.
CB: [Chuckles]
MS: Having been a secretary, or one, I know how much work there- It entails.
CB: Thank you, brilliant. The thing I forgot to ask you, is about your family. So, what about your daughters?
MS: We’ve got- We were married for seven years and then we had Jennifer, who is now sixty-five or- Sixty-six, living in Cheshire, she’s got two children, and grandchildren, and another- Then we had another child, and- Within about two years of having Jennifer, and we went on holiday to North Wales and we had a hor- It was a horrible accident and we lost that beautiful little girl-
CB: Oh dear.
MS: I don’t think she was four, I’ll show you a picture of her.
CB: What was her name?
MS: Catherine, we lost her.
CB: Catherine.
MS: So, a little while afterwards we had another baby and- Elizabeth, and that’s a colourful life there, she runs the equestrian centre in Mustique in the Caribbean, she’s always worked with horses, she’s got four children who have all done incredibly well. So that’s my family.
CB: Super.
MS: We had a wonderful, we had a wonderful-
CB: This is why it was such a good get together.
MS: This was Christmas, three of the children are engineers and one’s in design, and Sam, Danny she does hotel management and she’s in Bangkok wait- Yesterday she flew to China to do things with a new hotel, and Sam has now got a job, he’s just got his degree, in Spain, and that’s his partner, and that’s- They’re partners, and Tom is absolutely incredible, he’s involved- He’s just finished his engineering course, but he hasn’t got his degree because he hasn’t handed in his dissertation.
CB: Oh, what a lovely picture.
Other: Isn’t it lovely?
MS: Isn’t it lovely, this is Christmas, we’re all together.
CB: Yes, isn’t that super.
Other: Lovely.
MS: Emma, Danny, Sam and Tom, and Tom, at university, he was with a chap who's invented something that’s gone- Just gone global and he’s involved. So, he won’t be handing in his dissertation at the moment.
CB: Oh right, no. Less important.
MS: I said, ‘Tom I don’t understand what your- What the thing is that you’ve done’, and he- When we were in Truro and it was the carol service at Christmas, first of all, the parents who in Mustique they arranged two cottages in Roseland, Cornwall, and all four children joined us, with their partners. You imagine.
Other: Lovely.
CB: Amazing.
MS: But- Tom’s magic thing is- When we were in [unclear] for the carols at Christmas, he said, ‘Granny, you see all those cables, we don’t need those cables’, so it’s something to do with that.
CB: Right.
MS: Something to do with- Magic to do with IT. The things that happen-
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
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Interview with Margaret Saint
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-02-12
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ASaintM180212
Format
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01:17:30 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Saint was employed by Airworks Limited as a civilian office worker throughout the Second World War, and met her future husband, Trevor, an air gunner, who she married in June 1945. Daughter of a Welsh miner, the family moved to the Cotswolds following the Depression in the 1920s. Attending Cheltenham Technical School, Margaret became proficient in typing and bookkeeping. Upon leaving school she obtained employment in the office of the RAF (volunteer reserve) and when war broke out, moved to Staverton airfield, working in the office of the commanding officer. In 1942, Staverton became a military unit and Margaret moved to Booker, near Marlow. Here, future glider pilots were taught the basics of flying with powered aircraft. Initially working in the airfield Watch Office, before again being transferred to the commanding officer's office. It was here she met her future husband who was a local resident. Trevor joined the RAF in 1941, and following initial training was stationed at RAF Halton assembling Hurricanes that arrived in kit form from Canada. Having been selected for pilot training, Trevor became frustrated with waiting to be allocated a course and when offered the chance to become an air gunner, accepted. Once qualified, he served a full tour with 514 Squadron on Lancasters operating out of Waterbeach. Margaret enjoyed her time at Booker. Her social life was busy and only experienced a couple of air attacks. However, she was able to witness the sky being illuminated towards London during attacks on the capital. Being a civilian, clothing and food coupons were a challenge, and her fellow workers used to swop dresses for dances. Margaret left employment at Booker after she married, and Trevor demobbed in the summer of 1946. He joined the family business and became a master tailor.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Tilly Foster
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1945
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
514 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
control tower
entertainment
home front
Lancaster
love and romance
RAF Halton
RAF Staverton
RAF Waterbeach
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1111/11601/ASaundersJ170609.1.mp3
9eb6de7875d7e6d31dad307ae215e888
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
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Simon, Francis William
Frank Simon
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. An oral history interview with Jillian Saunders about her father, Francis William Simon (b. 1917, 2211910 Royal Air Force), his log book and photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 153 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jillian Saunders and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, some items are available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-02
Rights
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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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Simon, FW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Right. I’m just going to pop that there but just ignore it. So, today it’s Friday the 9th of June. The day after the election 2017. And this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command Centre. I’m with Jill Saunders today and we’re at Jill’s home at [ buzz ] Whiston, in Rotherham. And Jill’s going to talk to me about her mum and dad and their experiences during the bomber war. But then we’ll also come on and talk a little bit about Jill’s experiences since with regards 153 Squadron and also with regards to research into a specific plane. So I’m going to start off, if that’s ok Jill just to ask you a little bit about what you know and what you can remember about your mum and dad’s childhood. Perhaps we’ll start with your dad first. How old would he, can, can you remember what year he was born?
JS: He was born, he’d have been, he’ll be a hundred in, next month.
AM: Ok.
JS: So he was born in 1917.
AM: Right. Ok. So just towards the end of the First World War then.
JS: Yes. Yeah.
AM: Where was he born?
JS: He was born in Salford. His mother died when he was twelve. And his father died about eighteen months later.
AM: Right.
JS: Of a heart, of, well no. His mother died, she’d had an operation for, to have her tonsils out and they left a swab in and she got septicaemia and she died. Which he never got over. And his father I’m not supposed to know it but he was found hanging in the outside loo about eighteen months later.
AM: Right.
JS: So my father was actually brought up by his much older sister, Margaret who he idolised. She was his mum virtually.
AM: Yeah.
JS: And he lived with her until after the war. Until he got married.
AM: Did he have brothers and sisters?
JS: No. No. No, he didn’t.
AM: No. So did Margaret.
JS: Well he had his sister. Margaret was his sister who brought him up.
AM: Of course.
JS: Yeah.
AM: But you said she was considerably older than him.
JS: Yes.
AM: Yeah.
JS: That’s alright.
AM: I’m thinking aunt rather than sister there.
JS: Her son, Les died last year, in fact. He was eighty. He was my cousin obviously and he thought the world of his Uncle Frank and Auntie Peggy. And told me once how, I think it would be in November ’44 he’d be about ten or eleven, something like that. He went to school one day. They were preparing for the Christmas concert and they needed some gold paint for something so the teacher said, ‘Anybody got any gold paint?’ So he said, ‘I’ve got some at home, sir.’ ‘Go home and get it then.’ And when he got home his mum, that’s my dad’s sister Margaret was there making tea and toast for a full seven aircrew who were all sitting around on the living room floor. So, young Les walked in and sort of wow. And they made a fuss of him and he had some tea and toast. And it was the naughtiest thing Les ever did in his life. He didn’t go back to school. They took him to Bellevue for the afternoon.
AM: The zoo.
JS: Yeah. And funfare as it was in those days. And he thought that was great fun. And you know they all made much of him and he remembered my dad and all his crew until the day he died which was last year.
AM: Yeah. It just shows you doesn’t it? So did your dad go to school in Salford?
JS: Dad went to school in Salford. Yes. He was Salford born and bred. Proud to be a Salfordian. And started work. He got an apprenticeship as a fitter.
AM: So, did he leave school at fourteen or —
JS: I don’t know what age he would be.
AM: No. Because it was usually the fourteen for school certificate.
JS: Something like that. He was bright though. Totally wasted. And he was a brilliant engineer. And I think he served his time at Reynold’s. Reynold Chain. That was in Trafford Park, I think in those days. In fact, he worked at the time with Harold Goodwin the actor who was in a lot of war films including, ‘Bridge over the River Kwai.” Little man. He was in quite a lot of war films. And every time one of these films came on TV my dad would go off. ‘There he is the little so and so.’ He was a conshy. He wouldn’t go in the war.
AM: Ok.
JS: But he made all these films afterwards which really wound my father up.
AM: I can imagine.
JS: So, yeah. So he, as I say he served his time as a fitter. In his latter years he was such a good engineer his nickname was Two Thou Frank because everything had to be done to two thousandth of an inch or less. He was just meticulous with everything. The paperwork. You know. He drove me mad with my homework. You know. I had to underline my answers and it had to be neat. He was just that sort of guy really.
AM: So what, so if he started work and apprenticeship.
JS: Yeah.
AM: As a fitter.
JS: Yeah.
AM: What year would that be then? ‘Ish?
JS: I don’t know.
AM: Or am I, obviously pre-war.
JS: It’s pre-war. Yeah. And I know he was a Volunteer Reserve.
AM: Right. So, so this is when?
JS: Because I’ve got his little VR badge. And I think he moved onto AV Roe’s working there and was classed as Reserved Occupation.
AM: Yeah.
JS: So, he was actually older and later joining the fray.
AM: Right.
JS: Than most his contemporaries —
AM: So he actually worked at AV Roe as an, as and engine, a fitter.
JS: Which is where, where he met my mum.
AM: An engineer. Yeah.
JS: Yeah. And he finally got his call up papers and kept for years his one way ticket. His rail ticket. Which —
AM: Yeah.
JS: I threw it out of course. He called it his one way ticket. So, yeah. So then he, he trained for the, they wanted him, they were short of engineers in the RAF and it was the obvious place for him to go really. He trained at St Athan as most of them did. Then he, I’ve got his logbook there. He went through various places but ended up in 166 Squadron at Kirmington.
AM: Ok.
JS: And then in October ’44 he’d crewed up with six Australians at Kirmington.
AM: Right.
JS: Formed a crew, and they were sent down to Scampton to form 153 Squadron with a number of other crews.
AM: Did he tell you anything about the crewing up process? And how they, how that particular —
JS: Yeah. He didn’t, he didn’t but the two guys in his crew that I spoke to and that I met in 2006 did in that they were all just more or less shut in to a room and said form yourselves into a crew. Now, I don’t know whether my dad picked them or they picked him but he ended up in an all Australian crew apart from himself.
AM: I think that was what was in my mind. How did he end up with six Australians then?
JS: Whether the six of them had got together and we need an engineer he’s the only one left. I have no idea. I don’t know who would. Whether the skipper picked them all or who knows.
AM: We’ll never know.
JS: No. No.
AM: But from there they would have gone on to —
JS: So they started ops, I think late October ’44.
AM: They would have gone to Heavy Conversion Unit.
JS: They did that before. He did that before.
AM: Ok. So then the crew.
JS: If you, if you can stop that I’ll go and get his logbook and —
AM: We’ll have a look at that afterwards.
JS: Yeah. Alright.
AM: Oh, well hang on. So what I’ve got here in my hand is a copy of Jill’s dad’s logbook. Jill’s got the actual logbook. And once they’d crewed up and were actually ready to start operations they moved from 166 Squadron to 153 Squadron. Jill, have you any idea why? Why did they move squadrons?
JS: They were just for, as far as I’m aware they were just actually forming a new squadron, 153.
AM: Right.
JS: And I, I don’t know that it was only 166 that was sent there or whether there was others sent there as well to make up the squadron. I could find that out for you. I only need a phone call to Bill Thomas and he would tell me.
AM: Yeah. No. It’s just interesting.
JS: Yeah.
AM: To wonder. Because obviously I’m looking. I’m looking at [pause] I saw the training and the familiarisation. The circuits and landings. All the rest of it. The night bomber. Fighter affiliation. Diversion and bullseye. Almost all with Pilot Officer Mettam.
JS: Yeah.
AM: As the pilot. But for some of them, and we’re in Halifaxes at this point as well. So, Pilot Officer Mettam. Was he one of the Australians then that became the —
JS: Yes.
AM: The final crew.
JS: He was his pilot.
AM: Right. Ok.
JS: Right the way through.
AM: Yeah.
[pause]
AM: So what we’re looking at now is that in —
JS: Also had to do dual and solo. The flight engineer had to be able to fly.
AM: Right. Yeah.
JS: Himself.
AM: Yeah.
JS: In case anything happened to the skipper, of course.
AM: So then in September 1944 when the training had finished that was when they moved the following month in October ’44 to 153 Squadron. So he was based —
JS: At Scampton.
AM: At Scampton. And did he, what did he tell you, if anything, did he tell you anything about the operations? Any stories. Any — or just what it was like.
JS: He — no. He only told me about coming back with the full load on. But I subsequently found out a couple of stories from the skipper and tail gunner when I met them. The tail gunner was a real comedian. Apparently, when they all got back and went for their bacon and eggs Ned didn’t. He went straight to the parachute shed to chat the girl’s up who were folding up parachutes. But that was what Ned was like. He said they were coming back, I don’t know whether dad was with them or not at the time, from one op and he said they were on fire. He was in the rear turret and there were sparks and all sorts flying and they were coming down and he could hear them jettisoning fuel, and you know and preparing for a nasty. And he got on his mic and said, ‘Are we baling out, skip?’ And Mettam, in his voice, ‘No. That won’t be necessary,’ And brought it down sweet as a nut. He also, then Mett himself did tell me once they were diverted to Manston. I don’t think it was the one that dad was on because I’m sure he would have told me but he overshot at Manston which is very, not like Mett but the problem being that as he overshot he hit a ploughed field and the furrows instead of going the way he was going went the opposite way. So I said, ‘Well, what happened?’ He said, ‘Well, the nose dug in,’ he said, ‘And it flipped over.’ Completely flipped over from the back end over the front end. I said, ‘What the hell did you do?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We all got out and scratched our heads, looked at it, laughed and hitched a lift back to Scampton.’
AM: What happened to the plane though upside down in the ploughed field?
JS: That’s right. It wasn’t their problem was it? So, yeah, I mean I did found out a little bit from them two. Dad didn’t speak a great deal apart from he did tell me a few times about the time he came back with a full load on and I think that must have really frightened him. Having to land with a full load that they had been trying to get rid of for a few hours.
AM: Did, did he ever say anything about what he saw as the differences between, because looking at it most of the training was done on Halifaxes and then right towards the end of the training in September they went on to Lancasters.
JS: That’s right.
AM: Did he ever talk about the difference between the two?
JS: No. He only ever spoke about Lancasters.
AM: Right.
JS: He never mentioned Halifaxes at all to me. I think like most of them he was in love with the Lancaster and still are.
AM: And that was the one he did all his operations on.
JS: Yeah.
AM: So. So, I’m looking at the logbook and the first operation was to Essen. And then a couple of Colognes. Nights. A fair mix actually. Mainly, mainly night. Mainly night operations. Cologne. Dortmund. Düren. [unclear] Freiburg. And did he ever say anything about the operations. How he felt about them or —
JS: The only thing he did tell me about was having his bacon and egg and them saying, ‘Flying tonight, sir?’ Which when I watched the “Dambusters” film and having eaten in the mess at Scampton I found it very difficult to actually eat in there. To even go through the doorway. It was just, yeah it sent shivers down my spine.
AM: I think you said, so I’m looking at the operations and we’ve, let me just find the right page. I think in total he did —
JS: I think it was nineteen. I think.
AM: Nineteen.
JS: I think it was nineteen.
AM: Yeah.
JS: I’m trying to find out because they were, they were transferred as a crew down to 582 Pathfinders at Little Staughton in January ’45. Dad was admitted to hospital in Ely in February ’45 and mum did tell me that he, he had done an operation in Pathfinders.
AM: Right.
JS: But there’s no record of it anywhere.
AM: No.
JS: And I think that’s perhaps because he was, didn’t get his logbook filled in and was whipped in to hospital quickly.
AM: Right.
JS: I don’t know.
AM: Because, yeah because on the logbook as you say it shows the last one as number eighteen in January ’45 over the Bay of Biscay. And then you said he was ill.
JS: Yeah.
AM: What, what was, what was wrong? What happened?
JS: He took bad with stomach ulcers and in those days if you had a stomach ulcer they cut you vertically from top to bottom and removed all sorts of things. And he suffered for the rest of his life.
AM: Right.
JS: With duodenal ulcers. I mean today you take a course of antibiotics. I did myself only a few months ago.
AM: How long was he in the hospital? You say he was in the hospital in Ely.
JS: Ely.
AM: Yeah.
JS: In Cambridgeshire. Yeah. Because he was taken from — he was taken from Little Staughton which is Cambridgeshire way isn’t it? And I presume Ely was the biggest hospital.
AM: Yeah.
JS: Looking at the photographs of him just after the war and on honeymoon painfully thin and gaunt. It had obviously, the war and the operation had really taken it out of him.
AM: Well, you know it’s a huge operation.
JS: Yes. Yeah.
AM: And he wasn’t tall to start with. Five foot seven and a half I’ve read on his, on his commencement papers.
JS: Yeah.
AM: So, obviously then he was that was it he didn’t fly again.
JS: He was. Yes. He then went into, he was made to, made to go in the Home Guard.
AM: Because he left. He was actually discharged in May ’45. So then he went in the Home Guard. Any stories about that?
JS: No. He just found it all very amusing and like little boys playing with sticks over their shoulders. Just like Dad’s Army, in fact.
AM: And he would be quite a bit older than them.
JS: Yes.
AM: Well, older than the young ones.
JS: Of course.
AM: Obviously then there’s old.
JS: Yeah.
AM: Old ones as well.
JS: Yeah. And I think he was one of the few that had actually seen action.
AM: Yeah. He would have been twenty eight by then. Which was actually quite old for a flyer.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: So, tell me a bit about your mum and then let’s come back to your mum and dad together. Tell me a little bit about your mum’s early background and where she was born.
JS: Mum was born in Kendal in the Lake District. A country girl. She was one of nine in a small house up there. Left school reasonably early. She was born in 1920.
AM: If she was one of nine did she ever describe to you, talk to you about what sort of house they lived in?
JS: Oh, my God. Yeah.
AM: Go on. Tell us about that.
JS: I’ve been in there.
AM: Oh, you have.
JS: I have.
AM: Describe it for me then.
JS: Just an ordinary [pause] well they were all grey stone built.
AM: Yeah.
JS: Got to be in grey stone in Kendal. Just an ordinary semi with three bedrooms and a downstairs toilet. They did have an indoor toilet and a little bit of a bathroom downstairs off the kitchen. But very small and there was five boys and four girls. And they all had crazy senses of humour. She’s often told me about how they were all tops and tails in bed and many a night the boys would sneak in when they had just gone to sleep, crawl under their bed and just lift the bed up. Frightened them to death. They, they were all she had one brother who she came in one day, she ran in from the garden because she could hear her sister screaming. And her brother had a roped down on to the kitchen table with a carving knife dangling on a rope wrapped around the light fitting swinging. Lowering it like a [laughs]
AM: As you do.
JS: Yeah. And those were the sort of things. They had to make their own fun.
AM: Well, yeah.
JS: And they sort of tortured each other.
AM: The television. Sitting in front of the television.
JS: That’s right.
AM: Where was she in the age range? Somewhere in the middle? Top or bottom?
JS: She was right in the middle, I think.
AM: In the middle. Right.
JS: In fact, the youngest of them mum always said our Lenny was born, she was on the change when she had him. He was the first to die in actual fact. My mum was the last one to die. She died three years ago. She was ninety four.
AM: So she left school at fourteen.
JS: Yeah. And as you do in Kendal you go to work at the K Shoe Factory which later became Clarks. And she was there with all the girls doing piecework. She did piecework all her life and quite happy.
AM: Describe for the tape what piecework is.
JS: Piecework is, you get paid for, per item. So the more items you do per day the more money you get. So it had a great impact on her life because her idea of doing something well was doing it as fast as she possibly could. She went to the gym which she did in her fifties and sixties it was, ‘I’ve finished,’ in ten minutes flat because she’d just tear around like a lunatic. Everything she did was at break neck pace because she was used to being on piecework. She later went on, she carried on for the rest of her life as a machinist. And worked for a number of years making nurses uniforms.
AM: It’s just piecework’s not a phrase you would hear now.
JS: No. No.
AM: And of course —
JS: I don’t know what they’d call it now.
AM: When you said she did piecework.
JS: Yeah. Yeah. It was the only thing.
AM: So, so back to she worked at —
JS: Yeah.
AM: The K Factory.
JS: She worked at Ks. And then the war broke out so she would be about nineteen. Nineteen and a bit. They were obviously stopped from making shoes into more useful footwear and she ended up on flying boots for the RAF. And she told me how as the flying boots went along the production line and they all did their little bit to them and all the girls to relieve the boredom and because they felt they had to, no. They wanted to. Slipped little notes in the boots as they went along in front of them. Little slips of paper. You know, “God bless the RAF.” “Good luck.” “Stay safe.” All that sort of thing.
AM: Nowadays it would be have my mobile number.
JS: Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So then after a while there she was all her brothers and sisters were doing their bit in various places, she was sent down to Manchester to work in the munitions factory in Trafford Park. And while she —
AM: Did she have a choice of what war work she did?
JS: No. No. She was just —
AM: Quite the opposite. That’s where she was sent.
JS: She got a notice that’s where she was going and that’s where she went. And then once she was sent there of course there was a little bit of room left in the home where she was brought up so her mother, my grandma then had to take in evacuee children. She had two little boys. One didn’t last too long. And then the second one was from the North East. A pale sickly child and of course nice fresh air and good food as far as, well to what he’d been used to his parents came to visit him and didn’t recognise him. So, yeah mum’s now in, I think it was AV Roe she was in. It was, she was making parts for Lancaster bombers and she was doing something with a bit of metal. I don’t know what it was and in came a load of airmen and dad was amongst them. They were obviously all engineers. As part of the training learning how it was all put together and their eyes met over, I don’t know whether it was a lathe or something like that and that was that. they started going out together. And they got engaged. He sent her money to go and get a second hand ring somewhere. He wouldn’t get married until after the war. She used to go home at weekends, I think. Now and again. And her sister, my auntie did tell me that whenever she saw dad by this time was on ops and whenever she got up in the morning and read the newspaper and it said a thousand bomber raid over so and so again last night. Apparently, the colour just drained from her face and she wouldn’t eat her breakfast and couldn’t do anything. And they all left her alone until she got a telegram because dad always sent her a telegram when he, as soon as he got back. After he’d his bacon and eggs I suspect. And as soon as she got the telegram she was alright. But he wouldn’t get married ‘til the war was over. And his war was over when he got [pause] well when he came back of the Home Guard I suppose after he’d been discharged from the RAF.
AM: You were telling me some stories about your mum. So when she’d moved to Trafford and was working at the AV Roe factory obviously she would end up in digs.
JS: Oh yes. That was the only thing she would ever spoke about. I mean she never spoke about the work or the girls or anything. It was just the horrible digs she was put in and there and it was bed bugs and fleas and it was filthy dirty and icy cold. And she couldn’t wait to go home at weekends. She hated it and she was lonely and she was a very timid soul. A very nervous person. You know to be taken from her nice comfortable country existence like that to be sent to a big city to have to do that and put up with all the bombing and everything else. I remember when it was D-Day she said, she said they knew it was brewing and that morning she said all through the night they’d heard aircraft going over. She said it was just a constant drone all night long and they knew that something was, was happening. And that morning the hooter went in the factory, Everybody to the canteen,’ and they all lined up in the canteen and the guy said to them, ‘Let’s just say a prayer for the lads. This is it. This is D-Day,’ and she said they all just you know had a few minutes for the, for the boys.
AM: Sorry that gulp was me sipping water. So then obviously you said he sent this telegram every time he got back.
JS: Every time. Yeah.
AM: From ops. I’m just trying to piece together in my mind so she’s still there working when he was in hospital in Ely as well.
JS: Yes. She must have been.
AM: She must have been, mustn’t she?
JS: She must have been. Yeah.
AM: And then come the end of the war he’s in the Home Guard.
JS: Yes.
AM: Well, not the end. From his discharge which was in May ’45.
JS: Yes. He went into the Home Guard.
AM: He’s in the Home Guard.
JS: In the Manchester area again, I presume. I don’t know for sure but I presume it was in his home town. I think it was in Salford.
AM: And she would still be in Trafford Park or would she have moved back up to Kendal.
JS: I have no idea when she moved back. I’ve no idea.
AM: But obviously they’d got engaged by then so —
JS: It was all go then. Yeah.
AM: So when did they get married? ‘ish?
JS: Well, I was born in ’49 and I think they’d been married two to three years before they had me. 18th of April err 27th of April.
AM: Where did they end up living?
JS: She moved down to Salford to be with him. They moved in a, oh it was an awful house. I can remember it even as a kid. It was four back to backs next door to the school. And when it rained we had buckets everywhere. It was cold. It was damp. The toilet was a hundred yards away in a block with three others to go with the other three houses that were back to back with.
AM: Just explain what back to back, what you mean by back to back.
JS: Well, these were, it was two semis and then attached to them at the back of them was another two semis. So it was a square block of four properties.
AM: And that means that the windows were only on the front because the —
JS: That’s right.
AM: Back wall is the dividing wall.
JS: Two walls.
AM: Between the two properties.
JS: Two walls.
AM: Which is why we call them back to back.
JS: That’s right.
AM: It’s like four in a square as you say, isn’t it?
JS: Yeah. Yeah. And torn up newspaper for loo roll. I can remember my mum always going mad that, ‘Mrs Garforth, next door has been using our toilet again. I can tell.’ [laughs]
AM: So the toilet was at the end of the —
JS: The toilets were along the side. So [pause] let me see. You’ve got the four houses there.
AM: You’ve got your four houses in a square.
JS: Back to back.
AM: Yeah.
JS: And there’s a bit of a garden here and the road there.
AM: Right. So in the front of each house.
JS: And there.
AM: There was a garden but then at the side of them —
JS: No, there wasn’t. No.
AM: No.
JS: The front of that house and this one were on the, on the road.
AM: Oh right. Ok.
JS: Right. This was ours. This one here. And the front door was here.
AM: Right.
JS: So it was on the corner and was that one. And the toilets were there.
AM: Right.
JS: Difficult to explain.
AM: And were there four separate toilets then?
JS: And so we had to go from, yeah.
AM: Ok.
JS: In a row. So we had to run from here.
AM: But you were further away.
JS: The furthest away.
AM: Because you were furthest away house from there really.
JS: Yes. That’s right.
AM: From the toilets.
JS: And that was Mrs Garforth’s. And our toilet was quite handy for her [laughs] And my primary school was here.
AM: Right.
JS: The school yard gate was there.
AM: Right.
JS: So whenever they couldn’t find me as a two year old I was in the school yard playing with the kids. And the teachers knew me and they’d take me in to class with them at two and three years old.
AM: I’m trying to think. 1949. Would rationing still be on?
JS: Yes.
AM: It would, wouldn’t it, then. So no sweets or anything like that.
JS: Oh no. No. No. You were lucky if you had clothes on your back. Times were really hard. Tin bath in front of the fire.
AM: Yeah. Once a week.
JS: By this time my dad was working at the power station. At Agecroft Power Station. And he used to go off on his bike. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Agecroft Brew, but it’s about one in one. Cycle down there to do his stint at the power station and then have to cycle all the way home and many a time we didn’t see him. I didn’t see him for days on end because he’d go to work and then it was can you do some overtime? So he’d go straight into overtime and then during the overtime there’d be a breakdown so he could be there for forty eight hours. And there was no phones or anything.
AM: No.
JS: He’d go off to work and we really didn’t know when he was coming back.
AM: Did your mum work? Or was your mum at home.
JS: Mum was working full time as a machinist. Yeah.
AM: Oh, you said she worked her whole life [unclear] Yeah.
JS: Yeah. So the next door neighbour was the caretaker of the primary school that I’ve just described and they became great friends. And she was the grandma that I never had was Auntie Nellie. She babysat so that they could both go to work. She was a wise old soul. She virtually brought me up.
AM: So how long did you live in in those houses?
JS: We lived there until I was about seven.
AM: Right.
JS: And then we thought we’d hit the big time because we were granted a council house a couple of miles away. And I mean it was the business, you know. We’d made the big time.
AM: Indoor bathroom. Indoor loo.
JS: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
JS: Nice big garden. It was in a state and dad set to and he made it lovely. It was his pride and joy. But in those days the rent man came on a Friday or whatever it was. You had to pay him in cash. No pets. You did as you were told else you were out. No benefits. No nothing in those days.
AM: No. Well yeah. Its, I’m just trying to think what year National Health came in. ’50. I can’t think.
JS: I think there was national health but there was no benefits as such.
AM: No.
JS: I mean you were privileged if you got a council house and you made sure you paid your rent. And you had to be, you had to be a good upstanding family with a full time job and able to afford the rent. There was no housing benefit or anything. If you couldn’t afford the rent you couldn’t have a council house. Times are different now.
AM: So then you grew up.
JS: I grew up.
AM: Got married. Moved away.
JS: Yeah.
AM: Your dad carried on working. I think you said your dad died.
JS: He carried on working. He worked hard all his life. Yeah. And then he had a heart attack in ’73. Died in ’73. He was only fifty five. It should never have happened.
AM: So quite young.
JS: Never have happened.
AM: Relatively speaking.
JS: I mean in this day and age they’d have put a stent in and he’d have been alright.
AM: Yeah.
JS: Again. And the care was dreadful. Within ten days his back was covered in bed sores. I didn’t believe him. I thought he was joking. Then he leaned over and I saw his back. It was raw. Absolutely blistered from top to bottom.
AM: It’s just how things have changed. When you do look back at something like that it makes you realise how much things have changed.
JS: I saw him the night before he died and he was fine. He’d watched the Cup Final. Manchester United. He was made up, buzzing. ‘Look at, they’ve moved me up here.’ ‘Well, that shows you’re getting better. Look. Your charts back.’ ‘Yeah. Ok.’ And then I got home and I got a phone call 6 o’clock the next morning, ‘It’s the hospital here.’ I said, ‘Is it my dad?’ ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Is he dead?’ She said, ‘Yeah. There’s nothing you can do. We’ve told your mum on the phone to get down there as soon as you can and then come here at 9 o’clock for his things.’ Well, by the time we got to my mum’s house she was running up and down the stairs just completely hysterical. They just told her over the phone and she was on her own. And we got there and he was still in his bed with the curtains around. Oh, there’s a bag with his things in. Sign for it. Sign for a post mortem. Come back tomorrow.’ And my husband said, ‘No. You’re not doing a post mortem.’ ‘But we’re — ’ He said, ' No. He’s dead. Peggy, don’t sign.’ I’ve never seen my husband be like that before. It was quite barbaric really. He didn’t deserve it. He worked long and hard all his life. He had a really tough life.
AM: So, tell me a little bit now about you and afterwards and 153 Squadron and and your relationship and what you do.
JS: Yeah. Well, because of dad’s discharge from the RAF Mett, his skipper was his hero and dad was all set for going back to Australia with him after the war. But of course because he was hospitalised and everything he lost touch with them all. And he tried ‘til the day he died to find them all but they were all Australian and there was no internet and phones or anything in those days. And he spent hours in the library but he wasn’t able to come up with anything. And on and off from thereafter I kept having a dabble myself and then the internet struck up and in 2006 I got hold of a guy who was on the internet, down as a representative for 153 squadron. And his phone number was there so I rang him and I said, ‘Is that Bill Thomas?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘153 Squadron.’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘My dad was with 153 Squadron.’ And he said, ‘Just a minute. What was his name?’ And I told him and he said, ‘That’s right. Came down from Kirmington. 166.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ He said, ‘Yeah. His skipper was Hal Mettam.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Hang on a minute,’ he said, ‘I’ve got Mett’s phone number here. Do you want it?’ Well, I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t believe it. I sat on it for two or three hours before I rang him and he, he was quite curt with me when I, when I rang. He was a bit off guard. He was moving house. He was about to eat his dinner and that was that and I put the phone down. Well, he put the phone down. And I thought well at least I’ve spoken to the guy and I set to and I wrote him a letter. Enclosed a few photographs and my contact details and I stuck it in the post. I got home from the work the following night and this Bill Thomas called me again. He said, ‘How did you get on speaking to Mett?’ So I said, ‘Well, it was a bit of a weird conversation really.’ He said, ‘Yeah. He was a bit aloof.’ He said, ‘I’ve got another one for you.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Another member of his crew.’ I said, ‘Oh, go on then.’ ‘Ned Kennedy, his tail gunner.’ I said, ‘Yeah. That’s right.’ He said, ‘He lives in Scarborough.’ I said, ‘Oh wow.’ And he gave me the phone number. I said, ‘Scarborough?’ He said, ‘Yeah. Scarborough, New South Wales.’ I said, ‘Oh right. Ok.’ So I waited ‘til the early hours of the morning and I thought right I shall ring now, because of the time difference. A little lady answered the phone and she put me on to Ned and he said, ‘Hello.’ I said, ‘Is that Ned Kennedy, 153 Squadron?’ ‘Yes. ‘I said, ‘Do you remember your flight engineer?’ He said, ‘Frank. Yes.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m Frank’s daughter.’ ‘Well, bugger me,’ he said in a broad Australian accent. He said, ‘You sound just like your dad. I can hear him now saying “Want a cup of tea, skip?”’ So, cutting a long story short I got home again the next night and lo and behold there was an email from Mett, the skipper which took me by surprise. Apologising and saying yes he did remember and everything. And, and we kept in touch. And in May ‘07 Mett came to the reunion. I went to the first reunion. And Ned, very sick, in a wheelchair got on a plane and came over from Australia and we all met up at the reunion and there wasn’t a dry house in the house.
AM: Where was it? Where was the reunion?
JS: It was at the Holiday Inn in Lincoln. Prior to that they had them at another hotel in Lincoln and we had it then at that hotel for three or four years and I started to get involved. And now we have it at the Bentley.
AM: So, how did you get involved in doing more?
JS: I got involved, particularly. There was one year we went and one of our vets was taken poorly the day before as happens because they’re all getting elderly and said he couldn’t make it and the staff at the hotel were insisting we paid for his room. And the secretary at the time was, ‘Oh. Ok then. Yes.’ And started to write a cheque. And they were also insisting that in future years all these veterans must be insured in case they couldn’t come. And being the rubber gob that I am stuck my two penneth in and said, ‘No. You are not being paid. You can’t tell me you did not sell that room last night.’ ‘Well um —' I said, ‘No,’ I said, ‘There’s no way you’re having money out of us,’ I said, ‘These guys are veterans. They’re OAPs,’ you know, ‘Stop taking the mick,’ I said, ‘And regards insurance you can stick it.’ And they were sort of oooh. And then one or two people said, ‘Good on you, Jill.’ De de de de de de. Bill Thomas, in those days used to write a newsletter three times a year handscript and send it out to people. I said, ‘I’ll type that out for you Bill if you like.’ ‘Oh, will you?’ And it just sort of snowballed from there. I was elected to take over from madam who was saying yes to everything. And I started typing the newsletters for him and adding a little bit and then it got to the stage where I was actually doing them. And then arranging they decided after that particular incident to move hotels for the reunions. And we moved and I took over the bookings of that and then, you know as the vets have sort of either died or not been able to, to keep up Bill Thomas who was the secretary decided we should have an honorary secretary, an honorary treasurer and what have you. The next generation down. So that was how I got the post of an hon sec.
AM: That was you. So do you still have an annual reunion?
JS: Yes. We had it last month.
AM: How many Second World War veterans have you still got?
JS: Well, on the books we’ve got [pause] about half a dozen or so. Maybe more.
AM: Yeah.
JS: But we only had three show up this year. In fact one of them with his family came over from Majorca. He lives in Majorca now and he comes quite often. He’s a case is Jack, er the year before we went to the BBMF and we were having a look around and he got in the Lanc and he was sat in the pilot’s seat. He was a pilot. He’s the only pilot we’ve got left. He sat in the pilot’s seat and as we were walking away he was walking with his two sticks. I said, ‘Did you enjoy that, Jack?’ He said, ‘Aye. But I couldn’t remember where the undercarriage switch was.’ He’s got a wicked sense of humour. A very nice chap. The other one is Taf Owen. He did a Manna drop.
AM: Aneurin.
JS: Hmm?
AM: He’s called Aneurin.
JS: Yeah. We all call him Taf. Yeah. He did Manna drops. He’s our president. And Les Jenkin. Les [pause] Oh God. I forget his surname now.
AM: I’ll find out off you after if they’ve all been interviewed.
JS: Yes. Yes. He has. Les. Oh. my goodness. Well, his daughter’s treasurer anyway.
AM: Yeah.
JS: So —
AM: Tell me a little bit about the research you’ve been doing into a specific Lancaster.
JS: This specific Lancaster.
[recording paused]
AM: Well, tell me. So go on. So tell me about the plane.
JS: Right. Right. As part of my role as hon sec I decided one year a few years ago that we should get a bit more high tech and develop a webpage and a Facebook page. So I started them off and we’ve had all sorts of contacts come in via both. We’ve picked up a lot of new members. Particularly this last year. I think it’s because a lot of people going into their genealogy and stuff now. And things are beginning to tie up. Coincidences are happening. And, you know we had a couple meet up at the reunions whose fathers were, flew together and that sort of thing and it’s been, it’s almost spooky at times. Anyway, sometime last year via our webpage I got an enquiry. I was contacted by a guy in Germany called Roland. ‘I have some pieces of an aircraft. One of your aircraft from 153 Squadron. Would you like them? I found them in the forest.’ And he gave me the number of the aircraft. He’d done a little bit of research himself so, ‘Yes please.’ So arrived a box full of pieces.
AM: And I’m looking at —
JS: Yeah.
AM: Exactly that.
JS: Yeah.
AM: A box full of pieces.
JS: Yeah.
AM: From, blimey.
JS: They smell weird.
AM: I will take a photograph.
JS: Yeah. Well, I’ve got. I did take some photographs. Somebody reckoned that that particular, we thought that was leather but he was thinking it was part of the self-sealing liner for a fuel tank.
AM: Ok.
JS: Anyway, after a bit of research I discovered that this particular aircraft, it went down in March ’45. It was on a raid to Nuremburg with a crew and it was their first operation. And it was fully loaded with a four thousand pounder and fourteen hundred and seventy incendiaries and it was hit by a night fighter. It was virtually vapourised. But this gentleman in Germany has done a lot of research. He’s been and found their graves. He’s sent me all the information he’s got plus photographs of the crash site plus a report from the local mayor about the incident which I’ve had translated. And I’ve managed to find relatives of [pause] how many members of the crew now? I think it’s, well it’s four lots of relatives I think I’ve managed to contact who’ve become members. Yes. There we are. One. Two. Three. Four lots. So, that is still ongoing. We, at our AGM discussed it, wondering what to do with it all and seeing as the pieces are so small first refusal on the pieces has been to relatives or descendants of any of that crew. And the rest we thought we would take the most convenient bits and put them in a little presentation box. A glass fronted thing with a document which I’m trying to pull together of what exactly happened to it and give it to them at the Scampton Heritage Centre to put with the other 153 stuff that they’ve got there. That’s as it is at the moment. I’ve made lots of notes but we’ve not put a document together and we’ve not had a presentation.
AM: And did, did you say your dad had flown in that plane?
JS: Yeah. Yeah. And part of my research shows that my father flew in that, in that particular aircraft on one occasion. I think it, did I say it was October ’44 and it went down in March ’45. There’s also Tom Tobin who you have on your records. It was his, his favourite aircraft. He did about fourteen ops in it before it went down.
AM: But not that one.
JS: I’m in touch, regular contact with his daughter in Australia. A Douglas McCourt also flew in it on March the 2nd. I’m in contact with his son in South Africa. And Doug is ninety five and still going strong. And there is another. You have Peter Baxter’s memoirs on record. His son, Mike Baxter is in our Association because his father was the engineering officer for 153 and he actually flew in it as well. And he says in his memoirs, “We flew in Lancaster W-William. Appropriately numbered with my initials PB642 Peter Baxter.” So yes. It’s quite incredible really tying it all together. We’ve got a couple of photographs of members of the crew. We’re still trying to find more. As I say I’m still pulling it all together.
AM: Those pictures of the graves at the back.
JS: These are pictures of the graves.
AM: Where are the graves?
JS: At —
AM: Durnbach.
JS: Durnbach War Cemetery. And this is where he found the pieces. These are photographs of where he actually found the pieces of the aircraft.
AM: Given that there were that many, I mean you describe it as virtually vapourised.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: Given that there were that many incendiaries on them.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: It sort of makes you wonder.
JS: Yeah. Tiny little pieces.
AM: What went in the graves.
JS: According to, according to the mayor in his report he says [pause] where is it? [unclear] Yeah. That, that’s what Tom [pause] Tom Tobin was in it. Flew fourteen ops in it or something. I’m just —
[pause – pages turning]
AM: Yeah. it’s, it, it is absolutely fascinating to look at the, to look at the photographs of where he dug the pieces up from.
JS: Yeah.
AM: It actually looks like wood smell.
JS: It is.
AM: It’s come down in woods.
JS: I’ve got the actual crash site and a map with it plotted on it. As I say, I’ve really got to bring all this together.
AM: Yeah.
JS: That’s my ongoing project at the moment.
AM: Yeah. but although you describe them as quite small pieces, which they are there’s quite a lot of it.
JS: Yeah.
AM: There’s a whole box of it.
JS: Well, there’s two boxes arrived. I mean one box arrived within days. And another one a few weeks later.
AM: How did he know?
JS: I have no idea. I have no idea. I mean most of that information in there in the graves and everything all tallies up and he, there’s a lot of Germans now doing this.
AM: Oh yeah.
JS: With metal detectors.
AM: Yeah.
JS: And then following it up and researching it.
AM: Yeah.
JS: And that’s what he does a s a hobby etcetera. But I found it particular spooky when I opened the box. It was just a cardboard box. It had leaves and mud and twigs and things in it as well. And the smell as I opened the box and as I touched a piece and thinking dad’s flown in that.
AM: Yeah.
JS: We just, we both just stood there and we actually shivered.
AM: A little shiver.
JS: There’s one place. Is it that page?
AM: Your dad could have probably told you.
JS: Yeah.
AM: What they were and where they were from.
JS: Like this one we worked out that this piece we worked out at the AGM that that’s got to be part of the one of the seats because they’re screws rather than rivets. Right. So it would have been screwed into the wood.
AM: So I’m looking at a piece of metal that’s maybe eight inches long.
JS: Yeah. And you see that’s the interior colour paint.
AM: And maybe about, yeah, about three quarters of an inch wide. You can see the green paint on it and the one, two, three, four, five, six screws with the screw heads. And on the other side of the metal where the screws have gone through it, the whatever it was and it looks like some sort of leather seat cover.
JS: That would have been a washer of some sort on the other side with it being screwed you see.
AM: It’s, I will take some photographs of this. It’s fascinating.
JS: As I say we decided in our infinite wisdom that that would be part of a seat.
AM: Yeah.
JS: Because it will have been screwed to something wooden which would be a frame for a seat.
AM: Yeah.
JS: As opposed to rivets in, in other bits, you see.
AM: Crikey. So we’re looking at a Lancaster with rivets through it here and I wish I could bring Rosie the riveter in. I’ll tell Jill about Rosie the riveter later.
JS: That would be interesting. You know they’re quite heavy.
AM: It is absolutely fascinating.
JS: Yeah.
AM: To look at and think what, what they are and what they were
JS: We’ve scoured them all to try and find numbers on them but you can, you can feel the different metals. [unclear] probably a bit of shrapnel judging by the weight of that.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s absolutely fascinating looking at all these. I’m going to switch the tape off now and then take some photographs.
JS: When it first arrived —
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 Jill Saunders
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
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
2017-06-09
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
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Sound
Identifier
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ASaundersJ170609
Format
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00:53:45 audio recording
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
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Jill Saunders’s father Frank Simon was born in Salford in 1917. He served an apprenticeship as a fitter before joining A.V. Roe. He had joined the RAF volunteer reserve but as he was in a reserved occupation, he was only called up in 1944. He trained at St Athan as a flight engineer and was subsequently posted to 166 Squadron, based at RAF Kirmington, in October 1944. The remainder of his crew were all Australians. They were one of the crews sent to RAF Scampton to form 153 Squadron. Altogether, Frank flew 19 operations before his crew were transferred to the Pathfinders at RAF Little Straughton in January 1945. However, he became ill and was hospitalised in February 1945. It was while working at A.V. Roe that Frank met his future wife, Peggy. She was born in Kendal in 1920 and had worked at a shoe factory before being conscripted to a munitions factory in Manchester. They married after the war. Frank worked at a power station until his death at the age of 55 in 1973. Peggy lived into her 90s.
In about 2006, Jill made contact with the 153 Squadron Association and through it, with two of Frank’s former crew. She became involved in the running of the Association and remains Honorary Secretary.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Manchester
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
153 Squadron
166 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
civil defence
final resting place
flight engineer
Home Guard
Lancaster
love and romance
RAF Kirmington
RAF Scampton
RAF St Athan
shot down
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1118/11609/ASeckerFE170815.1.mp3
47cfe21bac4401a2c3fc946d0008bae1
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
Secker, Frances Elizabeth
F E Secker
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Frances Elizabeth Secker (b. 1923). She lived near RAF Feltwell 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
2017-08-15
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
Secker, FE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: I’m talking today to Frances Elizabeth Secker, who lives in Feltwell, on the 15th of August 2017 and it is currently 14:45 hours. Elizabeth, I know you’ve lived in Feltwell all your life and you were here during the World War Two. Can you tell me a little bit how you interacted with the Bomber Command boys on Feltwell station?
FES: Well, I got on well with all the boys on Feltwell station, had quite a few friends, yes, yeah, a lot of them through a friend of mine and I got introduced to them, yes. We’d go to the dances at the gym, we’d go to the cinema in the camp, yes, uhm. Then I met a lot of the airmen, the New Zealand airmen coming to the fish shop where I worked, quite young, yes, and what I can really remember about them was they had egg and chips quite a lot but not when I get the time, quite often three [laughs], yes, so sometimes they had to be cooked in the chip pan because they wanted so many. There’s two eating rooms there and I was the person that waited the tables quite a lot, yeah, all very friendly, yeah, nice people to work for, yes. I had a few boyfriends, in the Air Force here [laughs]. [file missing] The actual uhm New Zealanders flew from Methwold, didn’t’ they? Yeah, the first one, yeah, flying from here I suppose but I think the actual first one that flew in Feltwell was a Harrow, yeah, is that right? Yeah. I was at school, yes, and we had the Wellingtons after that, uhm was it the Venturas? Yeah. I don’t, the Lancasters flew from Methwold, I think, didn’t they? They didn’t fly from Feltwell, yeah. Yes, I can remember that, remember when one or two of them crashed round, yeah. Another thing I can remember is seeing the, the [unclear] be New Zealanders a lot, a lot, I think, going off to Methwold, sometimes in an open truck, sometimes in a coach, and I was working at the fish shop, they would quite often stop at the post office next door for some reason [laughs], yes [laughs], yeah, yeah [unclear] she met them she met them, I know she did Charlie, they went into the shop and she get a date, she would say, [laughs], so yeah and then we went out with a couple of officers, [unclear] different ones but really they were more casual dates, yeah, just, you know, at the gym we met quite a lot of them, yeah, and dances on camp yeah and I can remember cycling to Methwold uhm where they had dances in the Nissen huts, yeah, we went there, cycled there, [laughs] yeah. Another thing I can certainly remember is watching the funerals, yes, [unclear] yeah, which is very sad, yeah. And I went to, uhm when they unveiled the memorial for them, went to that, yeah, and when they, this is recently in, the one by St Mary’s, I went to that when they put that there, yeah, went to their little service, yes, yes, very friendly, yeah, we did have a very nice time although it was wartime, yeah, we did, yeah, ok. Well, he took us to Brandon fair we cycled, my friend Pam and me, Pam, he asked me for the next date, so we went on [unclear] but he was stationed, he came here in ’47, to, was it, a flying training school, he was, uhm, I didn’t know really, I didn’t know him then, and actually I never saw his logbook so anything until after he died, uhm, never talked about that much really, apart from talking about his, the crew he was with but yeah, I never saw his logbook so I knew [clears throat] that he said once they crashed at Mepal was when he had his first cigarette [laughs], yes, yeah, yes uhm. So, he was here from ’47 till ’50, then he came out, air traffic control and that was at Methwold, yeah, yeah. About things up here, in the mess his friends, yes, one there, he wasn’t in the forces, I don’t quite know what his position was but he kept a few hens and turned a bit laugh and say, he came into the mess at breakfast time and said, my hens are not laying very much and Joe Bowman would come in and say, would you cook, this egg for me? I think it was [unclear] [laughs] so that’s why his hens weren’t laying much for him, yeah, lots of fun times really, yes, he had some. Charlie’s a big sportsman, yes, he played for station, yeah, and the one time he played for Yarmouth but when he was in the Air Force he played different stations, yeah, a big sportsman, football, this I’m talking about, yeah, yeah, well, any other sport he was interested into, yeah, yeah. Yes, new Zealander the pilot, two Canadians, yeah, they were British, Charlie and his crew, Charlie was the rear gunner, Flight Lieutenant Keen was the pilot a new Zealander, Flight Lieutenant Brown Canadian, Flight Lieutenant King Canadian, Flight Sergeant Spilsbury, Sergeant Elms and Sergeant Smith were British. I think, his skipper, as he called him, thought quite a lot of Charlie, made quite a fuss of him, although they couldn’t eat in the same mess, they were quite friendly, yes. They’d done thirty-one tours, yes and then that was it for them, were very lucky, yeah, to survive, yeah, [unclear]. Charlie kept in touch with the Canadians, Flight Lieutenant Brown and Flight Lieutenant King for a while, yeah, heard all about their lives and what they’d done after they’ve come out of the service, yeah, yes. Charlie came to Feltwell in ’47 with the, uhm, training [unclear], flight training, for that he was air control at Feltwell and Methwold, yes, stayed in the Air Force until 1950 from when he took a job with Pearl Insurance, ok, that was Charlie’s bit [laughs] [unclear] uhm, yeah, not the land army as such but land work in the Fens, near the village, where we cycled to work, everywhere we had to cycle if we needed to go anywhere at that time [laughs] yes. And work, uhm, we picked potatoes [laughs], planted potatoes but by machine, we picked potatoes by hand what else did we do? We do celery, bit in the harvest fields, yes, at that time, yeah and no cow, yeah, no, no cow, horses there, at that time till we got to practice machine, yeah. Yes, I’d done that for until mum [unclear] died I stayed home, yeah, I then went back to fish and chips [laughs], yeah, till I retired almost, yeah, different ones, yeah, [unclear]. Yes, Charlie would talk about Queenie, Q for Queenie, apparently his favourite aircraft. One thing he talked about was when they crashed at Mepal, he had his first cigarette [laughs], yes, he never talked much about the operations, unless he saw something about Germany on the television and he would say, I think I know where that is [laughs], and that was all he’d say about. His logbook I never saw until after he died. So that was Q for Queenie, his favourite aircraft. Going back to the fish shop, they were packed, it was packed in those days, two eating rooms full and the actual shop, there was no queue, everybody trying to get in front [laughs], calling out what they would like, very happy times although it was wartime, yeah, yeah. Yes, I think that they had fish too, yeah, but I remember that, I used to go with Mrs [unclear] the shop to, have you heard of Wearham? Little village? Yeah, used to go there and get these trays of eggs, yes, because I suppose having the shop, they could get them, couldn’t they? And yeah, I don’t know whether they got them on the campus match, anyway they left their eggs and chips, [laughs] and fish and chips [laughs], yeah, and that was it, egg and chips and fish and chips, and bread and butter [laughs], yeah. I don’t think we’d done fish, we’d done cups of tea, no, I think it was just fish and chips, and egg and chips and frittles [laughs], no, I think we were too busy really, we working and then, yeah, then on the corner, uhm, just by the camp gates on the right hand side, I think it was The Sally Ann if I remember rightly, the one, yeah, yeah, then there was The Blade, I think that was open at the time, I think they’d done, they’d done food there, yeah, looks, yeah, shop, yeah, cause it’s not a shop anymore, my lifelong friend from schooldays, her mum and dad had a shop, she went into the ATS, her mum died suddenly so she came home, and helped her dad in the shop, a grocery shop, this was where she met a lot of the airmen [laughs], this is where we made, made up our friends, most of them, at the time [laughs], mostly casual but Pam married Ted King, he was a, stationed at Feltwell, Pam met him and married him and she was quite young, and they were quite young, yeah, and from then on she travelled with him, yes, so they went a lot of different places in the country, yeah, we always stayed friends, great friends until she died last year, at the beginning of this year, actually, yeah, yeah, Pam and Ted, I’m friendly with her daughter, 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 Frances Elizabeth Secker
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
2017-08-15
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
ASeckerFE170815
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:20:07 audio recording
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
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Germany
Description
An account of the resource
Frances Elizabeth Secker is a lifelong resident of Feltwell. She was still at school when RAF Feltwell opened in 1937, and she remembers the Harrow being the first aircraft to arrive, followed by Wellingtons.
Elizabeth has clear memories of attending dances and the cinema at both RAF Feltwell and RAF Methwold, along with her friend Pam. She was employed as a waitress in the local fish and chip shop, which brought her into direct contact with the New Zealand airmen stationed at nearby RAF Methwold. The airmen’s love of egg and chips is a particularly fond memory. She had several boyfriends, but nothing too serious. Open trucks and coaches full of aircrew being transported to and from RAF Methwold is another memory that has stayed with her.
She didn’t meet her husband to be until 1947 after he was posted to RAF Methwold to retrain in air traffic control. They met when she cycled with her friend to Brandon fair. Charlie had been a rear gunner. His crew was made up of a New Zealand pilot, Flight Lieutenant Keen, two Canadians, Flight Lieutenants Brown and King, along with Flight Sergeants Spillsby, Elms and Smith. The crew were a close-knit unit and they carried out 31 operation, and remained in contact long after the war. He spoke fondly about his favourite aircraft, Q for Queenie, but he did not talk about his operations. Elizabeth only discovered his log book after Charlie’s death. His only comment about his experiences came when an item on Germany made the news, and he would indicate that he knew where the location was. She does remember Charlie told her he had his first cigarette after the aircraft crashed at RAF Mepal. Charlie demobbed in 1950 and was then employed by Peal Assurance.
Elizabeth also worked on the land. Planting potatoes by machine, but picking by hand. She also helped at harvest time. Cycling to the fields where all the heavy work was carried out by horses.
Her friend Pam married Ted King. She was quite young, and although Pam and Ted moved around, they remained in contact throughout their lives until Pam passed away. Elizabeth worked at the chip shop throughout her life until her retirement.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1937
1947
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
aircrew
bombing
crash
Harrow
love and romance
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Feltwell
RAF Mepal
RAF Methwold
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1121/11612/PShakesbyFN1801.2.jpg
3d522f64f0b7c49430a9c1da120cc987
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1121/11612/AShakesbyFN180822.1.mp3
e604bfe604acb62ad2038ee02c983aa9
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
Shakesby, Norman
Francis Norman Shakesby
F N Shakesby
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Francis Shakesby (b.1924, 2207370 Royal Air Force). He worked on H2S and Gee as a member of ground personnel with 582 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
2018-08-22
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
Shakesby, FN
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IP: This is Ian Price and I’m interviewing Norman Shakesby today, the 22nd of August 2018, for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at [beep], Kendal. Also present is Pam Barker, a good friend of Norman’s. Norman, thanks ever so much for agreeing to talk to me today, it’s- I’m really looking forward to it. It is 10:37 in the morning, and we’ll start the interview now. I think, just to start off, can you- You were born on the 17th of May 1924, but you- Can you tell me where you were born and where you went to school?
NS: Barton-upon-Humber[?] if you know where it is? Where my life was dominated from the first [unclear] four years by the New Holland Pier where you went over on the river- On the train river Humber to Hull. Great excitement, when they built the- It’s a beautiful bridge but it’s taken all the excitement out of it. Don’t you want to- What was it next?
IP: Where did you go to school?
NS: Oh yes, well I attended my infant school for about one year and then we moved to Lincoln, and I went to the Lincoln St Giles junior school, took the, took the [unclear] scholarship and attended The City School of Lincoln.
IP: Ok, and were you an only child or did you have brothers and sisters?
NS: No, I have a sister who is younger, four years, and a brother who is older by four years.
IP: Ok, and what did you- I presume your mother sort of looked after you children and looked after the house, and what did your father do?
NS: Well, he came out of the army, I can- Yes, his grandfather had a- And I've got to explain how he came to have it. His family- Grandfather, was- And his Grandfather’s brother, ran a drapery shop in Hull and they sold mainly to the, to the seamen and they had a strike and they went bust, so they lost their- All the money. So, my father decided, he would follow his father, who was- Worked as a traveller for [unclear] Hopper, Hopper’s Bicycles. I’ve got them- I’ve got a catalogue about them, and he followed on, his father had retired, and he did all the Midlands and learnt how to drive by sitting at his side for miles and miles in the school holidays and, so that he- And then when he- The foreigners took over, and he lost his job. Well, it narrowed his area so much, he couldn’t have made, you know, he couldn’t make ends meet. So, he went into the brewery trading, he- When we got a- We got a pub. We got this public house in Lincoln, well just outside Lincoln, and then he got a pub right in the middle of Lincoln, and if you go now- This is an interesting thing, if you now go to Lincoln and walk down the high street, and you get to Barclay’s bank and you stop and look above where they usually look, you’ve got to look up in the air and at the top of that building it says Black Swan, and the one on the left window was my, my brother’s wind- Bedroom and his father and his mother, my mother on the other, and then when the war broke out they say it’s why he was gone, he was on the reserve list, and he was called in at Dunkirk and I still to this day remember him telling- Coming in, he said, ‘I’ve got to go, I just had the phone call and they said pin cushion or some ridiculous thing, that means that invasion is imminent and I've got to go and report immediately’, and they sent him up to Durham, to, to take on the role of keeping all the civilians in an orderly fashion if they’re evacuating.
IP: Ah right, so his, his reserve service was as a result of him having served during the First World War.
NS: Yes, yeah.
IP: So, what did he do during the First World War then?
NS: He was in the- First of all in the Hull friends which, you know, and then he, he was in the front- In line for about, oh about six months and they came down the line and said, ‘Would anybody like to volunteer going to the air?’, you know, he thought that’s a better thing than being on the Western Front. So, he said, ‘Yeah, ok’, and he came home and then he sort of spent a few months over here training to be an observer, which is at the front of the aircraft [unclear] on the- The pilot is behind him, and behind the pilot is the engine, and behind the engine is a propeller, propels hence, propeller and that was his- And then he was shot down and that ended it all.
IP: He flew FE2b’s I think didn’t he, yeah-
NS: Yes.
IP: So, so he was shot down about 1916, 1917 we think?
NS: Yes, the year before and then in 1918 armistice. Yes, he was- He did- Yes, I think it was just over a year. But it, it ruined his- He couldn’t bare to be in a shut door, room, you know, it does something to him. But one or two of his stories were interesting, how they had a- This is irrelevant, they had- One of the lads was very feminine and they got to work and back then they’d make all sorts of things with experts in the prisoner of war camp, and they would fit him out as an officer in the German army, and the block house had a partition in the middle of wood, and the German’s were one side, English the other side, and they took a panel out when the Germans changed at lunch time and put it back, and then they waited for the opportunity, they got him out as an officer, a German officer, ‘Yes it’s today, go quick’, out with the panel, and they’d also got this fella dressed up as a woman and the other one was a German officer. The two of them scrambled out, straight out through the main door towards the main gates, and they got to the gates and saluted, got a salute from the gate and they walked off, hundred yard or so down the road and he was watching them go, he thought there was- The pair of shoes that he’d got on, they would- ‘Halt’, caught him [chuckles]. It was an amazing story, so close, so close to getting-
IP: And, and his experience in World War Two then, did he stay in Durham? Did he- Was that- He was, he was just in the UK I presume?
NS: My mother was dying slowly with TB, so he put in for- Once he’d been there a week, they sent him home because he was forty-something, a lot of his- And he was very quiet and concerned, a lot of his oppos or friends, you know, the level- They’d done the same thing, signed in, they went to Middle East [emphasis] and forty-five or so. Well, he came out and he was, you know, discharged, so went back to the pub.
IP: Ah right. So, we’ll, we’ll step back a bit then to just before the war, you were- You would’ve started, what I might call grammar school, I know it wasn’t called a grammar school but this- Did you say it was the-
NS: City School.
IP: City School in Lincoln. So, you would’ve started there about 1935 I suppose, something like that, would that be right? Born in 1924, started when you were eleven?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ish, roughly.
NS: I’m trying to work it out.
IP: It doesn’t matter precisely. So you were, you were at City School when the war broke out?
NS: What happened, and it’s rather relevant in a way to what went later, Lincoln had a system whereby you can take your scholarship a year early, the bright lads, and then you could- When you got in- I got maths, so I started at ten, not eleven or what [unclear] and then as you get to the first year and second year, they pick out the top ones, who go straight through without ever a middle one. So, you did- Taking the-
IP: School certificate, was it? Yeah.
NS: A year before you should, and that mean- Can I tell you why it was awkward? Because, when the war broke out, I was nearly getting- We lost all our teachers, we ended- I was taking like languages, we ended with two teachers who- And they were both called up because they were interpreters, you see, and because of that it- We reached a position where everything was collapsing at Dunkirk, absolutely pandemonium, and we, we were told there was nothing terribly- Headmaster said, ‘I don’t think the universities are going to be functioning because everything, you know, and everything’, he said, ‘You better get something, get a job and now’. So, the two of us, there were only two doing languages, the- And I never knew what happened to the other physics people, whether they were kept on, but we were more or less, ‘You better go’, and so we both decided to go into a bank. So, at sixteen, I was whipped off to Alford because Barclays worked on the basis that you couldn’t work in your hometown, you might know that you earned too much and have a living, you know. Whereas my friend went into NatWest, and they let him stay home. I had to go into digs, so at sixteen I [unclear], she’s a lovely lady looked- There were two juniors, and she took us in both, [unclear] till I was called up. So that- And I was away from home, my brother had got- Qualified as a pharmacist and been called up, but it was, you know, plenty of sergeants and things, you only got a good payment. When I was called up, it was [chuckles]- Hadn’t got anything, there were no, no, you know, exams or an A to show for it, but I’ve-
IP: So, how did, how did you find working for Barclays then? Did you enjoy that?
NS: I did actually, yes, and I had to get there and it was the Tuesday of Dunkirk and that was the last to be- Took them out of the sea then, and there was no trans- Very little transport, I got a bus within three miles of Alford, sun and sun, you know, lovely day with a big suitcase tramping along and a fella came along in a milk float [chuckle]. He said, ‘Where are you going?’, I said, ‘I’m going to Alford’, he said, ‘Hop on’ [chuckles]. So, the horse went trotting along and I sat at the side of him. We got there and there was this very forbidding win- A big white door and it said Barclays, so I went round, I pushed a big spring and it went behind be bang [emphasis], you know. This little tubby fella came up behind the counter, he said, ‘Good Morning, can I help you?’ and I said, ‘I’m the new junior’, ‘Where the hell have you been? Dunkirk?’ [laughs]. I can remember that as clear [chuckles].
IP: Good stuff. So, so you were- Must’ve been at Barclays for a couple of years I guess then before?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And, I took ten of the- Six of the ten bankers' exams and in the last year at, what was I? Sixteen, seventeen by that time, seventeen yes. The- We’d lost our chief clerk, we’d lost the other junior, only in one junior and [unclear] curious one- We had ladies, two ladies and it was years later, she was, I’ve forgotten- She lived in a big house in the village and invited me one night to tea. She was about three year, four years older than me, invited me to a dinner and we played [unclear] tennis, and met her years later. I was listening to the radio in bed, and they said, ‘This is’- And I cannot remember her name, and ‘We’ll tell you how she came to be in Africa’, and she was the [unclear] right-hand woman, and it was because she had to be kicked out because they were saying she was, you know, telling him not what- What not to do, when he shouldn’t’ve been doing, and I thought, I’ll write a letter to the BBC and tell her I'm here, you know, to see her. He put it off, I then went to look for her and she had died. Anyway, that covered me the earlier times.
IP: Yeah, so you mentioned you were called up to the RAF, you didn’t volunteer, it was- You just got you papers?
NS: Yes, but while I was in the air force- While I was in the bank, I joined the ATC for Alford and I was a flight sergeant. I mean, that’s my flight sergeant’s uniform, and so, when I joined the air force, I made sure I got into the air force by doing ATC. They took people who were outstanding, took them into the radar and radio station, that’s how I got into it and they said- Curiously enough at any one time in the- [unclear] would you want to hear what, how, where, when?
IP: Yeah, well we’ll get onto that ‘cause I'm- The first thing that struck me about it was, I mean it sounds like you were quite well educated and that sort of stuff, so I was wondering why you didn’t end up as an officer? Do you know how that-
NS: Yeah, because a technician- I mean I was a- Totally without any knowledge of- Because the first thing they did do, we did six months in Leeds college of Technoloy to do all the radio and stuff, and then they took the top two to go into radar, and the top two, me being one of them, we went down to London, we were digs in the, what do you call? The prom place.
PB: [Whispers] Royal Albert Hall.
NS: The?
PB: Royal Albert Hall.
IP: Royal-
NS: Can’t hear [chuckles]
IP: Royal Albert Hall.
NS: Oh yes, Albert, just round the corner from Albert Hall is Albert Court and it’s a very posh- They said the [unclear] or somebody [unclear] had had it, so they covered everything with plywood and we were in there, and we prayed[?] the outside, which was at the time the front of one of the- The London, you know, university, and we- Say we went into 3 Squadron because we had a fellow army officer who’d come to make [unclear] in London and you had to say, ‘A Squadron, B, C Squadron’, and turn, where? ‘Left turn’, down Vickery and Grand Exhibition Road, what’s by all retired [unclear], how it is there, and you wheeled left at the V&A and there were laboratories with the V&A, and I came out as the top two in that, with the- Having done Gee and we didn’t- We’d done a bit of H2S at that point, and we did- How long was it there? About six months.
IP: So, you just- Sorry to nip back again. So, you were called up to the RAF in November- Was it December ‘42, wasn’t it? That’s right, and did you go straight to Leeds from there, or did you do basic training first, you did sort of square bashing?
NS: We went in- Yes, we went into [unclear]
IP: Into where sorry?
NS: We went in the west coast area there was an RAF training camp there.
IP: Ok, alright.
NS: So, we did that, and then we went up to Redcar
IP: Oh yeah, yeah.
NS: And a little aside that, years later I was teaching in Redcar new college and I was standing- Having a dinner at the [unclear] hotel and the last time I'd been there, I'd been standing out while the officers tell you to [unclear] [chuckles]. Anyway-
IP: How did you find- How did you find the basic training and stuff? The square bashing and all that sort of stuff?
NS: Oh rubbish. We got off very lightly because we were ATC cadets.
IP: So, you knew how to do drill, and you knew how to make-
NS: You were taught how to- In half an hour we had to- You know, what it- To arms, ‘Shoulder, arms’-
IP: Rifle drill, yeah.
NS: And they said, ‘Right’- One of the other corporals, ‘You’re gonna do it with the flag tonight’. Pull the flag down and that sort of thing, back to the hotel [chuckles] well it’s like Dad’s Army, we’re actually in fits, even he was laughing [unclear] [laughs].
IP: So, you did- So, you did that sort of basic training and then from there, from Redcar I guess, you went to Leeds to do your mechanic training. But, do you know how they selected you to be a, a mechanic? I mean, presumably you could’ve gone off to any training?
NS: Yes-
IP: Cooks, bottlewashers-
NS: Well, the only thing I knew, is they said, ‘You were a bank clerk, we found them very, you know, very good at this bank clerks’, I don’t know why-
IP: Maths and stuff maybe, I guess, I don’t know.
NS: I couldn’t say why it changed to-
IP: Ok, alright, alright. So, to Leeds, down to the Albert Hall, London. Do you remember how long you were in Leeds doing your-
NS: Yeah, six months.
IP: Six months, and that, that was- Sorry, just to- Sorry. So, that was- Was that radar mechanic training, or was it-
NS: No.
IP: It was just mechanical training?
NS: Yeah.
IP: And then they streamed you to radar, the top two as you say. So you were the top two of that, you then went to your radar mechanic training in London and you were the top two of that course.
NS: I was-
IP: Yeah.
NS: And I can tell you why I was never a corporal as well, which I should’ve been.
IP: Oh, we’ll come back to that maybe. But- So, right, so-
NS: [Unclear] say this about that-
IP: Yeah.
NS: The- We’d been [unclear] and- Oh I’ll tell you. In [unclear], we had a theatre with two rollers chairs- Stairs either side and you go up this one and you shove the needle in you and then take the needle our, or take the fridge out and the needle in and you walked across the stage and they’d put the next one on tight up to the other one [chuckles], and I had a fellow who’s six foot three in front of me and he started going like that [laughs] and jumped out of the [unclear].
IP: Went down like a sack of spuds, yeah.
NS: Right, so that’s the only reason that I was in the bank clerk, I suppose I’d got the fact that I'd done some extra work at the bank with- Banking, you know, banking law, nothing to do with it, but, we’re all- And the thing that struck me it was being push here, push there and we were in digs in Redcar and I'll never forget the porridge it was burnt every morning [chuckles] and- But we then ended in nice digs in Leeds, lovely widow and she looked after the two of us and we’d all [unclear] what’d be known [unclear] and we walked in the first morning, we sat in anticipation and this [unclear] walked in and said, ‘Good morning gentlemen, take a seat’ [laughs]. Gentleman [emphasis] [laughs] oh, what a change, yes.
IP: So, just trying to get this back where we are now. So, we’ve gone- Done your basic training, did you go to Redcar before you went to Leeds then, or after?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ok, so it was Redcar first, then Leeds and then you went down to London, The Albert Hall, and did your radar mechanic training there, came in the top two of your course there and then- So what- And how did you- I mean, did you enjoy- Did you enjoy it, was it, was it- How did you find that phase of being down in London and the training down there and what have you?
NS: In all the wave forms and things that we learnt, it’s fascinating [emphasis] and I really did enjoy that, yeah.
IP: Had you- So when you’d been growing up, I mean, had you, had you done any sort of electrical, electronics or electrical stuff-
NS: No, nothing.
IP: - sort of crystal radios or any of that sort of stuff?
NS: No, well they had a whiskers, you know the old, [unclear] whiskers [chuckles] those little- Yes, and- But, nothing further than that. I’d no, I'd no mechanical background.
IP: Oh right.
NS: No.
IP: Yeah.
NS: But it- They’d got a good volunteer [unclear] and I mean, they picked somebody who they- I did, I did very well.
IP: It sounds that way. So, what happened then after you left? Did you say you were about six months, you think in London?
NS: Yeah.
IP: So now we must be into 1943, I guess, something like that, or maybe, or maybe later than that I don’t know, do you remember?
NS: No, not- It wasn’t as long as that I don’t think.
IP: Ok.
NS: And then it was posted to Gransden Lodge.
IP: Right.
NS: Canadians.
IP: Yes.
NS: That was lovely.
IP: Yeah, 405 Squadron. So- And you were posted onto the squadron? You weren’t stationed personally?
NS: No, no.
IP: You were on the squadron-
NS: There were two of us, two Englishmen among the- All the rest were Canadian radar mechanics, because we hadn’t got them at that time
IP: Ah, right.
NS: I assumed that we were still training them, you know, but- And then, I wish I'd taken the names because there was just a gang, you know [laughs]. In fact, when I went to- I’ll tell you in a minute if you want to know why I moved to-
IP: Little Staughton?
NS: Yes, Little Staughton. What was I leading up to there? Oh yes, I'm in Little Staughton and Christmas I cycled over because it’s was only about eight miles and I had my Christmas with the whole gang in Gransden Lodge.
IP: Ah, ok. So, right- Just, just going back. So, I get the impression you were happy to be a radar mechanic, I mean you said you enjoyed it, you said you found it fascinating. So, and I supposed compared to some things you could’ve ended up doing, it was great.
NS: It was a, a marvellous piece of equipment.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And you’ll see I've got a [unclear] on the inside, and when I came out, I was then mending people’s televisions, but you see then you went all this funny business and that, nothing like mine, you see, [unclear] red tube and things.
IP: And so, you joined the squadron, 405 Squadron, it was- Well, your section, the radar mechanic section, how big- How many people were there in the section then? Do you remember, roughly?
NS: Um-
IP: I mean, are we talking ten? Fifteen?
NS: Well there was about the same as on that photograph which is at Little Staughton, it’ll be about fourteen in this I suppose
IP: Ok, alright, so- But, two of you were Brits and the other, the other twelve were Canadian, and how do you, how did you find them? Were they friendly? Were they a friendly lot?
NS: Oh yes, they would- Yes, marvellous [chuckles] and they used to, you know, mock limeys and that sort of thing, but they were great fellas. The [unclear] particularly a man called Moon Mullin, and he had shock of hair like an Indian and he was a real rover. They couldn’t touch them you see, because as soon as you got one step from the safe it said ‘Private [emphasis], no entry’.
IP: Ah yes, yes, so behind closed doors sort of thing, yeah, yeah.
NS: Yeah, we did no mucking about, flying drill or anything like that, we just looked after our own [unclear] you know, along that and that was [unclear].
IP: Ah, and did you feel that you were part of 405 Squadron? Were-
NS: Yes, I was very sorry to leave it and it wasn’t to my- Actually, I can tell you later, it wasn’t to my- It’s tied up with the corporal, it wasn’t my- It wasn’t to my best and it was all because the radar officer found out- When I went there, I went there as an AC1 and within two, three weeks he’d made me a LAC because I was so good, and they then wanted to form a new squadron at Great Staughton, or Little Staughton [unclear] and they’d taken the half from one English one and half from the other English one, but they needed the officer and they took the officer who was English, with the Canadian and he had- He said then, he said, ‘We want one more’, so he came to me and he said, ‘I’m going to move to- And I’m taking you with me’. I thought, well I'm gonna be alright here, he’d look after me. Did he hell [emphasis]. I got there, and of course, what happened was that after a few weeks it came to the idea of this new squadron getting there, getting there informa- Getting their [unclear] better, you know, going up to corporals, and they were- And I thought, well, the two- They’d already got theirs, two from one half and the other two, so no [unclear], and that was it, and nobody said anything, and I thought oh that’s a bit [unclear] and it dawned on me why. This half, ‘Oh we want this man’, this half, ‘We want this man’, and ‘I want this fella’, no way mate, you haven’t got any supporters there, and then didn’t have- That was my first time that I wasn’t made a corporal [chuckles] which I should’ve been because I was in- You know, he took me with him because he thought I was good [emphasis].
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
NS: But, anyway I didn’t want the job, because at the [unclear] I start off by doing DI’s every morning in the cold-
IP: Daily inspections? Yes.
NS: [Unclear] and then I got into the- When I got to Great Staughton, I was put on the bench doing- We didn’t do Magnetron, I didn’t- Never got- Didn’t know how it worked but that was obviously a big secret. But I did the H2S and the Gee, putting the faults right on them. I always remember, I loved that, it’s like a detective model. You go through all the, the [chuckles]-
IP: The diagnosis?
NS: Yes, the- You’d got a big, a big book of all the info- The brown [unclear] that goes to that, and that- And you used an oscilloscope because you got a wave form, that’s [unclear] wave forms for television, they go quickly down and then slowly, quickly down because you’re putting it into the devalves[?] and you’re making it move, the dots, so you get that- It’s- It makes it move round on the screen and when I got to the other- Great Staughton they said, ‘Well you know quite a lot about H2S so we’ll do it on the Benson[?]’ and I was doing it one morning and I couldn’t find this damn fault and I thought, oh it’s lunchtime so I got on my bicycle, because you all had bikes then, and I'm cycling and I think, oh I didn’t try that one, I'll have to go, ‘Norman put your hat on’ [shouts] [laughs]. I’m trying to [unclear] a bloody war on, and you’re telling, put my hat on [chuckles].
IP: Have to get your priorities right.
NS: [Laughs]
IP: Hats are everything.
NS: [Unclear] a bit.
IP: Right, so just, just going back to- Was it 405 Squadron- Were they already on the pathfinder force when you joined them then?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: So- And was, was that one reason- Because you were top of your course were you particularly selected for the pathfinder force do you think? Or, or did it not quite work that way, or don’t you know?
NS: Well, I mean the thing was you went to Gransden Lodge and it was pathfinders and I don’t know whether I was chosen- I don’t know where the others went, you know, [unclear].
IP: Yeah, yeah, ok, yeah. Did you, did you understand at the time what the pathfinders were all about? Did you understand how the, how the bomber offensive was working kind of thing?
NS: Yeah, oh yes.
IP: So you, so you were- I mean this is, this is the whole thing that interests me of this whole- Being part of the squadron and understanding what was going on ‘cause as an LAC you might reasonably not know exactly what they were doing and what was required. Somebody turns up with a broken H2S-
NS: LAC is the highest technical thing you can get to.
IP: Right.
NS: So you’re bound to know, you know.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you were well treated on, on the squadron?
NS: Oh yes, yeah.
IP: What did you, did you have any thoughts at the time about what the bomber crews were doing? About what they were going off to do, did you think about it at all?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: And what were your thoughts?
NS: Very, very traumatic, you know, and we used to see them off at that time it was like metrology[?] mare[?], eighteen aircraft one behind the other, and I'll tell you the story what I did- Happened to me on that line [chuckles] if you’re interested?
IP: Yeah, go on then?
NS: And- But- And we- At the front of it, it had the caravan with a dome and the red light and green light and they’re there in case a fault starts before they get off, so you can see them off, and then you see them back, and that was it.
IP: Yeah, so you used to watch them come in?
NS: And that’s three you’ve got.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you get to know the crews quite- Or
NS: No.
IP: I mean-
NS: Not a click.
IP: You didn’t meet the navigators or anything like that who are dealing with the equipment?
NS: Well, I did because I was put in charge of what was like a big toy. It was a huge tank- Well a tank, ten foot by ten foot, full of water with a little scanner and underwater you can have it at a pay low frequency, so it’s a mock-up of the H2S in- Underwater, and you had the controls at the side and they had to- Before they got their little badge, extra pay, they had to pass the test I gave them to get to Berlin underwater [chuckles] which is fascinating
IP: Yeah.
NS: I always thought it would do lovely for the kids, pathetic, this little thing buzzing under water, and had this arose because you asked me something-
IP: ‘Cause I was asking you how well, how well you got to know the navigators and that-
NS: So I did get to know some of them and one particular one, they were in- This was at- I didn’t do it at Great Staughton, I did it at Gransden Lodge and one I’d got friendly with and he- And his brother was also in aircrew, so there was another there and we all went out for a drink at times, and to put it short, we saw them right through to the end.
NS: Yeah.
IP: And we counted it [unclear].
NS: Yeah, no that’s ok, that’s I- I understand. So, you said you- That you went to see the Lancasters off and that sort of stuff, and that must’ve been eighteen I think you said on the squadron, that must’ve been quite- I mean it must’ve been really impressive seeing eighteen, eighteen Lancaster-
NS: Yes, they stopped it very quickly because one night [unclear] all 8 Group into [unclear] he was there from senior, saw them all there and went down the line, so they stopped it very fast.
IP: A German intru-
NS: Bomber.
IP: Oh bomber, or an intruder- Well, doesn’t matter really, does it but-
NS: Yes, it was a foreign air, aircraft. So now they used to wait to be pulled off the outlined positions, one at a time. But it used- It was quite a, you know, quite an occasion. Everybody was there, all the ground crew were seeing them off and it was quite a- Quite emotional.
IP: And did you have to deal with anything with the aircraft at that stage then, or?
NS: We would’ve done if there’d been an error because they’d run all aircrafts, all their instruments are put in through it as while they were waiting and if there were- No I didn’t- Never had one- That was my servicing during the day [chuckles].
IP: So you have to- So if there was a problem with the H2S or, or, well Gee, you had to jump on board the aircraft and try and do a quick, a quick fix?
NS: Oh, we had more that, we had to jump on anyway because the Germans had got the Gee and it’s a very accurate piece of information in this, in this country it was at one end of the runway to the other, and we didn’t want this happening so they decided we’ll delay the actual frequency until the last minute. So, it was- We had about ten boxes all with a different set-up and each one had another ten, so there was a hundred choice and that was only put in twenty minutes before take-off, and job of radar mechanic was to put them in the back of the van, get the [unclear] WAAF to drive at the end, starting and went jump in the first one, up to the eye[?], over the back, [unclear] room, ‘'scuse me’, get to the next [imitates vehicle]. Eighteen, one after the other and you’ve got seventy-two machineries in front of you, propellers [imitates propeller] noise and this particular- Next one, next one I got to, seventeen, eighteen, eighteen [imitates vehicle] right up to the front and the wireless op was there with his headset round his neck and I'm just screwing it up and hear- And on his, on his- In the earphones, ‘Are you ready for take-off [unclear]’ [imitates aircraft engine] and we were swinging onto the, ‘Me, me’ [chuckles]. So, ‘We’ve got a foreigner, stop, stop’. So, I had to say, ‘I’ll just finish this’, ‘Ok, cheers’. Go down into the mid-upper, ‘'scuse me, could you open the [unclear] door?’. ‘Cause I couldn’t open it from the inside, never had done that, I could open it from the outside. He’d have to get out- I delayed them ten minutes while I [chuckles] I don’t know whose fault it was. I mean I was going at a noble pace standard every time before, I think they were a bit ready that, bit-
IP: A bit keen to go?
NS: Yeah.
IP: So you nearly got a free ticket to Hamburg or Cologne or Berlin or wherever?
NS: On 405 Squadron they had brothers and such and occasionally they used to take the brother with them, very illegal.
IP: I know, I know that passengers used to go occasionally, and there’s some really sad stories of course about bombers being shot down with passengers on board who shouldn’t, who shouldn’t have been there really.
NS: They could shoot them.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Because Hitler’s spies.
IP: Mhmm.
NS: That’s why I-
IP: So you, so you didn’t- You never went on a, on a trip? Would you have liked to?
NS: No.
IP: No.
NS: I’m not a- I couldn’t have stood it. I used to think, how do those lads do it day after day? And I came to the conclusion the only thing that kept them going was the comradery between the crew. You can’t tell anybody now, so you keep going but- I know it's a bad day today but this could be a bright, summers afternoon and they climb in that bloody aircraft and go out and come back two having gun- Not coming back and then you got to go again two days later and it goes on and on for forty of them.
IP: Yeah, yeah.
NS: Which is amazing.
IP: Yeah, absolutely incredible, yeah, I take my hat off to them.
NS: I used to say to people, just before you start criticising them, just put yourself in their position
IP: Yeah.
NS: In the army, you have [unclear] bloody army and a fired battle and people getting blown to bits and then you pulled help and you have a rest. Those lads go every morning knowing they’re going, by the afternoon they’ll be off, maybe two days rest or what, you know, and I, you know, I admire them to the fullest.
IP: Mhmm, yeah, couldn’t agree more. Right, so we’ll- That’s, that’s- I think you’ve provided some really interesting information there. You moved onto 582 Squadron at RAF Little Staughton which is near Great Staughton I know that much. Was that- But you were working the bay then weren’t you, so you had less interaction with the aircraft and the crews I suppose but you were still doing the diagnostic stuff. Was, was that much of a change then, being on 582 after 405? Did you- I mean, it sounds like you missed 405 because you said went back for their Christmas dinner?
NS: Yes, yes.
IP: But, but was it a big change going to 582 or?
NS: Well, yes, I didn’t want to go but it [unclear] you know, orders is orders and he was gonna take me with him.
IP: That’s right.
NS: But of course, I- If I'd have stayed in 405, I’d have been a corporal. It was very sad that he was trying to do something good and it didn’t work that way, well I could’ve- And an interesting thing, I mean to prove it, we had to be on duty, one every night, one- And I was in this- I was in there and I walked into the office, looked around and there was a waste paper basket and pulled it out, it’s torn up and said ‘LAC Shakesby corporal’. So it’d got to the point actually putting it forward and they’d killed it
IP: Mhmm.
NS: And I went right through until [chuckles]- I can tell you that- I won’t tell you, but I can have so many- Every time- I had four other times when I just didn’t- Just missed it, and the last time was when I was being demobbed. The officer on- At Waddington, when I went to sign and get it signed off, he said, ‘You know, you’ve got an awfully good record here Shakesby’, he said, ‘You know, you should’ve been made a corporal’, I said, ‘Well, it’s just the way’, he said, ‘I’ll- Going to put it- I’ll put it in for you, I’m going on leave for three weeks’, and I was demobbed by the time he got back [chuckles], so it’s- Such is the world.
IP: Yeah.
NS: But it would’ve been nice because my wife, my wife would’ve got more money and I’d have got a bit more kudos.
IP: So you were married by then?
NS: Yes.
IP: When did you get married then?
NS: Pardon?
IP: When did you get married?
NS: 1946.
IP: Oh, I see, oh ok, so this was- Right, not during the war then, it was after the war that you got married. Ok, alright well-
NS: Yes, it was actually almost VE Day, V- No, no- Let me go-
IP: How did you meet your wife?
NS: I was- She was a girl in the digs we’re in in Leeds.
IP: Ah, ok. Right, so you kept in the touch all the time as you were moving round the air force and then- Oh ok, then you got married, wow. Yeah, ok.
NS: Too early, but [chuckles]-
IP: You did what you do don’t you?
NS: I got [unclear] I've got two boys.
IP: So, that kind of ties into my next- What was going to be my next question actually, which was how- What did you do for social life when you’re on the squadrons then? What, what social life did you have?
NS: Mainly in- The British Legion had a bar on the, on the drome and they had a special bitter and we used to end up there playing dominos and what not and every time, every few weeks or when- You had a day off and there was a bus to Cambridge and I well remember having been drinking the night before and getting on the bus the next morning and I was trying to keep upright [chuckles].
IP: Bit worse for wear?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah yes, nothing changes. So, so it was- And, so you’re going to Cambridge with your mates and that sort of stuff and- So you’re going to Cambridge with your mates and what have you?
NS: Well, normally I usually was on my own, you were the only one off from there-
IP: Ah yes, yes of course, yeah, yeah, ok, and did you get any leave? What did you do- I suppose you’d have gone to see your girlfriend or whatever-
NS: Yes, we usually had weekends towards the end of- Later time until the, as I say, the bomb dropped in Japan and they- We all- Had to be sent back and they didn’t know what to do with us, so they sent us to the Middle East as- With the radio mines, and then because I got- I’m now jumping very quickly-
IP: Well, I was just gonna say. So, you, you did your time on 582 Squadron, I think- Yeah, we’ll cut that sort of stuff. So, you did your time on 582 Squadron and then were you on 582- So VE Day happened, were you still on 582 then?
NS: Yes, yeah.
IP: You got married around about that time as it happened, did you get- Where did you go- Did you go back to Leeds to get married or?
NS: Yeah.
IP: Ok, was she a Leeds girl then I take it?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah right, ok, and- So, VE Day came, you were still kept in the air force ‘cause obviously they couldn’t demob everyone immediately and the Japanese war was still going on anyway, and then they dropped the bomb- So- But you weren’t up to then- ‘Cause I know numbers of the bomber command squadrons were, were ready to go to the Far East and some of them were converted to transport squadrons as well-
NS: Yeah, we, we were ready to go, we got the clearing and we were starting to, to convert onto Lincolns.
IP: As, as a transport squadron or as a bomber?
NS: Yeah.
IP: Ok, as a transport squadron.
NS: Well I thought- We thought as a bomber.
IP: Oh I see, ok, yeah, yeah. So- Right- Ah that’s interesting. So, so you’re waiting for that but then as you say, the bomb- The atom bomb was dropped-
NS: Fortunately, fortunately, weren’t looking forward to that bit [unclear]
IP: Yes- What- I suppose, just going back to VE Day, can you remember the- I mean this is just one of those general things if you were around at the time. Can you remember when the news came through that the war had ended?
NS: Yes, I think I- It was a morning I remember on the radio, and there was [laughs] great hilarity from everybody on the [unclear] as we can well imagine.
IP: Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say what was your reaction? What did you think about it?
NS: Oh, we wanted to go, it was an adventure [unclear]
IP: Yeah.
NS: [Unclear] we’d been- I’d been in the air force a length of time by then.
IP: Yeah. So, you were ready to go home?
NS: I was.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So- But as it turned out then, 582 was pointed out to go out to the Far East and- I mean from your reaction it sounds like you didn’t want to do that but-
NS: We were dispersed all over and we were sent out to the Middle East, and I was spent with- Two of us, two- Where a ground [unclear] team was operating for the Middle East and we had eight Nissen huts on this barren- Well it’s- I think there’s a photograph of it actually, and we, we went on AS[?] and then did a bit of overhauling then, and we got all the messages on the [unclear] screen in [unclear] morse code and I’d been there- And we used to go from there to Castel Benito, fifteen- Well you’ve seen them haven’t you, fifteen hairpin bends to get down to the flat plane and then the- It’s still an airport for Tripoli and they had two tents for us and we’d arrive this, you know, fairly dirty [unclear] and the white things on the [unclear] and you’d say, ‘AMES’, ‘Oh, that bloody lot’ [chuckles], air ministry experimenting, and they had two, two tents for us and we fed there and we stayed the day and then we went back, and then a day went with nobody and then the next one went and back, and we were doing this about [unclear]- About three months, it said, ‘Shut down, these are your orders, close [unclear] shut it off’. So, [unclear] won’t shut it off, we just carried on going down, nobody did a thing. We had two months where nobody did anything but play monopoly and go [laughs]- We had a- And there was a little village, we went through it to get to the set, there was one photograph showing the Nissen huts and they had little tin cans, the [unclear] smoke and they used to stop us and swap cigarettes for eggs, so we’d get eggs and then go, come back [unclear], and in that village there were two Italians, one was the electrician, he had an engine that he’d start by doing this [imitates engine] and they had electric lights but it went off at ten o’clock because that was the orders, and the other one was a bar and we used to go down to the bar, nobody else went except us and there’d be all liqueurs on, we used to drink our way down them [chuckles] and they had a little girl and she taught me to say [sings a tune]- Can’t I’ve forgotten the words now.
IP: The Italian national anthem it sounds like, was that the one? I don’t know but- So- Right- Because I was thinking you must’ve been desperate to get home but it sounds like you were having quite a good time in the Middle East really.
NS: Well, it wasn’t- Mixed feeling, I mean ok, I could’ve done without it. Then they sent us back to Cairo and they said to put us on then this, this- Well, dismantling these radar, because the- We’d only been the few, the rest were still doing that. So- And we had our tents in a little enclosure and guards at the gate, so and then we’d get garries[?] to go into the treble 1MU, that’s the- That’s the- What we did, called it, and I got there on my own, having flown and I thought well [unclear] I'll go on parade. ‘Airmen, get your hair cut, get that shined up’, and I thought bloody hell mate I haven’t been- And all the lads round me were eighteen and I was twenty-two, you know, and I knew the ropes a bit, ‘Oh righto, sir’, and I found out then that the guards at the gate were from some foreign, foreign empire, maybe- I’ve forgotten which one it was then, but they went off duty at ten to seven and the British got in- On at seven o’clock, gap of ten minutes, so I used to go out at five to [chuckles] because by that time [unclear] I had a severe stomach dysentery, or not as bad as that but when I came out the fella said, ‘You feeling better?’, I said, ‘Yes’, ‘cause he was being in the hospital. ‘Have your bowels moved today?’, ‘Yes’, ‘How many times?’, ‘Twenty-four’ [chuckles] and the toilets were the other end, you know [chuckles] that’s your fault from doing- Getting it. So, he said, ‘Would you like to do a misemployed?’, he said ‘You won't get any pay and you’re still on tread with 1MU, but there’s a hotel, Regina, which looks after all the posts in the Middle East, they have three offices in descending ranks, wing commander all this, and several women who [unclear] and I have to decide, the person is going is a corporal and he’s being demobbed, would you like to take his job?’. I said, ‘Yeah, that sounds ok’. So, I used to walk out every morning- This is why I got [unclear] going out early before the- And arrive at the hotel, and it was quite pleasant [unclear] the three offices used to have a bit of a [unclear] and then I'd watch the girls and, and- So when we- All the correspondence came through me, and this [unclear] oh, airmen with whatever they called it release over, under, sixty, home. Oh, I'm fifty-eight. The wing commander came in he said, ‘I see you’ve read that Shakesby’, I said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Well, we’re going to make you a corporal and we’ll keep you’, and I thought, like hell you will [chuckles]. So, ‘Yes, thank you sir’. This is the next time I didn’t get it.
IP: Yeah, yeah.
NS: So I got on the bicycle and I biked out to treble 1MU, it was about four miles and went to the dis office and knocked [knocks], ‘Yes’, ‘Hello corporal, you’ll be wanting to see me soon’, ‘Why? What’, I said, ‘Well this, you know, people, I'm due for the re-pat’, ‘Oh god, we don’t know, it’s not’, I said, ‘I know it’s true because I've seen the-’. I said, ‘But, just remember I belong to this unit, not that hotel, I'm fifty-eight’, ‘No’ he said ‘I’ve got- Ok’.
IP: When you say you’re 58, what, what do you mean?
NS: That’s a number.
IP: What, as in your service number, or-?
NS: Just a number relating to your- Time you’ve been in.
IP: Right, gotcha, ok, yep.
NS: Well and the- Fifty-eight was- And it was up to sixty, you see. So, he said, ‘We’ll look after you’. So, I went back and several weeks went by, [unclear] to get moving, got to organise transport and everything to get the fifty to home, and then it came through, LAC Shakesby report back to M- 71 MU and [chuckles]- I still remember that face of that officer, ‘Oh’, he said ‘I see you are’, I said ‘Yes sir’ [chuckles].
IP: On the way.
NS; He said, ‘Pity we were going to make you a corporal’, I said, ‘Yeah, well I know which I prefer’ [chuckles]
IP: And that was you- So you were demobbed once you got back to the UK then?
NS: No.
IP: Oh.
NS: No. I had then- How long was it before I was demobbed. That was a different thing from being demobbed, it was just they were using it for this particular group who’d been sent overseas knowing nothing what else to do with them. You know, I can’t remember-
IP: So when you went back to the UK, where did you go to then?
NS: Waddington.
IP: Right.
NS: And I lived in the Black Swan, every night, I was there when I went to get my signatures [unclear] office and said, ‘Are you arriving or leaving?’, I said, ‘I’m leaving sir’, ‘I don’t remember seeing you’, so you know. Of course, the radar officer knew because I'd said to him- My parents lived down the road, he said, ‘I’ll get the sleeping out pass for-But I'm going on a- I’ve got to come back, I'll be back several weeks’, and of course it was just over weeks, I just went home and came back again. I thought that if I'd been in [unclear] too long.
IP: Knew how to keep your head down.
NS: I mean [unclear] looked around they were all bogs, you know, and- And he said to me, he said- And he was looking at that, he said, ‘This is an excellent report’, he said, ‘Why are you still not a corporal’, I said, ‘Well, there’s a story’ [chuckles].
IP: Yeah, ok. So- But Waddington was your last base?
NS: Yes.
IP: And then you were demobbed?
NS: Yes.
IP: Was that a good day?
NS: Yes [chuckles] the only thing was that, it had been all this snow and ice, which took me off my bicycle every morning and evening. They sent me to the west coast to be demobbed and there wasn’t a snow flake over here, they hadn’t had any snow, and by the time I got back we were flooded out, we couldn’t get into the village, the snow melted all this stuff and, and that was-
IP: And where, where did you go? Once you were demobbed, where did you go then? What, what happened? Where did you go to live and what did you do for work?
NS: This is when I went to the west coast to be signed off and-
IP: Yep, yeah, and given your suit-
NS: And then went back and they said ‘Cheerio’ on-
IP: But, where did you go? Did you go back to Lincoln? ‘Cause your wife presumably was still up- Was she still in Leeds at the time?
NS: No, she was living in Hykeham, where my parents were.
IP: Ok, right.
NS: So, yes I just walked out and I'd got my civvies over in the west coast, sent back on the rail pass, said- Went to see the radar office who said, ‘Well thank you, cheers’, pity about that, pity you were on gone leave, I might’ve been a corporal but never mind.
IP: And what did, what did you do work wise then? Once you left the RAF, what happened about that?
NS: My father was, being the pub, was great friends with a fellow who was one of the officers in the Russen Hornsby, they build- Built electric motors for the mines, and he said I could get a- And I had a- I applied then for the- I went to see my headmaster and he said, ‘Well, would you like to take up teaching?’, I said, ‘Yes’, he said, ‘Well there’s an emergency scheme for anybody who wants to, you’ve got the right- You’ve got matriculation’, he said, ‘But one thing, they’ll offer you twelve months’, he said, ‘Don’t- Go for the full time one which is still being used by everybody normally because it then, I think the others might be down paraded a bit by not being the full course’, and he said, ‘Apply to Leeds’. So, I applied to Leeds and I had to wait a year, and I was then working in this chaser in the, what you call them, [unclear]- Anyway they built these, this-
IP: Mhmm.
NS: And my job was to go around the stem[?] all and they had a- They had a foundry[?], they had a machine shop and they had, what’s the others? Anyway, there were three different processes and they used to get stuck with the bits at one of them, these can’t go ahead until that goes, so my job was to go and hurry it up you see.
IP: Trouble-shooter?
NS: Yes and just before I left, I found out where they kept all their information for each of the [unclear] each one of them in a Kardex system and if you looked at this Kardex system it shows what the- The number of the machine and where it was. Well, when the oddbod, boss at my office went to the weekly- Say, ‘Why aren’t we getting on with this?’, and they’d say, ‘Well, we can’t get, can’t get the thing out of the machine shop’, ‘Oh well’. So, I thought I’ll check this, so I went- Nobody stopped me and I pulled out, where is it? Oh, it’s in, it’s in the [unclear] oh, boilers, the boiler shop. So, I went back to my boss, I said, ‘That one, it’s in the boiler shop’, So he went [chuckles] to the next meeting, ‘It’s in the boiler shop’, ‘What, how did you find that out?’, and I thought this is a ridiculous English industry, they told [unclear] from where they want- Don’t want to be caught napping, that they deliberately don’t let people know what they should know.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Anyway, I thought I'm leaving after a fortnight, so I got a bad name, I can tell you, ‘Don’t do that mate, don’t tell them where we are, let them find out’, I said, ‘I have found out’, he said, ‘Well you’re out of orders, you can’t go in that place, it’s not your’- [Chuckles]
IP: So-
NS: Is this irrelevant? I don’t know-
IP: No, no, no it’s- No, it’s not at all. But you went to Leeds from there to do, to do teacher training?
NS: Yes.
IP: Whereabouts in Leeds were you doing that then?
NS: Brickett and-
IP: On Briggate?
NS: Yeah- No, not Briggate. It’s the-
PB: Beckett..
NS: Beckett.
IP: Oh, Becket college.
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah right, which is now- Which became Leeds polytechnic and is now-
NS: Well, it was polytechnic [unclear] when we were there-
IP: University of Leeds or Metropolitan or something, yeah.
NS: And the- I was there, the second [unclear] and they just had one more, there were three intakes of the men- And the girls were the- From school and so here was the men's dormitory and there was the girl's dormitory with the various names and there’s as [unclear] used to say, ‘There are two-hundred men chasing two-hundred women across the quad’ [chuckles] ‘cause we were behind them on the rotation and they were eighteen and we were almost twenty-six. It’s a bit- I mean I, I was [unclear] with my wife, I was true to her and, and because we’d got a baby by that time anyway.
IP: Oh right, ok.
NS: And- But the others had a whale of a time, the single men.
IP: Yeah, yeah, and was your wife back in Hykeham still-
NS: Leeds.
IP: In- Oh, she, she went with you to Leeds?
NS: Yes.
IP: Yeah, so what- How long did the teacher training last then?
NS: Two years.
IP: Ok and what were you, what were you going to teach?
NS: Well, it was all- They were all primary.
IP: Ah right, yeah, ok.
NS: And I'd got matriculation and, on the way back one day when we were going back to our own houses, there was a- One of the other fellows he said, ‘I’ve just appealed to London University for a degree’. Well, I didn’t want to do- I mean I'd been doing it ten years and [unclear] a reunion [unclear] and that’s- I was trying to [unclear]- Yes, we had a reunion and I'll put in for the training he said. Oh, so I wrote to the London University of course I wanted- I remembered that fellow on the Leeds, where we- In our training, ‘Good Morning Gentlemen’, I thought that’s fair fee for me, I want to be further education me, and- So I wrote to the London and they said, ‘Well you’ve got a matriculation so you get interview’, and of course there was no financial aid, I had to pay the lot and I had to do it at home. So, I did a- With a [unclear] two children and my wife, sorry I'm going to be working all night and I did it nearly every night for five years.
IP: To do a degree course from home? Distanced learning.
NS: Yes.
IP: I didn’t know they did that in those days
NS: It was- Well it’s- It’s called private and I've got the list of all- And there is a whole lot of people who were doing it at home.
IP: Oh right, ok.
NS: Then.
IP: Oh, what was your degree course in then?
NS: Mine was- I was in second- I was in economics
IP: Oh right, goodness, ok. So, and you were at that- You were teaching at that stage I presume?
NS: Yes-
IP: Which-
NS: In a small village which was- It was the only one left in Bedfordshire which went from five to fifteen and I used to take the juniors and all of the group for music. I got on quite well. I could play the piano roughly and I had to play for the hymns, and I had to take the- All the ones for music and, and I quite enjoyed it because I got them first of all in the juniors with- The music man came to see me he said, ‘You’re doing very well here’, he said, ‘Would you like to have a set of percussions, [unclear] for the juniors?’, said, ‘Yes’. So, we got tambourines and all sorts of things and a record player and they used to- And it- I taught them [chuckles] I taught them on tables because they used to say, ‘You’re the violins, you’re the flutes’, and I put the radio on and say, ‘Right [hums a tune] one, two, four, two, four, three, four’, and if it was a wet Sunday, a wet half-time, you know-
IP: Yeah.
NS: Playground. They’d say, ‘We’ll stay in, can we do the music?’ and they loved it.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And they learnt their tables by god.
IP: Which village in Bedfordshire was it, can you remember?
NS: Yes. Riseley.
IP: Oh, ok.
NS: It’s just off the main road.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Down, Bedford.
IP: Right.
NS: And it’s one of the best years in my life, but for my wife as well. That village was fantastic[emphasis]. We had a drama group, I'm into drama, we had [unclear] drama group with no end- We used to win trophies and we had the vicar who was- He used to say, ‘Oh Mr Shakesby, [unclear] bring Mr Shakesby a cup of tea’, and he could do everything [unclear] of comedy and the other fellow was a- He’d been Bedford, Bedford, what do you call it? Anyway, Bedford Modern. I don’t know whether you know, it’s a public school?
IP: I’ve heard of it.
NS: Yeah, and he- And his father was a big farmer but he’d been robbed by [unclear] and went- During the war, somebody had done him down and they were down in quite poor circumstances. They lived in a little cottage and when my wife and I went for tea they had a little girl who had look of [unclear] said- And her coat of arms, she was an Irish professional tennis player and Godfrey, he was mad about drama and he and I- Because he used to get the artistic side and I was the [unclear]- I’ll, I'll produce this one, and used to go to London, when the, what’s it [unclear] all the musicals, and he’d come back with the music and put different words to them, quite illegal, and we had a very good pianist and we used to do these and, and I've got all the photographs of them [chuckles] and he used to say, ‘Hello [emphasis] Norman’, and the people who had- The- In Bedford there was a factory which made chalks for the schools.
IP: Ok.
NS: And they used to come- They were also from Bedford Modern in their schooldays, and they used to come to the village and Godfrey was there and he’d say, ‘Hello [emphasis]’ [laughs]. Anyway, that’s not RAF [chuckles].
IP: No, no, that’s alright, but going back to the RAF, did you find it hard to adjust after the war? After you left the RAF then, or did you just slip into being a civilian again no trouble?
NS: I found it very easy.
IP: Very easy?
NS: Very easy.
IP: Yeah, you just put it all behind you and cracked on sort of thing? Oh ok. But what were your thoughts at the time about- ‘Cause obviously, by then Bomber Command people had turned their backs on what had gone on during the war pretty much, did you have any thoughts at the time about that? Or, or were you not concerned greatly?
NS: Sorry about?
IP: About how, how the world- Or how the country was starting to look on the bomber offensive and that sort of stuff and trying to forget all about that stuff.
NS: I wasn’t very happy, you know, and when it got worse and worse, when they had this old thing built and somebody knocked it down and, you know, in one of the parks and I thought, oh this- You know, but you can’t do anything can you? So- But I always had a great admiration for those lads and I pushed it whenever I could and say, ‘Hey, just a minute you saying that, just think this, they go on, you know, this eight, ten-mile- Ten hour and then they come back and have a cup of tea and go to bed and then they’ve got to go again in two days' time’. My friend, I met him up at Great Staughton, we’d been on- He was the other one of the two, and he came and he was on, on Mosquitos with what you call it, the Oboe and that was much easier. They used to be setting off at eleven at night, ours would’ve been in the air by eight, by then [chuckles] and they were back home and, [unclear] by night fighters, so if you want to go on ops, go on-
IP: Mosquiots.
NS: He was a little fellow and, and the radar, the Oboe was in the front and it was a thing like the front of a car, the lid lifted up and then he went- And one day he was in there, in the seat and somebody came along and pushed it and shut it up and the thing took off [chuckles]. I met him after and he was- He said, ‘I didn’t want that again’. He said, ‘Somebody came and shoved it, next thing I knew we were rumbling down the runway’, and the pilot came back because he felt there was a big weight on the front, something wrong with his aircraft, he wasn’t going on ops he was doing, you know, what are they called? When they do this-
IP: Yeah, just a, an engine test or whatever it-
NS: [Unclear] and lifted up the-
IP: Was he in the nose of the aircraft then?
NS: Sorry?
IP: He was stuck in the nose of the aircraft?
NS: Yes, yeah, you know, just room for a little fella in there, he was [unclear] like this and he’s sort of leaning over there and this [chuckles]-
IP: Good grief.
NS: Another funny story.
IP: Yeah, yeah ‘cause there are two VC’s won at 582 Squadron during the time you were there, but I don’t know if you would’ve- If you would’ve known about that, there was a South African captain won a, won a Victoria Cross and a chap flying in a Mosquito won one as well but- But that doesn’t ring any bells? I don’t know whether that news would’ve percolated down or not. ok. So, so you- Did you spend your whole working life as a teacher then? Was that how you- That was your career as it were?
NS: Yes, I got my degree, I got a job in a- Well I got a job in Bedford College because there was a job offering for business to them, accounts, accounting, which is my- One of my- And it was night- They had a night team there and a night school with- That with the adults and that [unclear]. The only thing was, the nasty part [unclear] was that I had to hand the [unclear], you know, apprentices and the plumbers on, what you call, general studies.
IP: Oh yeah, yeah.
NS: Absolutely back breaking, ‘Well what are we doing this here for ey mate?’ [chuckles] and I stuck it for a year and I couldn’t do it any more than that so- But I got into it, I got into FE, that’s my thing.
IP: Right.
NS: And so I went to Redcar, which was a new college and-
IP: And what did you teach there, at Redcar?
NS: Business studies, what I've just said.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And, commerce and all that side.
IP: Yes, yes.
NS: And I had a fantastic principal Joe Dunning and the- Is this irrelevant? [Chuckles]
IP: It’s all relevant.
NS: He- The- Redcar had been opened for one year for the engineers, business side and the general degree and A-level, O-levels were starting that time and there was five of us for the whole of the, that side and I remember sitting at the five with the head of the department [unclear] are we going to get anybody? ‘Cause we’d seen nobody yet, you know. When I left four years later, there were thirty-two [unclear] staff, from five and Joe [unclear]- I won’t go into that but that’s my sadness about missing- I found out only just recently that Joe Dunning had been here before he died.
IP: In- What, in Natland? Or in-
NS: Yes.
IP: Good heavens above.
NS: And I'd been in the same place, I desperately would’ve met him.
PB: And seen him.
IP: Yeah of course.
NS: ‘Cause I went to see him at one time, we went up Glasgow, ‘cause we went to Glasgow and I went onto the iPad and a glowing report of him in [unclear] he sorted all their technical colleges out and they’d given him this award and that award and he’d died in, well 2010 wasn't it? Or 5.
PB: Yeah, while we were here, yeah.
NS: And, it said- And his wife had retired to Penrith and there was an overlap of three, three-
PB: Years we were here.
NS: [Unclear] years, when we were both alive and he was- And he died by the time I got there. So- What some six weeks ago, I said I'd go and see the wife.
PB: Yeah we did, we met his wife.
NS: Delighted.
IP: Yes, yes, I bet, yeah.
NS: Of course, I got a programme because in my- I was only there for two years and that was because I fell out with a man in- Anyway, doesn’t matter. But- What, what he did, he’d seen one of my productions at Saltburn, so he’d been down to London and it was the Union of the Australia, New Zealand were having a technical week and then he went down to London, came back with- Full of [unclear] with Galileo and he said, ‘That’s what we’ll do with this, Galileo, and you are Galileo’. I’ve got the programme [chuckles] I’ve got it out there, and so I took part as Galileo and it was nice because after I'd seen his wife, his widow, she said [unclear] money, she said, ‘She remembers you in the, in the, that play’, I thought if you saw it, you should be ‘cause it’s a magnificent performance [chuckles].
IP: Did you, just- I think we’ll round it off- Oh blimey we’ve been going for a long time actually. Did you, did you keep in touch with any squadron members? I mean 405, they’re all Canadians so they would’ve gone off back to Canada I suppose, wouldn’t they, so you didn’t keep in touch with anyone after the war?
NS: No, no, no.
IP: Ok.
NS: No I lost touch with them all.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Once we came over from oversea because I kept meeting new, new bobs of people. I mean when we got to Tripoli with a ground [unclear] chain, that when we left there, we went to different places and then never met them again.
IP: Sure, ok.
NS: So I haven’t got a- Nobody.
IP: Well, we’ve been going for nearly an hour and a half-
NS: I know.
IP: -Norman, so I think, I think to save your strength we’ll call it- I’d just like to say, it’s fascinating listening to you, I mean I'm sure we could talk for hours more, but, but I think we’ll call a stop there, it’s been great. Thank you ever so much, I do appreciate it.
NS: Well, I’ve enjoyed it, it’s nice to talk about yourself.
IP: Exactly, exactly.
NS: You see, it’s the drama, dramatic in me [chuckles].
Dublin Core
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Interview with Norman Shakesby
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Ian Price
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2018-08-22
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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.
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AShakesbyFN180822, PShakesbyFN1801
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01:20:01 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Norman Shakesby was a radar mechanic on 405 and 582 Squadrons. Born in 1924, he was studying languages at The City School in Lincoln at the outbreak of the Second World War. His language teachers were quickly called up to act as interpreters, so on the advice of the headmaster, Norman left school and found employment as a junior bank clerk. He became a member of the Air Training Corps when it was formed, which paved the way for him to enlist in the RAF in November 1942. Having completed his basic training, Norman attended the Leeds College of Technology studying radio, from where he was selected to specialise in radar. Further training followed and he became proficient on both H2S and Gee radar. Posted onto 405 Canadian Squadron, Norman maintained the equipment on the aircraft. This also involved boarding aircraft before take-off to set the selected frequency for that operation. Care had to be taken with impatient crews, to ensure he wasn’t a reluctant passenger on operations. He had the greatest respect for the aircrew and witnessed the euphoria of them completing operations before going through the same emotions again a few days later. In 1944, a posting to 582 Squadron gave Norman a change, servicing equipment in a bay carrying out more detailed rectification. Following the ending of the war, a posting to the Middle East saw him complete his military service before returning to RAF Waddington and demobilisation. After meeting his old headmaster, he followed a career in teaching, initially employed as a primary school teacher at Riseley, Bedfordshire, before completing his degree and becoming involved in further education.
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Ian Whapplington
Tilly Foster
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Great Britain
Libya
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Libya--Tripoli
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1943
405 Squadron
582 Squadron
Gee
ground personnel
H2S
radar
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Little Staughton
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1125/11617/ASindallTH170801.1.mp3
f9b061c7d247788b9204765b3f063b26
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Title
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Sindall, James
James H Sindall
J H Sindall
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Timothy Sindall about his father, Wing Commander James Hepburn Sindall DSO (608158, 37365 Royal Air Force) and a photograph.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tim Sindall and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-01
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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.
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Sindall, JH
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 1st of August 2017 and I’m in East Horsley, in Surrey with Tim Sindall to talk about his father, James [unclear] Sindall, DSO. And we are going through all the details that Tim has amassed on his father’s life.
TS: Whilst my father James Heaven Sindall was alive, he in common with many others of his time very rarely spoke about his wartime experiences and yet I knew sufficient to respect him greatly for all he had achieved and was awed as to his unquestioned bravery in operations. After Madge, my mother, died at an all too early age, he withdrew into himself and sought solace in adventures at Salcombe for fishing, France, caravanning and Spain, a house he had built for him in an olive groove. He was careful as to those he accepted as friends for he was a handsome man and his neighbours never tired of trying to fix him up with solo female companions. But this was not what he wanted. He always welcomed my family to his house in [unclear] and he loved having us there for holidays, but he refused to install a telephone, so communications of other types relied upon the personal services. Only towards the very end of his life did I discover some tin trunks hidden under the stairs of the house where his sister lived and I didn’t have time to ferret around their contents until the end of the year 2010 when I came across his pilot’s flying logbooks, letters and other documents. These contained such a wealth of information that I simply knew that I had to commit time and energy in compiling his biography, not just for my own satisfaction but also for that of my family who had already begun to ask questions and to encourage my endeavours.
CB: Go.
TS: Chapter one in the biography is entitled flying begins between the years 1933 and ’36. James Heaven Sindall was born at home on the 12th of November 1909 at 41 Clock House Road, Beckenham urban district in the county of Kent to Annie Agnes Sindall and, formerly Heaven and Owen Sindall whose occupation was given as accounts clerk. The birth was registered on the 24th of December 1909 in the district of Bromley. James attended Worcester college Westcliff between 1922 and 1924 and then Eaton High School Southend from 1924 until 1927. One of his sports was boxing and we have a medal that he was awarded for his prowess in the sport. His civilian occupation after leaving school was as a clerk and include working for first, the Anglo International Bank EC between 1929 and 1933, then Novel Libraries Limited in 1934, and thirdly, the Bank of British West Africa between 1934 and ’35, all these appointments I believe to have been in London. But whilst he was working as a clerk, he joined the territorial army, the London regiment, the 14th, the London Scottish, as a private on the 20th of March 1929 and was promoted to Lance Corporal on the 16th of June 1932. He attended training camps annually between 1930 and 1933 but relinquished his appointment in January 1934 and was discharged on the 8th of July that year, quote, having been appointed to a commission in the RAFO and quote, RAFO means Reserve of RAF Officers. Whilst with the territorial army, James’s army number was 6666088. His military history sheet showed that his service was at home i.e. not abroad and that it counted as British, i.e. not India, and that its length was five years, 111 days. Now we move on to 1933, to a paragraph entitled flying training in Essex. The first flying records contained in a civilian pilot’s logbook begin just before the 9th of July 1933, the date of his second flight and show two dual training flights at Gravesend airport, each of twenty minutes. Subsequently, James undertook six further dual training flights, each lasting between fifteen and thirty minutes from Southend Airport in Gypsy Moth Golf Echo Bravo Tango Golf. An entry made on the 26th of June records landed plane ok, obviously with some pride. The last flight made in this phase of training took place in July at whilst still [unclear] includes the comment, take-off and landing solo, which to me seems to imply that captain [unclear] his instructor allowed James to manage the flight. We now move on to 1934, flying training sponsored by the Royal Air Force. The same flying logbook shows that James was at this time living with his parents and sister at Outspan, Nelson Road, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, a semidetached house that remained the family home until after he died in May 1991. Issue 34072 of the London Gazette, dated the 24th of July 1934, shows James being granted a commission in the Royal Air Force reserve as pilot officer on probation, class 1AA little 2 with effect from the 9th of July 1934. This was the same date when he was authorised to wear the RAFO flying badge. His personal number in the Royal Air Force was 37365. It would appear that James recommenced flying training on Tiger Moths at Hatfield in July ’34 being deemed ready for solo on the 4th of August but actually doing so in Golf Alpha Charlie Delta Echo on the 14th for five minutes. The exercise he performed were 6, 7 and 14 meaning taking off into wind, landing in judging distances and solo, in other words, probably just one, thrilling circuit. This allowed him to enter into the remark column first solo. He flew a solo again on the next couple of days but mostly however after that his instructor Cox took him through turn, spinning, glides and aerobatics, as well as the all-important take offs and landings. The ammunition of course on DH82 aeroplanes run by the De Havilland aircraft company Limited took 56 days to complete. His assessments for airmanship, air pilot, forced landings, cross country flights, and instrument flights were average. The chief instructor commented on the 12th of September, he has definitely improved throughout the course, his flying has been consistent, aerobatics require more practice, he is very keen and should make a sound pilot. 1935, We have Consolidation and the start of service flying training. The pilot’s logbook records that James flew Avro Cadet, Golf Alpha Charlie Tango Bravo three times from Rochford on the 17th of March, James flew with Glava again on the 8th of April from Rochford, diverted to Gravesend owing to rain. Flying training resumed on the 15th of March, when James was back at Hatfield, once again flying Tiger Moths solo. They were doing advanced forced landings, reconnaissance, instrument practice, spinning, loops, aerobatics, cross country and general flying. On the 27th of April, the logbook shows that James flying solo, quote, landed Luton to find direction and quote, five minutes later he was off again, flying under very low cloud back to Hatfield. The course ended on the 1st of May 1935 when ten hours total had been flown. This time his performance was assessed as average on all counts, adding, he is very keen, he displays ability, and with more experience should make a very sound and reliable pilot. Now, between the 8th of June and the 24th of September 1935, it would appear that James undertook several private flights in Avro Cadets flying Moth airplanes, three notable entries in the remarks column of the pilot’s logbook included, flying his first passenger on the 2nd of July a Ms Keithley who is possibly associated with a film crew and she joined him on seven other occasions in dispersed with film job, going to location, line take off etcetera for Wells film Things to Come. The second item was flying Madge her first flight. That was F O Madge Birchall who became my mother. This a twenty-minute flight made on the 6th of July must have been a wonderful moment, for three years later James and Madge were married and the third point was flying O Sindall, that’s Owen, James’s father to London and back on the 9th of July, almost certainly the first time he had ever flown. By the end of September, James has amassed forty hours and forty minutes dual time and forty two hours and forty-five minutes solo and the London Gazette dated the 10th of September ’35 shows James being confirmed in the rank of pilot officer on probation in the RAF reserve and then, in 1935, on the 22nd of October, the London Gazette shows James relinquishing his commission in the RAFO on appointment to a short service commission with the RAF to take effect from the 7th of October. His first posting was to the RAF depot at Uxbridge and then to number 6 Flying Training School at Netheravon. The first page of James’s logbook here shows that James’s RAF flying training proper began at number 6 Flying Training School Netheravon and entry at Reading records I certify that I understand the petrol system and that I know the action in the event of fire in the air, also the use of breaks on the Hawker Hart. His first instructional flight in a Tudor includes spinning and the second slow rolls and loops. His third flight was the CFO eyes test which could have been to ascertain or confirm that James had the potential to benefit from further instruction.
CB: Right.
TS: James was clearly very impressed with the Hart and wrote to his mother on the 2nd of November 1935, have been flying Harts, look, something like this, enclosed a picture of a Hart, not a good one, I intended to draw it but I could not do it justice so here’s a picture of a Demon, same makers and practically the same, the only difference being that the exhaust comes out under the lower wing as I have [unclear].
CB: Just doing that again.
TS: James was clearly very impressed with the Hart and wrote to his mother on the 2nd of November 1935, have been flying Harts, look, something like this, I intended to draw it but I could not do it justice so here’s the picture of a Demon, same makers and practically the same, the only difference being that the exhaust comes out under the lower wing as I have [unclear] and I fly it from the front office and not from the back. After crawling around at 70mph in the Moths at home, you can imagine the thrill of cruising at 130 and at full throttle speed of 160 to 170mph. Coming out of a spin, a Hart is pointing vertically downward and everything screams, wires, struts and me until she comes out. I have not had the time to look at the speed indicator, but it must register something horrid. The sticks tooks up getting used to, not like the usual straight at moving in all directions from the floor, sideways and forwards but hinged just above the lease for sideways movement and both together for fore and after. The top is a ring, a spade grip and the two little leavers are thumb leavers to push to operate the forward guns which fire through the propeller. It is great to hurtle around the sky so fast. As a preface to this letter, James had written, no doubt to calm his mother’s fears, always remember that with machines there is more safety the faster one goes. James’s flying training, which included aerobatics, instrument and lower flying, cross country and flair path exercises on Tutors, Harts and Audax aircraft continued until February 1936. He recorded that on New Year’s Day 1936, whilst flying solo in Audax K4393, he carried out a forced landing at Portham being flown back as passenger to Netheravon in a Tutor nineteen minutes later. He also recorded that on the course of a solo flight made in a Hart, he carried out loops, spins and stall turns, notwithstanding that spinning had not been part of the planned exercise. On completion of his RAF training, James’s proficiency as a pilot on type and his instrument flying assessment were both recorded as average with a note, that disregards the standard entry any special [unclear] in flying which must be watched, must look after his engine. No other outstanding faults. These entries were dated the 16th of February 1936 and he was then qualified for certificate B under King’s regulations at air staff instructions. On the 6th of March James was posted to number 64 Fighter Squadron stationed in the Middle East. Chapter 2, fighter aeroplane to the Middle East and testing parachutes 1936 to 1939. First of all, a fighter squadron in Egypt. On the 6th of March 1936, James was posted to number 64 Fighter Squadron that was stationed in the Middle East. The RAF history records that number 64 had reformed in Heliopolis on the 1st of March although for political reasons it had been announced as having reformed at Henlow so as not to disclose its true location. The squadron was commanded by squadron leader Patrick John [unclear] having been established by authority. Now the RAF Form 540 which is the operations record book states that the original intention had been to form the squadron under peacetime conditions as part of the RAF expansion scheme. It was to form in Egypt to relieve congestion at home and by taking advantage of the good flying weather in this country to become fully trained as quickly as possible. Its Demons, fitted with derated Rolls Royce Kestrel V engines had already been set out to Egypt where they formed D flights in number 6 Bomber and 208 Army Cooperation squadrons and these were transferred during March to number 64 Squadron. The next entry in James’s flying logbook shows that he’d been transferred to number 208 Army Cooperation Squadron being based at Heliopolis. The unit was seemed to have being carried up type and role version at area familiarisation training. On the 19th of March, he was given a 35-minute checkout in an Audax after which he was sent off solo for general flying, navigation, formation and landing practices. A separate entry dated the 6th of April 1936 reads authorised to wear the flying badge with effect from the 20th of February 1936. He signed this as pilot officer and it was countersigned by a flight lieutenant, O C A flight 64 Squadron. On the following page of the logbook the heading number 64 fighter squadron Egypt appears. The first flight which was also from Heliopolis was made solo with balance to assimilate the way to a passenger in a Hawk Demon K4516 that lasted for thirty minutes. Two days later James flew again for landing practice, this time with aircraftsmen turrets on board. On the 9th of April, the squadron moved to Ismailia, James being a passenger in a Victoria 6. It had been the original intention to move to Mersa Matruh east but, due to severe engine troubles, which all squadrons operating in the western desert had been experiencing, it was decided to keep number 64 Squadron at a less dusty aerodrome, a turret should be required for the actual operations. The squadron consisted of three flying flights of four aeroplanes with no reserves. Its strength was thirteen officers and 153 other ranks. With the Abyssinian crisis still on, the squadrons duties were to carry out attacks on enemy airfields and act as cover for bombers being refuelled at advanced landing grounds. However, until required to commence these operations, the squadron carried out on normal training whilst being kept at 72 hours readiness to move to Sidi Barrani whence operational sorties would be flown. On the 15th, James was airborne again for a local familiarisation flight and this was followed by practice force landing, aerobatics, formation and air to ground firing with the front guns. On the 27th of April, he flew to and landed at Suez at Little Bitter Lake airfields. On the 28th and 29th he recorded battle climbs, five thousand feet in four minutes, ten thousand in seven and sixteen thousand feet in eleven and then he recorded on another flight, five thousand feet in five minutes, ten thousand in ten and sixteen thousand in fifteen. On the 19th of May, James was regraded from acting pilot officer on probation to pilot officer on probation. May was spent practicing more air to ground firing by the front guns and those fired by an air gunner, formation flying, aerobatics, air to air firing and on the 16th he undertook a twenty minute test flight in a Vickers Valentia with sergeant Higgins. In June 1936 this training continued with visits to Mersa Matruh, Sidi Barrani, Solum and Amira. He flew to [unclear] on the 6th of June to enable the engine of the Valentia to be changed of, I think it must be a Hart which had forced landed there. Also on the 18th he flew in a Gordon 2617 for two hours on a target train mission to facilitate air to air gunnery. In July a number of flights were made to test engine air filters fitted to Demons and James carried out some flair path landings and the times to height that I recorded just now were probably associated with these air filter engine performance trials. Number 64 Fighter Squadron returned to the UK in August 1936 to form part of the fighter defences of London. James’s logbook showed no flying during the months of August and September. By the time he’d left Egypt, he had amassed sixty-five hours and thirty-five minutes solo flying on Demons. On the 22nd of October, James flew in English skies once again, in Bristol Bulldog 1961 Martlesham Heath checking up on landmarks. His next flight on the 10th of November included formatting with a flying boat over Felixstowe. Thereafter, his flights included formation landings, circuits and bumps, cloud flying, testing RT, that’s the radio telephone and aerobatics. On the 3rd of December he flew Demon K4509 over [unclear] and Bexley on a tactical exercise radar on London fog and smoke and this is the first time he’s recorded undertaking flying, probably in association with Bentley Priory, beginning to trial the air defence of Great Britain, the radar chain. On the 8th of December 1936, James was confirmed in the rank of pilot officer with effect from the 7th of October 1936.
CB: Now back in Egypt. No, ok.
TS: We’re not, we’re back in the UK. We’ve come back to the UK.
CB: OK, that’s fine. Keep going.
TS: 1936, the parachute test flight. January 1937 saw James involved in testing camera guidance and in rearming and refuelling exercises, followed by quick getaways and battle climbs. There were more raids on London exercises. On the 27th of January 1937, James flew for the last time with his squadron, his logbook recording his proficiency as a pilot on Demons as average. James moved to the home aircraft depot at Henlow where he flew again on the 9th of February in a Tiger Moth on a refresher test. He then began a series of flights as a second pilot on the tail of the Vickers Victoria a Virginia aircraft drop testing parachutes, eight on each flight attached to dummies. He also made eight solo flights in a Hawker Hind, on one of which he, quote, landed to retrieve map near Bournemouth, and quote, after having encountered bad visibility, mist and rain. In March he carried out sundry flying tasks in a Tiger Moth, Prefect and Hind. These tasks included map reading tests for sergeant pilots, air sickness tests for aircraftsmen, photography and high-speed parachute dropping. Typical entries read, from ten thousand foot, 265mph, twelve thousand feet, 295mph, pull out four to six hundred feet, engine can’t take it at two thousand eight hundred revs in the dive, cutting out, boost minus two. On the 17th and 22nd James records, general flying over flooded areas and on the 23rd, search for Green Tiger Moth Duchess of Bedford, lost since previous evening. A note at the foot of this page records, struts and portion of aircrew recovered from the Wash confirms from the Duchess of Bedford’s machine. In April, James flew to Sealand, recording to [unclear] a new aircraft, with regard to an Audax that he’d got, with a hundred and fifty LSI airspeed indicator, with two thousand two hundred and fifty revs cruising, then he returned to Henlow in the, the Blackburn after which he recorded flying Blackburn hard labour all the time. After flying Moth 1889 on air experience for parachute pull off, he made two more flights in the Fairey to Cardington and back. At the end of the month, James signed off the months flying totals for the first time as officer commanding parachute test flight home aircraft depot Henlow. May began with a short flight in a Fairey 3F, followed that afternoon by an entry in red ink, live parachute pull off from port wing, from Virginia K2329 and this excitement was repeated on the 28th. Later in life, my father elaborated on the technique used to test parachutes. The Virginia would take off with one parachuter standing on the outer part of the lower wing on each side, facing [unclear] and grasping the strap with both arms and legs. On approaching the top [unclear], in response to a signal given by one of the crew, both parachuters would turn to face forward and await a further signal whereupon each would then deploy the parachute, if the parachute deployed as expected, the increase force would pull the parachutist away from the strut and he would ascend to a normal landing. If the parachute didn’t open, then the parachuters would turn around again to face [unclear] and remain there until the aircraft had landed. It was important I was told that when facing forward the parachuter should not intertwine his fingers when deploying his parachute, otherwise the snatch force created when it opened would dislocate his digits. Empire Air Day, held on the 29th, was the highlight of the month. Before this, James was closely involved in rehearsals. He flew a second pilot in a Virginia that was used over Long Church as a target for attacks by three Gladiators. On the following day, which is 21st, he flew photographers from the local rag, before collecting fireworks for the Empire Air Day from Northolt. There were further rehearsals after that and on the 29th he flew Fury in a display handicap race, coming close forth, followed by a flight in which the Virginia took on the role of enemy aircraft, shot down by 54 Squadron. August flying began with Queen Bee Moth K, ferrying this aircraft to Sealand for shipment. Now, the Queen Bee was a modification of the highly successful and reliable DH-82A Tiger Moth. The main differences being that the Queen Bee had an entirely wooden fuselage and a fuel tank five gallons larger than the Tiger Moth. Queen Bees were first produced in 1935, in response to an Air Ministry request for inexpensive, expendable radio-controlled target drone for anti-aircraft gunnery practice. The front cockpit was fitted with conventional controls for a test or ferry pilot, while the rear carried the radio control receiver and pneumatically operated servers for the flying controls. Queen Bees were said to have been the first, full sized aircraft originally designed to fly unmanned and under radio control. September 1935 involved miscellaneous air tests. On the 10th, James flew to Netheravon in Fairey 2F for live and dummy drops in the making of MGM’s film Shadow of the wind. He [unclear] often doing flight with flight sergeant Smith and a gentleman called De Grue on board, James records live drop, use reserve parachute, just made it, later that day the latter named person was on board for another live drop, as was Naomi Karen Maxwell, both went off, quote, ok, with dummy unopened, unquote. On the following day, dummy drops took place through clouds but had limited success with one dummy landing a mile and a half off and another, quote, drifted fifty miles, unquote. Dummy drops were made from a Hind for the bystander magazine on the 17th, followed by a landing at Bassingbourn due to a thunderstorm. On the 18th, James was once again helping MGM make their film with Ms Maxwell and De Grue, both making live free drops. December 1937 offered very little in the way of flying due to a very bad visibility, rain and cloud. On the 3rd, James recalled his height as fifty feet, whilst very low flying. On the 8th, the remarks include damn cold, ice and snow on the ground, followed by b…. cold. On the 11th, the entry reads, fall after frost, low cloud, circuits and bumps, and on the 13th, hit three peewits taking off. On the 24th, conditions had hardly improved, thickish mist and [unclear] almost like flying in an iceberg. The last entries in this logbook relate to the 17th and 18th of the month, the remarks are regarding a flight from, Henlow to Sealand flowing Queen Bee over the top of clouds, came out in the middle of Wales. Then on the 18th, refuelled, land in Penrhos, hit post, damaged port [unclear], returned to Henlow by a train. We do note also that in 1937 the landing was made near Bournemouth to retrieve the map and near Aberystwyth due to a petrol shortage. All in all, the records by now showed an adventurous flying career in the RAF. James was promoted to flying officer on the 30th of December 1937. 1938, James was broadening his experience. He continued to fly from the home aircraft depot at Uxbridge as officer commanding the parachute test flight, flying the Prefect, Fairey, Queen Bee, Moth, Tutor, Magister, Hind and Virginia. In March, he carried out a number of high-speed runs in the Hind, recording variously 240, 250, 280 and finally 290mph. On the 26th of March, he took this aeroplane up to twenty-four thousand feet, recording times and boost pressures against altitudes as he did so. The maximum altitude he reached in forty minutes and forty seconds. April ‘38 seems to have required a mixture of flying that included passenger transfer flights, balloon chasing, cloud flying, circuits and bumps. On return to Henlow from Bircham Newton where they had gone for lunch, he or his pupil hit port errond on post. On the 6th of May, he flew a press representative to take photographs of pull offs presumably from a Virginia. Not much flying took place in September but on the 30th an entry reads playing silly Bees around cloud. Another flight in the Virginia shows flying around in November ’38 but then it went to add forced landing in fog on the 9th and fog turned back. Total flying in December was only one hour but there was a reason for this, for he married Ethel Madge Birchall, who preferred to be called Madge, on the 3rd of December 1938 in the parish church at Saint Andrews in South Shoebury in the county of Essex. James, a bachelor, was twenty-nine years old and his occupation was given as RAF officer residing at Henlow camp Bedfordshire. Madge, a spinster, was twenty-eight at the time of her marriage and had no work or profession recorded on the certificate. Owen Sindall retired was recorded as James father and Jasper Beasley Birchall, captain Royal Artillery retired as that of Madge, who had been residing with her parents at Newland, nurse Road, Shoebury, in the county of Essex. James left the parachute test flight on posting to Central Flying School at RAF Upavon at the end of March 1939. Chapter three, training new pilots and flying in the Battle of Britain 1939-1941. 1939, Central Flying School and of flying instructor posting. James arrived at Central Flying School at RAF Upavon in April 1939. The primary purpose of CFS was to train pilots to fly competently. These next couple of months were then spent flying Ansons, Hart, Tutor, Harvard, Fury and Oxford airplanes. He was also cleared to instruct on the link trainer. James began his postings as qualified flying instructor in July 1939, he took his first students for revision exercise on the 24th and in his logbooks he records all their names. The Second World War began on the 1st of September 1939. James flew the Anson once that month and had a refresher flight in an Oxford instructing new students and performed several solo, navigation and forced landing tests, as well as aircraft and weather tests. In a letter to his mother, James wrote on the 15th that they had overcooked some marrow jam and it was so thick that they could almost have used the toffee to stop up the mole and rabbit holes. The only war news they were getting came from the papers [unclear] that it was generally expected that air raids would commence fairly soon so it was necessary to, quote, keep the old respirator, anti-gas handy and quote, on the 19th of December 1939, the London Gazette shows James being promoted from flying officer to flight lieutenant with the effect from the 13th of December of the, of 1939. Flying training continued from Raf Hullavington at number 9 Flying Training Service School and March of that year 1940 saw the tempo increase with up to five sorties a day, often involving three or more aeroplanes. In a letter to his mother dated the 5th of March James wrote, I taxied onto another machine night flying the other night, broke my prop and his tail, managed to hush it up. James was clearly not the only one enjoying exciting flying for on the 16th he wrote, things go on here as usual, we are just at the end of our night flying program, one of the pubs by himself landed outside the aerodrome, it’s a four inch thick tree, he did say he brushed something, came through three hedges, hopped over the road and landed on his back on the aerodrome, as his usual he had not a scratch or a bruise. It was at night and although I saw it, I only saw his wingtip lights going up and down and over. Another pub took two soldiers up without permission in an Anson, which is a twin engine five seater, and crashed, smashed the aeroplane to bits and the three of them had a few cuts and a few bruises, it’s amazing, isn’t it? Beginning of June 1940 saw the commencement of number 20 course. In a letter to his mother, Annie Sindall dated the 4th of June, James implores her to persuade the family to leave number 46 Nelson Road, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex and get away to South Africa or if not, to Wales or Cornwall, to avoid the Nazi way of bombing, not a dozen machines as in the last war, but hundreds and coming in waves at about two hours interval. I’m making it sound awful, I know, but I’m not exaggerating, will you please do something now? It’s not even safe here. We have a station defence working day and night. As I said before, don’t worry about me. I may go anywhere and at any time. To stay in Leigh waiting to see where I go is madness. July saw the end of number 20 course and beginning of 22. Within that month an entry on the third, towards the end of the day reads dawn patrol, written in red ink. With the Battle of Britain about to begin, it would seem that preparations would be made to defend the defences. James wrote to his sister Dorothea who joined the WAAF and who’d been posted to Lincoln, James was expecting to be on lookout duty that night, which would have meant sitting on top of a water tower accessed by going up an open iron ladder which gives me the creeps coming down. An enemy aircraft had shot down a pupil early in the day, not one of his, and had machine gunned him as he drifted down, spoiled him too. They say that we caught the Hun later.
CB: OK.
TS: Participation and the Battle of Britain, which officially now ran between the 10th of July and the 31st of October 1940. On special interest, James flew a Hurricane II, apparently for the first time, on the 12th of September for station defence. On the 16th he again flew a Hurricane for station defence but with the additional words after Junkers 88, the whole entry in the logbook being underlined in red ink, his method of indicating an operational sortie. He flew a, probably the same Hurricane again for air tests later in the month. At CF 5 number 5 Flying Training School signed the monthly totals confirming that all these flights had been authorised. James wrote to his parents as follows, Dear mother and dad, I nearly got a Junkers 88 long range bomber yesterday. We have a Hurricane we keep ready for station defence and three of us were allowed to fly it, very occasionally, as we waste petrol. Anyway, the Junkers came over the camp at about five thousand feet and as I was doing nothing at the time, I grabbed my bike and peddled off to the Hurricane with my brolly over my shoulder, leaped in and started up and off. I chased away the way he had gone with my electric sights on and my guns ready. Of course, I didn’t catch him. He had had too good a start. I flew around at twelve thousand for a bit in case there was another and then saw another Hurricane going past towards Swindon. I followed him in case he knew of something but there wasn’t anything there. So I came back, maybe I get one someday. The Hurricane is grand, cruising at 200 and climbing at 160, I dive quite gently and got 360. No effort at all. Cheers. Love, Jim. 1941, James flew in the first three and a half months in the year but in April he flew a Hart to Benson and on to Hullavington before proceeding to number 12 Operational Training Unit at RAF Benson to learn to fly and operate Wellington bombers.
CB: OK.
TS: Looking back at the details that were in this particular letter, it does seem a little odd that performance information should have been written without perhaps being intercepted by a censor. Maybe James’s enthusiasm for writing this up got the better of him as indeed we shall learn later on when he was in India as it resulted on his being court-martialed following interception of information of by a censor.
CB: Brilliant. So, we are restarting now when we are at the OTU, 12 OTU Benson.
TS: Chapter 4, bomber operations over France and Germany 1941 to 1942. The London Gazette dated 11th of March 1941 shows James being promoted from flying lieutenant to squadron leader temporary. In April he arrived at number 12 Operational Training Unit RAF Benson opson to learn to fly and operate Wellington bombers. After two dual sorties, James went solo on the 25th of April, with wing commander Daddy for company. Both pilots swapping seats as they built up experience on what was termed local flying practice. The next page in James’s pilot’s flying logbook displays at the top line number 115 bomber squadron at Marham and in red ink operational. The first operational bombing sortie for all such sorties was numbered by my father in sequence and recorded in red ink was flown on the night of the 10th and 11th June. Operational sorties flown with the squadron in June, July and August were in Wellingtons, all believed to be in the Mark I C. The first flight made on the 10th and 11th of June with Bailey as the captain and James as co-pilot was to Brest to attack the Prinz Eugen, a five-hour flight all at night. On the 12th and 13th my father was in command and, I beg your pardon, it was Bailey still and my father as co-pilot, they attacked Ham, the marshalling yards. The following night, the 13th and 14th, my father flew his first operational flight of a Wellington in command. They attacked the Prinz Eugen again at Brest. On the 15th and 16th it was Cologne. They attacked the railway yards and they shot down one Messerschmitt 110. On the 17th-18th it was Dusseldorf, the railway junction. On the 20th and 21st Kiel, various battle motes. On the 26th and 27th Cologne, turned back by storm. And on the 29th and 30th Bremen, town blitz. In July 1941, operational sorties continued, on the 1st North Sea sweep for dinghy, on the 4th and 5th Brest and my father wrote in his logbook, bombed Lorient. On the 6th and 7th Munster, with the remark Coventrated. On the 7th-8th Munster, ditto. On the 9th and the 10th Osnabruck, short of fuel, crew bailed out. On the 13th and 14th Bremen, snow, ice, hail, sleet, rain. On the 15th and 16th Duisburg, returned early, aircraft not climbing. And on the 24th, Brest, daylight sweep on Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen and one Messerschmitt 109 F shot down. A letter relating to the bailout on the night of the 9th and the 10th of July which is, which I’ve referenced, which is the day after I was born, still exists, my father sent it to my mother and it reads as follows. Royal Air Force Marham, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, 12.7.41, the time is 05.30 and I have just come back from Abbington where I went with Doc Bailey to see one of my crew in hospital where he is with a broken leg. I had just read your letter which you asked me if I had a good party that night. We did, we went to Osnabruck and came back to find everywhere covered with cloud, cloud at ground level. We arrived back at the aerodrome at 3.30 in the morning, but were told to go to Abbington where it was clearer and we could get down. At 4.50 we were very short of petrol, so I tried at first the distress calls, but there was such a row going on in the air, everybody calling for help, that I could get no result so eventually I sent out SOS. We got an answer from Hull, they listen in for SOSs, who said go to Abbington, they then telephoned Abbington which took twenty minutes or so to say let these people in at once. Well, we contacted Abbington as soon as Hull told us to go there but as they did not know by then that we were in an SOS they just decided to let us take our turn with the other machines. At about 4.30 the engines cut and I pushed the crew out. I decide to stay on for a moment or two to let all the petrol burn up so that she would not burn when she crashed. Then a funny thing happened, it picked up again, and spluttered and banged and I was able to fly for another hour. It was due to the change in altitude weight with the crew gone. I flew north to get nearer the dawn and to put it down in a field if possible but came over cloud again so flew south to keep over open country. I could just see light coloured fields and nothing else. At 5.40 I saw an aerodrome flash SOS on the under recognition light and landed. As I was holding off the engines cut for good, there were thirty-six other machines there from other squadrons. My crew all landed safely, one in a group captains garden, except one who broke his leg. I saved the country twenty thousand pounds of an aeroplane, but I bet they don’t get me a commission of even 5 percent. I can’t write all this out again so will you forward it to mother when you write? On the 24th of July, the target was Brest, operational form 540 states, bombing from fifteen thousand two hundred feet, dropped one stick north east to south west over target, first bomb fell in water about ten yards from warship laying alongside the mole, burst from other bombs seem to burst around other ships about half a mile south west of Mull. Aircraft hit by flak in rear turret hydraulics, one Messerschmitt 109 F was successfully engaged and shot down in the sea. Two other aircraft of number 115 Squadron that took part in this raid were captained by sergeant Prior and by flight lieutenant Pooley. The first landed at St Eval and the second in Exeter. Now, I do vaguely remember my father telling me once that on the way back from Brest, on one of his sorties there, he had slowed down to formate alongside another British bomber that had suffered badly from enemy action and was barely able to stay in the air flying slowly. As that aircraft was so vulnerable to fighters, James felt that his presence along the side, might help to ward off any attacks. In the event, both aircraft made it home to the UK, following which the pilot of the stricken airplane was told that he would be in line to receive a medal, an Air Force Cross or Distinguished Flying Cross possibly. As I remember it being told, that pilot said that he would accept such an award if offered only if some similar recognition could be given to James who, by risking his own aeroplane and crew, had ensured the safe return home of both aircraft. Apparently, such an assurance was given. Sadly, there seems to be no record as to who the other pilot was and whether or not his resilience resulted in an award. What is without doubt is that no special recognition was given to James for his effort on that particular flight. It is possible, given that James flew St Eval on the 23rd of June to collect the crew of [unclear], that the protection he had provided to a stricken aircraft might have taken place on that the 24th. August operational sorties on the 8th and 9th Hamburg, ten tenth of cloud, no joy. 12th, Mönchengladbach flak over 14, 15 Hanover searchlights, 18-19 Duisburg. 27, 28 Mannheim, crashed near [unclear], crew bailed out with my parachute. According to the squadron form 540 the record for the night of the 27th -28th of August states, Squadron leader Sindall bombing from eighteen thousand feet, dropped all his bombs south to north, just south of the aiming point, burst was seen followed by a large explosion, aircraft had to be abandoned, all crew bailed out, well that’s what they said, and made successful descend, aircraft crashed and was burn out near [unclear], now at the back of my father’s logbook under accidents, he recalls a few more details, crew bailed out, no parachute left, crashed in a field burnt and in a letter to his sister Dodo written on the 29th of August, James gave a very detailed account of what occurred that night. Royal Air Force Marham, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, 29.8.41. Dear Do, you like exciting stories so here is one. We went to Mannheim last night with a 50mph wind behind us, cracked the target good and proper and set course for home. The wind against us put us off course a bit and we stouaged over Dunkirk where we got coned and I think it was there that a bit of flak holed one of my reserve tanks. We got to Marham and as we started to come in, so Jerry dropped a stick along the flair path. Control told us to go to Honington. Off we went putting on the one reserve tank and not both as I thought there are no gages for the reserves. Honington was dead and we could get no reply to repeated calls or there we were over the aerodrome, we saw what appeared to be a flair path some distance away so wandered off there but it went out. Then the engines cut dead at fifteen hundred feet I shouted to abandon ship and the boys went out in quick time. I stretched out for my para and found someone had taken mine. I flashed a torch to look for another but there wasn’t one. I swore hard and sat back and prayed like mad. Switches off, top escape hatch open, helmet off, landing light on and went straight ahead at 80mph. At first, I saw nothing but rain, then a field and another at five hundred feet, then a village over that, then trees, then more fields, very close now, then crash, crash, crash. I went for a six up at the front, feet in the air and an almighty wallop on the head, laying there wherever [unclear] had stopped moving I felt my head and to my horror in all the blood fair rushing out it was, a bit of my head came away in me hand. Holding my head steady so that my brains wouldn’t fall out I plogged my hankie over the hole and tried to get the right side up. I did then up and out of the top hatch to trip and fall face down in turnips and mud. Got up, I walked over to an incendiary bomb which was still burning, some of ours had stuck up and lit a cigarette advert for players. I thought alright but really honestly thought I was done. I sat by the bombs, it was warm in the rain, when, bang! The blasted thing blew up, it was one of the explosive ones, I only had one boot on, so I hopped along the field holding the hankie with one hand and smoking with the other. I sang and shouted as I went, proper daft I was, until I found a nettle or something with my bare foot, I only shouted then. At a safe distance I sat on a bank and waited for someone to put in an appearance. Then poor old J for Johnny started to burn, and I sat on the other side of the bank in case a high explosive bomb had hung up too. Various aircraft circled round and when it was quiet, I shouted for the Home Guard, fire watch, girl guides, WAAFs and anyone else I could think of. After I while I was still alive so up to the standard of the second field towards a church, they have graves there, which I could see by the light of Johnny. There was a ditch, then a road, no house at all. So I started walking until I came to a cottage, still see, [unclear] this time, my words, as I opened the gate, the upper window opened and a female said, what do you want? I said, there’s been a terrible disaster, and a shocking occurrence up the road. What’s that fire? My aeroplane. Oh, your aeroplane? I’m a parachutist now. Have you a telephone or where is there a doctor as I have a hole in my head? The doc is round the corner. Window down with a bang. He was and then I went to [unclear] hospital for stitches and bandage and here I am back at Marham once more wangling sick leave. The bit of my head must have been a bit of Johnny which I had broken off. So there you are, life is never dull, I’m due for six days about the middle of September so they may make it twelve days. Cheers, Jimmy. September ’41, operational sorties, just one, went to Karlsruhe, natives friendly. The operational sortie to Karlsruhe would appear to be the last operational flight James made within Bomber Command. In October, he flew Wellington again on a marker test and twice in formation, on formation flights, he also managed to carry out an air test in a Hurricane. There was no flying for the month of December. In January 1942, James made one flight, an engine test in Wellington 1645, this lasted thirty minutes and he just two crew members on board. In February he flew twelve times in five days on Whitleys in the beam approach training flight, accruing some eighteen hours, of which fifteen and three quarter were logged as instrumental cloud flying. He then flew as part in command three times in a couple of Wellingtons on local sorties and then he flew a Hudson from Port [unclear] to Kemble and a Wellington from Kemble to Lyneham, his grand total of flying hours now stood at one thousand, five hundred and twenty. He had no flying in April, May, June, July or August because he was on route to headquarters, New Delhi, India and James was not to set foot in Europe again for three years.
CB: What we know from all our experiences of all our fathers really is that they didn’t talk about what they did in the war but occasionally there were snippets that would come out perhaps in social situation so did you ever get any feeling for your father’s approach to things later?
TS: Not a great deal, my father became very reserved after the time when he left the RAF. His life had changed as my mother had died and I was now away joining the RAF myself and when I saw him on holidays for many years after that he never really talked to me about anything and certainly didn’t talk about the war. I think, in common with many people, who’d lived through it, they wanted to put that past behind them and get on with their lives.
CB: An interesting aspect of this perhaps is that you were in the RAF for many years, you had exchanged posting to the Royal Australian Air Force and when you came back and visited your father in Spain, what was his reaction to your urge to tell him what you’ve done? He didn’t want to know. Right, so moving on now to his next posting.
TS: Chapter 5, Air headquarters India 1942 to 1944. He was posted on May the 21st to from [unclear] 44 Group to West Kirby for posting to air headquarters India. On authority of Air Ministry postagram for duties in connection with a selection of sites for aerodromes, on May the 26th he travelled to Newport on to board the P&O steamer Cathay that had recently been converted into a troop ship in the USA. James left the UK on the 27th of May 1942, stayed through Freetown and Cape Town and arrived at Bombay on the 23rd of July. When he reported to headquarters New Delhi and he learned that the people that had asked the Air Ministry in London for a surveyor, not a general duties i.e. pilot bloke, can you please delete it? Anyway, a place was found for him on the training staff, will I ever get away from training, he said. And then the next three days was spent reading files to find out how Air headquarters functioned. In September, James arrived at Lahore, headquarter to 227 Group and then started visiting various squadrons, first 31 Squadron at the aerodrome. Later he left Lahore for Delhi and by 30 he was back in the office there. On the 26th of September, James was promoted to acting wing commander on the strength of the training staff. October the 1st went to [unclear] by road, into tribal territory up and down the pass, quite exciting, everybody had a gun except me. In January 1943, he reports on the first, not feeling too well, on the 4th he was felt really ill in the office, and this was the beginning of a long period when my father was affected by malaria. Not only malaria was rampant, but so was too was prickly heat and by February my father had contracted jondiss that resulted in three weeks sick leave. James applied for a couple of weeks leave having had none for two years. He remained in his quarters throughout April and in May went to Chakrata on sick leave. In August he started leave travelling by train to Rawalpindi where he hired with a friend a houseboat. Back in office in September, today we’ve been at war for four years, another two should finish it off, I hope. September the 18th very hot, could not sleep, on the 19th not feeling well, really ill, reported to the medical officer, malaria, into the British military hospital straight away, bad afternoon and night. In October, James learned he’d be posted to HQ 227 Group as wing commander training who’s assessed for being fit for duty. On arrival there, he felt familiar signs of malaria returning and was packed off at the hospital. As a result of that, he was downgraded and ranked to squadron leader war substantive. On the 23rd of October 1943, a colleague told James that a ladder to dad, James’s father, had been stopped, all males vetted before leaving the unit. On the next stage, James was yet experiencing familiar symptoms of malaria and had to take leave. In December, he arrived back in Bombay and waited for a posting. On the 11th, he heard that a date had been set for a court martial that would consider an alleged offence associated with the contents of a stopped letter that he’d been told about in October. On the 17th of December, James wrote, we saw an enormous comet fairly sizzle across the sky, never seen such a long tail. And on the 21st of December, the general court martial held at headquarters 227 Group Bombay was held. James was being charged with conduct prejudicial to good conduct and air force discipline etcetera. In that honour about the 13th of October I posted in Bombay a letter containing references to movements of Halifaxes and Lancaster aircraft in this country. The prosecution called the duty pilot at Delhi airport to say that one Lancaster had arrived on the 9th of October, no Halifaxes. As James had no defending officer, the deputy judge had a break whilst he instructed me how to conduct my case. He told me to say that the prosecution had not proven their case and therefore I had no charge to answer. I did so. Another break whilst the court considered it and I went again, not guilty, hurray! And my beautiful fireproof defence was never needed. So that was that. I came back to Karrian and had a quite evening doing the round of rat traps. I can remember my father mentioning this episode as I recall he had whilst delirious with malaria and the associated medicines written to the effect that hordes and hordes of Halifaxes and Lancasters had been flying overhead which was quite clearly a delusion. December the 22nd, I’m off to Bhopal to be present of a court, president of a court of enquiry into a crash at Bhopal or near there. What a wizard service this is, prisoner one day and president the next. It means I shall have Christmas at Bhopal. Should be good. December the 31st, the last day of ’43, and now I can see I’m due having next year, seems very comforting. James records that on the 2nd of January he decided to build a sundial outside the mess, using hard wood and an old celluloid computer, spending most of the afternoon marking in the times, North, South, East and home. There was to be small garden around it. On the 4th of January he decided the sundial required some to finish it off, a verse or something, so during the evening, he produced this, remember that the group responsible for his being there was 227 and they don’t pay much attention to our once. This is what he wrote. To those who have to or who care, put on their letters Callyan, little stranger passing by, pause a while let’s slip aside, for we who knew Bombay was heaven were posted here by 227. For company we lack it not, rats, snakes and mozzies are our lot, the sun beats down, no fancy given, we’re even there with 227. Time marches on in Solam state but awful thought if from the gate of India with [unclear] a ship sails home with 227. Of course, I’m prejudiced, said James in his diary, but I think it bloody good, I wish the OC of 227 could see it. He has no sense of humour. James later referred to this as the headstone of rank and sent a type copy to the editor of the journal of air forces, accompanied by a rather long sundial serenade. This was actually published in the journal, pages two and four of the Indian edition, volume two number two dated the 10th of March 1944, the only change being made that numbers 227 were changed to 527, so as to confuse the Japanese. On the 18th of January, James wrote, my posting came in with a mail, Poona for a fresh air flying a Wimpy and then onto ops, just what I wanted two years ago. Still it’s gonna be wizard, have to keep it quiet from Madge though. Wrote to Jasper telling him only. Three days later, James arrived at Poona and started his Wellington Mark X conversion refresher course, doing navigation, intelligence and lib trainer sessions. A red-letter day if ever there was one, I flew, actually flew myself in a Wimpy, first time for a year and ten months, not too bad landings either. On the following day, he took over the sea flight, when the CO went down with malaria, and found himself having to organise flights, air tests and training exercises with the navy. Chapter 6, number 215 Bomber Squadron, Jessore 1944. February 1944, operational sorties, in a Wellington he flew to Pru a six-hour night flight. James made four sorties in February. On the 2nd he wrote, I put up my 39-43 star ribbon as all Euro rifles ex-U have, ex-UK have. Note, this was subsequently to become the 1939-1945 star. On the 17th, James set off for Jessore at number 215 Squadron where he was to become Bee flight commander was met at the station by the squadron in Jeeps and a fifteen hundred weight truck on the platform, never had such a welcome anywhere, the party continued until 3.30. The next two days were spent meeting people and finding his way around and he flew in Wellingtons doing circuits and bumps. Then, on the 22nd, he flew his first operation in [unclear] bombing the [unclear] dumps with squadron joe’s captain. No opposition at all, took off in daylight and got back 11:00, flares dozens of them all over the place, [unclear] fires. After returning from a flight to Lahore to collect spares flying through an intertropic front, lots of extra flying, very wet on the 25th, he flew twice on the 26th, once to an overload test, and once doing circuits and bumps. The dairy records, quiet day and party in the evening. I was eventually debaged after putting up a stiff resistance, had a finger in my right eye, bruises and a bash on my nose. The following day the diary reads thus, due for ops this evening but the medical officer has put me on service [unclear] for two days on account of my eye. Had three accidents today, one, joe’s undercarriage collapsed and slid off the runway, two, starboard engine of A flak machine cut on take-off and it crashed and burned out a mile away, four dead out of five. I pulled out two bodies, the fifth crew member died on the 28th. Three, night flying aircraft with no flaps, went off the end of the runway, one hurt, what a day. March 1944, an operational sortie was flown to Anissakar aerodrome. The other squadron that was with them, number 99 of Liberators bomb went off to bomb Rangoon. On the Sunday night the 5th James took off in one of the Wellingtons to attack the town of [unclear] on the Irrawaddy but returned after twenty minutes when the port engine oil pressure dropped to below the minimum acceptable 70psi, makes you think by which I surmise he had in mind the recent loss of the Wellington due to engine failure just a few days earlier, just might have been repeated. After this, James had three weeks leave to stay in a bungalow as the guest of a maharajah with the aim of hunting tigers. On March the 13th he bound a boar on a first drive with one shot through the head, followed on a second drive by a dough and a stag [unclear]. James’s name was not drawn out to go on the tiger shoot, only two officers were allowed but one was shot by an American. April 1944 operational sorties on the 3rd and 4th all in Wellingtons he flew to Yaju, violent explosions, on the 5th and 6th to Akyab, four thousand pounder, dirty, 8th and 9th Mandalay four thousand pounder, on the 17th a seven hour journey air sea rescue Sandoway, found out ultimately that was unsuccessful although some of the air craft searching reported that they had found a dinghy in lights they were lost and the crew were never returned. On the 23rd and 24th they attacked Maymyo barracks missed it diverted to Fenny and on the 28th Kallowar daylight. On the 21st of May the entire squadron with the exception of two crews was detached to 3 Dakota squadrons to assist in supply dropping on [unclear] in the Arakan and Burma. I went with eight crews to a station north and operated over the [unclear] near to Kina Morgan area. The Dakota is a very nice aeroplane, I like it, did twenty trips, some in foul weather. Returned to Jessore on the 15th of June, having been away just over three weeks. Stayed at base long enough to collect clean clothes, we’d been in the jungle and off to Kolar near Bangalore for conversion onto the Liberator VI. Now, my father’s logbook entry show that before being attached to 117 Transport Squadron, he flew one operational sortie to Kalimo in Wellington [coughs] on the first of May. And the second [unclear] to drop a four thousand pounder at the Infa area on the 9th. Conversion onto the Dakota began on the 23rd with circuits and bumps, followed by loaded landings and flights with soldiers on board. The first operational sortie was [unclear] lake and the 29th of May with a payload of five thousand five hundred pounds. The average trip times were between four hours twenty minutes and just over five hours. And in this length of time he flew some 17 operational sorties to Indigoy lake so a total of seventeen operational sorties to various destinations, all in the space of fourteen days, all in the Dakotas, either air landing or air dropping, three fifths of the Dakota time count towards tour time. The RAF operational record for 117 Squadron states that one aircraft was lost in June 1944, the crew being part of a detachment from 215 Squadron who’d been helping us for a time. The machine was last seen approaching [unclear] when it was flying normally and there is no evidence to show why it did not return. The loss of this crew is much regrated as the 215 boys had been popular in the time they had been with us. The detachment later returned to their parent unit as did the C-48s manned by American crews. Each of these had done much to help the squadron 117 during a particularly arduous period. The last entry for June 1944 shows a flight back to Jessore at the end of the attachment in Dakota Whiskey with 29 crew. On the 10th of July James flew the Wellington to Kolar to join 1673 Heavy Bomber Conversion Unit to learn to fly and operate Liberators and the RAF 540 for July reads squadron leader acting wing commander J Sindall general duties pilot posted from 215 Squadron, squadron leader flight commander post to 215 Squadron wing commander post with effect from the 10th of the 7th ’44. Chapter 7 number 219 Heavy Bomber Squadron Digri 1944. On the 28th of July my father flew a Liberator under instruction from squadron leader Sharp, a familiarisation sortie with circuits and bumps and on the 31st after another circuits and bumps session he flew solo with his crew. In August James completed his conversion onto Liberators, that’s the B-24 Mark VI and his dairy showed that he returned to Jessore on the 21st of August and having been given command of the squadron with effect from the 10th of July. I settled down or tried to run things and dealing with a number of bloody-minded gunners. Six flights were made in September all in Liberators, two for fighter affiliation and others associated with communications, including the squadron move on the 15h to Digri with an expectation that they would join wing headquarters at Dhubalia later on. After the move, James and his squadron personnel set about settling in, finding that the mess was a bit of a mess, ha-ha, but not so bad as he had left behind in Jessore. There was on my father’s squadron a Canadian by the name of flying officer later flight lieutenant Frazer who wrote and published a book which detailed much of what took place on the bomber squadron at this time and in which he mentions my father by name. I will be quoting one or two little pieces from his book. Flying officer Fraser describes his first meeting with James thus 16th of September 1944. I must have met him before but now I see how [unclear] sitting with three others at the table right in front of me. Two I’ve met but not the one with three blue stripes on his shoulder tabs. Of course, that’s the CO, Wing Commander Sindall, I only saw him from a distance at Jessore but whilst I’m trying to give him the white silver, the wing co gives me a flip with his finger a-ha, I’m being summoned, I slide off the stool and say, yes sir, managing a quick nod to [unclear] at the same time, at least I don’t have to salute, you don’t unless you’re wearing a hat, which is lucky, I don’t know how I managed to holding a glass of beer in one hand and a cork bottle in the other. You’re Fraser, I believe, the CO says, not sounding that excited at the thought, you’ve met our [unclear], this is squadron leader Beaton, and flight lieutenant Williams, their nods are almost imperceptible, what’s all this about? Welcome to the squadron, from the wingco, still sitting he extends his hand. To shake I have to get rid of the damn bottle and the only empty place is under Sindall’s outstretched arm. When I put the cork there, he pulls his hand right back. He extends it again but cautiously reaching around the bottle, lightly concerned about knocking over my beer which is thoughtful maybe why his handshake is so limp. Standing before him, I’m been given a thorough examination by cool eyes in a solemn face. It gives me a chance to look him over too. He’s an older type of young guy into his thirties but not far into, dark hair, small moustache, good features with a firm chin, a sort of military look. He might even be a handsome fellow if he hadn’t tried smiling. In this climate, Fraser, at this temperature, do you really think alcohol makes sense at the Landshar when you don’t know what cause you may be, yet be asked to perform today? I glance at the table, all their glasses are filled with lemon limes, well sir, I didn’t expect a large bottle, well, [unclear] come very polished at all, so I just finished with, I guess not, sir. Then I say, you’ll be right, he said, but welcome to the squadron. October the 5th, one of the other squadrons, 159, did a low level daylight on the Bangkok railway, lost one aircraft unheard of, one ditched out the Cheduba island, we sent out aircraft daily and at night, we found it twice [unclear] lost it again. Today I’ve only got three aircraft [unclear], two are off at four, one should go out at eleven then we can do no more. [unclear] October the 13th, one aircraft at 0400, another one at seven, they will be the last, I’ve no more aircraft. October the 14th, it’s amazing how the ground crew do things, I was able to put two aircraft in the air. October the 15th, no joy with the air sea rescue, it’s been called off, poor devils. I recall my father saying that with so many crew members wearing shoulder flashes because on his squadron there were members from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, eight Canadians, fifteen Australians, half a dozen each from New Zealand and South Africa, one from the States, one from Brazil and one from Fiji. There was also one Indian equipment officer and several [unclear] followers. But with so many crew members wearing shoulder flashes displaying their country of origin, my father had some made up with England that the British could wear. November ’44, operational sorties. On the 2nd to [unclear], weather good, two thousand two hundred miles, it was a twelve-and-a-half-hour flight, all at night, twelve thousand feet, fifteen hundred pounds of bombs. On the 26th, [unclear], a marshalling yard, leading a formation of twelve aircraft. And then Fraser wrote, on the 3rd of November, action at last, not for me, the squadron, just four crews, but 215’s first ever bombing trip in Liberators. I didn’t hear it until this morning, sitting in the shade behind the flight shed, we saw them circle the field for landing, strange there’d been no take offs that we knew about, within minutes three more, Roy Williams who runs Bee flight when O’Connor’s away came out of the office with a field glasses, Liberators? Four of them? Whizzo! The crews were on a mission last night. Mission? What mission, we clammered? We didn’t hear about any op. Aircraft V, that’s O’Connor, Roy says mostly to himself, glasses pointed at the runway a quarter a mile away, good landing, Percy! Now B, that’ll be [unclear], here comes Jimmy Ross, very nice Jim, where’s the fourth? Alright there he is, that’s the wingco, whoops! Hold it straight, James! Ok, you’re down. Even without glasses, we could see that wing commander Sindall put another dent in our runway. A good pilot in other respects, he is famous here for terrible landings. Not that if you bumped or anything to be ashamed of, maybe we are even a bit proud of the CO who can make jokes about his bounces. Everyone’s excited and full of questions, where did they go? What was the target? But the answer is, really, did the CO and two flight commanders go on the same mission? Well, they did, William shrugs, maybe because it was an unusual target, shipyards at Vin, well, was there, Burma? No, further east, French Indochina. Before Fraser flew on his first operational flight, the wing commander started the meeting with a little speech, I guess it was intended as a pep talk but it didn’t come over like that because Sindall is more of a low key type, wouldn’t go for razmataz stuff, mostly he just wished us good luck, for those going on your first operational flight, just remember you are well trained crews flying an excellent aircraft that is exceptionally well armed. If you remain alert, keep your wits about you, you should have no problems whatsoever. The sortie went well and the crew enjoyed their operation. In the days before the raid at [unclear] on the 26th, James carried out bombing practice on the ranges and practiced formation flying with pilots of 99 Squadron. This culminated in his leading of the twelve [unclear] formation. Some bombs fell west of the [unclear] outside the target area but many bursts were observed on the tracks and station buildings causing a heavy and secondary explosion with much black smoke. The weather was good and no opposition was encountered. In December on the 10th, James flew with his crew to [unclear] Bangkok railway, trail-busting eight hundred feet and also [unclear] railway station, five hundred feet, heavy anti-aircraft opposition, rear gunner killed, two thousand five hundred miles on a fourteen hour mission. The squadron form operation says that it was sergeant Day that in Liberator Lima who was killed by shrapnel from a small calibre shell fired from the ground, I can recall my father telling me that after they had landed he carried out the task of removing his rear gunner’s remains from the turret not wishing to delegate this to anyone else. We should of course remember that Kanchanaburi is that featured in the Bridge over the River Kwai and there was a letter received from a KJ Porter from New Zealand who was a prisoner of the Japanese at this time, naturally we were all scared when bombs began to fall and some bloke’s nerves were in a bad state already but I personally and some of our mates welcomed the sight of those big birds floating over seemingly all powerful and indestructible as this was the first, real sign to us that the Allies were now on the offensive and the end was in sight. Perhaps just as well we never knew you were flying down from India but imagined you were using captured bases around Rangoon or thereabouts a few hundred miles away. When I lay on my back in a shallow monsoon rain outside our hut by the Kwai bridge, it gave [unclear] commentary on the raids, the adrenaline surged, and I thought, now these bastards are getting some of their rain back. The great thing was that you appeared just when morale was at an all-time low and gave us a much-needed boost, so I feel we are indebted to you. Number 215 Squadron moved from Digri to Dhubalia on the 27th of December 1944. Chapter 8, number 215 Heavy Bomber Squadron Dhubalia 1945. James flew only once in January 1945, he went to [unclear], little opposition, earthquake, number 28 Korak railway yards, these were both in February, no opposition, in March on the 11th, two Rangoon dams, leading formation, dam accurate, flat [unclear] but also damn accurate and on the 19th to Nanyen railway yards, two thousand four hundred miles, that was another fourteen and a half hour flight, on the 24th they went to [unclear] again, Uk dumps, very hazy, just made it, flat fool proof, this time they dropped seven thousand five hundred pounds, on the 29th Rangoon, Japanese army headquarters with a seventh brigade, good [unclear], large lumping [unclear] but accurate, eight thousand five hundred pounds. There was a letter that he received from the AMC, Air Marshall Keith Park, who’d only recently been appointed Allied Air Commander in Chief, written to all officers commanding squadrons and upgrading them for not maintaining the efficiency of wellbeing of service personnel regarding messy and he said, that it seems to me that some units pay less attention to the wellbeing of their men than we did to our horses when I was a junior officer, it was a matter of pride in those days that we got the very best rations and fodder for our men and horses and a little bit extra yes for luck. I’ve got the letter still and in it my father’s written in blue crayon with an end, with an arrow pointing to the word horses, with [unclear], when I was at Poona, so I don’t think he took it too seriously. April 1945 operational sortie to Kaykoy, Bangkok area, individual aircraft in a gavel, first time this was attempted in South East Asia, weather good, bombing good on railway yards, two thousand four hundred miles and dropped six thousand pounds and that was another thirteen and a half hour flight. On the 10th of April the airfield was struck by an unexpected hurricane, the aircraft were mainly alright although most had shifted into wind and on the 13th Wing Commander Sindall announced to air and ground crews the intention to divert to Dakota transport aircraft under combat cargo task force, training to begin immediately so suddenly everyone was changing from operating the Liberators which they were quite happy with to becoming a transport squadron. Everyone was a little stunned. But still there was a visit from Air Commodore Melash CBE RC Air Officer commanding 231 Group and he spoke very well of his regret at the squadron’s departure and his appreciation of the excellent work they had done, wishing every success for the future because Sindall also was leaving to go home and then it was not long before the time came to go back and wing commander Buchanan arrived to assume command of the squadron on the 28th of the month and then Sindall entered in his final logbook the following in May, 2nd of June in the Liberator self to [unclear] one hour. On the 4th in the Liberator Karachi with sixteen passengers, eight hours fifty, on the 5th with the crew Shaima Cairo fourteen hours ten, and on the 6th Cairo Malta Lyneham. I can remember visibly my father looking out of the lounge window one day when I saw someone I did not recognize open the little gate that connected the pathway from the front door to the pavement and calling out mummy, mummy, there’s a strange man in the garden and then recall well as my mother rushed to the door and they fell into each other’s arms. Issue 37119 of The London Gazette dated the 8th of June 1945 shows James being mentioned in dispatches and the London Gazette promulgated on the 20th of July 1945 that James had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order. The citation reads, this officer has served in both the European and the Far Eastern theatres of war, during his first tour of duty he attacked many of the most heavily defended targets in Germany. Now on his second tour of operational duty, he has taken part in many sorties against targets in Burma and on numerous supply dropping operations. Many of these missions have involved flying over difficult terrain in adverse weather. Wing Commander Sindall has at all times displayed outstanding organising ability and great devotion to duty. He has lead his squadron on many low level daylight attacks against the enemy’s lines of communications and rolling stop and has always pressed on these attacks with skill, courage and determination. By alongside the [unclear] of the DSO at the end of the war my father now wore in order a 39-45 star, the aircrew Europe star, the Burma star with rosette depict his entitlement to the Pacific star, the defence medal, the war medal 1939-45 with oak leaves to depict his being mentioned in dispatches, later on, much later on I, his son, was able to add the Bomber Command clasp to his 1939-45 star, and a photograph of my father after he returned from Southeast Asia, shows him wearing a wound stripe, a vertical bar above the right rank on the left seam of his number one dress. That’s the only record I have of his wearing band. He then served on the staff of the Air Ministry in Whitehall from the 15th of July 1945 until the 23rd of June 1947 in the post of bomb ops, bomb operations 1. War against Japan ended on the 14th of August 1945.
CB: It was really good, thank you very much.
TS: I cut back on a lot of.
CB: Now of course, while you were away, you with your mother were staying in England, what were your, you were very young at the time, but what were your recollections of the happenings of the time?
TS: I have only one very clear image in mind, bearing in mind I was about three years old, and that was because we were living alongside Southend-on-Sea, we were in the firing line for many of the doodlebugs that came over and also there were many comings and goings of aircraft. I have one clear image and that was from within the iron cage that my mother and I slept in every night on rugs underneath the kitchen table. My mother going to the French windows, pulling back the curtains and looking out and beyond her silhouette I saw lots of lights which were most probably anti-aircraft gunfire and searchlights and maybe some explosions, that was my only memory of activities in the war. But we were not alone, we were accompanied all this time by Remus, a cocker spaniel, he’d entered our family about two years or so before the start of the war and he lived for a good length after it but Remus was the first early warning system we had of the approaching enemy bombers. I don’t know the reason why but I put it down to the fact that the engines that powered the German bombers made a different sound to those of our aircraft and then Remus associated that sound with the discomforting bangs and explosions and flashes in the sky and therefore used that as the early warning for us. One other remembrance I have and I suspect it was on V, Victory in Europe day, when my mother and I went down to the seafront [unclear] and there were a line of American army trucks and they were all in a very high and happy mood and one thing we were able to do was to make a voice recording on a little, tiny disc and I think I sang a song or recited a poem but that no longer exists unfortunately but that just reminds me of the euphoria that existed at this moment as people were so pleased that in Europe the war had ended.
CB: Brilliant. 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
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Interview with Timothy Sindall
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-01
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ASindallTH170801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:41:46 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Timothy Sindall is the son of James Herbert Sindall DSO, whose career as a pilot in the Royal Air Force started in the mid-1930s. Following the discovery of all of James logbooks, personal letters and newspaper cutting, Timothy has put together a biographical account of his father’s career. The logbooks have provided a detailed account of aircraft and sorties flown. Letters to family give detailed accounts of various incidents, including one where he was forced to crash in Norfolk and another where he faced a court martial. A letter from a former prisoner of war who worked on the Burma railway describes how morale amongst prisoners raised when operations against the Japanese reached them. His first logbooks commence with him being a civilian and then joining the Royal Air Force qualifying as a pilot in 1936. At the outbreak of the war, he was posted to the Central Flying School to train new recruits. In 1941, he was posted onto Wellingtons at 115 Squadron at RAF Marham and then in 1942 he was sent to Air Headquarter in India. Much of 1943 was lost when James contacted malaria. 1944 saw a return to operations, when he was posted onto B-24s of 215 Squadron. Bombing operations throughout South East Asia were then carried out. Post war, James served in the Air Ministry.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Burma
France
Great Britain
India
Bangladesh--Jessore District
England--Norfolk
France--Brest
Bangladesh
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1936
1941
1942
1943
1944
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
115 Squadron
12 OTU
215 Squadron
aircrew
B-24
crash
Hurricane
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Benson
RAF Henlow
RAF Marham
training
Wellington