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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/328/3488/PSmithJ1601.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/328/3488/ASmithJ160312.1.mp3
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Title
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Smith, Jean
J Smith
Description
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Two items. An oral history interview with Jean Smith (2105009 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. She worked as a clerk in the aircraft manufacturing industry before the war and later served as a secretary in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She served at 27 Operational Training Unit at RAF Lichfield.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-12
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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.
Identifier
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Smith, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Jean Smith, who was a WAAF at Lichfield among other places during World War Two, she in fact I met her husband who was a Stirling flight engineer, so this is gonna be a good one. My name is Adam Purcell, the interview is taking place at Jean’s home in McCrae, south of Melbourne and it is the 12th of March 2016. So, Jean, I thought we might start from the beginning, it’s probably a good spot. Uhm, can you tell me something of your early life, what, where and how you grew up, uhm, education, first job, that sort of thing.
JS: Oh, well, I was born on the 1st of January 1922 and born in [unclear] 6, moved to, uhm, Welwyn Garden City and that’s where I spent my school life. I went not to the local primary school and I went to Hitchin Grammar School, was the nearest secondary school to Welwyn Garden City and then I went to Pitman’s College in London and at the same time the family moved to Amersham in Buckinghamshire. I was always very keen on horse riding and show jumping so that’ s where I spent most of my spare time in my youth. I did a secretarial course at Pitman’s College and also studied for my civil service exams, which I passed very well and went in, I chose the Air Ministry, my father told me I was very silly to do that. He was a civil servant, he knew better than me but I wanted to go into the Air Ministry. And then the Air Ministry split and was the Ministry of Aircraft Production which I went into. We spent our time typing out and preparing all these contracts for small firms to make Wellington bombers and Spitfires and Hurricanes a year at least before the war started. Then the war started and by that time I had met a very nice young man at Halton number 1 school of Aircraft Apprentices and he was passing out that year and he was sergeant apprentice and he, when the war occurred, he went straight over to France with the British Expeditionary Force, he was a fitter of course, and then managed to escape back from a French fishing village, on a French small fishing boat back to Folkestone and as soon as he got back to Britain, he, then we were, the Battle of Britain had started and we were very short of pilots for all our new aircraft, fighter aircraft and he trained as a Hurricane pilot and sadly he was shot down in the Battle of Britain. I wanted to go into the Air Force straight away, into the WAAF, but my father wouldn’t let me, he said, no, not until you are twenty one, why that magical number? I got in at twenty in the beginning of 1942 and I wanted to be a flight mechanic or a radio operator but of course they conned me and they said that you’re already trained and you’ll save your country such a lot of money [laughs] and so I went in as a secretary and all I did was my two months training at Innsworth Camp with thousands of other girls, usual routine, learning to march, to salute and hygiene and air force laundry, marches. And there were no mirrors on our training station so we had to learn to do our hair, put our make-up on and put our caps on and tie our ties without anything other than your little compact mirror and that was a bit of a thing. Anyway, I was posted to number 27 OTU Lichfield and I wanted to be in Fighter Command, now I was going to Bomber Command. Anyway, I arrived at 27 OTU and I found out what a lovely station it was, friendly and happy. And, [sighs] I became secretary to the Chief Flying Instructor Wing Commander Jackson, he was a South African and he’d done his first tour on Hampdens and I, my office was part of the orderly room, training wing orderly room down in flying control on the edge of the air field and I was stunned when I used to see all these young officers and flight sergeants and warrant officers coming in, all the instructors coming into our office, I was strapped dumb and they were all decorated and they’d all done their ops on Wellingtons and Hams, not Wellingtons, Hampdens and another aircraft, we used to call them coffin boxes, Hampdens, can’t think of the other one, uhm, and I was so naive and young, all these young heroes coming in, breezing in, and of course I quickly learned all the slang, you know, di digitate and you’re in the fertilizer business and [laughs] so on and so on, the prangs and they really did say jolly good show when they came in up to doing something [laughs], well, uhm, so, the Waafery was two miles down the road, uhm, I think it was a place, a little village called Streethay, it was on the main road and it was two miles away and it was surrounded by high barb wire fencing and sentries at the gate and I remember, some of the aircrew boys saying: ‘Why do they, why do they surround your place as if it’s like a prison?’ and I used to tell all the Aussies: ‘To keep you randy Aussies out’. We had a little pub called the Anchor, a tiny little pub that had been a coaching inn and it was just, all about a quarter of a mile down the road from our camp and, of course we were all armed [?], we were all given service bikes, we could all ride a bike because we had to ride to and fro to camp and coming down on summer evenings, especially when I was first there, lot of the girls used to stop and go in for half a pint of beer before they went in for their tea [laughs]. Oh, I was so pure and innocent, it took me six months before I set my first footstep, I’d never been in a pub in my life, [laughs]. Anyway we used to go into the Anchor a lot for a quick drink and also of course on the nights in the winter, when night flying was cancelled, when it was thick pea souper fog or rain streaming down, you couldn’t see an inch before you, we all used to wait around in our hut after we’d had our tea at night and suddenly over the tannoy the message would come: all night flying cancelled, all night flying scrubbed, over and out. And we’d all say whoopee and get the curlers out and put all the glamour on, those were the days of big pink rouge cheeks and thick horrible makeup called powder cream, we used to plaster all over our spotty faces and big cupids bow lips bright red and mascara [?], which came in little black blocks and you spat on it and rubbed it with a little brush, and thickly coated your eyelashes. The trouble was it wasn’t waterproof so if you went to the pictures and it was a sad film you, also all the girls came out with streaks of black down their cheeks [laughs], we’d all be trying to wipe of our black tears. Uh, we had a lot of fun in the Hut 2 and, as I say, we used to put all our makeup on and then best blue and dash down to the pub and then we’d wait there, we’d order our drinks, just half a pint of beer and you’d hear all the boys coming down and all the bikes going bang, bang, bang on the pub wall and they’d all come streaming in and in half an hour the whole place would be a thick fug, you could hardly see across the room, cigarette smoke and I always remember cigarette smoke and all the wet wall, there was always a big fire on in the lounge bar and the piano, oh, piano would be going like mad with all the songs getting naughtier and naughtier as the night went on [laughs]. And it was good because these boys were doing their, they were doing their operational training, they were, they’d come from all their various schools, pilots from their flying school, wireless school, gunnery and they’d come together and they’d been put in big room and told to make up a crew of five which would be pilot, navigator, wireless operator, he was also a gunner, uh, a gunner and a bomb-aimer and they would then convert onto Wellington, twin-engine bombers, the good old Wellingtons which were nicknamed Wimpies, they were, they were going up doing circuits and bumps all day and all night and it’s all very well, I was shattered actually when I got there, because the number of accidents in training was shocking during the war and I don’t think a lot of civilians, I didn’t think there were going to be all these terrible accidents and my first job, as soon as I settled into my, into my office, my first job was to type out a form 765C, I think five copies I had to do, you had to do five copies, one went to Bomber Command, one went to Group Headquarters, one went somewhere else and this particular form 765C, which was an accident report form for Bomber Command, it was a Cat E, and Cat E was total wreck all crew killed, it started with Cat E which was just nothing, you know, somebody knocked a, knocked a whole in a [unclear] or something like that, but the Cat Es were all full and of course when I’d done that and send that off and I was appalled cause I said to the sergeant in charge of the orderly room: ‘Does this happen often?’. ‘Oh, yes’ he said turning to me, he said, ‘Oh, we’ve had one accident, we should have another two in the next week’. Sure enough we did and next day I, and next morning I, after I’d done the general correspondence with the Chief Flying Instructor, the CFI, I had to go and sit down and we did letters of condolence to the various parents and wives and I know there were two Australian families and I thought how dreadful, all those miles away and I suppose no air mail, so I suppose in five weeks, will take five weeks for the letters to get to the parents somewhere in the outback of Australia and it just hit home, the war really came home to me in those first few days at my new station. And I was to see a lot of very nasty accidents and I think you know there’s always, it always makes me shudder now when I hear of a bad accident to a large airliner, you think of the horrible noise and the smell and that sort of vile cloud of black, black grey smoke and then the dark red flames going up and I’d seen dead bodies being carried out of planes and it’s so terrible and it did happen so often and of course we were very near the Peak District, Staffordshire, Derbyshire was the next door county and of course the Peak District and the boys did their night flying training in all weathers, terrible weather in full blackout and there they were flying around with all the peaks not very far distant and all the, all the Welsh mountains not very far away so, we had quite a lot of accidents hitting mountains. There used to be a comical character, in a magazine which was circulated to the air crew every so often and there was a little pilot called PO Prune and he was always saying: ‘Do not come down to sea!’ and he always held his finger in the air and that was called the irremovable digit [laughs] and he was always telling people all the things they, all the aircrew telling them what they must look out for and what they mustn’t do and constantly it was: ‘Do not come down to sea!’ Never come down lower than a certain height. And life went on very smoothly at 27 OTU. I remember, uhm, I turned twenty one of course at the end of that year, on New Year’s Day 1943 and there was, on Saint Valentine’s Eve there was a WAAF dance. Morale had been bad among the WAAF at that time because we’d had an awful lot of accidents, one girl had lost her young husband only a few months married, several girls had had bad news from their boyfriends in Africa because at that time our tanks, it was the first time when our tanks were being pushed back by Rommel and there was bad news from all our various fronts and the U-boats were having a feast downing our convoys, rations were being tightened for civilians, it was a very bad time, so, all the officers, and our WAAF officers decided, have a dance, I think it was the, our WAAF, the WAAF was formed in 1938 or ’39 just before the war and it was an anniversary for the WAAF and of course we couldn’t be allowed to wear civilian clothes, you weren’t allowed to wear civilian clothes, you had to be in uniform all the time. So, they got round that by saying, we’ll have a fancy dress dance for the WAAF, not for the airmen, the airmen have to come in uniform for the girls. So, we all rushed home, if we had a 36 hour or 48 hour leave, we all rushed home and said to our mothers, what have we got, got all the bits out, my mother dyed some spare cloth, she dyed one lot red and made me a very full skirt and then she found a bit of blackout curtain and made a little bodies and the boys in the dope shop painted a sickle and hammer on it, cause they were, the Russians were our gallant allies in those days and I’d also I got a little [unclear] in civilian life, a little, pretty little embroidered blouse, Hungarian blouse. So I went as a Russian peasant and my aunt had given me a beautiful silk Japanese kimono which she had before the war, it was a really beautiful thing. And my best friend, Hibbie, Brenda was her real name, Hibbie was dark-haired and very petite and I lent this kimono to Hibbie and she did her hair up with a comb in it and went as a Japanese girl, a horrible [unclear] [laughs] and so we all got it, we were told to get in the transport, we could go in our fancy dress and we were all glamourized that, we’d had all our hair set, we’ve had to get in the transport in order to go up to main camp but we had to take our uniforms with us to, to camp, so that we came home, back to camp in uniform. Anyway, we got up to the big NAAFI on the main camp and the station band which was very good started to play and the boys came in and we were dancing and a couple of young men came in and they, they were just in working gear, with scarves round their neck. They walked over to the bar, meanwhile ten of us had coloured a huge table near the bar, so, we were all there, sitting and chatting and these two young airmen came along and the older said; ‘Hello, girls, can we sit with you?’ And I said: ‘Oh, yes’. And they dragged out the young man along, she seemed very shy, blushing about being among with all us girls, anyway this was to be, this was my husband-to-be and he didn’t ask me to dance and I was getting up and dancing with all these other boys and then I said: ‘Don’t you like me or don’t you think I can dance very well?’ He said: ‘I can’t dance, he said, I’ve never danced in my life, he said, there’s a boy in our hut being trying to teach some of us to dance but, he said, I come from the isle of Lewis, and we are free Presbyterians, we are Calvinists, and we believe dancing is very sinful’. But he said: ‘I don’t’. And he said: ‘I’d like to learn to dance’. He said: ‘Will you dance with me now?’ So, he danced with me and trod all over my feet, he was such a, oh, he had lovely blue eyes and he was a very nice boy with that beautiful Highland accent, very soft and of course I really fell for him and he said, so after the last waltz we, he said to me: ‘May I see you at to transport?’ I said, ‘Oh yes’, I said, ‘You have to wait outside because we’ve all got to change back into our uniforms’. So we go into another room, change back and I found that I got all my uniform there except that I hadn’t got my, we didn’t have suspender belts in those days, we had corsets and [laughs] large, pink corsets with suspenders on the end and I found I left my back at camp. So, I put my stockings on, I went out to transport, I was holding my skirt with my stockings up and there is this nice boy waiting for me and eventually, you know, after we all chit chatting and talking, the driver said: ‘Get in girls!’. So, he said: ‘May I kiss you goodnight?’ and I said: ‘Oh, yes!’ and I put my arms up around his neck and my stockings fell down [laughs] and so obviously it must, it must have been ordained that this would be my future husband. Oh, we only had five dates before he went off, he was a fitter on our camp, and we had five dates and he went off for his aircrew training and the young man and the older man who’d introduced him to us girls was Norman Jackson, who went on, he went off on the flight engineers course too, he was a fitter. And he went on to win the VC, he climbed out on the wing of his burning plane, he stuck a fire extinguisher into his tunic and climbed out and the other men were sort of holding onto his parachute pack and then a flame [unclear], he managed to put most of the fire out but the flames blew back all across his face and hands and unfortunately in all the shemozzle, well the fire extinguisher of course went, fell off the plane and but his parachute started to open so he had to go off, they couldn’t drag him back and he was a POW. The Germans cared for him pretty well but years later, apparently he worked, somebody told us that he worked in a high class Rolls Royce showroom selling Rolls Royce, he probably would be helped after the war, but he was a prisoner of war for a long time. Uhm, no, from about 1943 to 5 and uh, unfortunately we tried to get in touch but it was very difficult after the war, everything was in such a muddle and we never got the chance to meet him again. And, so, Jock wanted me to be his steady girlfriend but most of us WAAF didn’t like, didn’t like to be, it was the boys who wanted to be serious but we didn’t like to be serious with any of them or getting, most of us didn’t want to get engaged or married because we all felt with aircrew that once they got married or they were engaged, they were, they became very serious and much more careful and it was, we all felt talking to aircrew boys that it was the worst thing to be very careful, it was far better to be gung-ho and able to take risks than, and not have to think about a wife or a serious girlfriend. But I wrote to him the whole time he was on ops, I didn’t see him for eighteen months, I wrote him the whole time he was on ops, and I’ve got most of his letters and unfortunately he hasn’t, he didn’t, he couldn’t keep many of mine because most of them threw letters away, personal letters were thrown away. Uhm, aircrew on ops, it wasn’t a wise thing to keep anything from love life or anything like because if you were killed or taken prisoner, the RAF police went in and put everything into, uhm, boxes and all that was sent to the parents and sometimes, or wives, and sometimes it was far better that certain things weren’t known. So, I mean, you know, even things like condoms, they were told not to keep in their lockers and things like that because of the attitude in those days. So, uhm, eventually in 1945, I was posted to 3 and 5 Group at Grantham, the top groups which commanded the operational squadrons and we were working in a large country house on the edge of Grantham and we were billeted in a lovely old Edwardian house right in the middle of Grantham, not far from the Great North Road which ran through Grantham at that time. And it turns out, when I was reading the biography of Bomber Harris, when he was a young air commodore at the beginning of the war, that was his living quarters, his house with his wife and young daughter and they, eventually it was withdrawn as living quarters for RAF officers and became the living quarters for mainly the clerical and secretarial staff and actually discipline was very easy in the house, this was the place where we were living, uhm, because we were all very trustworthy women who’d worked as personal secretaries all the war and so were trusted to go and come without having to book in or book out. So, I knew I’d been keeping in touch with Jock and I knew by then he’d finished his tour of ops and he was a fighter engineer instructor at Woolfox Lodge, just down the Main North Road and he’d got a motorbike and so I said, you know, I said, he said, you know, did I feel like taking up the friendship again, and I said if he was interested, yes, fine. So, he came up on his motorbike to Grantham and we renewed our friendship, which of course brought something to our romance and we married at the end of 1945, once all the, when the war was over. But, to go back to Lichfield, I would have gone on Lichfield, unfortunately my very nice Chief Flying Instructor boss went back to do a second tour of ops so I was getting some, I was going to work for someone else. But sadly he went back on ops and he lost his life, his plane crashed over Germany and he lost his life and it was very sad because he’d married an English girl and he had two lovely children because I used to, when there were officers mess dances, I used to go and babysit for him, cause I always felt, I always used to sit next to him in his car when I was taken out to his house. [unclear] for the night and I used to feel like a queen sitting next to a senior officer [laughs] going past the guards [laughs] and they were all saluting [laughs] and so I used to look after the children and then he, and I’d have breakfast with them and he’d go, we’d go back to camp next morning. But very sadly, we were moved from our nice wooden house, we were moved into new Nissen huts, this was when conscription came in for women at the end of 1942 or the beginning of 1943 and we really suddenly became inundated with all these conscripted women, they hated us, we hated them, we were volunteers, they were conscripts, and they didn’t want to be in the services and we made it clear that we wanted to win the war and we were going to win the war [laughs] and so on. Anyway, we were moved to new Nissen huts, which had been built in the winter and were still, the concrete floors were still very damp and it was terribly, terribly cold, I know, we discarded our sheets and used to sleep between blankets and we put on our pullovers and our slacks over our WAAF pyjamas, which were nice and warm and thick but still not thick enough and we heat bricks up and wrap them in newspaper or old bits of cloth to put in the bed and even so in the morning your breath used to be frozen, right down the blanket, a little icicle. Anyway it was so cold, and I got flu and I didn’t do any, I got a cold and then it went into flu and I didn’t do anything about it and didn’t go sick, that went into bronchitis and the bronchitis very quickly turned into pneumonia and I was at work and I went all funny and they had to get an ambulance to take me to sick quarters and I must have been very ill because they put me in a private room which was normally kept for officers and I was wrapped in the officers white blanket because if I’d been, other ranks blankets would have been grey [laughs] and they gave me the new miracle drug, MB363 or some, it was a new sulphanilamide drug and it worked wonders on pneumonia and I was sick for, very sick for a few days and then eventually I lost my voice and I was sent down to Waafsey quarters to convalesce and in Waafsey quarters they had a dreadful sergeant, a woman sergeant, a WAAF sergeant in charge and she used to have all us patients up every morning, we had to get on our hands and knees in our pyjamas and polish the floors [laughs]. I couldn’t speak [laughs]. We had a little wind-up gramophone in sick quarters and the only record we had was some well-known singer of the day singing, we’re having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave, it isn’t surprising, the temperature’s rising, she certainly can, can, can [singing] [laughs]. We played it and played it and played it. So then I went back to work but by then my boss had gone and the senior medical officer decided that I’d been so sick and I’d also had a lot of very nasty boils and said really you should have a series of injections for vitamin B but unfortunately vitamin B is kept for aircrew only so I can’t give it to you, and he said, I’m going to do the very next best thing, he said, I’m going to arrange a posting to group headquarters and he said you’ll have much better food, you’ll get fruit and he said you will be in much better quarters, but of course when I went to group headquarters it was all very nice but no aircrew, no any young men. The only thing was, we had a big Canadian Bomber Command station not far from us and a huge American camp so we used to go to the American camp and that was the first time we saw, for several years that we saw oranges and ice cream, they gave us ice cream [unclear]. But to go back to Lichfield, before I leave Lichfield to go to 93 Group Headquarters in Derbyshire, I must tell of the most exciting thing that happened to all of us and that was our station taking part in the first thousand bomber raid on Cologne, I think it was the 30th, 31st of May 1942 and that was very exciting, I mean, we didn’t know where, that the target would be Cologne but we all knew something big was on. Apparently, I’ve read all about the thousand plan but at first poor old Bomber Harris thought [unclear] make the bombers because the Coastal Command was going to be in it and their bombers were going to take part and the navy bombers, but at the last minute the navy and coastal or they say so, Coastal Command withdrew so we were left with less than a thousand bombers and Bomber Harris said they must: ‘Churchill had said it must be’, and Bomber Harris said it must be a thousand bombers so they racked in all the training stations and every screen was allotted a crew and so cause always at the end of OTU training the aircrews always went on things called bulls eyes [?] or light tight raids just over the coast of France either to straf, shipping or to drop leaflets and just over the coast and then back again, to give the young aircrew a taste of what it would be like but now we were going to have everything, uhm, every crew we could put, even if they were going with an instructor, the screen instructors and so, of course our poor old Wimpies, I mean, all those operational training units, all the heavy conversion units, the aircraft were already second hand, they’d all been used on operational flying, they’d all been used and abused I mean, you, when you talked to a flight engineer as my husband was, they were running those engines very often at revs never put down in the makers note and they came to the instructional units, and they were pretty knocked about a lot of them, a lot of them been hit and repaired and they weren’t very good and that’s probably what caused a lot of the training accidents. And so of course my husband, cause I didn’t know him in those days but than I knew, but I knew all the mechanics, all flight mechanics and fitters were working all around the clock to get service for aircraft and aircraft were taking up on their tests and then repaired again and again, the, don’t you want to stop [whispers]?
AP: No, no, you’re alright.
JS: And then they, then the uhm.
AP: But I will get you to move the microphone if you can, slip down [laughs] it was fine as long as you put your hands on [laughs]. There.
JS: Then, uhm, the uhm, so, they were very, very busy and we knew, because our, the control tower was next to K2 Hangar where my future husband worked and we knew where they were working cause we very often worked very late at night and you could hear all the noise and claying in the hangars and so we didn’t know the actual date until the actual date occurred the 30th of May and suddenly all, everybody was called on deck, everyone, you were just told to do all sorts of jobs, I know I was giving out sealed maps to the navigators and the pilots and we were getting all sorts of things together, all the Red Cross, the Australian Red Cross used to send wonderful parcels across, and the Aussie boys used to share, all the RAAF boys always shared their Red Cross parcels which were marvellous, full of all sorts of goodies and we were getting all those things ready and there were planes obviously being air tested and the whole station was busy with people, all with very definite looks in their eyes, all going about our business, sort of, with a lot of extra jobs to do and wherever you walked on the station normally when planes were bombed up, you wouldn’t see any bombs because they’d just be out of dispersals, but there were bomb trolleys everywhere, you were weaving your bikes all among all the different things, keeping a wary eye on the incendiary bomb boxes, which were painted red because if incendiaries fell off and the box broke open, the incendiaries could, they were very touchy and could often go off and you know, they were very dangerous. So, then of course the boys went for briefing and we were all hanging about, we had, I remember we had our tea and everyone, everyone was very quiet, very serious, the whole station. Of course, when there’s any big operations on the station is closed down and there is no leave and there’s no out coming or incoming personal phone calls or anything like that. So, we were all very busy, doing our various jobs and then I remember after briefing, they all came into the, into our big room in training wing and we were giving out the various, you know, chewing gum, barley sugars, cake, all sort of, parcels and things, cigarettes and off they went. We all had our quick tea and a whole host of us went down to wave them off, and I always remember that night, quite a mass of people were all standing underneath the balcony of flying control and all the top brass of the station, all the senior officers who weren’t flying men were above us, they were all out on the balcony and all the flying men, they were all in the planes, they were all been allotted to [unclear] crews and the three Padres all went, [unclear] and other denominations, Padres, they all went off choice and quite a few of our senior officers, who were ground staff chose to go with the crews, they said they backed them up and they wanted to go, you know, to give them heart as someone was there with them and we heard the first, to see a station, I’d never been on an operational station but my husband’s told me a lot about it but to see these planes or to hear them going, you know, we were standing there and of course always bombers during the war were around in dispersals, all dispersed around the airfield and you’d hear that coughing and choking sound of each engine starting up and revving up and then slowly, slowly. It was a rule that they mustn’t taxi fast because during the war all our rubber came from, well, what’s Malaysia and Indonesia now and of course rubber was very difficult to get and actually it hit the Germans more because of, you know, we were downing any German ships trying to get rubber, they couldn’t know they couldn’t get rubber because it was still British and but all aircraft, all aircrew were told to taxi slowly, because if you taxied fast it wore the rubber out more quickly. We were told that with our bikes, that we must only put our bikes into the bike racks with the rear wheel because if we put the front wheel in, it wobbled about and wore the rubber out [laughs]. All these silly things that happened during the war [laughs]. Uhm, so, then the, the first aircraft came weaving down past the control tower and I always remember the pilots window open and seeing the pilots face, each pilots face white in and his helmet faming [?] his face and he waved to all of us and, as they went slowly past, and we all gave thumbs up and he gave thumbs up and then slammed the window too and they went along to the runway, the end of the runway which wasn’t far away from us and of course they revved up each engine, one must be like a four-engine bomber station where they ramped each engine up to shrieking and you could see, you could see in the dusk, you could see all the dust and leaves and twigs flying and then of course they’d get a green from the airfield control and the caravan down at the end of the airfield and each one revved up and they took all the whole of the runway to get off to clear the hedge at the far end and almost before they were over the hedge, the next one was going down the runway, you know, heavily loaden with bombs and oxygen and high octane fuel, a living bomb themselves and we were all waving and we stood there long after the ground crew had put out the flarepath and long after the dim lights on the balcony had gone out off and all the officers had gone in, we all stood there, sort of not speaking, you know. And next morning of course lying in beds, you know, when the dawn was breaking, we were lying in bed, a lot of us hadn’t slept much that night, hearing the first faint roar of the aircraft coming back and counting back, we only lost one aircraft and they were actually, they had gone to another station, we were lucky but several of our aircraft had to turn back, cause that was the trouble on the training stations, Harris did get his, he got just over a thousand but actually before they got to the enemy coast some were turning back and I mean, once one engine goes in a Wimpey, you know you can’t go on. And of course, you know, we were lucky as I say, we, I and my friend who worked in training, when we dashed down on our bikes before breakfast to go and have a look, I think we run up to Flying Control, up the stairs to Flying Control to have a look at the big board to see who was back and that was quite an exciting night and so, and of course later on Jock told me all about, you know, his operational life and he had some exciting times. But, I went on to, Group Headquarters and of course you were working for senior officers, uhm, there were just one or two flight lieutenants, most of them were squadron leaders, ah, and of course you had air vice-marshals, all the people with the mess of scrambled egg on their caps and you were doing some, we were doing very secret stuff actually at that time and because of course, when I was at, yes, it was, 1945, yes, that was when I, that was when D-Day occurred and we all knew, because they cancelled long before D-Day, they cancelled all long leaves, all seven, fourteen day leaves and even forty eight hours weren’t very, weren’t given out very much. I was lucky, I wasn’t very far from my home and my home was by then in Buxton in Derbyshire because my father was in the civil service and he was in the customs & excise on the Board of Trade, and they were evacuated out to Buxton in Derbyshire. A lot of places, Ministry of Aircraft Production, were evacuated to Harrogate, all the non-military, there only be the Air Ministry, Admiralty, War Office, the Home Office, Colonial Office and, well, the Foreign Office, they were the only ones that stayed in London. All the other departments went out in case of being bombed, so, my dad’s office was in the big Palace Hotel, the biggest hotel in, uhm, in Buxton in Derbyshire and which is a beautiful place and so I wasn’t, when I was at Group Headquarters I wasn’t very far away. I could hitchhike to Derby and get a train to Buxton, so I was lucky I could get home for thirty six hours, but, I, uhm, for D-Day we all knew something was afoot but nobody, I don’t know why none of us put two and two together that it would be D-Day and we were doing all sorts of things so we used to, when you are on duty at night you know we’d be sitting the, only two or three of us on duty and we’d be having to take lots of coded messages and stick them onto paper and they’d go to various officers and the tele printers would be chattering all night with stuff from Bomber Command mainly and of course, then of course we, I came down to early lunch on, actually on D-Day and I went into the airmen’s mess and there was this little huddle around a tiny little radio that they got in the corner of the mess and I said: ‘What’s going on?’ and they said: [makes a shushing sound] ‘it’s on!’ So we all got our ears together listening. And I, cause I was very interested actually and had been interested for a long time because, of course I’d moved up with my parents, I’d left the Ministry of Aircraft Production and I moved up to Buxton when they moved to Buxton in 1940 and, I’d worked for the, I’d had a job as a secretary, as a town clerk in the town hall and the junior clerk who was a year younger than me, he had to wait till he was called up, he was in the home guard, he had to wait till he was called up because his mother was a widow and he was sort of contributing to the family so he waited until he was called up and the non, the local government offices were like the civil service and some big firms. When men were called up, their service pay was made up to their civilian pay, what they were earning in their civilian pay by the civil service and they were very, that was very good, so he had good money all the time. And we used to go out together, I was doing, everybody did voluntary work during the war, my mother rolled bandages and made up, she rolled bandages and made up, she old dressing kits for the army in her spare time, my dad used to fire watch and I used to go and work in the services canteen at the town hall in, about three evenings a week, pouring cups of tea or stirring backed beans for all the troops, cause we had troops everywhere, every town was full of troops, and, this, my boyfriend Morris, he was in the home guard, so he used to come and pick me up after his guard duties on reservoirs and oil damps and so on and, walk me home and I was, he was called up and went into the West Yorkshire Regiment and for years, I mean, Jock knew all about my romance with Morris, and the West Yorks were one of the first, they were one of the first to go on D-Day onto the beaches for the British crowd and I always wondered how he’d got on and my friend across the road, my neighbour across the road, she does genealogy and she’s looked up a lot of my family for me and she looked up Morris for me and if he’s alright and he got through obviously and he married two years after me and they had a daughter. And, so that was nice to know. So, that was our D-Day excitement and then of course I went, I was posted on to 3 and 5 Group Headquarters at Grantham, where of course I met Jock again. And our romance took off but nothing was, I mean, it was very easy living and very easy working conditions at Grantham compared to what I’d had and the war was almost winding down then so we had a very easy time of it and eventually of course once D-Day came, oh yes, D-Day, not D-Day, once VE-Day came, oh, we’ve all danced in the streets, there were civilian women dancing in their nighties in the streets and the street lamps were put on, and of course they’d obviously been preparing for VE-Day because all the street lamps went on and Jock and I, we used to go to a little park in Grantham and we had a special seat and that was our Snogging Seat and [laughs] we used to kiss and cuddle and on our Snogging Seat and we were very put out, after we’ve been down singing, drinking and you know, all the boys, he and all the boys climbed up, they put, they climbed up on the town, Grantham town hall roof and one of the boys tied a pair of WAAF blackouts, twilights, pair of WAAF knickers on the flag staff, certainly weren’t mine and Jock and I went round to our little park and our Snogging seat was no good anymore because there was a big lamp above it and it was lit up [laughs]. So, that was that but, he of course, he did his ops on Stirlings, so, I don’t know if whether you’ve heard, the losses on Stirlings were terrible and whenever we met people after the war and he said he was on a Stirling Squadron, they said; ‘Well, you are one of the few to get through!’ And half way through his ops, they took them off quite a lot of bombing ops and they put onto dropping, uhm, sea mines mainly in the Baltic, up the Gironde Estuary and so on, and then, that was quite tricky stuff, the only two or three would go out, it was quite tricky stuff because those sea mines going down on parachutes of course they were very touchy and they have to be, you have to fly at a certain level so that they would drop into the sea and then they come up to a certain level in the sea and lie there under the sea. And of course, while he was doing that, while he was dropping all these mines in the Baltic and so on, his father, who had been in the Royal Navy during World War I and then he went back into the Royal navy in World War Two and he was on minesweepers off our coast, off the western of [unclear] and the Minch, he was minesweeping for the British convoys coming and going. So, he was sweeping them up and his son was sowing them, they were called gardening operations and so he, they were doing well and also they were dropping a lot of stuff to the Maquis, the French Maquis in the Alps and he said, that was a very leery thing because he remembers, you know, cause Stirlings hadn’t go the height, they couldn’t get the ceiling like the Lancaster could so you often had to fly through gorges, these alpine gorges and he said, very often wingtip to wingtip you’d see this black icy glassy rock each sideof the wingtips and quite a lot of aircraft of course got smashed up in those gorges. And they also dropped to the Maquis, he had a quite an exciting experience, once they were quite high up in the Alps and they had just signalled and they received a torch signal back from the Maquis and they were coming to drop their, they had a lot of stuff including a Gee, of course it was always a flight engineer and a bomb aimer who were pushing it out in a big hatch, they had a special hatch who pushed all the stuff out and they were coming down in a steep curve and suddenly the floodlights, the searchlights went on and guns started, obviously the Germans were waiting for them and because they just went straight up, they took off and went off but he said he always wondered how the poor devils on the ground got on. And they did quite a lot of that sort of thing and they had, they were, they had a nasty time when they took off one night and the plane had been going, they’d been up all day, they’d headed up and down on air test and as they took off, one engine failed as they were taking off and they carried on, I mean three engines were, the Stirling was a tough plane, even though it couldn’t get the height, but second engine failed as they went over the end of the runway, and then the third engine started coughing and it was wintertime and there was a ploughed field next to the airfield, I mean they got a full bombload and the pilot said to Jock the engineer, he said; ‘I’ll have to go in’ and shouted out crash, you know, crash positions and they went in and he, Jock was up with the pilot, he was up in the cock pit and he said, all the earth, we went nose, he said, all the earth came over the cockpit but, he said, fortunately, he said, the little escape hatch so, he said, the pilot went out there and I went out the back and got out and we all got out and he’d expected the bombs to go off but nothing happened. So they were very fortunate and one [unclear] them was, see they’d had problems with this particular aircraft several other times and they had actually come back, they didn’t, I think they’d only returned twice with a bum aircraft and then this crash, and one the engineers, warrant officers came up to them and said: ‘Uh, yellow aye!’ and apparently he got roasted because they found out this aircraft was in a bad condition but it still went on flying and we were very interested because I think the Bomber Command War Diaries gives a detail of every aircraft that flew. And Jock was really through one day and he said, Jean, he said, this is so interesting, apparently it was sent off to a Heavy Conversion Unit and it only did two flights and then it disappeared somewhere over the coast of Ireland, the west coast of Ireland out to the Atlantic it disappeared with the crew, the [unclear] crew and never seen or heard of again, so obviously it was still playing out. He said there were always bum aircraft, lemons, like cars and but they were very lucky to get out of that. And then another time they were on their way to target and they were hit by cannon shell and an Me 109 went underneath them, obviously aiming for the engine, hit the starboard side, blew his flight engineer’s panel out and, cause all the lights, everything went out, and shrapnel flying around and this great big jagged hole and you could see the starboard engine and he was a bit stunned and he said: ‘I couldn’t breathe’ and he said: ‘I could feel this something warm dripping down my back’ and but he said, ‘it didn’t hurt, he said, my knee hurt’, he had got shrapnel, small shrapnel splinters in his knee and but he said, the navigator was groaning and he said, as soon as I sort of pulled myself together, the pilot was checking the crew round, fortunately the intercom was still working and he said, ‘engineer, are you ok?’ and Jock said; ‘I think so, I can’t breathe’. He said: ‘I’ll check’. Well, he found, he got a hydraulic pipe blown around his neck and that was what was dripping hot oil down his back, not blood [laughs] and his, a big lump of shrapnel had hit his parachute, bent his parachute buckle, harness buckle, perhaps bent it and set his Mae West off, that’s why he couldn’t breathe [laughs]. And it had wicker shade and gone, made a real mess, gone right into the groin of the navigator, I mean, the navigator sitting right behind the black curtain, you know, quite nice and all, nice and protected from anything nasty and he was the one who was the worst hit, well, he, Jock grabbed the first aid kit and he went straight up over and he, the navigator was in a really bad way and Jock gave him, cause they all had whole series of small morphines, he gave him morphine and cut and sliced his trousers and put a big shell dressing on his wound, he was and sort of dragged him to a lying down position and then he went to the wireless operator whose poor right hand was pouring blood and he said to him, he said to, don’t give me morphine, he said, cause he practiced Morse with his left hand, he said I’m carrying you on, he said, I don’t want to have morphine and go out to the wood, just shove a shell dressing on this and actually it was worse than it looked actually when they got back but they were still on their way to target so they were among a whole stream of bombers, it was very difficult turning round in a stream of bombers and the pilot said to Jock, he said, engineer, how is our fuel situation? Of course by that time Jock was checking with the torch what was left of his dials and switches and he said, can we get to target and back? As long as we have enough to get back home. And Jock said, that was the time I turned from a boy into a man [laughs] and he said, yes, so they went on and bombed and came back and they landed with very little fuel and the navigator of course went straight to hospital. The wireless op only had a week or two off, his wounds healed and, oh, Jock had only dressings put on his knee. But the others were ok, but, you know, see, they had no officer in their crew and actually that would have warranted in many crews that would have got a DFC or DFM for the [unclear] but DFM was not given out in great numbers and having no officer to sign it all because, yes, that’s it, the navigator was the only officer and of course he was in hospital so he wouldn’t be, he was unconscious by the time, so he wouldn’t have been able to write anything else, that sort of put the kibosh on any medal for the crew but I mean that was quite something I thought to go on to target and then come back. But that went on, as they all, oh you talked to a lot of the aircrew and I mean, that went on, there were so many crews that went west, that should have got medals, you know, for what they did. And, so he was very pleased and actually if he hadn’t died when he did, he would have, he did qualify for the French [unclear] again because he was flying, they did their last two ops just before, just on D-Day, they came, their last operation was on D-Day and that was another well-kept, that was a such a well-kept secret, I mean, the aircrew didn’t know, it went out that night, and they were given targets north of Normandy and they were dropping all these funny little sacking parachuters, which had firecrackers on them, so when they landed, it sounded as if they were firing shots and they dropped them, there a quite a lot of planes dropped them in various parts of Northern France and a lot of Germans did think that that was where the invasion was taking place and of course they went out, I think it was after midnight, cause it was only just into France, and they came back just as dawn was breaking and Jock was busy at his dials and only the pilot, the pilot must have looked down and he said: ‘Oh, boy, it is on!’ and he said, we all rushed and had a look and he said; ‘What a wall of ships!’ he said it the most amazing sight, he said, it send cold shivers down their backs and they’d also gone out and been minelaying a couple of nights before in the Gironde Estuary and he said, that was a terrible place for being armed, and he said, only three Stirlings went and he said their’s was the first to go in and of course they dropped these sea mines which are touchy even in the aircraft, you know, can go off and he said he looked round and his great friend was in the next aircraft, and was hit, went up and then the third bomb went up, so, they’d been given a route to come home across the South of France and then across the Channel, but the pilot had him put the nose down and went out in the [unclear], into the Atlantic and they came in through, came back through Cornwall [laughs], they didn’t want to know any more having lost their team mates [laughs].
AP: Ah yeah.
JS: But they often used to come, cause they laughed after they hit the target, they loved finding trains to shot up and any roadways and shot up any convoys and anything and they’ve would come back with bits of haystack and leaves of trees and [unclear] but the Stirling was, he used to say cause eventually he went on and became a flight engineer instructor on Lancasters and he said, yes, they were, they were wonderful aircraft cause they could do the distance, they could carry the arms but he said, he said, our Lancaster wouldn’t have survived that first crash with a full bombload, he said, they were beautifully built, he said, they were a lovely, comfortable aircraft and he said, they were so sturdy, and then they could fly very low, but how stupid of the Air Ministry to cut their wings of ten feet to get into the normal hangar, I mean why not build the odd hangar to conform to the wing? Say, were some funny things in the, there were some weird, weird things went on, you know, people with all sorts of suggestions and as I say, this front wheel of your bike, I was put on a charge cause I put the front wheel of my bike in, I was late on duty and I flung my front wheel of my bike in and the service police came round and of course you had a number on and tracked it to me and I was put on a charge! And I remember being marched in without my cap and of course was one of the officers I knew and worked for and he [unclear] said: ‘Now, what have you been up to?’ And the WAAF officer looked [unclear] [laughs]. There was a WAAF officer and someone along this sort of thing and he gave me three days jankers and I went down to the cookhouse cause normally you got all these filthy, big greasy ben maries [unclear], huge things, this big cooking greasy stuff, you’ve got them to clean out, but they said: ‘Oh, we’ve got nothing for you to do’ and they gave me some tea and cake [laughs]. It was a good laugh and it’s funny when we’re all, of course now I go into the Air Force Association and of course, we always go, my daughter and I always go to the Odd Bods November dinner and we meet up together and we, it’s, I mean, even for years all those old chaps and they were facing hell and you wondered how they had the nerve to do it and yet they all said: ‘Best years of our lives. Best years of our’, Jock said it, I said it, and I mean our living [unclear], I I’ve seen the ranks, living conditions and food was terrible and the living conditions were often awful and what you had to do. Cause we had, when we were at Lichfield we had to, at one period, probably be ’42, ’42 more than ’43, there was a lot of business, Germans were dropping odd parachutes, two or three parachuters and of course we had a fifth column of people who were Pro-Nazi, Fascists, some even before the war, Royal Family, you know, old Edward the 8th and his bird, you know, they were all quite Pro Hitler and, we, we were, that was when there had been attacks on planes, that was when they used to keep the planes all in a line or on tarmac and they started to put them down in dispersals, the ones that were in use, any spare ones would be dragged out and put on a farmers’, in farmers’ fields under the trees and we had a couple of Wellingtons near our Waafery, near the Waafery and we were asked, we were told to do guard duty and you’d, there’d be two or three of us and, I mean, it was so absurd, was at wintertime and we’d wear our gas capes which came neck to floor and airmen’s wellies so you had to ware about three pairs of socks, because you were in these great big wellies and our tin hats of course and gas mask respirators at the ready and we were armed because see, the WAAF, the Women’s Auxiliary Airforce, the auxiliary women, we couldn’t be forced to carry arms so we were armed with truncheons, there were three girls with truncheons and we’d be out in the rain and mud, parading round these Wimpeys, we opened the hatch, we used to open the hatch and get in and sit up in the pilot’s seat and, oh, I loved the smell of aircraft, so aircraft [laughs] and not long ago the RAF went to the museum at Moorabbin, you know it was so lovely to smell a real aircraft inside, those oils and petrol and everything and sometimes we’d have an airman with a rifle. And at the same time they also had, we had a mock invasion and all they, they didn’t know what to do with the WAAF because all the airmen had arms with, with blank, you know, ammunition, and they had thunder flashes and they were, there were two, there were the enemy and all the ones [unclear] and all the aircrew weren’t armed and they didn’t know what to do with the WAAF so they told us we had to go and sit in the toilets [laughs]. And I remember cause there were thunder flashes, being blasted out against the wall, just outside, cause they knew we were in the toilets and the others were chucking thunder flashes [laughs]. And we, we said, why can’t we be out among it all. Anyway, they, you know, we had all those sorts of funny things and at the same, around the same period, when there was a threat, a real threat of airfields being invaded and they said, if there’s a last minute stand [unclear] on parade one morning last minute stand, would any of you girls volunteer to learn to load Lee-Enfield rifles? And you would be at the back and the men would be throwing their rifles to you to reload, you’d be throwing back loaded rifles and so on and so on. Then we all stepped forward, everyone, we all wanted to carry arms, it was funny because some, quite a lot of men, especially the aircrew said, oh, they didn’t want women to carry arms, we were nice, gentle girls, women, we didn’t need to, what we wouldn’t have done to a German with a bayonet! We, I mean, my dad was in the army in World War I, and I always, you know, used to talk about bayonet charges and things. Anyway, we all learned, we learned to dismantle a Lee-Enfield rifle and to clean it and then we learned to arm it and so on, and then they said, the sergeant down the rifle range said: ‘Would any of you girls like to volunteer to fire a rifle?’ and we all stepped forward and he said: ‘Oh, there’s too many of you’, he said, ‘we only have five rounds each’ [laughs] at least we got to fire a Lee-Enfield rifle [laughs] and I came back with a big [unclear] [laughs]. But, I mean, we very always said that we couldn’t carry arms, it seemed ridiculous they had a whole army there of women who were dying to carry arms. The ATS, my sister in law, Jock’s young sister, she went into the ATS towards the end, she was called up and she went into the ATS and, but she was put in as a cook, they didn’t, as a conscript, they were just, you’ll be a cook, and they had a horrible time but a lot, some of the ATS girls they were our viewfinders on the keg guns but they didn’t fire the guns but they were, they were very good on the viewfinders and but we, we actually in WAAF actually had the best of the women services in the war, I think we worked alongside our main army, you known we were always there and among the aircrew and helping to do things and I mean, we had, you know, there were flying mechs and battery charges and girls they are all among working among the aircraft and we all ate together, we didn’t eat in separate messes, we ate in the airmen’s mess and, I mean, we did everything except sleep together. And some of the girls did [laughs] but, you know, I think we were much closer because the air forces is a nice service, you know, it's a sort of much more specialised and you get different type of person in the air force, I think. And I now belong to the Royal Naval Association, I’m only an associate member, a lot of us RAF people go to the Royal Naval Association which is only a [unclear], [unclear] or [unclear]. They were lucky, the naval people, cause like our RAF Squadrons and the RAAF were all on our squadrons so there was a great closeness between the RAF and the RAAF and the same with the navy, quite a lot our RNAF were in on British ships and there’s quite a closeness and cause they, they obviously got into, they got in with the ones down here, the naval people got down here, got in the British navy got in ex-services associations with the Cerberus crowd, and they bought a block of land and it’s a lovely big block and the Cerberus as a sort of war memorial put up this memorial building and it’s, it’s not huge but it’s got a large hall and big kitchen, toilets, and a bar and outside a big barbecue and it’s really nice and once a month they have a meal and they get together and of course there is always a Trafalgar Day in October, you go and we always have a big Nelson thing, and drink our toast and rum, tot of rum and apparently they British Navy send out every year, they send out this small keg of naval full strength rum which is, cause in the navy it was always, when everybody used to have rum everyday but it was always watered down, it’s very, very strong and they are still saying this Cerberus, this ex-service crowd, still send out, I don’t know how much longer they will do it, this rum and of course the air force crowd, we sit at one table and the navy crowd are so different to us, we are very prim and proper lot, we are behaved, cause they always make fun of us, sailors are very rough and the funny thing, their wives and so on, they all sit at tables on their own and the men all sit at tables whereas we’ve always air force have always been men and women together and they, they told us the first time on when we were invited first for Trafalgar Day and they said, you air force types, don’t stand when the royal toast and the toast to Nelson is said, because apparently in the old sailing ships not very much headroom, do you know, those sailing ships, tiny old sailing ships like Nelson was in and they had a complement of eight hundred, fourteen inches for a hammock, that’s where you slept, fourteen inches, you’ve [unclear] and I noticed that a lot of those ex-servicemen, the old chaps, they, there’s a lot of them missing fingers and arms and hands, quite and I mean, you don’t see this among air force crowd. Quite a lot of them have, you know, half an arm or several fingers off and obviously, you know, I suppose with their big guns and things, I suppose stuff and I don’t know anything much about the navy cause it’s only my, up in Lewis of course most of them go into the navy, there were only four men from the Isle of Lewis who went into the air force during the war, Jock had always wanted to fly since he was a little boy, he’d always wanted to fly, and I mean as a crafters son he got back his chance because there is not work up there and you know, money was small but most of the men went into the navy or the merchant navy and the only ones that went into the army would go into the Highland regiment, the Seaforth Highlanders in [unclear] cause he had two uncles who were pipers and his sister, one sister was called up into the ATS, his, other sister, his older sister, unfortunately she couldn’t pass the medical for the ATS cause she volunteered, and she went into the NAAFI, cause the NAAFI was a good backup, you know, they had those little vans and they had, ran the canteens and they were very, very good and you’d find each station would have its specialised, you know, cakes and things cause I knew at Lichfield they made beautiful [unclear] cakes and we always used to go out to the NAAFI event who did outside about 11, or 10, or 10.30, or 11, everyone used to go, everyone, officers and everyone used to go out with their mugs and you’d always say; ‘Tea and a wad!’ [?] [laughs] [unclear], pig lardy, heavy things, we were always hungry [laughs].
AP: Pretty good. Let’s have a look. You have spoken for an hour and twenty minutes without a break, that’s pretty impressive [laughs].
JS: [laughs] Well, I’ve got no one else to talk to!
AP:
JS: I’ve got the cat.
AP: You’ve got the cat.
JS: He’s lying on my bed in the bedroom.
AP: I’m more than happy to assist. You’re absolutely fascinating so far. Uhm,
JS: I talk too much.
AP: We love this sort of stuff, this is really, really good.
JS: But then, then my cousin, there was my cousin, now I’m talking about the Isle of Lewis and as I say, my husband he once he went to primary school and he won a scholarship which, living in the village where he lived, fifteen miles away from Stornoway, where the only secondary school on the island. He won a scholarship but there was no bus you had to board in town and his parents, this was during the Depression, his parents couldn’t afford the books because, sometimes scholarships had a living allowance for books, uniform and living out but there was nothing like that during that particular year, so he couldn’t go to secondary school and he, I mean, there was me, I had a grammar school education and I was a hopeless scholar, absolutely hopeless, the only thing I was ever good at was English and history, and I never got anywhere with anything until I went to Pitman’s College and then I come out here and I saw one of my daughters teachers, when she was at primary school, said to me, oh, you ought to study and become a teacher, because we were desperate for teachers, so I investigated and I did, I went through, did my GCSE and so on went up the exhibition building and did my HSC and did very well, it was totally different doing it as an adult. Well, I hadn’t got horses or boys, that’s a thing, the two loves of my, oh, I was a terrible flirt in the Air Force. I was a student, I’ve been a quiet, studious girl as I say horse mad and I got in the Air Force and I suddenly discovered men and I didn’t read a book, I had boyfriends galore, I found a little address book and all these addresses are Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, cause they all wanted you to write to them and we wrote letters to all, we’d sit on our beds and write letters to all these different boys you never saw again. But, I mean, love affairs were no sex, I mean to start with, VD, we were shown all these film of VD when we [unclear] training stations and that would put you off sex forever and if you were pregnant you were chucked out of the WAAF and you were never allowed, you could go back into the ATS if you’d had an illegitimate baby but you weren’t ever allowed back into the WAAF. Oh, we were very pure and high [?] but, uhm, cause Jock was shocked when I said, Oh, I said, the only thing that kept me a virgin was VD, the thought of VD and getting pregnant. And he said, oh, he said, I’m very disappointed in you, because I thought you had higher morals [laughs]. Well, I said, I didn’t want to get pregnant and I didn’t want to get VD.
AP: Oh dear.
JS: And when you’ve done the VD report for the station, for all the Czechs and the Poles, they were the worst. They used to have to go to Cosford once in a week to have these horrible, I won’t, well, you probably know what they used to, used to inject them with mercury and where but it was very painful apparently and we used to see the bus going and they all used to have their heads down and we used to see the bus going to Cosford once a week and we all used to go [laughs ironically], they all used to have their heads down [laughs]. And, as I say, I used to do the VD report and Lichfield had two satellite stations, Tatenhill and Church Broughton and they of course used to, uhm, they had Czechs and Poles. Now I mean, the Czechs and the Poles they were, they were so brave, oh, they hated, they loathed the Germans, they absolutely, as long as they could kill a German their happiest time but they were dreadful and of course in this VD report they had to say when they went to the MO and it was discovered, they had to fill in a form, they had to, legally didn’t have to give the name of the woman but they had to give where they, whereabouts they thought they contacted it, usually under a tree or in a field [laughs]. Contracted it, I should say. Or, and roughly the age, and the age could be anything, of the woman, I mean, they wouldn’t know, but the ages could be anything from fifteen to about seventy [laughs]. And of course, all the girls used when I was typing the VD report, all the girls used to come and look through the papers, weren’t supposed to [unclear] and titter and make very [unclear] remarks and, but they were the worst cause I and after the war I met several Polish, ex Polish airmen and I always used to say to Jock, oh, I don’t think I’d better shake hands with him [laughs]. And they were very nice people [laughs] so you know but we had men of every nationality you could think of at the service, you know, of the Commonwealth and so on you. We had lots of South Africans, New Zealanders. Now, the New Zealanders, they never had the funny accent they have nowadays, it’s funny, they spoke much more like Australian men. They didn’t have that funny twisted accent. I don’t’ know where they got that from, cause it’s really weird. And of course New Zealand, when we were going to emigrate, I wanted to go to Australia because I wanted to, we were living in Scotland and I wanted sunshine and of course all the.
AP: So you went to Melbourne [unclear]
JS: Of course, all the Aussies had told me what a wonderful country it was. Jock wanted to go to New Zealand because full of Highland, Gaelic-speaking Highland people and of course their Scottish country dancing is impeccable, similarly if you couldn’t go and of course they were only taking building, tradesmen or farm workers. So he, cause he’d gone back to his basic trade by then, he was maintenance engineer with British overseas, no, British European Airways. And he came out here, the old Australian National Airlines brought him out here cause they were so short of maintenance engineers so he saw it advertised, applied, they took him, brought him out six months ahead of me, cause they had hostels for me and, uh, so, when New Zealand was no good, he went down to London and applied to Canada house [?], he phoned me up and he said, we can be in Canada within three months and it was winter and I’d got flu and I, you know, I get, my nose was streaming, my eyes were streaming, I said, you’ll kill me if you take me to a country with all that snow and so he didn’t and so that’s why we applied for Australia and of course we’d read all these books about Australia and we decided, oh, the best place would be West Australia, the climate there was beautiful, Albany, and you know, the climate was supposed to be absolutely wonderful and cause ANA brought him out to Essendon aerodrome, so, he was Melbourne [laughs]. I remember when the first time we took the caravan up to Darwin and I’d only been in Darwin a couple of hours, and I said to Jock, Gee, how [unclear] would cost to move house and the furniture up here? Oh, I’d loved to have lived in Darwin. Cause Darwin years ago was lovely but the last time we went to Darwin it was, it had grown in population, it was very commercial but the first few years, when we used to take the caravan up North, it was lovely. This, and, people, all the young people used to stop, you know, older people and say: ‘Oh, hope you are going to stay up here, cause we, it was too many young people, we need some grandparent type people’. Have you always been in Melbourne?
AP: No, I’m from Sydney.
JS: Oh, your [laughs]
AP: Yeah, I came down from Sydney about five years ago for work. So.
JS: I’ve, you know, I’ve been through Sydney on the bridge, to go on the car, wiht the caravan, we’d been there over the, on the bridge and we’ve also been underneath.
AP: Oh yeah?
JS: And I’ve been to Sydney to change planes. I’ve never been to Sydney as a town.
AP: A lovely spot sometimes. Anyway, uhm, you were telling me before we started the tape, uhm, about something that was going on, one day when you were doing the, I think it was the group VD report about a certain squadron.
JS: Oh yeas, about that, about the.
AP: Yeah, so, can you tell us that story again for the benefit of the tape?
JS: Yes. God, what was it called the,
AP: Fauld.
JS: Oh yes, the Fauld, the day the Dam went up, yes it was in 1944 and it was the Fauld explosion and uhm, oh yes and I’d gone upstairs and was typing away at this huge, great big long-carriage and those long-carriage typewriters you never see them now, great big thing, very, very heavy and so I was typing away and it was this funny rumble that went through my feet, I have felt this funny and heard, we all stopped because it sounded like air raids and, we, it was only, must have been seconds, barely minutes and suddenly this rumble got bigger and my typewriter really big jammed, it went [makes a repeated booming noise] and I sort of set back and I looked at the dirty, green wall in front of me and there was this little crack and it started to open and it came down in a big curve and I just, I just watched it, cause funny it’s like when you’re in an air raid when you bombs and you tend to watch them, you’re sort of rooted to the spot. I mean I remember once was a terribly bad crash on our airfield at Lichfield and we were all in our office, we heard this terrible thud, screech, metal, you knew it was a crash, that metal noise and we looked out of the window, the side window and there’s this flame and it was sliding across the airfield, right out on the airfield, on the runway and it was beginning to slide straight towards training wing and we just stood there, we were just stood rooted to the spot. That was the time when, it was horrible. The operators see the girls at the radio while the radio operators took the planes up, and now the girls, they rushed to the window when this thing happened and they left us with the intercom switched on and of course, see, those Wellingtons you know were geodetic and they had axes along the body but obviously the boys were burning, the thing was a degrees of heat and they were screaming and you could hear it from above, you‘d hear the screams, it was horrible and we were rooted to the, I, everybody, nobody said a word, I mean, I, nobody passed out or anything like that, but it was really horrible and of course then the fire, cause naturally the blood wagon, the ambulance and the fire engine were always right beside flying control, they went straight out cause they got foam and it had stopped but it was a fact that it could actually, I mean if nothing had been done, it could have banged into our building. We were so struck with that and it was like that in that Fauld thing, and we were sitting, as I say, immediately somebody said, oh, there must be a bad air raid somewhere, funny we haven’t heard the sirens because often we did have [unclear] and I mean once our airfield was very lightly attacked by one aircraft and I mean, you’d simply, you’d, over the tannoy they’d simply say even before the sirens died you’d hear: ‘red alert, red alert’ and we’d always have our respirators with tin hats on our chairs and all you do is [unclear] your respirator on your shoulder, put your tin hat on and all fire alert, slip trenches outside, you’d run like hell once you got outside because you were scared and you’d, the slit trenches were so nasty because they’ve been used as toilets [laughs] by people going to a frat night they were very smelly and I know, a friend of ours, poor men, they jumped, he was the first one to jump into the slit trench and someone had obviously been doing the other business in there and when he got out, all the others came on top of him and he noticed and he was sitting there a nasty smell and when he got out, he found his knee, he’d gone straight into someone’s poo and he said he got a knife and cut his, he said, he couldn’t bare it [laughs]. Like poor Jock, one time on an air test and he was moving about the aircraft and they hit an air pocket cause they were low and [unclear] went up and he and the mid upper gunner were both, and they couldn’t move because of the way you are rooted you know in the planes and he said, he saw in slow motion [unclear] came over. They’re supposed to be emptied every trip and it all come over the two of them, [unclear], he said, we, he said I took my flying without equipment on a stick [laughs]. Oh God, he said, I went straight up to the showers, he said, I just showered in my uniform and then he said, I took that off and he said I was in the shower spitting it [laughs]. But and the mid upper gunner was the same, but poor old Charlie [unclear] but there was, it was always very pooey, very smelly in the, in the trenches because you’d sit there with your tin hats and things do fall on you, you’d hope no bomb would fall on you but, I mean, we weren’t like the fighter stations, they had it regularly, they were bombed regularly, down more on the coast down south we were, we were lucky we were in the Midlands but I mean along it was all Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, cause Jock’s Squadron he was 90 Squadron and they were in Suffolk. Cause they always used to rendezvous at Cromer Pier when they were went off, the you know when the whole gaggle of paints [?] were going out, they’d fly from their station and go up round and round to get height and then go straight out and they’d have some to rendezvous, Cromer Pier was a great place for a lot of them and others would, they’d get into formation and then they’d pick the other formations up, all up from all up the coast and we went to Cromer when we, one trip we had overseas in the 1970s I think, we went to Cromer and it was beautiful day because I know he was swimming in the North Sea and I, he said: ‘Oh, I’m lying here, look at me up!’ Thinking about me circling around over here before we went out, we’d stay off and went in from their area, they went in to France over the Frisian Islands. Cause he always said, I always put, as soon as the pilot said enemy coast ahead, he said that’s when I always pull my, he was always scared of his eyes being burned, you know, injured, and he said, I always pull my googles down cause some of them didn’t and got their eyes burned. He said, I was always terrified of getting my eyes burned. But he never, he still, you know, they had three pairs of gloves, silk and wool and then leather, but he nearly always worked with his silk gloves cause he was using bars and things and [pauses] but as I say, I still think, you know, but we probably don’t remember the nasty parts, you only think of the fun parts. When you say it was, it was the best years of our lives. I tell you why, because after the war it was so horrible. After the war we went back into Civvy Street and you had this awful feeling you weren’t wanted. See, people had, who’d been in fact prison officers [?], they’d all got jobs and they were looking after, this is my job and we don’t want you people coming in and move, you know, with all, you’ve got medals and we haven’t and so on and so on. And then the idea was that we should all forget the war, get on with the peace and everything was so grey and actually we were then more severely rationed, that was when bread was rationed and onions and potatoes. I cued for hours for all those things, because we were feeding Europe and particularly because we had to feed poor old Holland, cause they were starving but we were feeding the bloody Germans, that’s what got up our noses and we should have done what Joe Stalin said, Joe Stalin said at one big conference, he wanted Germany totally disarmed and made into the food bowl of Europe, got rid of those bloody Germans. I still hate them and I’ve got German blood in me, I’ve got Prussian, great grandfather. I still hate them like mad, I can’t forgive but then I was going to tell you about my cousin. Can I tell you about my cousin?
AP: You certainly can. [unclear]
JS: My cousin, there was another boy like my husband, he, now, his was a very sad story. His father, like my father and my father’s two sisters both married men during the war that were in the trenches. My sister Nora married this soldier and he ended up the war, after the Great War, in a lunatic asylum, he’d, he was shell shocked, absolutely shell shocked. And Nora always told her little boy Bill, who was born, she was married I think in 1916 and had him in 1917 and she told Bill, growing up, that his father was dead. And because in those days to be in a lunatic asylum, you know, was like having a baby illegitimately, it was one of these, you didn’t talk about those sort of things, Gee, woman had a Hysterectomy, that was women’s [unclear] and you didn’t mention that, everything was so, [makes a shushing sound] proper, and anyway poor Bill, he grew up. Uhm, Nora went and when my grandfather was widowed, he went up to Lancashire or Derbyshire, where he’d come from and he opened a little corner shop and Nora went up and lived with him and worked in the shop and Bill grew up and went to the local primary school but then Grandad died during those years and the shop apparently wasn’t making much money so, Nora came down and stayed with us and Bill, they stayed in our house for a little while until, and aunt Nora’s a widow of a service man, was supposedly a widow of a service man, she got a council house, we were living in Welwyn Garden City at that time, I was going to the local Handside Primary School and Bill came along too. Now Bill would have been about three or four years older, three or four years older than me, and I’ve got his photo somewhere, and I couldn’t find it today and he was a nice looking boy and of course you know, I was only a little girl about eight or something like that and, eight or nine, and, oh, I was in love with Bill, I used to tell my parents and everybody I was going to marry Bill and I remember, cause Bill loved, he had a Meccano set and Bill loved his Meccano and cause with my little itchy [unclear] fingers, I remember, could I have put that, no! He hated me, I was always around his Mecco, trying to or reading his comics, and I remember at school, we were changing classes one day and the big boys came out of whatever they’ve been and he’s, and of course I’m saying to all my other friends, that’s my cousin, that’s my cousin Bill and you know, Bill’s looking everywhere except, we were twelve or thirteen. So, you know, that’s my cousin and so they went and lived in their house and eventually they moved to Luton in Beds, and Luton was the centre of the hat-making industry, of course in those days I mean everyone made more hats, felt hats, women wore hats all the time, straw hats and felt hats in the winter and my aunt was pretty good at her job and Bill got a job as a young, he had, when he left Handside Primary School, during Depression there were so few jobs he got a job as an errand boy. They would take boys as errand boys on delivery bicycles, like you used to see in that funny comic series Open All Times [sic], it how you would have seen it on TV, and always had errand boys. I mean, when my mother went shopping, she would carry a little shopping basket but she would only get the perishables like the meat or eggs, a bit of cheese or fish, she would carry that home, everything else was delivered either sometimes by delivery man, mainly by errand boys on funny big arm bikes with a huge thing. And errand boys were all everywhere, of course they got a pittens [?], I mean, there was no real big dole or anything in those days, so, they only got a little bit above of what the dole would be and as soon as they, all these errand boys turned eighteen, see, they had to go on to adult wages, so they were all sacked. So that was when Nora moved to Luton and Bill got a job in a factory, you know, he was just a general factotum sweeping up and so on and he could see, like a lot of boys of that era, that it was much better in the forces, so he joined the Royal Air Force in those days when they used to wear the breeches and the grey patties and tunics up to your neck and the peak caps and he was stationed at Cardington where the balloons were, all the big balloons. And RAF Cardington and of course he saved up and bought a motorbike and so on and my dad had had a motorbike and they were motorbike crazy, he used to come over and see us a lot. And then of course, uhm, he, that’s it, he went in, he hadn’t got the educational qualifications to go to Halton, to the School of Aircraft Apprentices to be a fitter because you had to have secondary education for that, with maths and so on. He went into the trade of, is not a trade now, machine tool oiler and setter, next, really, a machine, he would end up as a machine setter which was a very good trade. So, that was what he was doing when war started, and about the same time it was, it was beginning in 1943 when all the four-engine bombers were starting to come in and we were really doing something over Germany, we were the only service other than the navy, the only service really doing anything in the war. And Bill wanted to go as aircrew, I don’t know why he never said why, and he, he applied to be aircrew and they turned him down, saying, you know you are a school tradesman, someone will have to be trained in your place, stay as you are. So he said, right, I’ll go on strike. Well of course he was marched up to the commanding officer who said: ‘I could court martial you and that would be the end of your air force career’. But he said: ‘I’ll tell you what, boy, he said, you can go in as aircrew and can go in as a bloody bomb aimer’. So, he went in, he was trained as a bomb aimer, he was at Skellingthorpe. Now he was on Lancasters. Now, the Air Force in 19, 1943, ’44, I think it was October 1944, the Air Force had been trying to decimate Brunswick because it was full of factories, war factories and they’d been, they’d had raid after raid, there was going to be a really big raid, a huge raid on Brunswick and that night the huge [unclear] went out including Bill’s Lancaster and they were all so even other, this shows you how our Air Force had grown from 1942 when we were couldn’t make, could barely make a thousand, there were other small diversionary raids on that would draw fighters away and it was a highly successful raid. It was, the town was absolutely decimated. They only had three or four minor raids on it afterwards, just to clean up and only one of our aircraft was missing that night. That was my cousin’s aircraft. I managed to find this out. I found out from the Bomber Command War Diaries and then I was in the library only a month or two ago, and there’s was a wonderful book which I had written down somewhere which has all, it’s a big book about all our prisoners of war, it has all our prisoners of war and of course Bill’s name was in. And apparently they were badly hit and their navigator, funnily their navigator, navigators always seem to get hit, their navigator was badly injured and they, I mean, it must have been hell in the plane because apparently, you know, it was going round and how, how on earth you can move about in a plane that is going down like that I don’t know. They, he said, he told us afterwards, he said, two of them, he and another, the engineer apparently, had to drag the poor old navigator to the biggest exit and his parachute came open, started to open in the plane because they just had to bundle everything out but he seemed to go down alright but they, they never, then he jumped and the other man jumped, that must have been the gunner I think. When they got down, when they landed in Germany, cause it wasn’t far from the target, they, cause he’d forgotten all of the correct things to do, he didn’t take his helmet, and all the hoo-ha getting them out, didn’t take his helmet off, and he was nearly strangled, all the cords went round his neck, he was [mimics a strangling noise and laughs] and then his big flying boots he had they were unzipped, they came off, [laughs]. So there he was in his socked feet and they couldn’t find any of the other crew in the dark of the night and they started to down this long road and you know on the continent they very often they put all this plane trees along the sides of the road and there were all these sapling trees with thick sacking wrapped round them, so to keep them up to sporting post cause they were, so he and the other bloke they cut all this sacking off to wrap around Bill’s feet and they looked around and there were all these plane sacking across the road, all these [unclear]. And he said the next thing is a couple of nights, he said, it was very cold, he said, a couple of nights we just got water, rain water, where we could find it in the fields and he said, we got turnips from the fields and ate them turnips and carrots and he said, we got to this little township and he said, in the dark we could see this building with all these bikes outside. We thought if we can get a bike how much easier and cause they knew the direction they were going, you know, towards the west trying to get to our troops. Anyway, they both grabbed the bikes and cause they must have made a noise, next thing all these German troops come out and they take them prisoners and apparently it was outside the SS headquarters [laughs]. Then, the next thing, he was an officer, now, that what I always think about my cousin Bill, his bomber aimer training, he’d been send over on the ATS scheme to Canada and he’d obviously the smart lad, been commissioned, you know, I mean, drop us off a commissioned, who wouldn’t take it, but Bill took it, and he was, he came out as a flight Louie. So, he went to Stalag, the officers camp, Stalag Luft III, the great escape camp and cause he talked, I mean, he didn’t tell us an awful lot but they were all helping, you know, that were these, they made bags to wear inside their trousers to take the earth and they’d sort of sprinkled the earth if they were walking about or playing games and he said, oh, he said, I could have been in the last group, he said, to go, he said, all us tail enders, he said, of course by that time they’d been captured and but he told us quite a bit about that terrible march that the Germans did, not just from Stalag Luft III, but from several of the prisoner of war camps. They were going to massacre the prisoners but why they started, they started to march them to the east and it was the middle of winter and of course a lot of them had thin shoes and uniform thin and they didn’t have any, they had a bad couple of holes of thin potato, growl potatoey water and they were all being marched along with all these German guards and if any of them fell by the way and didn’t pick themselves up, they’d either shoot them or bash them with a rifle butt. And I mean, Bill didn’t say anything much, just told us about this and he said, fortunately, he said, I, and he wasn’t a very strong chap and he said, you know, he said, it was pretty sickening, he said, we were helping the ones that were really, couldn’t walk but, he said, it was pretty sickening and fortunately we ran into, oh, we were spending, we’d been put into an empty prisoner of war camp for overnight and he said, fortunately or unfortunately the Russians came along. But, he said, there was a lot of problems with the Russian soldiers. They were trigger-happy and he said, we were warned that if we tried to sort of get out of the camp to start going to the east again, to try and join up with the British who weren’t far away, that we would, you know, that these trigger-happy Russians and he said, they came into our prisoner of camp and they treated us as if we were the enemy. He said, they just took wrist watches and all the money, anything of any value. They took even cat badges and things like that. And he, so they were told to play it very cool, and be very quiet, and just, they stayed in this prisoner of war camp for a few days and behind the barbwire and the Russians were circling around outside and suddenly the Americans appeared full force, tanks and guns and things and they immediately, the Russians sort of, they ushered the Russians, there were only a few Russians by then, they ushered them off and took the aircrew to an American camp, to a British camp but he said it was a pretty nasty situation. He said, when you’ve been a prisoner of war and then suddenly your allies come and treat you almost as badly.
AP: Said one of my interview subjects a few weeks ago, he said: ‘Then we were liberated by the Russians’, he said.
JS: There.
AP: Actually, we were recaptured by the Russians [laughs]
JS: Yes, that’s what he said, that’s what it was like, and he said, you didn’t feel comfortable, you didn’t feel safe,
AP: Very, very similar.
JS: Weird.
AP: Strange stuff. So, Bill came home [unclear]?
JS: Bill came home but it was all very sad. Now, we came out here in 1952 and Bill had, he’d had a job and he’d got a very nice girlfriend, they were going to get engaged and then his mother, apparently, I mean, we weren’t near him at the time cause my father said, if only I’d known, you know, but his mother then said, you can’t get married Bill, there’s mental problems in our family, in your father’s family and he and I think Nora was very possessive and I think Nora wanted him to be there for her life. And she, I mean, had, we don’t know how she brought it to him but she more or less said, you know, if I, in the end she told him, you’re father’s a raving lunatic in a padded cell and Bill said, I want to go, I didn’t know I had a living father, he said, you should have told me years ago, I want to go and see him and of course there was a real breakup between them and in the end she gave him the address of this place. He went to this mental home and he saw his father, more or less a slobbering lunatic, you know, and in a padded cell. And he came back, broke his engagement, I think he had a complete breakdown and he was having a treatment, he went in as a sort of outpatient and apparently he was getting on very well and he got a job as a gardener and he was still having light treatment but of course he got to know a young nurse there and of course the authorities would never let the nursing staff make boyfriends of the patients. So she was immediately posted somewhere else and I suppose he saw another friendship gone. I mean, the poor boy was probably craving for love and I just, look, I go around, I’m sure these years since Jock died, if I were religious, I mean, I’m an atheist, if I were religious, and if I were a catholic, I’d say I’d be going through a sort of Purgatory because I’ve been looking at all the things I should have done, I should have been a better daughter, I should have done better at school, I should have been a nicer wife, I mean, I wasn’t nasty but I was, you know, things I shouldn’t. And I think of Bill, and torture myself, if only you had kept, you know, written to him more often, if only you’d asked him to come out, we were living in a caravan over on the north side of town on our block of land, building our house out of pocket more or less, building where [unclear} house our first home and I couldn’t sponsor him. And the next thing, he was living in digs and working as a gardener and I suppose he just had this complete, what’s the use, because I know the feeling myself. And I had a letter from his landlady, apparently he put his head, and when she was out one day he put his head in the gas oven and I mean, my lovely cousin Bill, and I, a year I was so fond of him and it broke my heart. And nobody else in the family took more. Jock didn’t know him well and dad and mum didn’t take much notice. And my dad was very hard, he was very hardened by World War I, and what he went through, and you know, I, it haunts me all the time, that nice boy and I mean, you know, flying and so on and then, every sort of romance, every bit of love broken up and I, blame my, well, look as I always think of mental hospitals, because that’s what happened when Jock fractured his skull, and, oh, he was, I mean, I could, it was a huge and I mean nowadays he probably would have had a brain operation, fortunately he had very strong bones but you could feel this huge jagged bone underneath his skin, huge scar and he said to me, he wasn’t going to ask me to marry him cause he said, he said, I in the end he did and he said, look, he said, I lay it on the line, he said, if you marry you are not going to get the man you would have got had I not had this accident, he said, and I know what it’s done to my brain, he said, I know you won’t get the man that you deserve. And, I mean, I was madly in love, I didn’t care and, but, I know he did, he wasn’t nasty or anything, but he had a nose operation, uhm, oh, in the 1980s, ‘70s, had a nose operation and when the, he had a, like me, he had a deviated sept, to my [unclear] had it done, my nose was twisted and his nose was badly twisted and he couldn’t breathe well and he had this [unclear] surgeon, she said his bones were all overgrown and pressing on nerves and he used to have these occasional days, a couple of days when he would have a terrible headache and he would wake up in the morning, he’d still go to work but he would, he wouldn’t talk to me, he’d just look at me, glassy-eyed, his eyes would just sort of glare at me and he wouldn’t say a word, he wouldn’t answer me and it would all clear over, I mean, I didn’t mind that, it didn’t worry me, he wasn’t cruel or anything to me. But, I mean, I put it down to what he had on his head. But, he was taken from the local hospital to the big service hospital at Rauceby out in Lincolnshire, very big hospital which had been a mental home, a mental hospital. And I used to go, I used to walk about five miles, my bosses used to let me off early, they were very good and I used to walk about five, used to walk down the old roman road, the old way and right out in the middle country this big, huge building and all these corridors and every so often they’d be huge, heavy doors with double locks on because they were all pushed back with great big long corridors and then every now and again there’d be a little passage and that led to the padded cells. And I heard groaning one day and I tiptoed, I was on my way to see Jock, I tiptoed down and there was this poor young aircrew boy, I mean, he didn’t see me, he was bandaged over his eyes, he obviously burned top to bottom and he was hung on straps and he just got holes for his nose and mouth and all bandaged up with his arms up like this and he was groaning away and he was and I actually saw all this sort of pale blue padding, all ceiling, walls, floor, everything, they put the very worst burns cases in there, I suppose peace and quiet and, cause a lot of them were screaming you know, would disturb the other patients. But I know Jock must have been very ill because when I first came to visit him, the RAF nursing sister, she said: ‘Are you his fiancé?’, I said: ‘Well, we’re not engaged but we are going to get married when the war ends or when the war’s over’ and she said, you know, you know your boyfriend is very seriously ill, she said, I want to warn you, he is very seriously ill. And I mean, all they did with him there, he had his head sort of wedged in a wooden frame and he lay there for a couple of weeks in a wooden frame and they fed him stuff like [sighs] you don’t see it now, it’s sort of made from bones and, bones and brain and stuff that we used to be called, it was called something in old-fashion, it was like a sort of jelly, carsford [?] jelly, that’s it, it was made by bones and I think brains and it was the most tasteless stuff, cause I had to taste if his, cause it was supposed to help remake bones [unclear].
AP: Ok.
JS: So, that was, he obviously was very ill but they never cleared, they never gave him an x-ray to after, he was x-rayed when he had the accident, never gave him an x-ray to clear him and he managed to get back onto flying because he went for his aircrew board to see if he was fit for flying. And there was, there were two doctors and the old chap more or less told the other bloke he could go, the other doctor he could go, he said, oh, I’ll deal with this case and he was an old doctor and he came from one of the Hebridean Islands and he spoke Gaelic and of course he saw from Jocks docs where he came from and they spoke for about an hour or so in Gaelic and the doctor apparently said: ‘Ah, you are fit for flying!’
AP: So this, I think we were talking about that before we turned the tape on. This was the motorbike accident for Jock.
JS: Mh, yes.
AP: Wasn’t it?
JS: That he, he had scars, I mean, you know, cause his googles were broken and his nose was damaged and the size of his mouth was split, his eyes were all split at the side, he had slight scars, but it didn’t damage his beauty, I think he was quite nice looking [laughs]. But he was the love of my life, he was a lovely man. We laughed our way through time and it was all giggle, giggle, giggle, all the time.
AP: Very good. Uhm, what else do I have. Can you, well, we might back up a little bit. Can you tell me where you were and what your thoughts were, obviously you’ve already told me that you expected war to come but when you actually heard that Britain is at war. What were your thoughts and feelings and what were you doing at that point?
JS: Well, that’s rather dreadful because I told you I was in the Ministry of Aircraft Production and obviously war was coming, well war was coming very close because that, you know, what’s his name, had been over, Chamberlain had been over and come back with a piece of paper and then of course Germany had walked into Czechoslovakia and in that interim period we were working twenty-four hours, they’d got camp beds in a big room and we were and it was a Sunday and I was on duty, I’d, cause I was living at Amersham at the time, I’d come up, I’d think I’d slept the night an hour in the bed there which was in the Ministry of Aircraft Production was, the offices were in Berkeley Square and we, in the West End of London just walked up and Piccadilly was just and the Green Park was just up the road and I, we were called, they said to, we were working and they said to us girls we are all going down to the big hall because there is going to be a speech by the Prime Minister, because we all knew Germany had [unclear] and everyone was cock-a-hoop, oh, we’re going to be at war, oh whack-o!, sort of thing and of course, see [unclear], I mean, in 1939 I was seventeen, young and silly. We all were, a big typing pool of girls, all silly girls and we sat in the hall and the speech came on and he said we are now at war and we all said whoopee! And the air raid siren went and we were told to go to the shelters, or go down the corridor and we all rushed to the big windows and there wasn’t a soul to be seen in Berkeley Square. The Queen Mothers, the Queen’s dressmaker William Hartnell [sic] had room, had his big shop and rooms just opposite, not a soul to be seen anywhere, only a big red big fat barrage balloon going slowly up. And we were all, where are the Germans? And we all thought it was wonderful, then we all sang, Pack Up Your Troubles and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary and we were all throwing paper around and thought it was wonderful. And then of course I went home and my father said: ‘Bloody little fool!’ [laughs] He said, you wait, you don’t know what war was like, he said, now, and I remember when Dunkirk happened because I had an aunt, my mother’s sister married my uncle and they lived on an island at Thames Ditton, which isn’t far from Surbiton in Surrey, an island in the river Thames, that’s where the Thames widens and Richmond Park, beautiful royal park, is on the other side. And my uncle had a little cabin cruiser I think and they were given orders, everyone was given orders to take, the navy came round to, all those people on the island had boats and they were given orders at Dunkirk time to take their boats, they had to take their boat down to some part in the Thames estuary and the navy would deal with them and they were all hitched up to a, I don’t know whether it be onto a torpedo boat or a destroyer, I don’t think a destroyer would be too big, they were hitched up on lines and they were taken over to pick men up and brought them back. He only went over the once, cause I think he had engine trouble coming home and you know, all this sort of thing was happening and I and dad said, after Dunkirk I mean it was only then the Battle of Britain started almost and I remember we, dad and mum and I went for a walk and dad, we were talking about the war and he said, I don’t know, he said, what have we got? He said, we’ve only got these young men and a few young men with planes and he said, they are going to be overwhelmed by the German Air Force, who’d been practicing in Spain in the Spanish war, he said, they are going to be just shot down and he said, I just wish I’d kept my World War I revolver with three [unclear], one for you, one for mum and one for me. And that was dad, he said, it’s going to be a bloodbath if they come over. But then again quite a lot of us in years later in the ex-service things, we were talking, there were all, I mean, there was the man in the street who could do what he’s told and he couldn’t care less, as long as he’s got a warm bed and three meals a day and I mean, Hitler had obviously impressed the German people, I mean, obviously, well, I mean, they had been in a bad, in a terrible way in the Depression and we were, and we’d come through that terrible Depression and I mean, if you had someone who started to tell you, oh, we are going to do this and we are going to do that and we, you know, we are all going to live in a united Europe and do very well, and a lot of the, a lot of the upper crust, a lot of the aristocracy were very Pro-Hitler and, but there was in recent years, there have been things discovered, there’s been an underground headquarters found which, they’ve got no records of anywhere in the War Office or, anyway and apparently it has come out that there was a big, like resistance movement already being organised by Churchill and the patriotic people, very patriotic leaders of the country. Now there would have been civil war I think, I think it would have turned into civil war. You know, lot of us ex-service people have been talking, cause I’ll tell you this. In recent years, with the way life is, with the permissive life and it’s all me, me, me now and the way things are going politically, I mean everywhere not just our [unclear], our politicians are bloody twits, all of them and everywhere seems to be the same and all these do-gooders and letting all these people into Europe and a lot of us ex-service people are saying, perhaps it would have been better, saying, was it worth it? Was it worth all those lives lost? Would we have been better under Hitler? If you’d kept your nose clean and done what you were told you’d probably be just as well off. Cause the German people were. The only thing is of course, you’ve got things like the, those concentration camps, I mean, you’d think of that. The concentration camps, I mean, would we want concentration camps? This is the thing. You’ve got. And I mean, I was only reading the other day about the Japanese, if we hadn’t atom bombed them, they had, form the Emperor down, they had been given orders that every prisoner of war, civilian as well as service, which would have been a hell of a lot of civilians cause they had a lot of Dutch people and so on were to be massacred, it didn’t matter how you do it, squashed them, hanged them up, knifed them, staked them, all the most horrible of things, that every non-Japanese was to be got rid of, so, I was just as well we get the atom bomb off, cause we saved a lot of innocent people’s lives. But I mean, you know, there’s quite a lot of us, especially you know like in the navy get-togethers and things, and everyone says, was it really worth it, when you think of all your mates. And I think more or less one of the reasons that we say it was the best time of our lives, it was a wonderful time in the majority of people, civilians and service, we were all pulling together, we all had one ideal, and it was a very legitimate war. We had one ideal and there was the mateship, the companionship. I mean, I never came across anything nasty, I never came across rape or anything in the services, in the women’s services and everyone was so, you know, working together and the great comradeship and friendship and helping each other, cause life was difficult and harsh at times and we all helped each other. And, you know, you would put your friends before anything else, you know, to help your friends and support them and perhaps I’d think it’s more that when we say it was the best years of our lives, that terrific comradeship. And it really to me and of course to me all the time and then it’s something we all say in the RAF association, you know, those young men who sacrificed their lives and the way they were treated after the war, the way the bomber boys were treated and they must never be forgotten. My daughter gets on my nerves cause she said, oh, one day will come and everyone will forget them, I said, no, they won’t after all they don’t forget Nelson and the sailors that fought at Trafalgar, they don’t forget the soldiers that fought at Waterloo, that saved Britain and there was, both of those were narrow squeaks, [laughs], I mean Waterloo was very near the knuckle, they were and so was Trafalgar, cause Nelson was, cause right from a little girl I always Nelson was my big one time hero and we’ve had a film of his life, we also, one year we had a film of a sort of mock-up thing that they did in Britain of these battleships and they had an actual broadside, cause Nelson, Nelson did it, instead of fighting each ship broadside on and opening the cannons, he got, he laid his flotilla, all the enemy battleships were like front and back, you know, all in lines and then he came along with his flotilla like that and they simply opened up, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, broadsides and split the ships right through and he brought that manoeuvre into being, I mean, he was a real, I read a lot about naval battles, I read, my reading, I read occasionally a biography or a travel book but my reading is all war books.
AP: [laughs]
JS: Oh yeah, I’m on the [unclear] and up there.
AP: I can see in the collection of books [unclear].
JS: I’m, I’ve been getting out of the library, I’ve been reading about [unclear], or I think submariners that’s even worse than bombers. I once met a submarine man and he was such a nice, gentle, little chap and I used to think, how can you go down under the sea, all those thousands of feet, oh, with depth charges?
AP: [unclear] a lot of fun.
JS: But I, I do, I read a lot and I’m reading a lot at the moment about World War I cause there have been a lot of programs, Tony, oh, he’s Sir Tony now, the man who does the walks through Britain, he’s done a very three or four weeks running on a Sat, Sunday afternoon about going through World War I. My dad in World War I, he was in the trenches and then they were sent to Mesopotamia and that’s of course Iraq and then they were sent to Salonica, but they were sent through Palestine cause I know he had a bathe in the Black, in the Dead Sea, and said, oh, you just float on the top of the salt water but he saw Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence of Arabia, he and another man, they came on their camels and he said, we’d just come out of the lines, we were fighting the Turks and he said, we’re all filthy and dirty and he said, we were having our rest and he said, cause dad started as a private and went up to, he went right through the ranks and was commissioned in the field and went up to captain and he said, I was in the headquarters and he said, this man in all his silk, was only a short man, in all his silk Arab robes came in and they wanted maps to getting from somewhere to somewhere and they were going to take a place, they were going to take the surrender of a place and the Aussies got there first [laughs] and took the surrender, and all these [unclear], all these two [unclear] men [unclear] Arabs they got there after us but then before that dad had seen the Australian light horse going up not very far away cause I think it was Damascus and the Australian light horse came through going up to Beer Sheba and he said, again we were all filthy, our poor old infantry, cause he was in the rifle brigade, he said, oh, the poor dirty old infantry and he said, we were all lying around and he said, suddenly, he said, in the middle of all this filth and dust, he said, these, like a vison, he said, these tall, they all seemed to be tall according to them, these tall bronzed young men and he said, everything, he said, their horses were gleaming, their saddlery was glowing and he said they got these, whatever, they got, I don’t know what they’re called in their hands and just, and they were all laughing and the Aussies were all laughing and joking and you know, the rifle brigade gave them a cheer and saluted them and they were all happy and I mean that was a real fluke, that the Turks had their machineguns set for them there, they’d had mown the horses down if they’d been able to and they got them locked all in a mess and apparently, cause you, I mean, if you’re on a galloping horse you know what’s it’s like on a full gallop, it must be pretty deadly to see all these waving their swords and shouting and, you know, shrieking and shouting and horses neighing and the thud of hooves, just imagine it. And it was a complete triumph but that means at some poor devils [unclear] worst of course and horses. Yes.
AP: So, oh yes, I have, we’ve covered a fair bit. [unclear] We’re still going.
JS: I shouldn’t have kept you.
AP: No problem at all.
JS: Four hours.
AP: I’ve loved it, it was really good. However, uhm, I do have one last question. It may well be the most important one all my interviewees is this. Uhm, in your opinion, how is Bomber Command remembered and what legacy has it left?
JS: How is it remembered? Well, I suppose all of us who’ve had anything to do with them will remember them for the, they were the, they were our little white hope in all those long years when we were waiting and waiting to try and get into enemy, try and do an invasion, they were our only white hope and they were, I mean, if it hadn’t been for Bomber Command, bombing the factories, roads, every, keeping them on their toes, and keeping them short of things, it might have been terrible on D-Day if we hadn’t done something, I mean, why isn’t Bomber Command universally, why is it always this bloody Dresden thing comes up? All the time it comes up! And it seems to me, Canada and Britain seemed to have fostered this, I don’t know why and I would like to see Bomber Command remembered for the fact that they were our one big bastion against Germany for those interim years before D-Day and I would, well, I hope that, I would like to see them remembered more as a special thing, as we remember the Battle of Britain, I would love to see a sort of Bomber Command Day or something but the way they are still remembered I don’t like this attitude, it always comes up Dresden. And I mean why, you’ve got a German [unclear] who agrees that Dresden was hiding a lot of things and still there’s these people, so, well, I’m glad that there’s this big memorial in Britain because I think that it’ll be there and it’ll be like that wonderful memorial in Green Park, so at least you’ve got something always there in front of people, but I mean, you know, I still think there should have been a Bomber Command Day and a Bomber Command Medal, I mean, I mixed with these old chaps and it’s so sad, I don’t know, it’s so sad and remembering what they did, I remember you see the crews and their average age was between eighteen and twenty two, I mean, I think Jock’s crew they had their, I think their navigator was, he was grandad he was thirty, no, no, it was their, I’m sorry, it was their rear gunner, he was thirty, he was ex-metropolitan mounted police, cause the only way the police could get in the services was volunteer for aircrew, so he went in and yes, Ron, he was thirty two and married with children and they called him grandad but I mean, they were young men and I look at young men now and think my God, they were either in charge of a bomber and seven men’s lives or they were in a motor torpedo boat, interestingly, I never thought much of Jack, John Kennedy when he was president, I didn’t like the Kennedy family at all but I’ve read a very interesting book about him and he was a very brave young man too in that motor torpedo boat, a very brave young man but you when, and talking to them and of course you’d say how did you feel, what was, when you knew you could be going to your death? And a lot of them have said, well, you couldn’t let your mates down, you didn’t want to go but you couldn’t let your mates down, cause Jock said the first, oh, he said, I looked forward to my first op but he said, after that I didn’t look forward cause he said, oh, he said, when we went over the target and I looked down and he said it was a vision of hell and he said I still, he said, I still wasn’t that scared until I got back. But I remember, see some people, they were, you know they were terribly superstitious, I mean, Jock always, he had a [unclear] bit, those tiny [unclear] bits with a hole through it that one of his relatives gave him and he had a tiny little silver thimble which he got the leaves that he, when he went into the air force, he had a Christmas pudding at his aunt’s place and he got this silver thimble on a chain, teeny tiny little thing, the size of his little nail and he had one of my suspenders and he’d always have them pinned on his flying suit and, when he was cremated and I put, they were always kept in our bedside cabinet and I took them out and I tucked them under his pocket, you know, so that when he was dressed and being put in his coffin, they would go with him on his last flight but I mean, they had, the pilot had a teddy bear and he always had to rub its stomach when you got in so that was always stuck behind the pilots seat and some of them, he always told he’d get through he always said to me, don’t worry, he said, I might get injured but he said I have a feeling I’ll get through, now, other boys didn’t and I remember when I was giving out some of the Red Cross comforts one night when they were going on one of these small ops and from Lichfield, there was a lovely young navigator, he, blue eyed and very fair curly hair and always a lovely smile and you know, he’d been one of the boys, we’d all been in the pub together, singing, we all knew each other quite well and I remember him coming up and he leaned across the table and he was a big tall boy and he picked me up, just picked me up under the arms and gave me a big kiss and he said, bye bye Jean, he said, I won’t see you again, I mean, a great big smile, and I said, I can’t remember his name and I said, oh come off, he said, no, he said, I know, he said, I know I’m on it tonight and he didn’t come back and he was quite jovial about it but quite a lot of them and Jock had friends that he knew and he said some crews, he said, some crews, when you were on your operational station he said you knew as soon as they walked into the mess as a new crew, he said, they had the look and the smell of death on them, he said, you knew that they wouldn’t last long, cause on his squadron, 90 Squadron, theirs was the first crew for ten months to do, to get through full operational tour and actually they did thirty two and they were asked to go on a last one and his mechanics said to him oh, one of his mechanics said, oh god, I wish you weren’t going on this one, but he said, It’ll be alright and it was, thank God, that was the one where the two friends got blown up. But I don’t know ways remembering Bomber Command, how do you make people remember? I just hope that they’re never, well, I just hope they’re never forgotten for what they did because that was a horrible job. And I, you know, you, as I say, we used to see them and they were twitchy, you could see a lot of them were twitchy when they were going down to dispersals and they’d laugh, they’d be like little boys, ah, and they’d light a cigarette and then they’d take two puffs and then put it out and then light another one, I mean, and in transports the WAAF drivers taking them down, they liked the WAAF to take them down to their planes, they much preferred a WAAF than a man driver and it was the same with the wireless operators, the radio operators in flying control, they, oh, Jock used to say, oh, he said, when you are tired out and he said, you know you’re being told, a force comes on telling you, you’re going in a stack and he said, all you want to do is get your feet on the ground and he said to hear that quiet woman’s voice, he said, a man’s voice never did anything to me, he said, you hear that quiet woman’s voice talking you down, almost sympathising with you, and he said, you know, it did something for you and I think, you know I think, they were full of nerves. Jock said, you were, he said, you were always very quiet in the transport, he said, some would joke with the driver, the WAAF driver about her boyfriends or things like that but he said you’d, he said, the worst part was the waiting, he said, the waiting for the word off, cause sometimes when they were down by the aircraft all bombed up, it was cancelled and that was horrible cause he said, if it was cancelled you think oh god, I’ve got to go through all this again tomorrow night and every time they got back it’s one off towards the end of your tour and he said, once you got into your aircraft, he said, cause, engineers, the bomb aimer very often did the second pilot’s job during a trip but always take off and landing, the engineer was always with the pilot cause he helped the throttles and so on and switches and he said, you sat down, you did your cockpit check, you did your crew check, he said, you forgot everything, you had so much to do before take up, off and once you were up you had so much thing cause the engineers were checking labour entring every fifteen minutes, fuel thing and of course any lights going out or oxygen not coming through or things like that, they were always, he said, we are, he said, I was always busy, I didn’t have much time to sit down at all, but he said, you were always so busy, you never thought it was only, he said, we always used to be so glad, we always used to give a cheer when we saw the Channel coming back, he said, when you saw the sea [unclear] those usually be or everything going up from the coast, or defences, he said, you saw the sea, he said, you just prayed you got across the sea cause so many of them didn’t. And the awful thing was that of course some poor sods that landed on beaches and then the beaches were mined or the aircraft went into mined areas and blew up, just as they thought they were there. They did one time come, they were short of fuel and they had to use Woodbridge, you know, Woodbridge was a huge, right just over the coast, gigantic, but he said, they said, and the next one most wonderful thing was when he said you saw your beacon, cause that’s another thing that caused crashes coming home, the, all the, on the east coast all these huge airfields and their satellites all the circuits were intercepting so you got planes twiddling around everywhere, all the time during the war the sky was never free of aircraft, it seemed to be, always aircraft doing something cause they’d all the train, people training and then there were people going here and there to other stations and going off out. One of the most wonderful things was when I was down in London on leave, I was walking near Buckingham Palace I think, it was with my mother and aunt and walking near Buckingham Palace and a huge squadron, cause it was right near the end of the war and I mean they were just it wasn’t easy in those days, they were going over and it was, the war was almost into Germany and all these Flying Fortresses went out, hundreds of them went right over Buckingham Palace flying out, quarter of an hour later [makes a whooshing sound] along comes a little fighter squadron, cause they had to, they picked their fighter umbrella up cause the fighters were much faster, all these Hurricanes and Spitfires all riffing a long, making a lovely noise and it was quite inspiring because I’d only seen aircraft going out at night one by one and circling round and listening to the [unclear] in the clouds and that was, that was not as exciting as seeing a whole squadron, of cause they did a big box formation, they were quite classy, and once they, once their jolly old formations were broken they were really limping and we were better with our open formations and once they had, it was nearly, it wasn’t before the end of the European war but it was not far off, we had a conference at, oh no it must, no, no, this was at Lichfield so it must have been, no, must have been, I left, I left late 1943, I went to Group Headquarters so it must have been 1943, we had a Stirling bomber coming to this conference, a Lancaster bomber and a Flying Fortress, now you could see the three of them, a Stirling just towered, the Lancaster was fair and the Flying Fortress, which everyone said oh [unclear] big planes, it was so small and the Yanks took us, our boys took us over there [unclear] and the Yanks planes, I mean I wouldn’t like to be a gunner on an American fortress and you know with this wide open bitterly cold I mean they wore a lot of warm things must have been terribly cold and they were more or less each side gunner, they were more or less bashing buttons and there were all the machine guns, all strings of ammunition everywhere, you had to pick your way through these strings of ammunition and it wouldn’t have been very nice at all, wouldn’t have been nice at all, so and cause, you know, the Lancaster of course you’ve got the big bulkhead but you’ve got a bigger one in the Stirling cause Jock said there was always the trouble you know when you had to get down to the rear gunner and you got an awful long way to go and it was, and you’ve only got a catwalk, is bitterly cold [coughs] if you hadn’t got, even through your silk glove you could feel the cold if you put your hand on the side of the aircraft [coughs] then you get that bloody great bulkhead, climbing over there with all that flying kit [coughs] horrible.
AP: Quite, quite amazing. Well, I think you’ve covered all the questions I had.
JS: [coughs] [unclear]
AP: I only had to ask three of them. [laughs]
JS: I apologize.
AP: No, no problems at all, there is some fantastic stuff in there. [unclear] I love these sorts of interviews I love the best, cause I come in, I ask one question and I just sit back and listen.
JS: Oh, as long as you don’t mind, I do apologize.
AP: Ah, I loved it.
JS; [unclear]
AP: yeah, yeah.
JS: I’ll make another cup of tea.
AP: Thank you very much. I’ll turn this off.
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Interview with Jean Smith
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:40:04 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary. Allocated S Coulter
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-03-12
Description
An account of the resource
Jean Smith worked as a clerk in the aircraft manufacturing industry before the war and later served as a secretary in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She served at 27 Operational Training Unit at RAF Lichfield.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Staffordshire
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1945
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Peter Schulze
27 OTU
aircrew
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
control caravan
control tower
crash
flight engineer
ground personnel
love and romance
memorial
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Lichfield
runway
service vehicle
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/PSouthwellDE1603.1.jpg
14aae2a01070e096fa9c00a5c57a4ace
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/ASouthwellDE160424.2.mp3
bd5f88b470f50c82d0fece440095f478
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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Southwell, Don
Donald Edward Southwell
Donald E Southwell
Donald Southwell
D E Southwell
D Southwell
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Donald Edward "Don" Southwell (b. 1924 - 2019, 423987 Royal Australian Air Force), documents including a navigation chart, and six photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 463 and 467 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Don Southwell 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
2016-04-24
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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Southwell, DE
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DES: [unclear] have you?
AP: My little question sheet.
DES: Oh, good, [unclear] you should have given it to me before.
AP: No, no, no.
DES: [laughs]
AP: So what I do, uhm, because of this little adapter, if I unplug it, the careful tuned thing dies and it gets embarrassing cause it never works. So, instead I have to plug in earphones, so that I can check cause this is a little splitter. I can plug in earphones so that I can listen to it, because if I just try on the speaker, it goes out the earphones so, anyway. It works now, that’ the most important thing, I’ve had a couple of interviews where I had to use the little microphone built in here cause I never know if this thing’s working. Very very [unclear].
DES: I didn’t know there was a mike in those. See, I use one of those all the time. [unclear]
AP: Well, some of them, some of them do, so there is actually a little camera up here, there is a little microphone there, so it is like for web cam, is not for very good quality and it picks up all the noise that’s around, this seems to be more, uhm, localised to adjust your voice, which [unclear] in the recording. I did one of those with a bloke, uhm, Jack Bell, who, he was shot down in Libya, uhm, he’s 98, he was shot down in Libya in 1942 and spent the rest of the war as prisoner, ’43, very early [unclear].
DES: Ah, prisoner.
AP: 42 [unclear]
DES: In Germany?
AP: Uhm, in Italy and then in Germany.
DES: Ah.
AP: Uhm, and the house next door was actually being demolished at the time we did the interview. In the background you can hear a little bit of it, but not very much. So, for a twenty dollar E-bay special, they are pretty good. Anyway, if you are comfortable and ready to [unclear]
DES: Yeah.
AP: All this is, as you know, IBCC interview, uhm, basically we just have a chat. Uhm, I’ve got a sort of list of questions to get us started, but basically I’ll let you run and we go wherever we go and then we might come back and fill in gaps, all that sort of stuff.
DES: You edit it. Yeah.
AP: Yeah, uhm, we just go until one of us begs for mercy basically. I know what you are like, so it could be for a while [laughs].
DES: No, no, no, it’s not right. No, I, whenever this comes up and I’m in a group, I know the people who’ve got all the interesting stories. I’ve been doing this since Australia all over.
AP: No, I.
DES: Down in, [unclear] I’m gonna write him a letter too, but, uh, Ian McNamara and uh he was, uhm, I was all, I did directing, at, down there, I got the, we got this bloke and got this bloke, got that bloke, got that bloke, he’s gonna get all interesting blokes, you know, I knew [unclear] too long [laughs] and they didn’t want me [laughs] Yeah.
AP: Very good. Anyway, uhm, so, look, the shortest interview I’ve done went from forty five minutes long to three and a half hours or so, you know, whenever we get, we get, it’s quite ok. As I said, there’s a list of questions to sort to start of, so
DES: Forty five minutes, [unclear]
AP: That’s very short one, that was very hard because I had to keep asking questions to. Uhm, my favourite one.
DES: You’d might have to do that.
AP: We’ll see what happens when I ask the first question, that’s always the same question I start with and once the opening response went for about ten words, the longest one has been an hour and fifty before I had to say anything else. Which
DES: [unclear]
AP: It’s astonishing, it’s really really good. Anyway, so, uhm, I start off with a little spiel, so, kick off with that now, just to sort of set the time and the place, uh, so, we are recording and it looks good. So, this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Don Southwell, who was a 463 Squadron navigator at the tail end of World War Two. Interview is taking place at Don’s home in St Ives in Sydney, it’s the 24th of April, I should know that, it’s their [unclear] day, my name is Adam Purcell. Uhm, so, as usual, Don, we will start with the normal question, can you tell me something of your early life, growing up, what you did before the war.
DES: Yes, I can certainly do that. Ehm, I was born in Croydon, in New South Wales, in number 10, Hardidge [?] Street as a matter of fact and I was the third child of my mother Cathy. Ehm, I had my brother Brian, my sister and myself, we were four years between each of us and we lived in Croydon, in Sydney. My father died when I was thirty, when he was thirty five and my mother brought us all up to the [unclear], my, I went to school in [unclear] High school and I had, oh I had a job when I left high school. I was, uhm, my first job was at, uhm, RKO Radio Pictures and I was there for about eighteen months and uhm, my mother thought that this picture business wasn’t the sort of place that [laughs] her son should be spending his career in. So, she started to work on various people and I finished up with a job at the MLC. At the MLC, at this particular stage, they only took you with the leaving certificate. My mum couldn’t afford to keep me on the leaving, so, while my brother and sister went to Fort Street High School and did the leaving, uhm, my mum couldn’t afford it. Anyway, we, I went to RKO Radio Pictures and we, uhm, I lasted there and, uhm, I got the job at the MLC and my sister actually worked and that’s how I probably had a little bit of influence and they didn’t want to appoint me first of all but I reached the stage where there weren’t getting many men in because of the war and the war had started and this was in 1941. And so, uhm, I was very fortunate to get that job because I remind there laws about 90 and that’s not a jag either, this is quite true and I [unclear], I have to write, yeah, uh, I was there for eighteen months and the war came and I’d already enlisted, I’d already joined the air training corps, it was 24 Squadron at Ashfield and under control of squadron leader Whitehurst and he had the grads there and we did all the courses for the air training corps and I was also an ARP warden on my bike and I had an ARP band on my arm, patrolling the streets at night to make sure the people were keeping to the blackout rules. I used to sit in those, sit at the top of the town hall at Ashfield and looking for [laughs] Japanese planes coming over. We didn’t get any Japanese planes but we had to report all things that were going in there and then I got the call up for the army. Because I was eighteen the army called me up and because I was in the air force, I had already been in the air training corps it didn’t make any difference so I went up to the infantry training battalion at Dubbo in central New South Wales and, uhm, I was there for about three weeks, while the rifle regiment came in on a motorbike and looking for [unclear] and took me back to the, you know, the orderly room, I was put on a train to Sydney, I was discharged from the army and sent down to Woolloomooloo. In Woolloomooloo was the air force, uhm, recruiting depot and there we did the medical tests and so forth and I was then posted off and I to number nine Glebe Island [?], which is a wharf in Sydney, I went in as an aircrew, I was called, the air force had so many people for aircrew that they couldn’t cope with them at a particular time and they made us air crew guards and I served for three months in Sydney, there’s an aircrew guard, some of them got posted all the way from New South Wales but I was fortunate enough, I caught number nine Glebe Island, where we guarded little beds, belonged to the air force and so forth and we also did jobs working on the wharves and I was part of the secret war people talk about, that the wharfies continually being out on strike and so forth and they asked the, they sent one of us down to do various jobs on the wharves because later all the supplies were going up to New Guinea, was on a ship called the Marino and it belonged under contract to the air force and now, the wharfies were pilfering stuff from this convoys that were going up to the, the trips up in New Guinea, they were pilfering stuff there and so we had a, we were put, what do you call it? A revolver, a Smith and Wesson revolver around their waists and I did stay for one night, I’d be inside the wharf for one day, inside the wharf in the stores where they had all the stuff there laying. We had a guard on the door, a guard on the, uhm, where the crane came down and picked the, uhm, supplies up, one on top on board the ship and one down in the hold. And we virtually stopped the pilfering in the, but there was a great war against the wharfies in those particular days but a very interesting book has been written about the secret war and it’s not only happened there, but it happened in the army and all around the place. So, that was just a little side set up, while I was waiting to go to aircrew. I was then called up to number 2 ITS in Bradfield Park, to go and do my initial training school and, uhm, so began my career in the air force. Then, do you want me to go further?
AP: Yeah, can you keep going as [unclear].
DES: I’m in the air force then, ok.
AP: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Absolutely.
DES: We’re in Bradfield Park and Bradfield Park was the centre of two ITS and we did the normal parades on the [unclear] rid marches, uhm, we did cross country runs, we did all sorts of subjects that were pertinent to air crew and so forth, meteorology, all that sort of business and we, uhm, that took us about three weeks to do that and then I was categorised as a pilot. Cause I wanted to be a pilot because my brother was a pilot and so they made me a pilot. They sent me off to number 8, I think it is number 8, EFTS at Narrandera and so began my career, started my career as a pilot. The time limit for getting through, through the school was you had to go solo in twelve hours, now came twelve hours and I hadn’t gone solo and the, uhm, my instructor said; ‘Come on, Don, we gotta get you through this’ and we were operating from a little satellite area, outside of Narrandera, he said you gotta go up and go solo today [laughs]. So, I worked out all what I had to do in the circuit and so forth and I went up on the, took off, made a nice take off but I got the wind changed and then [laughs], I didn’t know the wind had changed and I’m doing the circuit on the basis of when I took off, I did the left-hand circuit and so forth and coming, all of a sudden there is a Tiger Moth coming up beside me, it was my instructor and he was pointing down to the wind sock and I didn’t know what he was talking about, you know, so I didn’t, I just went up and landed, I did a beautiful crosswind landing, it was a good crosswind landing but that’s the last time I, I think I lasted for another half an hour or so flying and then they decided that I, you know, I hadn’t gone in twelve hours, didn’t look like it, so they scrubbed me, I was scrubbed and that was a terrible thing to happen to me, to be scrubbed, I wanted so much to be like my brother who could fly before the war. And, so, uh, I was then, I thought, oh, I’ll have it now the air crew but they transferred me. The boy that got a B in mathematics 1 and mathematics 2, the intermediate, they transferred me to embarkation depot as a navigator and so, but I, and then I stayed at the, I came from Narrandera back to Sydney and I stayed there at the embarkation depot and uhm, just as on the side, we used to, get my [unclear] at Burwood, that was a [unclear] about twenty minute train ride from Chatswood, we used to have a night down, tucked down under the barbed wire, get down a lady game driver, was not a lady game driver this near, walk up to take off, picked to be kept, seen the fiver air crew, when I say we there were a lot of fellows doing this, and we get, I get the train to Han, I spend the night at Ham (or Han), get out of bed at about five o’clock, then come back and up [unclear] at five o’clock ready for parade. And so that, that didn’t go on for long of course, but I did my, that was our waiting game but of course, we were going overseas an therefore we couldn’t leave Australia until we were nineteen, that was a government rule, they just couldn’t, you couldn’t leave, you couldn’t get out, be transferred out of Australia unless you were nineteen. So, I kept going, I was before I turned nineteen, I went to embarkation depot, so I kept [unclear] just about every day reminding them that I was, I’ll be nineteen on the seventeenth of April. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were bound on a train up to, from Central Railway, we went up to Queensland and transferred to Kalinga and the army came, was a big army came and we slept in tents, oh, by the way, the train trip was terrible, we were in, we had to sit up or some fellows were sitting up, lying down on in the luggage racks upstairs but we had a terrible trip that night, that train, they put us like cattle in there, and so we got up to Brisbane to Kalinga and we had to wait there for our ship and that was somewhere around the first or second of July in 1943, ’43, yeah ’43, and we uhm, one night we had the cars or the truck all arrived and took us down to the boat, was the Noordam, was the United States army transport going back to San Francisco, empty or as empty, except for us air force, because they’ve been bringing all those hundreds of thousands of American troops over to Australia for the Pacific War and uhm, so uhm, we set sail from Brisbane heading or Morton Bay and then shortly about two or three hours out from Brisbane we [unclear] and we wonder what we were doing because of the Japanese submarines and all that sort of thing and it was the, only about three or four days before, or, yeah must have been before, we have to because the Japanese had sunk the hospital ship, the, the, the, the, because they sunk one of their hospital ships and we had two minutes of silence we expected to be torpedoed [unclear] and we headed on our way to, I think it took us about eighteen days to get to San Francisco and never been past Hornsby, past Wollongong, never seen the Blue Mountains, I hadn’t been out to the parks to the, in the [unclear] and to Dubbo in the army and, uhm, here I was, just coming into San Francisco harbour and so I made sure I was at the front of the ship and I never left that ship till about two o’clock in the afternoon, we came by, saw the Golden Gate bridge [unclear] I was nineteen years of age and we heard the, we saw the [unclear] prison and the San Francisco bridge and we landed at Oakland and from there we were put on a train and sent up to, up the uhm, West Coast of America, uh, to Vancouver, where we switched trains for our trip on Canadian national Railways, was a steam, was an old-burner train and we went to, went on our way through the Canadian Rockies to Edmonton and slightly north of Calgary at and the thing that strikes us, was the difference in travelling in Australia in the cattle trucks, where we had, uhm, they weren’t there for our Americans in those days but they were there for Americans were waiting on us, we had sleepers, everything was laid on, the Canadian people, the Canadian government were fantastic, and here we were, we were only leading aircraftsmen, we weren’t even sergeants, and so anyway, we got to Edmonton, I went to the, uhm, manning depot, manning depot and I have a big photo in my home here of the, uhm, on one of our parades, you can pick me out in the [unclear], we had the morning [unclear], you can pick out the Australians because of their blue uniforms, all the rest wore khaki, was in summertime, but anyway, you could pick us out, pick me out with the manning depot and then I was transferred from there, which was just across the road, really, to number 2 AOS Edmonton, that’s where I did my navigation course. My first trip on navigation course was a real, [laugh], was a real did last as far as I was concerned but I’ll tell you about it. We, uhm, I had a, uhm, another navigator, we were flying Avro Ansons and, well, just digress slightly on our Avro Ansons and then poor our navigator had to wind the wheels of the Anson, Avro Anson up, a hundred and forty-nine times to get the wheels up, that was their job for, just straight on take-off. Anyway, we went on from this first navigation trip, I had a second navigator with me, who was supposed to be giving me fixes and that sort of thing and I got lost and so while I was suggesting we do, the pilots by the way were all civilians, they were not in the air force, they were under civilian contract and that was [unclear] Canada and, uhm, Maxi Titlebomb his name was and he suggested we get out and have a look at the railway sign [laughs] so we went down to the railway station and were at a sort of place called Wetaskiwin, not far out of Edmonton, but it was Wetaskiwin so I proceeded to [unclear] I knew where I was, I got me air plucked for Wetaskiwin and went up and we continued on our course, I expected to be scrubbed straight off on that score but I wasn’t, no, they didn’t, was the best thing that ever happened to me because I made a mistake on my first trip, you were never, the navigators rule was never to drop your air plot and I dropped me air plot because if you kept your air plot [unclear] end your life to get a position, make some sort of, where you think it was but you, you’d always got the opportunity to do that and, so a navigator never had to, should never drop his air plot. But anyway I finished up, was about six months course, was about six months and we, incidentally we had to, people talk about the weather these days, it was forty degrees, one night it was forty degrees below zero, now was in Fahrenheit was thirty-two degrees and so was seventy-two degrees of frost. We had to warm the aircraft up in the hangers before we went out and we had winds, sometimes we had headwinds where we were going backwards up in the north part of Canada [laughs], you know, very, very frightening for a nineteen year old [laughs] that didn’t know a lot about navigation, but we got through all of it and we, I finished up with a reasonable max coming out of my course, I was always better at the air plot than I was, I always had trouble with my theory things, wasn’t very good on the theory but I was, even if I say so I was reasonable as a navigator. And so we got our wings there and was around December 1943 and I haven’t been out to find many [unclear] since I came across my fellows book called Navigator Brothers the other day and I wrote to the author, because in there was a photo of one of the group that was having their passing air parade, cause a big deal the passing air parade, the Canadians really put on all their pomp and ceremony for their passing air parade. The, uhm, uh, yes, we got our wings and we proceeded then to go to, uhm, to uhm, we’d being posted to Montreal [unclear] I just had a thought, we went to Montreal and we had to wait a bit to go over to England and, you know, during my stay in Montreal, we stayed at a place called the Sheen, we were sent off for six weeks up to a ski lodge, so they didn’t have a boat to take us over to England so they sent us, was about thirty of us, we were all sent up to a ski lodge, luxurious place for, you know, a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, we learned to ski, we learned to use the tennis rackets on the feet to walk in the snow, we learned to ice skate, to do all sorts of things, it was wonderful. Anyway, we got back from, we went back to the Sheen and I found out that my brother, was, uhm, who was a pilot in the Middle East and an instructor at Lichfield, which would probably entirely they said to be Bomber Command.
AP: Absolutely.
DES: But he, uh, I found out he was coming over on his way home to Australia having completed his tour, he was transferred back to Australia but on his way he had to go, he was [unclear] to fly back with a brand new Liberator and Bryan was in New York with his crew, but they’d been flying Liberators although a lot of these fellows who did this were Lancaster pilots, cause there’s two hundred of them eventually, and then Bryan and I we shared a room in Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York for a couple of days. Then he went on his way home or to California, I should say, where he did three months before he flew off back to Australia, If you like I might talk about that later on. But, then I went back to Montreal and we then got advised that a ship was waiting for us in Halifax, so we did a night trip to Halifax from Montreal and we joined the maiden [?] vessel called, the maiden [?] vessel called the Andes, was a flat bottom boat, a, yeah, a 20000-tonner I suppose, but it was very fast and on that boat we had a complete Canadian armoured division, were ten thousand fellows with their tanks and about a hundred aircrew, [unclear] pilots joining there, there were navigators, there were wireless operators, there was bomb aimers, all been trained in Canada and sending us all over and so we went over there on our own, we didn’t go in a convoy, we went on our own, took us about seven days, we went up towards the North Pole and [unclear] in Liverpool but we didn’t have any, uhm, we didn’t have any [unclear] things happening to us except that we, was a [unclear] taking more than seven days but it was a fast trip was what we did and we weren’t allowed about decks at night time, so, at night time you couldn’t go up on deck no matter what it was because people had a habit of lighting cigarettes and submarines could catch you but some of these, the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, they were too fast for the submarines so they, we zig-zagged all the way across and we arrived in Liverpool and uhm, we uhm, got, we arrived nearly as the morning met by the salvation army, they gave us food and so forth, we went in the big tunnel out of Liverpool and came down to, went down to Brighton PDRC and that’s where I started my first, uhm, flying, my first events in England.
AP: What did you?
DES: Now.
AP: What did you think of wartime England when you first got there?
DES: When?
AP: As a nineteen year old Australian, you are now in wartime England. What?
DES: What I thought of it? Well, uhm, when I first got there I, we went by train down to, we skirted to London, we went to, Brighton was a lovely place but, we were, there was the IFF that had taken over the uhm, the uhm, the Metropole and the, the Metropole and the, the two big hotels, I have just forgotten their names but it was where Margaret Thatcher was blown up later on, she escaped the bombing near in Brighton some years later but we went straight down so, we didn’t see much of the, uhm, the countryside. We were billeted out from the hotels, the [unclear] were billeted out in homes quite near the hotel but we didn’t see any great, you know, people had their coupons, that sort of thing and I saw a lot of it after on my first leave to London, then was when I, you know, realised how terrible things were but there in Brighton, where we were, all the beaches were, they’re all pebble stones not sand all the beaches were mined so you couldn’t go there. If anybody knows Brighton as the Brighton pier, and then it had been chopped in half purposely and the bottom half was used by the air force to, but we used to go and gonna get paid there, we used to go and collect the money on a Thursday or whatever it was, and so uhm, we didn’t see, uhm, in all fairness, you know, I didn’t see, you know, it was, I wouldn’t say, you know, nasty looking, you know, there wasn’t, there was no visible damage that I saw down in Brighton but, my mother and father both came out from England in 1912 so I had relations to go to in England and so I was, uhm, my first leave I had when I went to, I went to a place called Maidstone where my mother was born and uhm, I went to see uncle Ted and auntie Gladys who became [unclear] mother while I was there and I stayed with them and they had a big two story home. He was the general manager of Fremlin’s Brewery, which was a big brewery [laughs] in London and Maidstone, and was a white, the emblem was a white elephant on all the London busses and he was the general manager of this [unclear] and so naturally I was well looked after. If they wanted some meat, if they wanted a steak or some, which was very rare, she takes it, make sure you keep the uniform on and we’ll go down to the butchers today and she, he’s my cousin from Australia you know and they’d toss out some special food for us. But uhm, they seemed to live pretty well you know I think they were, you had to be careful with petrol rationing and that sort of thing but in the group that I sort of as, you know, these people were part of, put in mind, you know, reasonably well off as people and, but she was a real mother to me, she used to take me round on, I always used to go there on leave but she used to take me round and onto, show me the Rochester cathedral or Ramsgate, where my mother used to go and swim as she was a kid and so forth, you know, and I’ve met all my relations but I, I don’t have any, it’s only when later on I went down when I was in the middle of the buzz bombs and the V2 rockets that I realised, you know, how terrible that, uh, what the Germans had done to our people here in London and, you know, when you see streets that are just completely, [unclear] smashed, it was quite something but generally speaking I can’t say that I, you know, I go shopping in London and I, one of the girls there I used to take out, Elisabeth Fulligan, she was a solicitors clerk in London and I used to see her every now and then when I was on leave but I generally speaking, you know, the, I go into a restaurant but we might have a bit difficulty in getting decent sort of stuff but, you know, I can always get eggs and bacon or some I think we had horse meat at some places in London but I didn’t know we were eating horse meat until somebody told us but. Uh, all I can say is about, the people there were marvellous [unclear] and if I can just get back, the people in Canada I missed them, I spent a lot of time when I was in Canada doing my course, one of the fellows on my course was Harry Thompson and he was a Canadian, he lived in 1065 107 Street and we used to go to weekends there and you know, they couldn’t do, his parents and their friends had us all out to their places and we go, they take us to their places and, you know, you can never pay for them, they , it was fantastic in what they did for us and I had, as I say, I had relations in England and they are all the same and I, I think that I was fortunate in that I had relations to go and stay with, all our on the other side of that I missed seeing a lot of England, I used to go down on leave to Wesperdale [?] , good to be when I was there, I was enjoying myself immensely you know, I didn’t drink beer, I drank cider and that was worse. I can always remember going to a Rotary club meeting in Maidstone and they introduced me to a sergeants household and I had to get up and say who I was and I didn’t drink beer and I thought I’d have some cider and I think I was silly as anything because I didn’t realise cider was, I any, I didn’t know much about the air force and before we finished I’d like to speak about to something about the air force that I would like to say but I answered that question there and that’s about the best I can do about the people and the conditions and that sort of thing.
AP: So.
DES: Except that I had a good time.
AP: Well, that’s the important thing.
DES: When I was on leave that was, all my leave [unclear], that’s when you notice these things.
AP: So, from Brighton, where did you go next?
DES: Oh, ok, from Brighton my first port of call was, I think it was 29 OTU, operational training unit at Bruntingthorpe, which was near Leicester and that’s, no, I’m sorry, that’s not where I went, I went to the advanced flying unit in Freugh in Scotland. There’s a good story about Freugh and that’s where we did our first lot of real navigation. We did all trips, day trips out to the Mull of Kintyre, we’re up right in the north of Scotland, no the north, but half way of Scotland, and we were doing all these trips. You went over pretty close to Ireland, we’re doing all these marvellous trips, you know, that’s where we really learned to be navigators, really into, we got our wings in Canada, but this where we really did the real thing and there we spent, West Freugh is near Stranraer and Stranraer was the main port of call when you go over to Northern Ireland and now we are on the maps, normal maps, you can find them on google now but on the normal maps you buy, you will never see West Freugh, I’ve asked many a Scottish bloke about West Freugh but they can never find West Freugh, they can only assume it was probably a farm of some sort but they had especially for that, they made it [unclear] because it was flying, we’re on Avro Ansons again, we were flying Avro Ansons there at West Freugh, they’re a two-engine aircraft, and they had two navigators on board and then we, uhm, so, I think from a point of view of a AF advanced flying unit, by the way, it was number 4 [unclear] which is [unclear], we stayed there about, uhm, oh, we didn’t stay there long, we stayed there from July ’44 to the end of July, early July, 5th of July to the 21st of July and that’s where we did our AFU advanced flying unit . Now, from there, we graduated from there and we were only doing cross country trips and that sort of thing from there. From there we went to 29 OTU at Bruntingthorpe and that’s where what we called crewed up and that’s where we, uhm, we’re all pilots, navigators, wireless operators, correct me if I’m wrong, there was, we didn’t have any engineers cause we didn’t have engineers at that stage we had two air gunners, not certain about if we had all, and the wireless operator and so we all, where we were, we were put in a big room and we were told to find yourself a pilot, navigators find yourself a pilot sort of, so, all was a real PR job, you know, we’d all yeah and there might have been a few drinks [unclear] around too as I say but they all, we were all supposed to be friendly and you wanted to find out if you, you wanted to find you’ll gonna have a team that you could work together with and I, I don’t know how I picked my pilot but I [unclear] [unclear] from [unclear] and was slightly older than me, he’s a big man and he had the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, he was a, he had a grape, not a vineyard, well it was a vineyard but he had dried fruits in [unclear] and now was to sitting behind a big bomber and we had to carry a full bomb load and with his hands gave him a great confidence. But I’ll get back to the Bruntingthorpe now, but we, we got together and we finished up with whatever we had to do and we all then did various cross country fighter affiliation where they send up and you get up in the air find another fighter plane to come and meet you and then attack you and all that sort of thing and all various subjects pertaining to air, Gee, H2S, all that sort of thing and we we’ve been introduced to, that was our navigational aids, air positioning indication, that was another thing we learned all about but that was, an hour on Wellingtons, Wellington bomber, well, they were bombers in the early stage, they were being used for training at this stage now and uhm, the uhm, and so we, when they thought the pilot was satisfactory, off we went then to, let me see, we went to, from to HCU which was the heavy conversion unit and that was our introduction to four-engine aircraft and we caught the Sterling, now said and the, uhm, we were there for a short time, that was just, this was mainly the, the pilot getting used to and the navigator, we were doing more, more uhm, things that we had done before, you know, were dropping bombs and packed us bombs and we were doing long, uhm, long cross countries, uhm, you know, five hours, two hours, that sort of thing and uhm, we, uhm, we’d be when the pilot was satisfactory trained, we were showed off to what we called the Lank finishing skill, it was the Lancaster finishing skill and we were introduced to Lancasters and the, from and that was once again, we all did our own thing with the pilot and he just had to become a professional on that particular type of aircraft and from there we were sent to the squadron. Which was Waddington, which was just a few miles away and, and that was when we started our operational flying.
AP: So, what was your first thought of the Lancaster when you first [unclear]?
DES: Oh, after being on the Sterling [laugh], after being on the Sterling it was marvellous, uhm, yeah, with, uh, yeah because [unclear], the carry under the Lancaster, you know, this was probably the best aircraft that had ever been produced at that time for the duration of the war uh, but everything was, when you are a new pilot on the squadron, you usually get the [unclear] aircraft, but some of them, some of had been there for a while had their own aircraft made sure that they kept their own aircraft, we were not allowed to do this, I was on my first start, we were on one particular type of Lancaster and but everything was so modern and up-to-date, you know for us the Gee was, the navigational instruments were all spot on, you know, we never, I don’t know who did the, to this day I don’t know who did all the mechanics and the [unclear], our aircraft was already, it was one of the ground crew base but, you never saw them at work, at least I never saw them at work, unless something really went wrong but yeah, the gap at the back steps of the Lancaster and to walk along the, yeah, it’s try I suppose when I first went up there, you wonder, Gee, where am I going, you had to walk over a big spare but then again I had my own room, well, area, it was just a small area with a black curtain around it but I had a nice desk, had the astro[unclear] up on top which would flashed the various maps down on the and the stars onto the table, everything was spot on and you know, we came to expect, we’re on a Lancaster, we’re on the best we had and that was the feeling that I had, that I was very, very fortunate, you know, some people like the Halifax , you know, but, you know, they say, I love the Halifax and so forth but we just happened to, uh, it had such a good reputation and such a wonderful aircraft and could carry so many more bombs than anyone else. Uh, you know, I think that, uhm, that was my feeling about my first, but I was amazed, really. I was in awe. Yeah.
AP: So, you then go to Waddington from, what’s it, I think, I saw Skellingthorpe in [unclear]?
DES: Yes, I did, I went to Skellingthorpe I thought that was after. I went to Waddington [unclear].
AP: [laughs]
DES: No we didn’t get to Skellingthorpe.
AP: You didn’t get to Skellingthorpe? [unclear] after.
DES: No, we went to Skellingthorpe after the war finished. We went to Skellingthorpe and we were all transferred to Skellingthorpe and we were, uhm, we had our final passing air parade in August, August 1945. We had our passing air parade.
AP: So, alright, we will get back to Waddington then.
DES: Yeah, get back to Waddington.
AP: Yeah [laughs]. Uhm, where and how did you live on the Squadron at Waddington?
DES: Oh, well now, Waddington was a permanent station in England, a permanent RAF station. It was, it had been there for many years and it consisted of what you would call apartment-type of accommodation, it was brick, big brick flats and in that we’d all, the officers, my pilot now was a flight sergeant right through but as soon as he went to the Squadron, he got his commission and that was the rule then he got his commission. And so he went to the officer’s mess and they had their own specific area and we had our own, we were in dormitories and, uhm, I had, I sort of, well, I was a flight sergeant a lot of that time but I was regarded as a bit senior, not senior but, I seemed to be the one that organises for when and what we are doing outside out of the, you know, for our recreation cause my pilot didn’t smoke or drink and that is marvellous, [unclear] didn’t smoke or drink, he was young too but, but he was a great one for, uhm. He was really wrapped in aircraft, which he should be I know, no, but he gathered at the end of the runway if we weren’t flying a particular day on the squadron he’d go off at the end of the runway and watch them all take off and that sort of thing, he was, he was a wonderful bloke and then he took a great interest in everything, but he. My brother was the same, he would do all that sort of thing, you know, they’re really wrapped but others might be doing something else, but, we used to, well, there were various things we could do, I used to take them down to the, we used to go down to The Horse and Jockey, which is still there, the hotel, but it was a hotel in the , you know, we could go and have something to eat down there, or we’d have a few [unclear], play darts, [unclear] balls and that sort of thing and there a lot of our lot, we had pushbikes and we could pushbike down to the Horse & Jockey and that was in the little town of Waddington, was only a little place and uhm, uh, a lot of our time was spent going around and then we’d have, every six weeks we’d have leave. But, sticking to Waddington, uhm, you know, we had a lot to do, we had dances, the west [unclear] we would have dances all night, yeah, we’re all, uh, I reckon that we were all well looked after and they really were, I’ve recently been back to the Horse & Jockey, and, you know, they are so pleased to see you and they were like that in England. Most, I think of most of them were, I’m not being a snob but I think most of them were pretty good party fellows, there were not a lot of drunks, gave me a favorite to drinks, we had a, we had right a bite back and a [unclear] who used to stop us every now and then and say: ‘Aye, aye, aye!’ but they wouldn’t do anything to us. They were quite, uhm, quite pleasant. But I’ve really found that the people there, I didn’t get involved in anything much outside [unclear] leave I had relations to go to [unclear] wonderful, cause I had my mother’s side and my father’s side so I had relations of both so [unclear] he was from, my father was from Maryport in Cumberland, right up in the north and I have been there a few times since. I met my grandfather that I had never seen and a bit quite of the other relations but the grandfather was the closest, he was a tenner and there was gaslight, there was no electricity, was gaslight, and he, I had to sleep with him, he had no other accommodation there was I think he had a family gone but there wasn’t a very big place and I had forgotten he had, I was [unclear] he was one of six brothers, my father was one of six brothers but later on I found out that my grandmother had fourteen kids so that meant we, in the last few years I’ve been chasing up all these people we’ve met, since I didn’t know we had but sticking to the, uhm, on the Squadron, yeah, we, uhm, I don’t think I had much more [unclear] than I, I had just a normal [unclear], I used to go to church at the Lincoln Cathedral every now and then, I used to go to Southwell. In case you don’t know that Southwell was six miles south out of Newark in Robin Hood territory and it’s a cathedral, it’s got a cathedral so it’s a city, it’s only a small place but it’s a city of Southwell, although they call it Southwell, and so I went there a few times, I was made very welcome and incidentally the Southwells in Australia is one of the biggest families in Australia but, and I am connected with them but they’re in Canberra and they, their offshoots are all, uhm, there is an enormous lot of them, probably the biggest family in Australia, the Southwells. You might, [unclear], but the government gave them a grant in the bicentenary they have their big reunion in Canberra, so there must be some truth in there.
AP: So, you mentioned The Horse & Jockey earlier. Uhm, if you walk into the Horse & Jockey, in wartime, what’s there, what does it look like and what’s going on?
DES: Looks like an old English pub.
AP: Yeah? Funny that.
DES: Yeah, a bit out [unclear] cause I went back a few months again and I hardly knew the place, it had been changed around, they moved a lot of the chimneys out, but I can’t remember getting to a reunion in 1995 at the Horse & Jockey and they had an upstairs everybody could go and we had a great get together that day which was been back on Channel 9 and I was lady in the singing of all the wartime songs in Waddington but it was a real meeting place down, there was another pub we tried [unclear] plus I didn’t drink much but I went to that, oh, I was drinking as at that stage I hadn’t started to drink but that’s another story. My brother, I didn’t mind, now I never drink in our family and my brother on his way back he came up to see me in Montreal at one stage and he said: ‘Would you like a beer?’ And I said: ‘Oh no, I will have a lemonade’. And he said: ‘I will have a beer’. I said, oh, so I didn’t say anything to him. And when since I got back to Montreal, I’ve had a beer and I’ve been drinking beer ever since [laughs]. But, you know, Canada was a funny place for beer because it’s a, they don’t sell beer in a, in those days they didn’t sell beer in a hotel, you had to go into a place that was especially designed and sit down and have a beer but you put salt into the beer to get the gas out of, it was so gassy, that’s another story. But, the Horse & Jockey now, I gonna say now because honestly I’ve forgotten what it was there like but now they have a lot of dart boards around, we played darts and we played balls outside, it was fun, uhm, but it was just, you know, there were members of the public, you know, the people that were working there, we would fraternise with them, they were all friendly with, so, it was generally, it was nice, actually it wasn’t a bad place to go and have a [unclear] and a [unclear]. No, I wouldn’t say that, [unclear] we were [unclear] but more recollections of the Horse & Jockey that was, I said, the crew kept together, I kept the crew together, we were all there together, it was the whole other six of us, there as, that didn’t mean, there was no worry about that but I would like to add that I had [unclear] to my place in about 1950 or 60 and he [unclear] smoked. So, [laughs], [unclear] it’s been a change, he remained a bachelor all his life. But he was wonderful fellow and he was another one, as I say he was very, very keen on, what he did, he took on the training course after the war in [unclear] and he was, he got a medal for that, an RFD or doing something like that, royal returned forces, no, not returned, what’s it, returned something forces decoration? Not returned forces. Anyway, as an RFD, as a, there’s a post normal or medal, but he, he got one of those. But he was a great fellow and he brought us home safely.
AP: [unclear] Alright.
DES: But I had a lot of confidence in him, as I was saying, earlier on, [unclear] blessed hands, they were bigger than mine, I got the tiniest hands you’ve ever seen, mine, my wife’s gloves won’t fit me, you know, they’re my hands, my hands are so tiny, but, yeah, he was, yeah, that’s about it, [unclear].
AP: Yeah, we’re going alright still. So, a little bit more about this daily life in Waddington. The Sergeants Mess, what was that like, what sort of things happened there?
DES: Oh yeah, the Sergeants Mess. Yeah, well, we spend a bit of time there, no, after a trip we do was going to the mess and there’s a lot of, a lot of untoward things went on in the Sergeants Mess and some of the other persons over there, a bit longer than I was, tell some wonderful stories about bringing a donkey into the mess and there’s the Officers Mess and all sort of that. But, we, uhm, I can’t recall, my memory is not that good for the Sergeants Mess. I can, I know what it was like but it was not a place that, you know, we all met there at various stages and had our lunch there and our dinner there and all that sort of thing but, uhm, this never stayed in my mind as being rather relevant to me, I don’t know why but I know we ate there and had our meals there and you know the ordering officer would come round and say: ‘Any complaints?’ [Laughs] Every day in the evening we had our meal there, the ordering officer would come round and say, quite often it was one of the, one of your pilots that, [laughs] you know, was his turn to come over from the officers mess and say: ‘Any complaints?’ What’s the officer, orderly officer, any complaints, I don’t know, that I had many complaints, no, I can’t help, I can’t recall a lot about the Sergeants Mess.
AP: Did 463 and 467 Squadron eat in, did they have their own officer’s mess [unclear]?
DES: No, we were all together, they had their own, the two were there together.
AP: So it was more [unclear] Waddington.
DES: yeah, yeah, yeah. Was Waddington, yeah. Yeah, when we went back to Waddington in, when we went to the Officers Mess there was just one place, yeah, there was only one place, there was 463 and 467, yeah, we got to know each other 463 and 467, as you know 467 was the first Australian Squadron, first Squadron on, uhm ,first was their own Squadron, they were formed in about 1941, something like that and then after they got a big bigger, we wanted to have another Squadron, so 463 grew out of [unclear]? Yeah, [unclear], grew out of [unclear], is it about November or December? ‘43, would that be right? 47 might have been ’42, I think it was ’43.
AP: Yeah, ’43.
DES: Yeah, it was ’43, I think. And so that’s how 463 was. Uhm, and that was under Wing Commander Rollo Kingswood-Smith, who send me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And I was only a young bloke who only shaved about four days a week and I was on, and they sent me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And then later on of course, I’m going ahead of fifty years I became the secretary of 463 Squadron, Rollo was, he is the patron at present, no, he is the patron, I think but he was and he came up to me, oh, I did know him a bit afterwards so. He came up to me and looked at me and said: ‘Oh, Don, you’ve done your shave today’. And days before he died, he said to me: ‘Don, you had your shave today’ and I reminded him when I came back from England but I became quite a good friend of Rollo, when I finished, cause he is really very, very good, he always [unclear], you know, he was a flight commander, no he was a CO, or was a flight commander, whatever he was, he wasn’t a station commander, because that was different from, but he was, he was a 463 commanding officer but he did his trips at the time, he never, he always did his trips, so, he could have quite easily have said, No, I’m going tonight or something like that, but Rollo would always do his trips and never fail. And he was always very good with his, I know, with his writing to people for, you know, lost their and lost their sons and but I believe he was a very strict, he was a very, very strict man, as I say, he was quite different in late years, well, he was, you knew where you stood with him but, and I think he had to be to be the commanding officer at that particular, and we had all walks of life in our, uh, in the air force.
AP: Did 463 Squadron have any superstitions or hoodoos or anything that you are aware of of [unclear]?
DES: Not that I am aware of, I always used to carry my RAF, I had no RAF scarf, always carry my RAF scarf, had to go back one night to get it, but, which I had forgotten, I had to get back but that was only a personal deal I don’t think I was really superstitious about I had to carry my RAF scarf, it was a scarf, it wasn’t a tie, it was a scarf, I didn’t see many of them, I still got mine on my top drawer beside my bed I’ve got my Royal Air Force scarf. I also had my Royal Air Force [unclear] [laughs].
AP: [laughs]
DES: Some [unclear].
AP: We were talking about off tape before we started. Very good. So, you flew nine operations [unclear].
DES: I did nine operations, yep.
AP: Do any of them particularly stand out?
DES: Yeah, was a couple I can have. The trip, uhm, I did to Pilsen. We took off, was a long trip, Pilsen was in Czechoslovakia and it was a long trip and not, we had a couple of hours and now one of our engines went and the skipper said to me: ‘Do you think we can make it?, and I said: ‘Yes, I think so. I think we can take a few short cuts [unclear] we might be able to make it, we don’t tell anybody whatever’. And he said, [skimming through pages of a book], yeah, the uhm, I said: ‘I think I could make it’ and I did a few calculations and even though I say [unclear] I reckon I did a pretty well navigation so I think that was that day because you know you had to be careful if you gonna take any short cuts it couldn’t stand out we were on a track that you were given and as long as you stayed four miles or five miles out of the side of the track you are fairly safe because that’s where all the other aircraft were going, and we were tossing out the silver paper, the Window, that made look as if there are more aircraft out and that sort of thing. But we had to be careful if we went out of it, you could be picked off by the German radar, so you had to be a little bit careful. So, anyway, we got there on time, uhm, we uhm, and uhm, so that was a long trip that I got a bit of praise for by my skipper in the briefing that we went back to and that was about uhm, eight hours and we bombed on three engines. We were diverted when we got back cause we didn’t have much fuel left, uhm, we landed at Boscombe Down that particular night and, uhm, then the next day went back to, uhm, to, uhm, Waddington but uhm, yeah, it was that. And one other night we went to [unclear]. I was in a couple of thousand bomber raids, daylight, we were over Essen and Dortmund and I, we bombed through a cloud there and this was, you realised we were getting towards the end of the war and the master bomber was down below the clouds and he’d come up the cloud, drop the target indicators and go back down again and see how they went and he turned on the RT, the radio telephone and he turned into [unclear] TI by ten seconds or something like that, you know, and he’d be conducting the whole operation from down below. And, so we were just, we just dropped bombs, we didn’t see where they go, we just dropped them on top of the cloud, and that was on the Krupp works at Essen and Dortmund and. But there was another one I was going to mention and we went to [unclear], and uhm, which is just south of Hamburg and the wind changed that particular night and the whole force was all over north-western Europe, we got a little blown away but well, I got a little bit off course, I got to say this, I got a bit off course and we were chased by the German jetfighters, the 263 I think it is? The 263, something like that, the 263? But, we went into a cork, we did have, we were well-trained, went straight away and went into the corkscrew and we did all that, and, cause they can only stay up for about ten minutes and so they, you know, you, if you did your corkscrew properly, probably you were safe so we got out of that but that was, we were picked off there because I got a bit off course. And then I went to uhm, smaller refineries, Bohlen, I went to Bohlen, that was out near Leipzig, for people that might know where Leipzig is, a lot of these synthetic oil refineries were in Eastern Germany and, uhm, we’re at the crossing of the Rhine when the British army were, uhm, crossing the Rhine, uh, we were given the job of bombing Wesel, we were given the job of bombing Wesel and, uhm, which we did and I think it was only, it was only our, you know, our group went that particular night but the British army were on one side of the river and the German side, the Germans were on the other side, and we bombed the other side but we were given a certain time because the British were going into the water at a certain time to go over and I took it with the loss of one life, I think it was in, General Montgomery, Field Marshall Montgomery, he, send the message back to, they brought it over to the loudspeakers the next day on parade, do you want something to eat?
AP: No, thank you.
DES: It was on parade and we were on parade and they read out a message from Montgomery to say how wonderful it was and we did a wonderful job bla, bla, bla, yeah, and uh, yeah that was interesting because you can, if you go to Wesel afterwards it’s quite, you know, I’ve seen some photos of it lately and I think they have rebuilt most of, most of the place. And lastly we did the last operation of the war which was on Tonsberg, which was in the southern part of Norway and we approached it from the North, so it was a long crossing over the North Sea, this was the last operation of the war, on Anzac Day, and with the, we came down the coast, I was coming down from Norway, with Sweden on the left hand side and Sweden was all beautifully lit up, all lit up and the other side was all black, blacked up there was the, Norway which was under the control of the Germans, anyway, we, uhm, that was the last operation of the war and we, uhm, that was bombed successfully but on, if I check forward about fifty years, I was at a funeral and, uhm, of a lady who was of Norwegian birth and the ex-consul of Norway was there and I went and spoke to him and I said: ‘I’ve never been to Norway except on the air’. And he said: ’When were you there?’ I said: ‘Oh, I was there on the 25th of April 1945’ and he said: ‘Well, your aim was pretty good that night’. [laughs] Not at all, so I thought we did pretty well. He said yes. He said, but some of your bombers did bomb the shipyards, some of them went astray and they bombed some of the civilians and he said that all the people of Norway, the war was coming to an end, the 8th of May was the end of the war, the war was coming to an end, they are all thrilled, all happy because everybody knew the armistice was coming on that particular day and he said, now, all the people in the rest of Norway, he said, we were burying our dead and he was very nice about the whole thing and, you know, he is, I got him down as a likely speaker for whoever wants someone to speak about it but, they were very understanding and. So I must really go to France these days, you know, the people in France they were terribly bombed, you know, was, they are thanking you and thanking you and we did an enormous lot of damage but they realised that we had to, that we had to do that for, uhm, sake of winning the war.
AP: So, you mentioned that Messerschmitt, or the jetfighter.
DES: Jetfighter, yeah.
AP: And the corkscrew. So, you are the navigator. You hear corkscrew port go. What happens next?
DES: I have been difficult. Well, we gotta a set of pattern what you got to do the, if the plane’s coming in from the port, you corkscrew port go the rear gunner or whatever the hillside part will do his corkscrew and he’d go down fifteen hundred and he’d turn and he’d go up fifteen hundred feet and it’s quite a ring morale to do but you fly, if you do it properly you fly, you know, a certain course even [unclear] and so, you know, it didn’t do much damage to our [unclear] we didn’t have to make much allowance for an hour in our navigation, if you had to corkscrew port, you, you could just sort of forget about it and just there’s, as long as you weren’t [unclear] too long but generally speaking you flew a net course for this business, all designed to and it was very successful the corkscrew but I, I think we did this about three times I suppose.
AP: What does it feel like?
DES: Oh, I don’t mind, don’t forget we are nineteen years of age there, this was just, this was just wonderful, trusting the aircraft. Oh, of course you were worried a bit about where you were being shot down that goes into it, but generally speaking the corkscrew never, we thought if we did the corkscrew port we would be safe. You’ve got that feeling in your mind that you’d do that, I always remember Redge Boys [?] he was our hero, he was [unclear], he was our navigation leader at Waddington and Redge he did two tours and he said he never believed himself that he’d ever be shot down and he tried to, he despite the fact that the pilot was the chief, he always made sure the crew were all, you know, positive about what we were doing, they were all, they were always convinced that they were gonna get through this. They had this positive attitude that they, you know, and I think it helped, while you’re up there, [unclear], I tried to adopt that attitude that, you know, we all wanted to get home and see the people and I want to get home but, I must admit that, when we were on a bombing run, I used to see, a navigator didn’t have his parachute on, he, you couldn’t work on a desk when, cause we had a chest parachute that fitted on a harness on your chest and you had it sitting beside you. Now, uh, if I was to leave there at my desk, I’d always put my parachute on and I would go, if we were on a bombing run, I would remember the course you got to steer after we dropped our bombs and I’d turn the light out and I’d go up and stand behind the pilot, and watch all the, what was going on and I could then pop down to the rear gunner, near the rear gunner and say, could I have a look at the pilot [laughs] and you’d see the fires and all that sort of thing in the background. But, you know, I felt as if I wanted to be part of the thing so I wanted to see what was going on. Cause everyone else could see what was going on except the wireless operator and what’s the name because we were sitting [unclear] bomb’s gone, you’d have to wait a while, while the photo was taken, away was given course 270 and off we go. And, yeah.
AP: Yes, that’s unusual, most, uhm, most navigators I have spoken to would, you know come up and have a look [unclear] take the head and go, no, don’t ask me to do that [unclear].
DES: Oh, now, that’s, that’s another story. Well, that is. After, a lot of people don’t know about this. But after the war we disarmed, the war had finished and we were disarming with all our, [unclear] disarmed and we had to get rid of all the bombs on the station. So, what they did was we’d [unclear] might have been a couple of weeks, I could look that up but that’s been a couple of weeks, we flew out of Waddington with four bomb loads, headed to the North Sea, about two and a half hours and straight course out, dropped our bombs, they were dropped safe, they weren’ dropped armed but they were dropped safe, and there, I know what the Greenies [?] had signed out because they knew all these thousands of bombs now there was really thousands of us, there was not only our Squadron but every other Squadron was doing this. We go out there and then we come back and if you were above the cloud, we used to have a lot of fun with the pilot with going over the cloud, as if you were low flying. We had some lovely time so, but what I’m coming to is I thought this particular dive [?] was navigation record, no had Gee operator, [unclear], I didn’t done any, I didn’t have to do any strict navigation set up, I, cause I had near position indicators which told me, anyway, we, I thought I’d like to get into the rear turret and I saw [unclear] was the rear gunner and he could come up and sit in the navigation seat and I’d coming in here for a couple of hours, you know. So I trotted off down to the and the [unclear] showed me what to do and [unclear] I couldn’t have gone out of there, couldn’t have gotten there faster, was scared stiff, you know I’d never been because you’re away from the tires of the aircraft, when you are sitting back behind you, so, you are sitting out in the open. You know, you’re away from the aircraft so you feel like it and I think [unclear] having to sit [unclear] on our trip to sit in this thing, you know, you’d be, mind you, these, while our air gunners had had the experience of flying they knew what they’d, you know, they’d got used to it I suppose but me as a person I was scared stiff, I was more scared stiff getting into, getting out of that turret than I was, say, sitting out there in the navigation and bombs, looking down and looking at bombs going off and [unclear] I was scared stiff on that trip. And I had the greatest of admiration for our rear gunner out there, how they could [unclear], and [unclear] you know, I’m not necessarily claustrophobic but I thought oh, Jeez, I couldn’t do this. And I realised how well off I was, because the navigator was lucky I reckon because, as I say, on a ten hour trip you’d have, you had to get a fix every ten minutes or so and, you know, you no sooner that you’d got your fix, you’d plotted it, as you got your fix, you plotted it, you’d make the necessary course, the course change and so forth so If you had to make any change and it took time and the time went quickly this was what the beauty was the pilot was the same, he may be sitting around looking, you know, sitting out on the front [unclear] putting on a [unclear] every now and then, yeah, most of the time but he, and but the navigator had to do and the wireless op was something similar to, he had a lot of work to do, he had to keep the schedules and report back and we had our jobs and our logs don’t forget, as soon as we got back, were handed in to the navigation leader and you were marked as if you were at school and you get 60 percent, or 50 percent or 75. And uhm, you know but this is why we had, oh I must say this as a navigator, that we had marvellous navigator, the navigators were, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, they were wonderfully trained, they, don’t forget, they took as about eighteen months to get into operations, the Americans, I understand can get in as navigating, get in about six weeks training, you know, and that’s not exaggerating, I believe as I say, because some of the B-24s out of Darwin carried, the Americans carried Australian navigators if you look up your history, which is not widely spoken about, but we were well trained and, as I say, we strictly [unclear], we knew our work was big marked anyhow so you had to be, you really gave you a greater incentive to be [unclear] but above all, you know, a ten hour trip might have seemed by far, you know, then, yeah.
AP: VE-day.
DES: Ah, VE-Day. This is all vivid with me, I had wonderful times on VE-day but VE-Day I did three trips to France bringing home, I think it was on VE-Day, yeah, it was on VE-Day, I don’t know if it was three or two we didn’t the next day, you know I did three trips of bringing home prisoners of war, we’d go over in Juvincourt in France and load up twenty five, it was called Operation Exodus and we were out, we load up to twenty five British war, British prisoners of war, they’d been, some of them had been there since Dunkirk in 1940 and the first load we carried, oh, they sit, the twenty five of them sat in the fuselage of the Lancaster on cushions, not seatbelts, uhm, they just had to hang on and [laughs] they just had to sit there and there were thousands of them, we brought out prisoners of war with this Operation exodus by the way, but they were, uhm, It was a wonderful experience, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, you flew these guys out, they’d been prisoners of war all these years and they, uhm, the first load I carried they were all Sikhs, they were Indians the first lot we carried out. The next load we carried were all obviously from England and it seemed to be most obvious, I made sure that I went down and I got them to come up gradually when the white cliffs of Dover came, got them, and we ferried them up but it was nice and orderly and hear the tears was rolling down their cheeks, you know, was absolutely wonderful to see the, uhm, and they all shook hands when we, uhm, they all shook hands when they got off the aircraft and that was what I did on VE-Day. Now, shortly after VE-Day we had a lot of celebrations and I, you know, I can always remember smoking a cigar, having a few beers, I was Mister Churchill at one stage, you know, was a lot of hilarity and joyness and it was a wonderful feeling, they, you know, all the station was all together and we were all having, officers, ordinary, you know, the airmen, we were all together having a and they’d put on some wonderful [unclear] there and at that particular time and that’s my, I worked on the VE-Day there and we were so glad we were doing, and the guy that wrote our 463-467 book, Nobby Blundell he was a, uhm, he was a fitter, he was a fitter, uhm, an engineer and on a ground staff and he wrote our books incidentally, all the books on 464-647 fisher [?] books were all written by Nobby did a magnificent job but the uhm, was great the, uhm, he managed to, you know, get, gives us all the particulars that we wanted to know, I don’t know, and he was all of our flying set up, all of the, he’d used the, [unclear], is that called, the evidence of our doing your trip, he used to get all these information from the [unclear], he spend years on doing this and so we were forever grateful and he did this but, uhm, getting back to VE-Day, I was more than, more than pleased with what was happening and then of course we had to start thinking about what was gonna happen as it was after VE-Day.
AP: Uhm, how did you get back to Australia?
DES: Ah, that’s a good [unclear], you’ve got some good questions. They are very good, you know, [unclear], we uhm, the uhm, oh I made two efforts to get away. We were disbanded by the way, we were disbanded in August at, uhm, Skellingthorpe, I think it was Skellingthorpe, we’d moved to Skellingthorpe from the Squadron and they formed a Tiger Force for people that were gonna go out to fight the Japanese and uhm, we uhm, managed to particular Tiger Force the uhm, [unclear] you know just asking [unclear].
AP: How did you go home?
DES: How did you go home, yeah. Lost my train of thought. At my age you can.
AP: That’s one. That’s the first one in [unclear]
DES: No, I forget.
AP: Off you go.
DES: Oh, good. [laughs] I know you can scrub that out, yeah, but getting home. Yeah, but I wanted to mention about, we disbanded and then we were transferred to Brighton to wait for a boat and the [unclear] came along. Now, a lot of people in the Air Force know what happened there, there was virtually no, [unclear] but the conditions on the [unclear] which is the [unclear] boat, there was no P&O those days, [unclear] made all the newspapers that a lot of the trips walked off the ship at Southampton because of the conditions, I didn’t want to go twenty five days or so we gotta go and we went back through the canal and [unclear], well we didn’t stop, well we stopped in a few places, the uhm, it was, the, in Brighton we went from, we’d gone onto the ship on the [unclear], we’d got onto the ship and we sailed eventually, we sailed to half of it and wouldn’t you believe we broke down in the Bay of Biscay and the war was over, there was no submarines or so, the war had finished at this time, this was in August or September 1945 [unclear] and we, in between time we had been flying, we’d been doing, taking stuff out to drop the bombs and we’d been doing fighter affiliation and all, we then found work for us to do. Anyway, we set sail out of Southampton and we broke down, and we were flying the black flag, anyone knows it’s out of control and so we eventually we got, we slipped back to Southampton, the first time I have ever been sick was on that bay because we just it [unclear] and happened [unclear] it was about 20000 tons and was their luxury ship when the [unclear] luxury could have been made into a troop ship and we went back to Southampton we were sent then up to Millham. Now Millham is right up near West Freugh, up near Stranraer, right up on the North-West of England and [unclear] us all up to, it was the middle of winter. And we were in Nissen huts and we had to try and keep warm and they had to heat us there but ran out of coal, they couldn’t get, we were rationed the coal, so we smarty Australians [unclear], there was the coal, we got into the coal, [unclear] and pinched the coal, I caught a couple of sometime [unclear] about but we had to go and pinch coal to keep warm. And uhm, we eventually went from there, we were there about a week I suppose and then they found another boat for us which was the Durban Castle, it was a [unclear] ship which went from London, used to go from London to Cape Town and that was a nice ship was made up of air, the complement of going home was a lot of air force people, we had New Zealanders coming home uhm, was quite an interesting lot of people that were on board but we were in [unclear], I was a warrant officer then I’d got up to warrant officer and there under the normal chain, six months of flight sergeant, twelve months of, uh, sorry, six months of sergeant, four months of flight sergeant, then you’re put and made a warrant officer, that was the RAAF and so we’d became warrant officers and then was commission if you got a commission. And the uhm, we uhm, [pauses] [unclear] yeah, yeah, we’re back, we’re off from and, yeah, we were now on the Durban Castle, we’re on the, I forgot, the Durban Castle and the Durban Castle and we had a lot of, we pulled into Gibraltar, can remember Gibraltar, the conditions on the boat were good, the food was good, I put on a stain on the way back because, you know, we put a lot of potatoes, they had a lot of stuff [unclear] but they fed us well, it was a full ship really, but we picked up people on the way, we went to Gibraltar but that was to drop off somebody who was sick so we didn’t pull in, it was just off Gibraltar and we could see the place and if anybody is interested they oughta go to Gibraltar, it is one of the most interesting places to go there. Uh, you don’t expect to see what you see, so we, Gibraltar just a night, we dropped these people off and then we went to Taranto in Italy, in the heel of Italy and there we picked up the New Zealand war brides, that had married a lot of the New Zealanders, who were fighting in Italy, they’d either gone home or [unclear], but the war brides were on their own and so we picked up the war brides and that filled the boat a bit more and then we went from Italy to the Canal, went through the canal, and they wouldn’t let us off the boat in the canal and, you know, none of us would have been through the Suez Canal and so, that was working of course and so was [unclear] to Port Tewfik, Tewfik? No, Port Said, we went to Port Said and they, one of the guys in that was with me at the time, was called [unclear] and he had a DCM, Distinguished Conduct Medal which he had earned in the Middle East but he was in the Air Force, he was, he was a gunner in the Air Force but and he’d been to Port Said, you know, he knew all about this place and we had to get to Port, [mimics the gunners voice] so there was a ladder down at the back of the ship and so a few of us got out of the bumboats as they called them [unclear] and we went ashore, we went ashore, we didn’t take any notice of them people [unclear] we, most of the people were doing this but they were not supposed to. And so we were wondering around the town and the Arabs tried to come and sell us something, dirty postcards on sale [laughs], you know, and we were looking, [unclear] got out, went off and he hit one of these blokes, he hit one of these blokes, you know, because he was trying to do something wrong or I don’t know what it was but he knew what he can get away with, he slapped him on the face [unclear] we gonna get caught [unclear] being in a riot, anyway we got back to our ship alright and went up the gangway this time, no one said anything so. We went through the canal which was a great experience to go through and see how that operates, I’ve never been through the Panama but a lot of our fellows went through the Panama, which I would have liked to have done, uhm, then we went into Aden, and then we, that was near Yemen, and that was in Yemen where you nearly got a lot of troubles and then we went to, uhm, Perth, we went straight across the Indian Ocean to Perth and that’s where we dropped of the Perth blacks [?] and I remember carrying, not carrying but helping a bloke who’d had too much to drink in Kings Park and we were gonna miss the boat, cause you had to be up to Perth and the boat was at Freemantle, we had to get back by train and we had to get him back so [unclear] helped him back but he was not used to Australian beer cause the British beer was pretty, uh, pretty weak and this Australian beer was pretty, you know, pretty [unclear] anyway we got back, we came around the [unclear] to Melbourne, and was Melbourne we got off the boat and went to, uhm, went on the train, went on the train to Sydney, I don’t recall, must have been the train of the time, we sat up but we didn’t have sleepers, and no, we went up to Sydney and the Vietnam blokes all complain that they didn’t get a welcome home. Well, none of us got a welcome home but we were quite happy, cause we arrived at Central Station on platform number one, my mother and sister were there to meet me, they took me home and then a week later I was to report at Bradfield Park, I went to Bradfield Park, they gave me a dischargement home and I went back to work.
AP: That was it.
DES: That was it.
AP: Did you have any issues settling down again? [unclear]?
DES: No, no, no, I had no issues. The only thing is for a while so I went straight back to my job that I left at the MLC and I had been there eighteen months, for eighteen months so I didn’t know much about the business and so I got into, when I went to, I applied when I went back, this is in early 1946 I uhm went back to the MLC and they put me on, they had to put me on that was the law, they had to put you back on staff and they sent me to a department where I was the only fellow with a hundred and forty girls. I’d been in the Air Force all this time with fellows, we had the well WAAF around but generally speaking you weren’t used to mixing around with women, you know, and they put me there for, they put me there for a purpose, of course, and they put next to me the girl that spoke the most [laughs] she was a real gossip, she spoke the most, Shirley Reed, and Shirley, and I, the first two weeks I didn’t hardly, apart from doing my work I didn’t say anything but not because I didn’t [unclear], I was just out, I don’t know what to do, you know, I was just doing my work but I thought, and I wasn’t that good at conversation at that particular time [unclear] we had lunch at our desk in those days, we bought some sandwiches and had lunch at our desks, she kicked the chair from underneath me, I was leaning back and she kicked the chair it was dangerous, she kicked the chair, I went down under the [unclear], well, everybody laughed and I laughed and from that time on I was married [?] [laughs]. I was in that department for about two years and I was still the only fellow. And I have great memories of that, of that two years because I was single, I went to so many birthday parties and twenty-first birthday parties, to weddings, I talked to get a few other girls, my wife was one of them and well, became one of them and I went to work for her in the department and I made [unclear] she came to England for four years and then came back and I married her then but I don’t, was I was then move to, I went again they sent me to Tasmania to open up the office in Tasmania in Launceston and then I was there for two years and then I, they did that in those days, don’t do it nowadays, then I was sent to, I was in Sydney for a while and then I was posted to Adelaide in 1960 and I, I was in charge of the collector branch there in Adelaide and we had two children there, Dave and Jane and that was another wonderful experience and then. I’ve got to say something about the air force, don’t let me forget.
AP: [unclear] of course.
DES: But, we had, Adelaide was a wonderful place to bring children up, I became a fan of the, I was a rugby person, rugby union, I became a fan of Australian rules when I first went to Adelaide I was, uhm, every Monday we had lunch with a group in the industry, in the life insurance industry and I didn’t have much to, I didn’t have much to talk about because I didn’t know anything about the Australian rules, for all they talked about were the teams that played at the weekend so I thought, oh, the best thing for me to do was to join those, if we were gonna have, [unclear], I’d better join them, better go out with them, so, they were members, a few of them were members of the Stirling football club, Aussie [?] rules club, and, no, The Double Blues, I can sing you the song if you want me to sing it, but they are The Double Blues and I became quite a rugby, an Australian rules fan, I’m not forgetting me rugby cause I’m a rugby person still but the, I used to, family, it was a family setup, we’d go out on a Saturday and we’d go, we’d have the radio would be on at the eleven o’clock match and then we’d go on, we’d have lunch or something then we’d go up to see the afternoon, the main game in the afternoon and then we’d finish there we’d go and buy some beer and some food and we'd watch the replay of that game and then we’d watch the replay of the main game in Melbourne, that was our Saturday but all the kids were all around at home that particular day and they’d come to the game in Adelaide, then they got so much free bottle they could pick up and the kids used to go and pick it up and make a lot of money on a Saturday [laughs] and but I became quite a fan of that we won the premiership four weeks running and that was my introduction to Australian rules, what a wonderful thing to be, but it’s a wonderful game and I love Australian rules and I do follow the Swans, uhm, but I don’t go out and see nowadays, I don’t go and see the rugby except on [unclear] occasions again I go and watch the rugby but. And in Tasmania I played rugby union and my [unclear] was the president of the North Tasmanian rugby union, we had three teams and I played in one of the teams and, uhm, that was in Launceston and, oh I forgot, New Zealand. I was in, I was two and a half years in New Zealand and I was there for the Springbok Tour in 1956 and I saw quite a bit of the football there, I used to go to the football in those days but New Zealand was another great place to be I was married there but I came back to Sydney, married Dorothy and then came back to New Zealand when she came back, she came back to work at the MLC for twelve months and, uh, and then we came back to, and I had a wonderful time because I have got relations there In New Zealand, so, I had places I had to go, so, I’ve seen every city in New Zealand except Gisborne and I don’t know why I’m saying that but, uhm, it was a wonderful place for me and it was a good place to, uhm, yeah it was a good, I was the, I joined the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and I played tennis and I became the treasurer of the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and so I fitted into the New Zealand mob, cause New Zealanders by and large as a group don’t like Australians, you know, but they do like, when they meet individually we’re all great, you know, we might talk about the Anzac business but they have really odd, that’s only my observation of course, they don’t’ really and I’m a, I regularly go to funerals in New Zealand at the moment but you know I’m a great fan of New Zealand and they as a group, they are jealous of Australians, I think, cause we’re so big.
AP: Ok, could be something.
DES: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, worked with a few kiwis, anyway. Uhm, yeah, you were gonna say something [unclear].
DES: I was gonna say, I do a lot of this, you know, I’m gonna plug in for the Bomber Command Commemorative Day and I’ve been involved with 463-467 Squadron Association, I’ve been involved with, uh, the Bomber Command Commemorative Day Foundation but that’s just a little aside. Uh, I’m doing this really because [clears throat] I owe the Air Force something. [sighs] When my, when memoires bring us [unclear] when I went away on the Air Force, I didn’t know anything, I was a real greenhorn, I was a green eighteen, didn’t know anything cause mum, you know, we were never allowed to play cards on a Sunday as I’d never, we never had cards in the house, mum didn’t, mum was a bit, she was an Anglican and uh, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t an [unclear] or anything either but a [unclear] drink she might have been, we never had but grog in the place, I tried to have [unclear] sherry sometimes [laughs] she went [mimics and astonished expression] when she heard, she was a great mother by, a great mother by the way but our mum, I’m trying to get the message over that I didn’t know a lot about the world until I went to the Air Force and the Air Force made me and I feel I gotta make some contribution to the Air Force and the same thing applies to the office MLC, that they to me were absolutely marvellous and I only retired from there about two years ago when I, I retired in ‘84, I went back to do a job for three months, to set up the database, helped set up the database in the MLC and now twenty five years later I’m still there with two, with another guy, it was five of us who stayed on for a while, but then, three had died and two of us are still left. But the MLC were, they, you know, I was on a, I tell you I was on a two and half percent mortgage for a time at the MLC, and they didn’t pay as much as probably some of the other companies but you know, I never, you felt you had a real, uhm, you know, they never sacked anybody except if you pinched money [laughs] and that, it remarks the office that didn’t happen but the MLC were wonderful to me, the Air Force and the MLC were wonderful to me and a lot of my friends are not jealous of me but they would have loved to have had a job like I’ve got, working with the MLC until I was just on ninety and, uhm, and I was doing every bit as good a job as I was as the people beside me that I was working, I was doing all computer work and this sort of thing. Oh, when I say computer work, it wasn’t on a main frame but it was, was all the stuff was all set up for us to do but I did some work on the telephones and that sort of thing but there was a lot of sixty plus, sixty five plus fellows that could, they some of the companies could, instead of putting them off, give them extra time, you know, keep them employed on a, say, five days, four days, three days, because, you know, I was bored stiff for a while when I first retired and when I got this [unclear], I was a bit two-minded about going back and doing this and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made and so there for that, this is not wartime setup but the MLC they could have paid when I was in the Air Force but I was getting more money in the Air Force than I was in the MLC [laughs] so I didn’t much from it but. Had I not been in the aircrew I would have probably cause we were paid extra in the aircrew, not a lot but we were paid extra. And, yeah, so that was, I have a lot to thank the Air Force for and that’s why I’m doing, I do this work now with volunteering with doing various things on Bomber Command Association and the 463 business, anything to do with the Air Force I like doing, you know, and I meet a lot of nice people.
AP: Good. Final question. Uhm, what do you think the legacy of Bomber Command is and how you want to see it remembered?
DES: Uh, well, I don’t think we will ever see another Bomber Command, in these days we will never see another Bomber Command because the days of the, uhm, what do we call them? The, you know, the things that fly on their own? You’ll never see another Lancaster bomber bombing places, you will see atom bombs or, not atom bombs, but these other sort of, what do you call the little?
AP: Drones. Yeah.
Des: The drones, you see, just here in one of our Squadrons here now, the 462 Squadron in Adelaide, they are mixed up in drones, you see, and so, you know, I’m very proud of, uhm, joining and taking part in Bomber Command. I think they did a magnificent job; they’d had a rough trot until 1942, when they weren’t hitting their targets, [unclear] as things got better, they did the, I’m fully happy with all what the Bomber Command did. I think the world of Air Marshal Harris and I get, I get annoyed sometimes when people who want to criticize him. You know, every year I get a message from Melbourne about Dresden [laughs], which, you know, which annoys me, more than anything else, because Dresden deserved what they got, you know, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, London, Liverpool, Coventry, they all got a similar treatment and I don’t think, you know, there was a lot about Dresden that, and I’m sorry I brought that up but we know that there were a lot of people operating in Dresden which were military, they were hidden, slightly like the people today are putting, uh, children and some of these in where real targets are and there were definitely a lot of things in Dresden that deserved to be bombed and, you know, we’re at war, we had to do our best to do that but I’m quite proud of what we did in Bomber Command and I’m very, I think I finished my speech at the reflections at the Bomber Command thing in Canberra a few years ago and I was very proud and fine with Bomber Command and but I don’t think we will see another Bomber Command type of people, there will never be a group like us ever again, so I don’t’ think there is any future, but it will be done by the drones, what it’s gotta be done I think will be done by the drones and then that creates a bit of loss of life to civilians but I’m afraid when you are fighting a war it’s just, you know, it’s just the way it goes. Uhm, I don’t know, of [unclear].
AP: How do you want to see it remembered?
DES: How will I remember it?
AP: Yeah, how do you want to see it remembered, how do you want Bomber Command to be remembered.
DES: Oh, [unclear], oh, I just like the people here today to and that’s what we’re in the business with the Bomber Command Commemoration Day Foundation, we want the children of our people to carry on and thank the people of, like the 5000 who died, not us particularly but, ah yeah, the 5000 Australian airmen we hope you’ll remember them, you might forget them, as I hope you won’t forget the Vietnam people and the people who went to Korea and the people who went to [unclear]. We do remember them and I pray that they remember them on Anzac Day, uhm, but I think that, uhm, I would like to and I am amazed at, uh, the young people today that we have come into their [unclear] up to about four or five years ago and never heard of some of the things of their fathers and grandfathers had done. And I’m amazed by the number of people who came out of the woodwork to find out more about now and it’s up to us now, cause we are talking here now, it’s up to us to make sure that we get the message out to the younger people that their living today because of the sacrifice that the people made, that died over in the Bomber Command raids and that sort of thing, that they would be, uhm, might be leading a different sort of life, that they, uh, if it hadn’t been for the actions and the deeds of those who fought in Bomber Command. But I’d like them to think nicely of us and I think most of them do. I get, not amazed, but I’m really interested and pray that today for instance I’ve been talking to people that were involved and had involvements, you know, a lot of them didn’t know to a certain extent what things we’d done and how we’d helped shorten the war and that sort of thing, cause we did really and I suppose dropping the atom bomb bought us to and I’ve got no objections to the atom bomb being dropped either, it probably saved a lot of lives too. It’s a terrible thing but once, if I can say again, I’m amazed at the young people that are so interested and yet there are some families that they are not interested at all, not interested at all and parts of families, including my own, now, some of mine are not that interested, my son is and but, and I think [unclear] but one of my grandchildren is very interested. It’s on the other side but that’s their decision, we probably haven’t got the message over to them which is [unclear] and I am disappointed when I speak to some of my friends who don’t want to talk about it, it’s not boasting about these [unclear], people should know that these sort of things went on, that these, because of their actions, they’ve had fifty, sixty, seventy years of freedom here, even in Australia which might never have happened if those people hadn’t made the sacrifices that they did and volunteered and don’t forget, all the aircrew in Australia were volunteers, there was no, no one was conscripted, they were all volunteers. Yeah.
AP: Oh well, that’s the end of my questions. So.
DES: Well, that’s good. Yeah.
AP: You’ve done very well.
DES: [unclear] How long was that?
AP: That was one hour forty two.
DES: That was alright, well, that was [unclear]
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ASouthwellDE160424
Title
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Interview with Don Southwell
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.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:42:57 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-04-24
Description
An account of the resource
Don Southwell grew up in Australia and worked for RKO Radio Pictures and as an Air Raid Precautions Warden before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. After training in Australia and Canada, he flew nine operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington. He describes crewing up and everyday military life at the station, and gives accounts of his operations and being chased by Me 262s over Hamburg. He remembers ferrying liberated prisoners of war as part of Operation Exodus.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Germany
Great Britain
New South Wales
Alberta--Edmonton
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Brighton
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leipzig
New South Wales--Sydney
California--San Francisco
United States
California
Alberta
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Sussex
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
29 OTU
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
fear
Lancaster
Me 262
memorial
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/332/3492/PSpenceMA1502.2.jpg
5a6657b4575a6396f0860cd494be921e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/332/3492/ASpenceMA151005.1.mp3
98a0fa42e0ca70873f8ca52ae247e6df
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
Spence, Max
Maxwell Alexander Spence
Maxwell A Spence
Maxwell Spence
M A Spence
M Spence
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Maxwell Alexander "Max" Spence (437564 Royal Australian Air Force), his log book and a photograph. He flew operations as a navigator with 460 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Max Spence and 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
2015-10-05
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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Spence, MA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Digital, International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive, is with Max Spence, who is a 460 Squadron navigator. My name is Adam Purcell, we are at Max home in Montmorency in Melbourne, it’s the 5th of October 2015. So Max, we’ll start with an easy one. Uhm, can you tell me something of your early life, growing up, uhm, your family and what you did before the war?
MS: Well, uhm, we here, [pauses] uhm, I grew up in Briar Hill, which is quite close to Montmorency. I’m an only child, I went to, I was an original pupil of the Briar Hill primary school and then I went to Elton High, eh, secondary royal Elton higher elementary and then I went to Melbourne High and I finished at year eleven, which was pretty, eh, substantial in those days, that was in 19, uh, 30, or 34 or 5, I think. And then I went to work at Briscoes Limited, which was a wholesale hardware firm, and there were two office boys, I was the outside boy, and the other was the inside boy and we knew in 1938 that there was a war going to start soon, so, we both opted, we were going to join the Victorian Scottish Regiment. But when we found that the uniform was gonna cost us twelve pound, or twenty-four dollars which is about a three months, uh, wages that went out the door, so [laughs]. So, as I said, my dad, being a Gallipoli veteran, and he was an only son with eight sisters, and I’m an only child and no way was he gonna let me go, so, uh. Then, suddenly in May 1940, he changed his mind and said the Air Force would be alright and I applied for ground staff and the recruiting sergeant said: ‘You could apply for air crew’, so, which I did and got up to the selection board and one said: ‘You’re left-handed’, I said: ‘Yes’. He said: ‘You’re no good to us’, I said: ‘Ah, why?’. I was only just eighteen, so, and he said: ‘You couldn’t handle a Morse key’, uh, so I said, ‘but we will send you Morse lessons’, which they didn’t. So, I lost interest in the war altogether like they [unclear] run it without me and but in 1941 I was called up and I went to, it was I believe a signal, uh, the signals organisation, that took [unclear] , well it was a signal operation and then, uhm, [unclear] was separated and joined the 19th Machine Gun Regiment as a [unclear] and we went off to Darwin and were there at pretty close proximity to a lot of the raids there, which was a bit, you know, ordinary, uhm. And about October it settled off and the RAF came recruiting again and I applied, and they accepted me, they didn’t have any of this nonsense about left-handedness. And there was fifty-four of us I think, and only eighteen passed and they were mainly, uhm, excluded because of the colour blind test which was not the red, yellow and blue thing but it was a complicated business where you looked into this pattern and if you’re colour blind you just saw a colour and if you weren’t, you didn’t see it, and vice versa and funnily enough it was developed by the Japs. So, we came down in February and to Corfield [?]and eventually started ITS, the initial training stream, uh, which was a three months thing, and, uh, I think it finished around about May 1941 and I was lucky enough to get what I wanted, a navigators course, and I went to Edmonton in Canada and that was a five months course, so I spent eight months in Canada. And then I, following that, went through and eventually came to England, where I went to a British (or badge) flying unit which was navigation in a [unclear] Ansett, uhm, was largely visual and uh, where you took a visual line of sight and guessed what the distance was. Well, having finished that I went to operational training unit, uh, where you formed crews and very scientifically there’d be one hundred and fifty blokes in a room and they just said, sort yourselves out, so, I got, I saw this big black [unclear], I said: ‘Do you look like you could handle a big plane, could I be a navigator?’. So, we did operational training unit at Syreford, that’s in Midland England and then we went to conversion unit, we’re on Wellingtons at the operational training unit and then we went to the Lancasters at the conversion unit and then we finally joined the 460 Squadron in about, I think, early February, forget what the date was now. Uhm, and I flew eighteen operations in pretty quick succession, including the Dresden raid which has brought so much, misinformation [unclear]. We were then posted to Pathfinders, the war ended and the squadron, we all set off to another squadron that was, uhm, breaking up and then I went down to Brighton, which was the forwarding station, up to Liverpool we got the Andes, this ship I got on, I had been on this before and was the same ship I came from Canada to Britain on. And then I came home, and the war ended in Japan, I was discharged and I went back to work. That was about it.
AP: I only had to ask one question there and we just [unclear] covered the lot. Uhm, anyway, we will go back in a little bit more detail, if you don’t mind. Uhm, what, you said, you went back to work, what were you doing, as work, before you enlisted?
MS: What? What?
AP: What were you doing as work before you enlisted?
MS: I was, uhm, a clerk at, in a wholesale hardware, Briscoes, which is a very old, uh, is still operating in New Zealand but it followed up [unclear] about 1970. I was warehouse manager then.
AP: Before or between, between enlisting, as in between the air force coming to Darwin and then you signing the paper, and you started the ITS, uhm, can you remember roughly how long there was between the two and what did you do in the middle there?
MS: Ah, well, the recruiting mob came up about October in 1942 and but we didn’t leave Darwin until February 1943 and then we spend a few weeks down Laverton and then I suppose it will be, around about April 1942, 1943 that I had gone to, uhm, initial training school Summers [?] and that was a three-months course. There was no flying in that one there. It was just, uh, a number of subjects that, uh, which were, [unclear], was quite a lot of subjects, I recall meteorology, navigation, signals, I forget the other ones, been quite a number of. And then we got our postings and I was posted to Edmonton in Canada and so to do that we went up to Bradfield Park in Sidney, were there for about a fortnight and this big ship arrived and next thing we were on our way, uhm, to San Francisco actually. Uhm, it was the Mount Washington, Mount Vernon, they called it, uh, it was a big ship, 35000 tons I think and it went on a sound, so. And then we travelled up to, uh, Edmonton, we were stayed in the manning [unclear] for about a fortnight and then we started there a five months course, which was pretty intensive. Uhm, and then I was onto Britain on the same ship as I came home on, and as I said we were in Brighton at manning [unclear] and then we went up to a place called West Freugh in Scotland which was just near Stranraer and that’s where we did our advanced flying unit, which was pretty much the same as what we did at Edmonton. And then I was down to Syreford, there was a place called [coughs] I forget now but Syreford was where we did our operational training as a crew. Seven, it was six of them to stay on a Wellington [coughs] and then we transferred to Lancasters at the conversion unit and then onto 460 Squadron, uhm, I think it was just before New Year’s Eve in 1944 and we did one, I think a couple of, trains country [coughs] or cross countries [coughs] and, may I get a glass of water? And we started there operations and as I say, after the 18th we were posted to Pathfinders, but we never flew there. So, that was it and I came home [coughs].
AP: Can you tell me a bit about the first time you ever went in an airplane? Was that in Edmonton?
MS: Ever went in a?
AP: In airplane. The first time you went flying.
MS: Ah, yes.
AP: What memories, if any, do you have of that flight?
MS: What?
AP: What memories, if any, do you have of that flight?
MS: [coughs] Nothing but enjoyment. Edmonton was [coughs], I put in me memoires, [coughs] leaving Edmonton was like leaving home, I just accepted it as so. Well, we spent time in their homes and. But as I say, it was largely visual navigation we didn’t have much in a way, we had things to look at the stars with, [unclear]?
AP: Sexton.
MS: Sexton, but our aviation sexton was different from the normal and we used to take star shots and [coughs] that was about on Polaris, which was the north star. We saw the constellations align and everything. [coughs] And that was, as I say, was a five months course. So we left there in February ’44, uh, I travelled across Canada, my mate and I went, we had eleven days leave actually and we went to Chicago and then there to Halifax and boarded [coughs] the Andes [coughs] to Britain and then on up to say, advanced flying unit which was [coughs], [unclear], pretty much the same as Canada and that was only [coughs], uhm, when we got to Syreford that we got into the more sophisticated, uhm, navigation, machines [coughs].
AP: You’re alright?
MS: Yes.
AP: Yeah, ok. Uhm, what were your first impressions of wartime Europe, of wartime Britain, was there any, anything at all?
MS: Funnily enough was that the women smoked, although I never smoked. And, uh, I had an aunt in Scotland, so I used to go up there a lot, uh, but that was pretty frugal, we were alright on the stations we got fed well [unclear] [phone rings] excuse me. Yeah, go on.
AP: [unclear] England you were talking about. The women smoked?
MS: Yeah [coughs].
AP: And something about you were treated pretty well on the squadron, you got plenty of food on the squadron.
MS: What?
AP: You were saying you got plenty of food on the squadron. Where else [unclear]?
MS: Yeah, well. Was pretty ordinary food [coughs] but was food [coughs] a lot more of it than the general public got.
AP: What, uhm, so, we will go back or forward a bit now to OTU. You’ve picked your crew, you’ve crewed up?
MS: Well, we were picked out by ourselves.
AP: Yeah, so you now have the six people before you get your flight engineer.
MS: Yeah.
AP: With which you get to fly with. What did you do at operational training unit? What sort of exercises did you do? What sort of [unclear] did you do?
MS: Cross country, uhm, mostly in Britain but we did go to the coast of Holland once, uhm, which was a pretty long trip [coughs]. Uhm, yeah, was mostly cross country using the Gee which is, [coughs] was the, you can find it on the internet, was the, they used to send their signals and you saw the cross reference and that’s where you were and then hopefully.
AP: Hopefully you got it right. Where, uhm, where on the airplane was the Gee set?
MS: Uh well, it was beside the navigator’s table.
AP: The navigator’s table.
MS: On the Wellingtons sort of facing forward, behind the pilot from memory but on the Lancaster was the, there was the, uhm, bomb aimer used to take his place as front gunner, then the bomb, operating [unclear], and the flight engineer, he sat beside the pilot, then there was the pilot and then there was me and then the wireless operator and then we had the mid-upper gunner and the, uh, rear gunner.
AP: That was in the Wellington?
MS: There was seven.
AP: Oh, seven. So, we are in the Lancaster at this point?
MS: Ay?
AP: That’s a Lancaster you are talking?
MS: Yes, yes.
AP: Ok, that’s the other crew then. Uhm, I guess, what, when you’re in England, obviously you would have got periods of leave in between your, well, while your training [unclear].
MS: [unclear]
AP: You would have had periods of leave while you were training?
MS: Ah, yeah, we had six days every six weeks.
AP: Oh, this is when you were on operations.
MS: Yeah, yeah.
AP: What did you do?
MS: Well, they had a couple of schemes. There was the lady Rider[?] scheme, which, uhm, you could book a place and go to the land of the state or, I went to with a friend to a retired army major and his wife up in the, uhm, up sort of north of, east of England, that was, when you got there, that was the first sort of scheme. And then they had the Lord Nuffield, Nuffield was the, the Morris, he owned Morris cars and he used to [coughs], uhm [unclear] of various places [coughs] and if, and if you eventually met up with someone who got married, he would pay for the wedding and the, uhm, sort of honeymoon, he was very good [coughs].
AP: That’s what you did on leave. Uhm, what about the pubs?
MS: Eh? The what?
AP: The pubs in England and
MS: Yeah, well, they were a bit of a, the first time I went to Tommy Farr’s bar, he was the [coughs] British empire heavyweight champion. Now I ordered a beer, that tasted like tar and water, it was mild beer and so I [coughs] talked to a couple of other blokes who’d been here for a while, they said, oh no, start off on bottled beer and then gradually, uhm, move over to bitter, which we did, yeah.
AP: Next one. We’ll jump onto the, your operational aircraft. The first time you saw a Lancaster, what did you think?
MS: Was another aircraft, didn’t really have any thoughts about it. It was a lumbersome, or cumbersome aircraft [coughs] and that was a difficult one to get into, you had to climb up eight steps with all your gear, all your navigation gear and parachute and what. [coughs] Ah, bloody cough, and I don’t know whether is any [unclear], I don’t there are, couldn’t find any, uhm, and then you, fairly narrow near the, walk right up to the front and had a huge spar across the, that held the airframe together and you had to climb over that and then I had a little office, uh, and then I had to pull the cloth around me, cause we weren’t allowed to show any light.
AP: Can you describe that office? What was it like?
MS: Well, [laughs] it was only just, a curtain drawn around, just had a table and had the Gee-set and the Y set there and, uhm, I had the various instruments up to, you know, [unclear] the dividers and all those sorts of things but they weren’t very big, [unclear] wouldn’t have been any bigger than that, yeah.
AP: You said then the Y set? What’s the Y set?
MS: Well, that was a primitive Radar set, uh, which when it was put on, it picked up the outlines of towns by the people, intelligence people know that sort of, they gave a chart with the major towns as you were passing, [coughs] outlined and this picked that up and then you could give a bearing and a distance by the [coughs], by machine and you just plotted the thing.
AP: Navigation? Alright. Uhm, might as well go onto the squadron. Where and how did you live at Binbrook?
MS: Well, this is another thing. For an organisation [coughs] fighting for democracy, the services weren’t very democratic. When we got to the squadron, our pilot got a commission immediately and he went off to the officer’s mess and we actually had [coughs] pretty comfortable, uhm, we lived in a house actually, all in a unit, uh, but we were all together in one big room, we had comfortable, uhm, we had comfortable beds and then we used to go to the Sergeants’ Mess for meals. And then incidentally on the, uhm, conversion unit they were real snotty people, they. The permanent staff here had their own mess, uh, we weren’t allowed to go there, we had to go to our mess, they regarded us as second-class amateurs. But, yeah, the conditions were quite comfortable.
AP: What, uhm, what sort of things happened in the mess, in the sergeant’s mess in Binbrook?
MS: singing and drinking, and the [unclear]
AP: [unclear] [laughs]
MS: Writing letters and that sort of thing.
AP: Flying for Bomber Command would have been fairly stressful, I imagine.
MS: I can’t hear you.
AP: Sorry, flying for Bomber Command would have been fairly stressful, I imagine. How did you cope with it?
MS: Well, they keep, all the documentaries they do sort of emphasise the drama but largely it was just hard work. Cause I had to fix my position every six minutes and then dead reckon ahead another six minutes so, I was like an one-armed paper hanger actually, I was. So, the navigators probably had the best job, cause they were working, the rest were largely in a watching role all the time. And that’s another thing you said, they used to offer Benzedrine tablets, uhm, ‘wakey-wakey tablets’, we, I never took them, I had no problems staying awake. But sometimes a bloke would take them and then they’d call the op off, and of course we couldn’t sleep all night. And, yeah, it was, mostly hard work, I didn’t really, some of me mates did but I really didn’t feel any stress much.
AP: You say: ‘Every six minutes you are getting a fix and did reckoning again’. What can you remember much of the actual process, the actual method that you were doing?
MS: Well, it was, if we used the Gee machine as [unclear] sort of, uhm, things that flicked along and you got them together and you sort of isolate and that gave you where you were and with the, uh, Y, the radar which we were only allowed to use for a minute because the, uhm, enemy fighters could home in on us, uhm, we just operated it and got a bearing and a distance from where we [unclear] onto.
AP: There is something from that, uhm. Ok, so, you had eighteen trips.
MS: Yeah.
AP: Uhm, we will get to Dresden in a minute. Uhm, do any of those trips stand out particularly in [unclear]?
MS: Well, two of them do. We did Nuremberg, where we lost, I think, uh, nearly eight percent of the force. And a place called Pforzheim, which didn’t have any particular merit but they put it off twice and when they put them off, they always used to have to change the route [unclear] but they didn’t and the Germans had just reduced their jet fighter Me 262 and they got into a [unclear] on the way in, so obviously they’d been informed of where we were going and the route.
AP: When you said they got into [unclear] was that your crew in particular or [unclear] general?
MS: No, no, no, just general, we were pretty fortunate, I don’t remember, we only had one episode with a fighter and that’s right up near the back and we got hit by flak once but that was pretty much all of it.
AP: So, fairly, fairly uneventful tour.
MS: Yeah.
AP: Ok, so, the inevitable question comes up then, of Dresden. Uhm, what was your personal experience on the Dresden trip?
MS: Well, it was the longest trip we did, was nine and three-quarter hours in the air. I believe I didn’t have any particular, uh, memories of it, uh, as it was just another flight but funny, after the war we didn’t go home, we had a lecture from one of the education groups and he was talking about the phoney aspects of war and one of them was that the British shareholders in the Krupp ironworks at Essen were saving dividends up till the end of 1942. And then he got onto Dresden, now the major reason was given for Dresden that was to help the Russians, you know, but he actually [unclear] was to hinder the Russians, because they were getting into Berlin before the Americans and in fact we went to Dresden once, the Yanks went there six times. Twice before us and four times after us. The last one was about, was only three weeks before the end of the war so, there could be some truth in the hinder thing, because you know, they had to get to Berlin and cut it up, so, we’ll never know.
AP: You mentioned earlier about misinformation about Dresden. What [unclear]?
MS: Well, they were, they kept saying, well one [unclear] that the press council didn’t win, he said it was a war crime, you know, and because it was the biggest loss of life I think in any other raids were about 35000, it varies, 35000 seems to be the [unclear] death rate. It was just another raid to us but they kept hammer every year, [unclear] on February the 13th they were hammering this Dresden raid so [unclear]. So, I actually got a couple interviews, I think, in the [unclear], not sure which paper it was, about it, you know because it was all lies, [unclear] the historians giving the wrong story. There was the, a major historian in the Australian war memorial. Uhm, he wrote a book, he wrote a [unclear] book, Australia at war, was about Bomber Command. Well, his first mistake when he had a diagram or a sort of illustration, he had the navigator and the wireless operator in the wrong place and [coughs] he also had said that Dresden had not been bombed before. So, I wrote to him and pointed out his error in the book and I said that the Americans had actually bombed Dresden before we did and he wrote back and admitted his error in the illustration but he said that it was only a small bombing, but it was still a bombing you know, [coughs] and they were all, when I really got into it, they actually bombed a lot more, or dropped a lot more bombs than we did on Dresden but, cause Dresden had been virtually destroyed anyhow but they kept on doing it. Yeah.
AP: Why do you think that misinformation is out there, why [unclear]?
MS: Well, it happened with Darwin, they said that the Japs were never going to invade, the same bloke actually, and we, well, we will never know but I tell you what, we were pretty sure they were when we were there and they kept hammering this one raid all the time, as I say, they gave the Americans no press coverage at all. And yet, they actually did more to Dresden we did. It was just another, I mean, probably weren’t, were doing what they were just done, Harris didn’t want to go to Dresden but they overruled him. It was some sort of between Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin, I think, in ’44, late ’44, they had a conference.
AP: So, uhm, we’ll step back to a more general question. Your sitting there doing your every six-minute thing at your navigation table, and you hear over the interview, over the intercom, uhm, I got one of your gunners saying, fighter corkscrew port go. What happens next?
MS: Uh, what, say it again.
AP: You’re sitting at your table doing your navigation stuff and over your intercom you hear one of your gunners saying, corkscrew port go.
MS: Ah, yes, well that was, uhm, they had an evading process called corkscrewing, where the gunner who picked up the, uhm, alleged fighter would say that the pilot, uhm, enemy fighter, well he did this time, enemy fighter skip, skip, he was a bit, he said, prepare to corkscrew left, na na na, prepare to corkscrew right, na na na, he said, doesn’t matter, he’s gone past [laughs]. Well, that was one and I had another one where I was, oh, I think I had done five trips or something and one of me mates came to the squadron, he was on his first trip and he was coughing and splattering, I said: ‘That’s a bad cough you got there Butch’, he said: ‘As long as I still got it in the morning I’ll be happy’. [laughs] Ah, that was two sort of, [coughs] lighter moment.
AP: Excellent. Uhm, so, your tour ended, well your tour as such as it was, and eighteen trips it ended with the end of the war? Is that correct or is that before?
MS: [unclear]
AP: When you got to eighteen trips, you stopped?
MS: Yes, we went to the Pathfinder.
AP: So, you were posted to the Pathfinders, the, uhm.
MS: But we never flew there because the war ended.
AP: You said something in one of your emails to me about a disagreement about navigation methods. Can you expand on that?
MS: Don’t know whether, I, I’ve been operating quite happily on my own, the eighteenth trip, when we got there they set the bomb aimer behind me and he was having very little experience of the Gee and the Y. He was taking the information and passing it on to me which, I thought, lends itself for error for a start [clears throat] and took him away from his proper role of watching, you know, being the front [unclear] gunner and I, all I said, I am not too happy about it. Next thing they pulled me and the bomb aimer out of the crew and they sent us off on a forty-eight, two days leave or as we thought. When we came back, we were called up, or I was, called up before the stuffy pompous CO who wanted nothing but to stand to our attention and he said you’d be an AWL, I said no sir. Anyhow he obviously wasn’t sure, he checked us. If you’re charged with being AWL, it’s either a confined to barracks or it can a mandatory penalty. And if it was to mandatory penalty, you’re gonna ask for court martial, which is all, uh, bells and whistles and you get a defending lawyer and all that stuff. And he obviously wasn’t sure of his ground, so he sent us to a shorter tour of Sheffield that was and it’s, it was called an Aircrew Retraining Centre, there was lads, they were slobs of a military type, you know, probably never been out [unclear] a drill, but it was, so was quite interesting, it was. I did air force law and one bloke [unclear], I’ve seen it anyway together, this bloke was gonna go back and he put his CO [unclear] when he went back because of the information he got from the military law. But that was a three week course and actually the war ended while we were there and as I say, we were then posted to a squadron that was breaking up and I went to Brighton and, uhm, I was home in, uhm, August, just before the Pacific war finished, I was out on September the 2nd or 3rd or something I forget and I was back at work at 20th of September ’45, most of them didn’t get back till 1946. So that all worked out well.
AP: How did you find the readjustment to civilian life?
MS: Couldn’t cause me any problems.
AP: Just got straight back in, straight back where you left off.
MS: Yes, more or less, yeah. No, I got a, I was given a hired job, so. [coughs] But, now I, a lot of my mates had a break down and a few of them have suffered a post-traumatic stress as they call [unclear] they got [unclear] I used to drink too much, that was the main problem.
AP: Ok, uhm, this is usually my last question. How is Bomber Command remembered and what legacy do you think it left?
MS: Uhm, without a say, it was just a job and we had a job to do, we did it to the best of our ability, it was. There weren’t any special sort of. I get annoyed at the documentaries cause they emphasise the dramatic side all the time, you know, [unclear]. When we flew we flew long, this the other thing, people refer to what we did as missions and missions were what the Yanks flew. We flew operations, so, it’s only mine I think, but I get annoyed about that at. I lost the train of thought, [pauses]. As I say, these air flights were long but basically the last raid was the same because we were sending more planes at night and a lot of them banging into one another rather than and then the issue of the Me 262. They reckoned that if the war got another three months Germany would have had aerial supremacy but they didn’t have any fuel of course and but they certainly [phone rings] excuse me. Ok.
AP: So, how, yeah, how is Bomber Command remembered for you personally, I suppose and in the wider part?
MS: I don’t think about it [unclear] at all really, no. It’s, it just little, sort of personal episodes. As I said, it was just a job and I did it as best I could. Don’t have any special place in my memories.
AP: Did you ever fly again, apart from just getting on a passenger plane and going somewhere?
MS: No, no.
AP: No, that was it. Did the air force [unclear]?
MS: I got a , well, even then, now, when [laughs], when we were being discharged, uhm, they’d take your shirt in and they give another one and I noticed all these blokes going around the back picking up all our shirts, I got four shirts out of that lot and they, uhm, you know, bureaucracy is never far behind. I, uhm, first thing that happened was, uh, the WO there wanted to put us on guard at the Melbourne [unclear] guard so we didn’t turn up and he got us out on Monday, he said, if you’re not out [unclear] in half an hour I’ll put you on the charge so, but we managed that alright, that was our final episode there. And I went up, my cousin was royal [unclear] in the army and he said to me, I met him in town and he said, oh, he said to me, we got a good mess come up and you know we will have lunch together. So, I walked through the guard there and the next thing this WO came out and he said: ‘Where are you going, staff, I was a flight sergeant then, I said I’m going up to meet me with my cousin up at the mess, he said: ‘You are not allowed in there’, he said, I said: ‘I thought we were on the same side, you know.’ And then he started blustering, carry on and this Lieutenant came down, he said: ‘What’s the trouble, [unclear] he’s so bloody stupid, he said, carry on staff. You know, that was [unclear], you gotta try the other side of bureaucracy, anyhow.
AP: You said WO there?
MS: Yeah, warrant officer.
AP: Warrant officer, yeah, just for the tape. I’ll write that down. Uhm, what can I say, I guess just the one question that I skipped over earlier, when you heard, you said, I think you said that by about 1938 you sort of had the feeling [unclear] that war was coming.
MS: Yeah, you know, Hitler was flexing his muscles and we’d had Chamberlain saying no war in the near time and that sort of thing. I was just [unclear] and we could see it coming and we decided we’d be part of it but when it was gonna cost us 12 pound we decided we won’t [unclear].
AP: Can you remember when you heard that war had actually been declared and what were your thoughts?
MS: No, not particularly.
AP: Not particularly. Uhm, what else do I have here. I think, ok, the final question, is there anything else that you would like to ad, any other stories that [unclear]?
MS: I think I covered it pretty well.
AP: Covered it pretty well. [laughs] Covered it pretty well with one question. You’re off for ten minutes and that was the end. Alright, we might end the interview there, thank you very much.
MS: Ok, good thank you. [file missing] We got a special medal and they actually had one [unclear] guide but I never, my issues were the clasp in a little, piddly little thing [unclear] read the views of some of the British airmen on that, a sort of a second prize, you know. [file missing]
MS: [file missing] And yet, the aircrew Europe star were given to, uh, people who finished their operations in seventy or eighty hours, they did a tour of thirty. We had done eighteen, we [unclear] about one hundred and forty hours, so, well, I think that was unfair [unclear].
AP: Good.
MS: And that’s it.
AP. That’s it. Can I turn it off now? [laughs]
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ASpenceMA151005, PSpenceMA1502
Title
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Interview with Max Spence
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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00:47:51 audio recording
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Pending review
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Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-10-05
Description
An account of the resource
Max Spence grew up in Australia and worked in a hardware store before he volunteered for the Air Force. He recounts his training in Canada and in England and life on an operational station. He flew 18 operations as a navigator with 460 Squadron.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Great Britain
Germany
Alberta--Edmonton
Germany--Dresden
Northern Territory--Darwin
United States
Northern Territory
Alberta
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
460 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
Gee
Lancaster
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Syerston
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/888/11127/AHughesWH151021.1.mp3
33613f53da69484a983e122f2ed1e463
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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Hughes, Harry
William Henry Hughes
W H Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM (- 2023, 159079 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 102 Squadron and then with a Mosquito Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-21
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.
Identifier
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Hughes, WH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HH: It’s all in the book, I think, mainly, isn’t it?
AS: Most of it is, but we need to get it on tape. I think. This is an interview with Harry Hughes, flight lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM, a navigator in wartime Bomber Command on 102 Squadron and then later on Mosquitos. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Harry’s home in St Ives. Harry, thank you ever so much for agreeing to this interview. Perhaps we can start by going over a little your early days. I believe, you were born in Dorset.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. Did you have brothers and sisters?
HH: A sister, yeah. But I went to school in Sherborne, the Grammar School in Sherborne not the big school, not the public school. And, it was a good school but there we are, I think it was a good school anyway but they’ve, in their wisdom they’ve closed it down now and they amalgamated with the Lord Digby school, ‘cause the Lord Digby school is gonna cost too much to repair or something and I think some builder wanted to get hold of their building anyway and make flats out of it. You know, usual thing.
AS: Yeah. How did you get on at school? What were your subjects? What did you do well at in school?
HH: Mainly in maths. I got a distinction in Maths and a distinction in Physics and Chemistry. Otherwise I got all passes except English language in which I got, I didn’t fail, I got a pass, just got a pass so I didn’t get my ‘tric. Did so⸻
AS: Sorry.
HH: Anyway that’s beside the point. Anyway I left there in 1940 and my very first job was a night watchman for some lady at Lewisham Manor near Sherborne, who lost all her staff and she wanted somebody to be in the house at night and to patrol the grounds. While I went round the grounds once, no, never again, it was too bloody scary [laughs].
AS: Things that go bump in the night.
HH: Yeah, there was hooting and things [laughs]. Anyway that’s beside the point.
AS: But this was 1940. Was this, was the Battle of Britain going on over your head or had that finished?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: What, was that what pushed you towards the air force or?
HH: No. Well, I think. Well, what pushed me towards the air force was the fact that I went, my father wanted me to join the navy and I, I went down to Portsmouth to sit an exam to be a writer or a supply probationer [unclear] his own clerk, and I didn’t fancy that, but anyway they gave you twelve blocks of pounds, shillings and pence to add up that way and then you had to add up that way and then you had to add them all up across and then the figure you got down here and the figure you got down here should have been the same. Mine was nowhere near. Anyway.
AS: But your maths were good so, you threw it really, didn’t you?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Did you deliberately mess up, because your maths were good.
HH: Yeah. Yes, I know, but not the accountancy type [laughs]. Anyway, we then, coming back on the train, I was pretty certain I’d failed, so, coming back on the train, I had to change at Salisbury and I had about an hour to waste, wait at Salisbury so I went in the town and I saw an RAF recruiting office. So I went in there and saw a sergeant there and I signed on for aircrew.
AS: Just like that?
HH: Yeah. And they took me on as a pilot or navigator and then I had to go to Oxford for attestation and I went there and with all the gunners from South Wales and what have you became gunners rather, from the mines, you know, and so that’s how I came to be in the air force.
AS: Okay. Did you go through the aircrew recruiting centres in London at Lord’s and?
HH: Yes, I was the first one there.
AS: Really?
HH: Very first one to go there, I think. In July ‘41, I suppose, yeah.
AS: That’s pretty early. What, what happened then? They’ve taken you into the air force at that stage, I suppose, you didn’t know what you were going to do.
HH: Well, we went to ITW and⸻
AS: Where was that?
HH: Down Torquay, which is very nice and, I’ve got my bloody reading glasses on, no wonder I can’t see, and then I was sent down to America to train.
AS: Okay.
HH: In the United States Air Force.
AS: Straight from Initial Training Wing.
HH: Yes. Straight from ITW. We didn’t get a chance. Later on they used to, they did a little course on Tiger Moths up on somewhere in the world, somewhere up that way.
AS: So, you hadn’t actually flown in an aircraft when you went to.
HH: No.
AS: How did you, obviously they wouldn’t fly you over, but how did you get across the Atlantic, in a convoy or?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. What was that called?
HH: I went out on a ship called the Highland Princess, which I ended up selling. I sold the Highland Princess, the Highland Brigade and the Highland Monarch.
AS: Presumably not during the war when you got there.
HH: No. Four of them, I sold them in about ’51, or ’52, something like that
AS: Okay. So, you’re going across the Atlantic in convoy. Was the ship crowded? What was the conditions like?
HH: Well, we were in hammocks, you know, on meat hooks in the, you hung your hammock on meat hooks in the lower hold, you know?
AS: Gosh.
HH: And we are right up on the stern of the ship because every time the, I think she was twin screwer if I remember rightly, because every time the ship rolled the prop shoot [mimics a sound] [laughs].
AS: Is that the prop coming out of the water?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh! Gosh, and so, there must have been hundreds of men on the ship with you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: All [unclear]
HH: The one thing you found out, you had to hang on to your four and a half hat because one went missing, what did he do? Go and pinch another one. So, it went all round the ship [laughs]. [unclear]
AS: Like measles, isn’t it? Yes, yeah, absolutely.
HH: Yeah, I remember that so, I hid mine, anyway.
AS: So, you went across in uniform with
HH: Yeah.
AS: Hundreds of other people.
HH: No, when we got to, we were being issued with, at Wilmslow I think it was in Cheshire, we’d been issued with a grey flannel suit to wear in America, ‘cause we all had to go down grey worsted suits, you know.
AS: Ah, ‘cause America wasn’t in the war then.
HH: ‘Cause they weren’t in the war then, yeah.
AS: Right.
HH: So, and so we went down to Maxwell Field in Alabama first of all for acclimatization.
AS: Wait, where did the ship come in?
HH: Halifax.
AS: Oh, so you landed in Canada.
HH: Went to Canada first, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: And then, I think, yes I think we were there, we were trained down to Toronto, I think, and then we went from Toronto down to Alabama, to Maxwell Field, to Montgomery, Alabama.
AS: Okay. Was the whole journey really well organised⸻
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: Or was is the usual service mess up?
HH: No.
AS: No. It was good?
HH: It was good, yeah, everything seemed to go to plan I think, pretty well.
AS: How were you received at Montgomery, at Maxwell Air Force base?
HH: Oh, pretty well. In fact, the very first Sunday we were there, first weekend we were there, the American officer came round and, when we were having lunch, and he said, there’s a fair in town at the moment and they’ve heard that you boys are here, so we’d like you, they’d like you to come along and be their guest. So we thought we were going there but no, it was a scam, we were all scammed out of our money. Yeah, so we woke up in the morning, everybody had lost all their money, it was a real American type scam you know and I saw a coach loading up with American service people all in uniform. So I said, ‘Where is this coach going?’ ‘Oh’, he said, one of them said, ‘We are going to a little village called Prattville just outside of Montgomery and we’re going to church and if we’re lucky we will get invited out for lunch afterwards.’ So, I said, ‘Can we come along?’ Then the three of us got on board anyway. And we went in and sang all the hymns [laughs] and, real gospel stuff too it was, yeah.
AS: Deep South, isn’t it?
HH: You know, happy happy-clappy type of fellows, kind of stuff, you know, and anyway afterwards all the American were all invited out to lunch and we were there, standing there, wondering what the hell to do, because it was a long walk back to Maxwell from Prattville ‘bout twelve miles I should think and then suddenly this lovely blonde comes up, she says, ‘You all from Maxwell?’ I said, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, we are.’ ‘Oh’, she says, ‘Matter of fact what sort of language is that?’ she says. ‘Well’, I says, ‘Well, you probably wouldn’t understand but we are English’ [laughs]. ‘Oh’, she says, ‘English, you are English?’ And she rushed around and she got all the Americans to cancel so that we were all invited to and she was a daughter of a, she collared me anyway and the other two were taken off somewhere else, I don’t know where. And then, we had lunch and her father was the local judge and he said afterwards, after we had lunch, he said, ‘I guess you would like to take my daughter out for a drive, would you? We gotta a nice Buick in the back. Buick with a steering column for your change’ and I didn’t even have a licence [unclear] never mind [laughs]. Never mind, and I got in anyway and I drove her out, bit of snogging and came back. And that was that and I never saw her again, she, I heard later she married an American navy pilot, who got killed in the Pacific. Yeah. So I could have followed it up if I wanted to but I didn’t but by that time I was back in Canada anyway.
AS: So when did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Well, when I go to, we went down to, we were posted from Maxwell Field down to Albany in Georgia to an aerodrome called Darr Aero Tech, that was the owner of the aerodrome, I think, Darr Aero Tech. And it’s still there, I was there not long ago. And so, I suddenly had to do a flight commander’s check and he decided, he decided to wash me out so I went back up to Canada and trained as a navigator.
AS: On the flying piece, how much flying did you do? Do you think it was fair that you got washed out?
HH: No.
AS: How did that come about?
HH: Well, they wanted, they, the Air Ministry wanted as many people washed out as possible who could train as navigators, bomb aimers and gunners and what have you. They weren’t too short of gunners but they.
AS: I believe you had an instructor with a German sounding name.
HH: Oh yeah. Schmidt.
AS: Schmidt.
HH: Yeah, that was a joke really. That was in the book, wasn’t it? Yeah.
AS: So maybe he sabotaged your flying career, your piloting career. So, I presume that a lot of people were washed out at this stage.
HH: They were, but [unclear] was never washed out.
AS: Wow.
HH: Over eighty percent. I know it was a whole lot of us came back. And on Pearl Harbour, the day of Pearl Harbour we were giving an exhibition rugby match in the town. And suddenly over the tannoy came an announcement that Pearl Harbour had been attacked by the Japanese and so everybody went home, they all packed up and went home. So we went home as well. And that night, I had a place I used to get under the wire and go into town at night, you know [laughs] and when I came back to get under the wire there was a man there with a gun [laughs]. And he was trying to shoot me because he thought I was a Japanese. He said, look mate, I don’t like your look, you look like a bloody Japanese [laughs].
AS: Did you go out of through the gate after that?
HH: No. Well, I didn’t bother after that.
AS: So.
HH: I went back, well, the following day we were on the train to go back up to Canada.
AS: Is that quick?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Flight commander’s test and then pack your kit and off you go.
HH: About for, about a week later I suppose I was back, I was on the train going back up to Canada. And it’s quite an experience travelling by train out in America, isn’t it? In those days with the dining cars and everything, and the bars and but we had to change, we were on what was called the Chattanooga Choo Choo, but going the wrong way [laughs]. We were going there, were going north but the Chattanooga Choo Choo goes, comes south, doesn’t it? But we were on that line anyway. And I remember we stopped off in Boston and we had a bit of a wait there so we decided to go into town, we never did see Boston because we got on the way into town, we got attacked by these Irish Americans.
AS: For being British?
HH: We had taken them into the war.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s our fault but [laughs]. And they were at war now. And they’d be getting called up and be killed. And then anyway we got away with that alright.
AS: You were physically attacked?
HH: Yeah, yeah. They had knives and God knows what. They weren’t very nice people. Anyway, I say Irish American but I imagine they were Irish Americans, being in Boston, wouldn’t you?
AS: Big population there, isn’t it?
HH: So, then I went to Trenton where I was interviewed by a group captain and he was Raymond Mass‘s brother.
AS: God lord, Raymond Mass of the Agfa?
HH: Yeah. It was his brother. He looked just like him too. Yeah. And.
AS: Was that a sympathetic interview?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: You wanted to be a pilot and then suddenly that stopped. Was the system generally sympathetic to you?
HH: Oh yes. So they were quite keen to take me on as a navigator. And so then I went from there to Quebec City, L’Ancienne-Lorette. And from there up to Rivers in Manitoba. Which was a dry town, that was, Prohibition there.
AS: Oh dear. Good lord.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Were you in uniform by this time? RAF uniform?
HH: Yeah. Wearing a Canadian uniform in fact [laughs]. They issued us with a Canadian uniform, which were quite smart actually. And they were very similar to ours but the cloth is a little kinder, shall we say?
AS: So, you’re in Prohibition and you went out, presumably looking for a drink, do you?
HH: Well, we knew that Mont-Joli was dry but there was a little, there was a port just down the river called Rimouski, which was a timber port mainly. I remember when I took my Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers exams, one of the questions was, could you explain what were the, how many and what sort of cargo was exported from Rimouski, well everybody else thought it was in Russia, didn’t’ they? [laughs]
AS: But you had a clear mental picture.
HH: Yeah, I’ve seen it. Anyway, we were trying to, we were drinking some, we went to a bar and we were drinking this clear liquid, we had asked for whiskey but they served us up with this clear whiskey, clear liquid and when we were coming back in a taxi we were, we’d had about two each of these, we were all very sick we had to stop the taxi we were really sick and we saw afterwards that [unclear] don’t drink anything that is given to you because there is a stuff called alcool which is made from wood alcohol and it’s can make you blind.
AS: It’s like drinking anti-freeze, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh, lucky escape!
HH: And so that was that. So then from Mont-Joli we went to the staff end course at Rivers in Manitoba which was astronavigation, advanced navigations course it was.
AS: What was the basic navigation course? What was your basic navigation training like? Was it mostly classroom or?
HH: A lot of in the air.
AS: What were you flying in?
HH: Ansons. Yeah. Mark 1 Ansons you had to wind up the undercarriage, you remember?
AS: Yeah. Did you take to it easily, to the navigation, because of your maths proficiency or?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: And you found it easy to be an accurate navigator?
HH: Yes, I mean, you’re training all the time of course and right the way through when I came home from Rivers, came home over on the Union-Castle ship, called the Cape Town Castle, which I didn’t sell. And, what’s the time?
AS: Now.
HH: [alarm clock rings] The taxi, yeah.
AS: Okay. We’ll pause at there, shall we? [recording paused]
HH: Yeah. Astronavigation course A and it was mainly a flying by using star shots yeah. But when I got on the squadron, I mean you had to carry about three sets of books, you know, and a naval almanac as well. Had to work out your star shots. But when I got to the squadron they had a marvellous bit of equipment, a little projector over the navigator’s tail [unclear], which about that high off the table and you had to measure it up with a special stick to make certain it was in focus and on this astrograph there was three stars you could use and, two stars rather, two stars plus Polaris you use to get a three star fix, and you worked out a datum point for the time before you, before you got airborne and drew it on your chart and then you lay your chart down on the table and lined it up with the astrograph and then this projected the position lines of these stars onto your chart. So all, so, the bomb aimer, all the bomb aimer had to do was to take the star charts, he was, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator anyway and I think he’s still alive, I’m not sure, and.
AS: So it was very much team work.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Between you and the bomb aimer but actually on astros. So, you, we jumped straight on to being on the squadron. Did you know, as soon as you started navigator training, that you would be going to Bomber Command?
HH: Well, it’s pretty obvious I would be. Yeah.
AS; Okay. And, so, you finished your training in Canada, came back to the UK by ship, and what happened next before you got on to the squadron?
HH: I went to [unclear], is it Cumberland?
AS: I think Scotland.
HH: Up near Carlisle, north of Carlisle then, between Carlisle and Keswick I suppose. And a little aerodrome there and we learned to fly in wartime conditions, you know, where the balloon barrages were et cetera. Where to avoid them.
AS: And is this when you stepped up from Ansons to bombers?
HH: No, no, this is still on Ansons. And then from there we went down to Hampstead Norris still on Ansons and then we went to Harwell, Hampstead Norris was a satellite of Harwell at the time and then we crewed up with our pilot and wireless operator, I think we already had a wireless operator and we crewed up with bomb aimer and engineer, no, no, we didn’t have an engineer at that time, this is on Wellingtons and.
AS: What were they like the training Wellingtons, were they in good nick, were they ropey old kites or?
HH: No, no, pretty ropey, they were draughty as hell, oh God they were draughty. The wind used to whistle through that fabric, you know. [unclear] construction, wasn’t it?
AS: What was, was there a step up in gear going on to heavier airplanes and operational tactics?
HH: Oh yeah, yeah.
AS: You are moving much more quickly in your calculations and navigation than perhaps when you were training?
HH: We did quite a lot of cross countries and Bullseyes we did in OTU.
AS: What’s Bullseye?
HH: Bullseyes we did down, we’d go down to, say the Channel Islands and experience a little bit of flak there and then we’d come back up again and fly across to Portsmouth or somewhere and fly across the coast there or else we’d fly, out to the North Sea towards Denmark and come back into Hull.
AS: So this was almost a simulated bombing mission, was that?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Training, for training. Okay.
HH: They were called Bullseyes anyway in cooperation with the army, I suppose, with the the ack-ack.
AS: So, when you’re at OTU, you’re on Wellingtons.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Then we went up to a place called Riccall in Yorkshire, near Selby, and we had to, we trained, we converted onto Halifaxes.
AS: What, can you remember what year, what month this would be when you?
HH: Well, that would be about Christmas of, just around Christmas in ’42, I suppose.
AS: Wow, so what type of Halifax would this be? The Merlin one or the?
HH: The Merlin one, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yes, so the Hali, Hali 1, what’s his name? Not Gibson, what the hell was his name?
AS: Cheshire?
HH: No. Gus Walker.
AS: Gus, oh yeah, yeah.
HH: He was a lovely man, Gus was, and he’d taken out, all the mid upper turret and the front nose cone as well, there is a very big heavy turret in the front nose and like the Lanc was, you know. And then, it’s pretty useless that front turret was but anyway. Then, eventually we got the Hali II.1 A which had a four gun [unclear] turret on the top, yes, same as on the Hali 3.
AS: So your mid upper then got his job back.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, Gus Walker he took these turrets out to save weight, to carry more bombs?
HH: To save weight, yeah. Just to save weight, to make it improve performance a bit. And get a better height. I better ring up my taxi.
AS: So, by taking the turrets off, Gus Water was giving his aircrews more of a chance really, wasn’t he?
HH: Yeah, but then later on they improved the, we still had the Merlin 22s, same as the Lanc had, you know. Merlin 22s, but the Mark II.1 A was a much better aircraft, you could get up to, you know, eighteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two thousand.
AS: Loaded?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Which is, you were at the same height as the Lancs. And the Lancs had the habit of dropping their bombs on you. Which happened on our very first trip. We went to, we were waiting to have a nice easy trip but no, we got Essen. And then, when we were over the, when we were over the target on our bombing run but a whole lot of bombs dropped on us, a whole lot of incendiaries dropped on us and the engineer and myself had to go back and kick them out the door [laughs] and which is good practice actually, because it happened to us again over Wuppertal.
AS: Really?
HH: But that time there was a, I think it was a two thousand pounder or a thousand pounder, I don’t know, and it came and took our port rudder right off, and the port tail and the port tail blade yeah.
AS: And what sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Mh?
AS: What sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Well, we found, she was, it was still flying alright but I found that we were crabbing a bit. And I remember seeing a light below and I said, take a drift on that, would you? And anyway we found that we were crabbing quite about ten degrees to port, I think, yeah.
AS: So you do all your sums again and take that out by adjusting the.
HH: No, I just took ten degrees off every course [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: That must have been quite a hairy landing I would think.
HH: No, [unclear], yeah. I can’t remember it being anything but normal.
AS: Wow.
HH: And when we got back, the little corporal in charge of our ground crew, he came out, what the bloody hell have you done to my aircraft! [laughs] as if it was our fault, you know.
AS: Did you fly your own regular aircraft that you got attached to?
HH: Yes, yeah. D, we always flew in D, until one time we let, we were on leave and I think it was an Australian pilot took it and he was very conscious of saving fuel. So he throttled right back coming back and the result was that the, when we went to run the engine up the following day, the engine started to shake, port engine started to shake and suddenly the prop came off and went right through where I’d be normally sitting and sliced my table in half, but I was in the rest position now for take-off you know.
AS: Wow. So that was one of your nine lives gone?
HH: Yeah. I tell that story I say, as you can see I’m still here [laughs]. I wasn’t sitting there at the time.
AS: So, did they repair the aeroplane or was that the demise of D-Dog?
HH: But that was it finished, D-Dog was finished then and we got the Mark 2.1 A then.
AS: Still as D-Dog or was there a superstition about that?
HH: No. We were still with D, yeah. But, Jackie Miles, he was our mid upper gunner, he was really pleased to get that. We got four guns, he was really happy [laughs]. But it was much safer to have somebody in a blister looking down underneath.
AS: Is that what he used to do before he got the target?
HH: Yeah. Yes, and he used to put it in his log book, duty, rear gunner’s me [laughs].
AS: Yeah. On, when you were on ops, had the idea of the bomber stream come in by then?
HH: Oh yes. Yes, we were on the very first time they dropped, the Pathfinders used Oboe on the Essen raids. I think it was first used on the 5th of March, wasn’t it?
AS: I don’t know, 1943. This was.
HH: Yeah, ’43, ’43 by this time, yeah.
AS: So, it was quite early on in the idea of the Pathfinders.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, you went on ops just as the stream and the concentration were starting to take place. I know you were deep in the bowels of the aeroplane at your navigation table. Did you, did the crew see other aircraft around them, feel the other aircraft around them?
HH: No, you are in the slipstream the whole time. Especially when you got near the target, when you’re on your final run, you sort of you feel the slipstream and you have got to remember that five percent of our losses were due to collisions, it has been estimated.
AS: That’s a high percentage.
HH: I think we were told that at the time to be extra vigiliant, you know.
AS: Against the dangers of collision. What about enemy aircraft on your first tour? Did you have any encounters with the German night fighters?
HH: Oh yeah. [unclear], he shot down two, he shot down a Ju 88 and an Me 110 I think it was, yeah.
AS: And this, this was your rear gunner.
HH: And he had a problem as well. A lot of Battle of Britain pilots would have given their eye tooth for a score like that. Probably would have gotten a DSO and a DFC.
AS: [laughs] there are a lot of unsung deeds in Bomber Command.
HH: Anyway then we finished up in October ’43 and I got sent up to 6 Group, it was a Canadian crew.
AS: With the Canadians. How did you?
HH: And they wanted everybody to be Canadians, you know. They didn’t want an English instructor so I got, I quickly got posted down to 3 Group. And
AS: Somewhere along the way you, you picked up the DFM. Was that during your first tour?
HH: Yes, was the first tour.
AS: And what was the story behind your DFM?
HH: I don’t know really. It’s not in the book even, not even in the, my citation is not there, there’s a book of DFMs in the RAF, book of DFCs and DFMs. And I think there was an Australian, called Cameron, he found this book of DFMs but I don’t know, I think Gus Walker probably. You see, I’d broken my left foot, I’d broken a bone in my left foot and what with having leave, we were due for leave I went on leave on with my foot in plaster, came back and had the plaster taken off and then I fell off my bicycle [laughs]. Didn’t help. So, the doc said, ‘Right, I’m going to keep you in hospital until your foot’s cured. I don’t want any arguments.’ And the following day Sam came in, he said, we are on tonight, [unclear] and they want me to take a spare navigator and I said, ‘No way, Sam, let’s go and see the doc.’ The doc was in a good mood ‘cause he was going on leave. So, have you read all this before?
AS: No.
HH: So, [pause] he said, ‘Alright you, you can go this time, but’, he says, ‘Provided you come back into hospital as soon as you get back. If you get back’, he said, ‘If you get back.’ So, he then went on leave. Anyway, I duly arrived at main briefing, done my navigation briefing, I think we came at main briefing and Gus Walker was on the door. And Gus said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m on crutches you see. I’m going on ops.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t where my crew is going, I don’t want them to go without me.’ ‘Well, oh alright then.’ So I went in and we went to Berlin that night. And when I got back, Gus was still on the station. ‘Cause he was in charge of three squadrons, wasn’t he? Up there. And he said, ‘Right, young Hughes,’ he says, ‘I’ve been hearing all about you, he says, ‘It’s alright, I’ll take you back to the hospital myself.’ And then I got in his car and he tore me off a bit of a mild strip for being irresponsible and some of that and then as I got out, he said, ‘Bloody good show anyway, Hughes.’ And I think it was he who recommended me for a DFM, I don’t know, probably.
AS: Excellent. It’s a wonderful, wonderful story. What happened, you said, you tried the book in the RAF club to find your citation. Have you explored anywhere else, to try and find the DFM citation?
HH: I did write to some time ago, I don’t know, I think they did, you get from RAF records I think.
AS: Okay.
HH: Because I wrote to them the other day and asked them if, ‘cause I had a letter from them to say that I could retain the rank, substantive rank of flight lieutenant when I finished in the reserve and use the courtesy rank of squadron leader. But I’ve never used it. So I thought it would be a nice thing to have on my tombstone, so I wrote and asked them if that still pertained, shall we say.
AS: And you are still waiting for a reply.
HH: Well, they wrote back to me and said that I’d have to give them some more proof of who I was, you know, passports, et cetera so I sent them up a copy of my, one of my utility bills and my council tax demand.
AS: Well, hopefully that’s good enough.
HH: It only went off last week, so we will have to wait and see.
AS: You mentioned briefings. I know the targets were different and the weather was different, but could you give me some idea of an average preparation for a mission from waking up in the morning to taking off. Is that possible, that sort of things that?
HH: Yeah, because you went down to the, you went down to the flights and you stood in the apron outside the squadron offices and at ten to ten on the dot, if you were on that night, the phone would ring. You knew you were on that night then and then, but if you waited and waited until ten past ten the phone would ring again to say the squadron’s stood down by which time we had all disappeared ‘cause we’d all. Didn’t want to go to on a bloody route march or something [unclear].
AS: So it was all incredibly secret but the routine gave it away.
HH: Yeah [laughs].
AS: So if the phone call came at ten to ten, you knew you were on ops that night, what would happen then?
HH: Well I did, we’d go down to our aircraft and check all the equipment in it and then if necessary you take it up on an air test and then you were back on the ground again by, about eleven, eleven thirty, and then you’d either come back and go to lunch and or else you’d and then after you’d had lunch you’d go on for navigation briefing at about two o’clock.
AS: So the navigator was the first person in the crew to know where you were going, what timing was.
HH: Yes, we knew where we were going, yeah.
AS: Was that a very full briefing, with weather? Is this when you drew up your courses, you got your turning points and what not?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Was this a very full briefing?
HH: Oh yeah, well, the navigation briefing, yes, you got your various tracks you had to go on to and hopefully they’re taking you around the defended areas you know.
AS: The flak and the searchlights, yeah. Was there a lot of work involved for you to prepare your charts?
HH: Yes, it took quite a time. You were mainly with your bomb aimer to help you, you know. Harry Hoover, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator, he trained in South Africa I think.
AS: So, you two were the only ones that knew at the navigation briefing the target. Was it difficult to keep it secret from your skipper and your crew?
HH: Oh no, you didn’t have to keep it secret but you just told the rest of the crew where we’re going so all this business about being a gasp when they, when the curtains were pulled across from the map.
AS: Probably you already knew.
HH: We all knew where we were going by that time, at least my crew did.
AS: So, you’ve done your navigation briefing and what happened then? Just sit around waiting for the main crew briefing or did you have duties to do?
HH: No, we just, by the time you finished doing the nav, it’s about time for the main briefing and then having done the main briefing you then went for an ops breakfast. The ops breakfast, which was bacon and eggs, baked beans, all the things you shouldn’t eat.
AS: Baked beans?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’re flying at twenty thousand feet.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Oh, that could have been interesting. What was the atmosphere like? Was there a lot of tension? Was there a lot of horseplay? Was there a lot of fear? What was the atmosphere like?
HH: I don’t know, I can’t remember now, there was a feeling of are we gonna make it or not, you know.
AS: Was that a personal thing or something that you talked about with the crew?
HH: I would never, never, never, never, my mid upper gunner, he, one day, we were in our room, I shared a room with him and he packed up all his biscuits on his bed and folded up all the blankets and sheets. What are you doing that for? And he said, ‘I don’t think we are gonna come back. So I’m putting the things in order now.’ And he got all his paperwork out and everything, letters and everything to his wife and things.
AS: What did that do to your morale?
HH: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t very happy about it but it was a scrub that night anyway. Then he said, afterwards he said, ‘God, good job we didn’t go to [unclear] because we weren’t going to come back.’ He knew.
AS: But after that on future trips he was fine.
HH: Well, I said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again, Jackie, I said, ‘You never do a thing like that again.’
AS: Tempting fate. What about off duty, what sort of things did you, you guys get up to that you can talk about?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Off duty, did you get much time off to yourself? Or to yourselves as a crew?
HH: Yeah. We, I used to go out with, mainly with another crew ‘cause all our crew, our skipper was commissioned, so we were all and the rest of them, Jackie Miles he lived in Leeds so when he had an evening off, he went back to Leeds and the rear gunner was the same, he was somewhere just outside Leeds. Sam was from Leeds as well, the pilot, so it was only the engineer and myself.
AS: So you latched onto another crew for the,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The social element.
HH: Yes, [unclear] crew, yeah. I was pretty friendly with his navigator but he got killed.
AS: And did the rest of the crew come back?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And brought him back?
HH: They brought him back, yeah.
AS: Your, we were talking about your navigation training and astro, during your time, your first tour on ops, did you start to get Gee in the aeroplane or any other navigational aids that you used?
HH: We had Gee.
AS: You had Gee.
HH: Right from the start, yeah. We had the Mark 1 Gee which was, used to have to tune it, the narrow knobs on the side and you had to tune it to get a signal and it’s like tuning one of those. Televisions, you know.
AS: Keep wandering off. Did you, was it as a big revolution in navigation as people say?
HH: The Gee was, yeah.
AS: The Gee was, it really did make a difference.
HH: Yeah, well, it did make a difference because, but you didn’t get it beyond the Dutch coast, it wouldn’t work beyond the Dutch coast but you had we, well, you had LORAN later, in Mosquitos we had Gee and LORAN. In fact, it really annoys me now to hear the met men talking about the jet stream because we found the very first jet stream. I found a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots at thirty thousand feet.
AS: Tailwind.
HH: Hundred and ninety five knots and when we got back, I told the met man, I said, ‘I got a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots and you were forecasting forty five to fifty knots.’ He said, ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!’ So he went to Group headquarters and the Group headquarters said we don’t believe it. They went to Command headquarters and the met people up there said they didn’t believe it either. But then everybody else came back with these winds and they suddenly realised what was called jet streams but now they talk about jet streams all the time. And what they mean is where the warm front, the warm tropical front meets the polar maritime front and all the way along that you get depressions form and then, and with it you get this so-called jet stream would form as well. Ah, so which comes first? The frontal systems or the jet stream?
AS: Must be the fronts, must be the fronts. So, when you are doing your tour, you’d had the nasty experience of being bombed twice by your own people, probably 5 Group above you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Was that the limit of the difficulties you had? Was the aeroplane mechanically reliable or did you suffer?
HH: Oh, we, came back on three engines more times than we came back on four.
AS: Really?
HH: Yeah. I think we came back on three engines eleven times out of our tour.
AS: And what did your ground crew chief say to that?
HH: Well, it wasn’t their fault, necessarily, well, he didn’t think it was anyway.
AS: It’s just overstraining them, is it, full fuel, full bombload climb to heights. Coming back from the raids, what was your pilot like? Was he one of those that, wanted to pour on the coal and get home early or did he stick to heights and courses as briefed or?
HH: Well, he couldn’t do much else with a Halifax. But when I was on Mosquitos, with our New Zealand pilot, we were always first back [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: Becomes a matter of pride. On your first tour still perhaps we can talk a bit more about that. As you got towards the end, did the, you knew presumably you were going to stop on, what, thirty trips?
HH: Well, I did twenty six in fact.
AS: Okay.
HH: Which we were screened two trips early. I would have done twenty eight for my first tour, ‘cause the pilot had already done two second Dickey trips to start with. [door bell rings] That’s my taxi now.
AS: Okay.
HH: So I’ll just pause this. [recording paused] We were just talking about your tour length. The question I was going to ask is did you feel a real rising tension as you got towards the end of your tour?
HH: But we didn’t know we were towards the end, we thought we had another two trips to do.
AS: Okay.
HH: But, I remember Sam coming in and he says, ‘I have some good news for you, we’re screens and you’re off on leave from tomorrow. You are all going on leave tomorrow.’
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Mh?
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Ah, it was good feeling but I forget what happened now. When I was on Mosquitos I think when I was doing my last trip on Mosquitos ‘cause you had to do fifty on Mosquitos you see for a tour.
AS: So, you finished on 102 Squadron and were there many crews that went all the way through like yours did?
HH: No, not a great deal, I wish I had the [unclear] I’ve got it somewhere, might be in that case there, book of all the losses, you know. 102 Squadron losses.
AS: Oh, perhaps we can look at that tomorrow or now if you like.
HH: Well I, it might be in that case, I’m not sure.
AS: Let’s pause this and we’ll go and have a look. [recording paused]
AS: Harry, good morning, it’s day two of our interview sessions. It’s very good of you to agree to this interview. Can we start by going back to your first tour of operations during the Battle of the Ruhr on Halifaxes. Were you conscious at the time that this was a major battle or was it just one job after another?
HH: We were trying to hit Germany where it hurt, ‘cause we didn’t only go to the Ruhr and we went to places like Pilsen, and then we did Nuremberg and Munich and.
AS: Were you briefed on specific targets in these cities and told what you were going after?
HH: Oh, we knew that Essen was the Krupp works, yeah, and we were given a good, pretty good briefing by the intelligence officer what we were gonna hit because one time we went, we were going to. There was almost a mutiny one day because they were sending to some place I forget, Gelsenkirchen or somewhere, I forget where it was now, and [pause]
AS: What happened then? What was the mutiny all about?
HH: Well, the intelligence officer said that he didn’t know why we were going there, there was nothing there, there was just a spa town that we were going to hit but what we didn’t know, of course, it was a leave centre for the Gestapo and the place was full of the Gestapo officers and but you know initially we said, no, why are we going there, you know? And there was almost not exactly a mutiny but it was a fear of you know, why are we bombing this place, we probably would just hit a lot of women and children.
AS: So, this was 1943. So even at that stage.
HH: This is ’45. ‘43 rather.
AS: So, even at that stage there were some concerns amongst the crews about what you were doing and where you were going.
HH: Yeah, we didn’t, the Hamburg raids for example. That’s the first time there was a real firestorm and we went on three or four of those raids, I forget now, it’s in the book, Hamburg in July ’43. That book is falling to bits, isn’t it?
AS: Well, it happens to all of us, doesn’t it? As we get older. Here we go, 24th of July ’43 and the 27th of July ‘43. Ops Hamburg, yeah. And then the 2nd of August.
HH: Yeah, the 2nd of August when we, we’d already realised that the firestorms, you know, in then, we were dropping our incendiaries first and setting fire to places and then dropping four thousand pounders, two and four thousand pounders on top of the fires which, that’s why it’s called the firestorm, the blast from the comparatively thin-cased two thousand pounders and what have you, would suck in the air and the oxygen, you know, and cause these firestorms.
AS: So, the thin-cased bombs would blow the roofs off and then the incendiaries would go inside and.
HH: Well, you know, in that, wish I could find that, you could sit and watch that, the CD I’ve got somewhere in there of.
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Yes, the first or second of the Hamburg raids which caused the firestorm. And I remember watching this from over the bomb aimer’s shoulder and watching these fires spreading and I remember saying, I felt very sorry for the people down there.
AS: At that time.
HH: At that time, yeah. In fact I said a little prayer for them.
AS: Is this something you discussed with the crew or any of your friends?
HH: Not really, no. I just said a prayer to myself, yeah.
AS: And was that really specific to Hamburg or to?
HH: Just to Hamburg, yeah. ‘Cause that was where the firestorms first started. Well, it was worst then Dresden actually.
AS: I believe so in the numbers lost. So, your first tour was absolutely in the thick of what we call the Battle of the Ruhr and extremely, extremely difficult and dangerous missions.
HH: The people who came after me, they’d done Hamburg and the Battle of the Ruhr, and then they had to follow on doing the Battle of Berlin. You can find my very last trip was to Berlin I think, no, it was Hanover. It was one of my last trips was to Berlin, that’s when I went on crutches, yeah.
AS: Home on three engines, that one?
HH: Was that Berlin?
AS: Yes, 23rd of August. And then you did a Munich and a Hanover. What was Berlin like? Was it special, was it the
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was Berlin perhaps the best defended target? What was Berlin like?
HH: It was the length of the trip really. You know, on heavies, on Lancs and heavies it took us eight and a half hours there and back. What’s it say there? [paper rustling]
AS: Seven hours fifteen, that’s still an incredible time. People talk about eight hour days, and that was a full day’s work at night.
HH: Was a full day’s work was being shot at too.
AS: And, I mean, was Berlin the best defended target, do you think or was that the Ruhr, perhaps?
HH: No, I think, I don’t think it was as bad as the Ruhr but it was, there was plenty of activity there but mainly a lot of fighter activity there over the target, over Berlin.
AS: And you, you could see the enemy?
HH: Oh yeah. They were coned and searchlights one time I was on Mosquitos, there was two Mosquitos, an Fw 190, and an Me 109, all on the same cone.
AS: Wow!
HH: And there is a painting of that somewhere. I described it, you know. And there is a painting somewhere that is called Berlin Express. And [unclear] have got the original.
AS: Okay, I’ll look for that.
HH: [unclear] then.
AS: Okay. Some trips to France as well. Le Creusot. You weren’t after a saucepan factory there were you, what was, can you remember what that trip was about?
HH: Oh yes, that was, they were manufacturing parts for tanks and things, I think.
AS: Gosh, here, after Le Creusot, Muhlheim, home on two engines.
HH: Yeah [laughs]
AS: What’s the story behind that? Did they just pack up or was it flak or?
HH: Yeah, they just packed up on us yeah, these Merlins were you know they were way overstressed on the Halifax and we came back on two on that occasion, yeah.
AS: After a lot of, after the Hamburgs that we talked about and Berlin, Munich. Now, can you remember that trip? September ’43 to Munich.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First off, first back, in your log book, eight hours, fifty five minutes. Did the stream hold together, the bomber stream hold together over these long distances?
HH: Yeah, you we were all given certain times, you know, you had to be at certain times on all the way along the track, at the various turning points, you know. And I think it did help, you know, no doubt about it and then with the advent of Window of course, it just threw their ground tracking, we had a little device, did I tell you, a little device called Boozer in Mosquitos.
AS: No, you didn’t, no.
HH: We had a little device which, when they were tracking you from the ground, a little yellow light used to glow. But when they were tracking from the air, a red light used to glow. And one night, we were coming back, and somewhere around about the Hamburg, sorry the Bremen Hanover gap, and this red light came on very bright and we knew the red light meant we were being tracked from the air you see. And then suddenly over the top of us, about the height of this building, just came two, I think they were Me 263s,
AS: The jets?
HH: The jets, yeah. Right over the top of us. And they didn’t see us. I got a photograph of a Mosquito somewhere I don’t know what she’s done with it now. I meant to ask her that when she was in last night.
AS: No worries, maybe today. So, this, the 262s had the speed, they were the only ones with the speed to catch you, really.
HH: Yes. They were doing about a hundred knots faster than us. Fifty to a hundred knots faster than us. And they just sailed over the top of us and disappeared in the distance. There were four jets, two of them.
AS: So they had radar airborne in the jets.
HH: Yes.
AS: That is a pretty dangerous development, isn’t it? That was another one of your nine lives gone, really, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Your slices of luck. Back to your first tour, you, when did you come off ops?
HH: I went to a conversion unit, at a place called Wombleton.
AS: Okay, was that Stirlings?
HH: No, it was Halifaxes actually but.
AS: Okay.
HH: Canadian group, they are mainly on Halifaxes.
AS: In 6 Group, how did you get on with the Canadians?
HH: Not very well.
AS: Really?
HH: No. They are very, they didn’t want to know us, you know, they just wanted to get rid of us as quickly as they could.
AS: I’ve heard this that they were running,
HH: They wanted to run their own show.
AS: [unclear] as part of the Canadian.
HH: I remember getting one crew and I said, I wanted to send them back for further training because the navigator was absolutely hopeless. He really was, he couldn’t, it was like putting, I don’t know, he was thick as two planks, he couldn’t. So, I said if you’re sending this crew with this navigator they don’t stand a chance of getting through, not a chance at all. They’ll be shot down on, within their first five operations, they’ll be shot down.
AS: And do you know whether that came to pass?
HH: No. They didn’t like this, you know, the fact that I’d criticised one of their Canadian crews and I was posted down to 3 Group and, which suited me, and the crew got to squadron, got to a squadron and they did one trip and got hopelessly lost and I heard it afterwards that the CO of the, I think it was Lane, what was his name? Lane. He said, what the hell are you doing sending us crews that are, they should have been send back for further training. And I had recommended that.
AS: Had you been commissioned by this point?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: I was commissioned at the end of my first tour, I think.
AS: What sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: Pardon?
AS: How did, what sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: I just had an interview, I don’t know, who I had an interview with now, I can’t remember. And I mean after the interview I was then a pilot officer but I was a flight sergeant before and my pay was sixteen shillings a day as a flight sergeant but as a pilot officer I was only going to get fourteen and four pence a day. So they said, oh, we can’t have that so they gave me a six pence rise, six pence a day rise so I was getting fourteen and six a day as a pilot officer. And then eventually when I was a flight lieutenant after a couple of years, I was out in India by that time, and I got, well I was on Indian rates of pay anyway so, it didn’t factor.
AS: Back to the instructing. You finished an operational tour, had some leave and presumably your crew dispersed.
HH: Yeah. Pilot went to Rufforth converting many French Canadians and to go to Elvington, French, I mean French crews rather, French crews to go to Elvington, to 77 Squadron.
AS: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew members after?
HH: I came up to York a couple of times and met Sam, Jackie Miles I used to see and my gunner and Harry [unclear] the, the last time I’ve heard from him, he was up at near Shrewsbury.
AS: You all went to instructors jobs, do you?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did they teach how to be an instructor or did they just send you off?
HH: No, I just went in and just talked to them and told them where they were going wrong, you know, and how to waste time and things like that.
AS: In the air this is.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, did you do any formal classroom training of these chaps or was it just, what, supervising in the air and on the ground?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Supervising?
HH: Yeah, just going through their logs and charts individually with them and showing them where they’d gone wrong.
AS: And I believe the same sort of thing used to happen on ops, that when you came back your nav leader would go through your charts, is that right?
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: They’d assess your, that’s the assessment on each one there.
AS: That we saw before.
HH: The little design on his wall, Charlie had, he had sort of a little square beside each one of you and you had two dots for very good, one dot for reasonably good, no dots at all for
AS: Average.
HH: Just average. Yeah.
AS: That’s his way of keeping track. So, on 3 Group, is this when you went to Stirlings? When you were training?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When you left the Canadians and went to 3 Group, that was, what was that, Stirlings, was that the Conversion Unit there?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yeah, it’s down at Chedburgh.
AS: Okay.
HH: And, yeah, Chedburgh, near Bury St Edmunds. There was a beer drought down at that time and we used to cycle miles to find a pub with beer [laughs]. Then we’d keep very quiet about it [laughs].
AS: It’s not too bad.
HH: Me and a Canadian called Connors and we wanted to, we’d heard about that 8 Group wanted Mosquito pilots and navigators, so, we both applied to go, we both applied to go back on ops together. So, our first application, we were turned down because, being in 3 Group on Stirlings, you know, they were rather short of crews, and so we were turned down anyway. So we waited a couple of weeks and we applied again and we got turned down again. So that night, I got a tin of black paint from the stores and I wrote a message, a letter on the ceiling of the mess to the group captain, quite a polite letter, would you kindly pull your finger out and get us posted back on ops. We’re fed up with this instructing so could we please get back in so and so and signed it Connor and Hughes. The following day we were up in front of the old man and he said, ‘Right, you’re both going back, no way you’re going on the same crew or on the same squadron. In fact, you go back first, Hughes. Connor will follow you in about two- or three-weeks’ time.’ And this is what happened.
AS: It’s amazing. So you weren’t actually instructing for very long, were you?
HH: No, from October until July, so I suppose six months.
AS: Okay.
HH: And you’re supposed to have six months, at least six months rest, you know? From operations. Between tours.
AS: Okay. And then, in July having arranged your own posting really, you arrive at 1655 MCU. What’s MCU?
HH: Mosquito conversion unit.
AS: Okay.
HH: At Warboys, yeah, and Weston [?].
AS: I imagine this must have been a completely different sort of navigating. Was it?
HH: Oh, just very quick, but you, you wouldn’t think it now but I was very, very neat and tidy in what I did. I knew exactly, I used to keep my pencils in my flying boots, my dividers as well, [unclear] my Douglas protractor I kept in my hat with my dividers, which was behind me and my Dalton and, and then we used to take as your [unclear] fix, as soon as you got airborne, you got to operational high I’d take fix, fix, fix, every three minutes, then work out a tracking ground speed wind velocity and then another three minutes later another fix, a nine minute tracking ground velocity plus the sixth, the latest sixth one and another one, further on, six, and I can tell you exactly which way the wind was going, how far out the met was on their winds.
AS: And these fixes would be visual fixes or Gee fixes or both?
HH: Gee fixes.
AS: Gee fixes.
HH: So I’d take fix, fix, fix, you worked really hard to get the timing, you know, of the.
AS: Whereabouts was the Gee screen in the aeroplane? You were sitting on the right in the [unclear]
HH: I was sitting on the right and the Gee was behind me and LORAN as well.
AS: Okay. So.
HH: Gee and LORAN which was behind me.
AS: So, could you operate the equipment with your harnesses done up?
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: ‘Cause you just turned your head and⸻
HH: I just turned my head. It was just like there, behind me, there, but I could turn easier then and it was there, you know, just behind about there, about that angle to me.
AS: And it is just, as you say, second nature, three minutes, three minutes.
HH: It didn’t take long to take the fix but it took a long time but we, we had charts with the letters, lines of the Gee chart superimposed on top of it. So, this really worked very well.
AS: So, what came up on the Gee screen? What allowed you to compare the screen to the map?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the presentation on the Gee screen? What actually came up? Was it numbers or?
HH: Yeah. Well, you just, you could, you worked out, you knew what, you strobed the whichever signal you wanted to take, you know, and then you, you strobed the two of them and then fix and then you just read it off.
AS: I guess it’s, so you gotta an alphanumerical printout did you virtually.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Wow. So that could be done quickly.
HH: It’s quite, it’s very quick to work it all out, yeah, to work it out to get, to actually calculate the winds on your Dalton.
AS: How did you operate at night, because I imagine you had no lights in the cockpit?
HH: Well, we had enough.
AS: Okay.
HH: We had a red light and then, what’s his name? Anderson, our group navigation officer, he found that red, you couldn’t see the red markings on your chart. So, that was all orange and green.
AS: Which was easier to see.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. So, when you’d done your Mosquito conversion unit or at the Mosquito conversion unit, you must have crewed up with a pilot, how did that go?
HH: Well, I had already wanted to fly with this Australian so, when this New Zealander came along, I thought, he’ll do, I crewed up with him.
AS: As simple as that. And did you do, did the aeroplane Mosquito take some getting used to it, so different from a heavy bomber, with different performance and.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: What was she like to fly in?
HH: It was nice and reasonably fast. And I don’t think you really noticed it until you were doing some low flying.
AS: Shall we take a pause there? Okay. [recording paused]
HH: The Mosquito was, it was terribly difficult for a navigator to get out of.
AS: Why was that?
HH: Well, you had to, first of all you had to get hold of your chute and you kept that on, then you had to jettison two hatches to get out,
AS: Underneath.
HH: Underneath, yeah. Slightly forward towards the nose, yeah. And but by which time your pilot probably gone out of the top and you were spiralling down and the chance of you getting out was pretty slim.
AS: This hatch underneath must have been very close to the starboard propeller.
HH: Yes, we, yeah. Yes, it was quite close, yeah.
AS: Did you practice this on the ground a lot?
HH: No. I don’t think they thought you were, it was worth the risk. But the, a friend of mine used to fly with a man called Gill and he went down, got killed, Ronnie Knaith went down with his aircraft, and Gill got out and came home and he went to see Ronnie’s parents and they just slammed the door in his face, they wouldn’t talk to him. ‘Cause they had thought that he’d should have stayed onto the controls until Ronnie got out. Which is really what one was supposed to do.
AS: I hadn’t realised that the drill for the pilot was to go out of the top.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Because there’s a tailfin behind.
HH: Yeah, you jettison, you jettison the hood I think, the whole hood went. And theoretically the navigator could’ve gone out after him, I suppose, but.
AS: I think overall the losses were less on the Mosquito.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: I think you were safer flying in a Mozzie than in a Halifax.
HH: Yes, I mean, there’s somewhere I got the losses in Hamish’s book, in Hamish Mahaddie’s book, all the losses in 8 Group and you will see that 692 do feature quite regularly, you know.
AS: Yeah, so you were posted to 692 Squadron after the conversion unit. You’d had, I suppose, eight months away from ops by then, ten months, had things changed a lot in that time?
HH: I don’t think they’d changed all that much for the heavies, no. And we operated separately and we used to do Window opening for the heavies, we used to do, we used to fly out with the heavies and used to meet up with them at Reading, they’d all congregated there, what’s that? There is something squeaking, did you hear?
AS: I don’t know, let’s pause the tape.[recording paused] Well, Harry, we discovered what the squeak was, it was the smoke alarm. We were talking about Window opening and you meeting the heavies over Reading.
HH: Yeah. We used to fly down with the and meet up with the heavies and then we’d weave in and out of them, stream, you know, and you could see the strength of the stream then because, you know, there was just a whole block of them all over the horizon.
AS: And these are daylights.
HH: Yeah, in daylight, yeah, it would be. And then somebody in one of the heavies would be signalling to us, you lucky bastards or words to that effect. So I was sent back, been there, done that [laughs].
AS: Fair do’s. Because you could fly a lot faster and a lot higher than they could.
HH: Well, we used to be, weave in and out of them, you see. And then, then when you got to the coast, you climbed very rapidly above and you got to your operational height. If we were going to say, if we were Window opening say for Stuttgart, we’d probably do a, you go to Cologne first and drop a few bundles of Window there making them, making them think that was the target, you see. And then we’d go along to wherever, Stuttgart, and where the main force were going, and we’d, we’d do Window opening for the first wave of Pathfinders going in.
AS: Okay. This was the, was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Yeah, well, we were the light night striking force, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: But our main role was to bomb Berlin every night.
AS: Oh, you were involved in this Berlin shuttle?
HH: Yes. So, we used to drop our cookie, we used to drop Window for the heavies and then we’d go along to Berlin and drop our four thousand pounders, keep them awake.
AS: Ah, so, did you have those special Mosquitos then?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Those with the pregnant bomb bay?
HH: That one there, isn’t it?
AS: Yes. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, who got to drop the bomb? Was it you or the driver?
HH: Me.
AS: You.
HH: Yeah. Unless we were doing low level. And even then it was me up on the front, up in the nose.
AS: How did you, how did you drop Window from a tiny little aeroplane like Mosquito?
HH: We had a chute, little wooden chute which used to go through the two doors and we just dropped bundles of Window through that. Remember to grab the string as it went down, otherwise you’d just drop bundles [laughs].
AS: You don’t want them falling on someone’s head and hurting them, do you?
HH: No [laughs]. So, it’s a nice day now, isn’t it?
AS: It’s wonderful out there. It’s great. So, sometimes you were operating with the main bomber stream and sometimes as 8 Group by yourself or squadron by yourself?
HH: Individually, yeah.
AS: Individually too?
HH: We used to fly, we used to sing, I made up, there was a song going round at that time sung by Hildegard, I walk alone, to tell you the truth I’ll be lonely, I don’t mind being lonely, when my heart tells me you are lonely too. So, I made up the words for our squadron, we fly alone, when all the heavies are grounded and dining, 692 will be climbing, we still press on, it’s every night, though they never will give us a French route, for the honour of 8 Group, we’ll still press on.
AS: That’s fantastic.
HH: It’s always a [unclear] no matter how far, one bomb is slung beneath, it’s twelve degrees east, one engine at least [laughs]. It’s a pretty horrible little song.
AS: it’s brilliant. It sums up what you felt.
HH: Not as good as some of the songs, you see, erks used to make up in India and down in Burma, you know. One they used to sing, rotting in the jungle, on a [unclear] marshy shores, dysentery, malaria and bags of jungle sores, living around in a bloody great heap, our beds are damp, we cannot sleep, we’re going round the corner, we’re going round the bend, two trips to Meiktila, maybe three or four, AOL’s a keen type, he thinks we’re doing more. When we get back as you can guess, we’ll put this effing kite US [laughs] and we’re going round the, and there’s about two more verses to that, I can’t remember, that’s when the mail arrives, and there’s two for you and f.a. for me you know [laughs].
AS: I think we will have to try and get you a recording contract. This could be an excellent CD on the wireless.
HH: I don’t think they’d allow it to be broadcast.
AS: Probably not, probably not. But see, you, it sounds as you had very high morale on the squadron.
HH: Oh yeah. But, yes, this was when I was on ferrying.
AS: And on 692, as you say, opening with Window and then lots and lots of trips to
HH: Berlin.
AS: To Berlin. Did you ever get involved in a double trip, I believe some people, some crews did two trips to Berlin in one night.
HH: Yeah, we did, on one occasion we did. I think we did Duisburg in the morning and Berlin that night. Came back, and refuelled and bombed up again and we were away again.
AS: There must have been, I would expect, a cumulative tiredness at that level of operations. I’ve seen your ops on your second tour are very close together.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First of October, third, fourth, fifth, two on the fifth, very, very very close together and then Berlin followed the next night by Cologne. Did you, were you conscious of getting tired?
HH: Well, no, because when you’re off, you went into town and into Cambridge and I met up with my girlfriend and she was lovely, my girlfriend, I must have a picture of her, I did have a picture. She was beautiful, she was lovely red hair and creamy skin, you know, and green eyes, oh, she was beautiful. I used to walk down the street with her and everybody would stop and stare, at her, not at me [laughs].
AS: I was going to ask that. And you met her when you joined the squadron?
HH: When I joined 692, yeah. Yeah, we were walking, you remember, do you remember the Red Lion in Cambridge?
AS: I don’t know Cambridge well. I know where the airfield is.
HH: There used to be a passage where you could go through, you’d start off in the Baron of Beef, down by the river there and, and then you go from there to the Bun Shop and to get to the Bun Shop you have to walk through the Red Lion right, right the way through there, the foyer, there is a bar, two bars there and when I walked through there one night, there was Red sitting there with two of her friends and as I walked through, I said, ‘Cor’ to who I was with and I caught red hair and no drawers, and I said, ‘I’m in’ [laughs]. And she followed me through to the Bun Shop and that’s how I met up with her [laughs].
AS: Excellent. Probably best not pursue that story too much further, I think. So, you’ve got here on a trip to Berlin, landed Woodbridge. Now⸻
HH: Yeah.
AS: I know that Woodbridge is one of the emergency landing grounds.
HH: Yeah, well we, very often we had to land, when we took S-Sugar, which is a bloody awful aircraft with a terrible fuel consumption, if we took that to Berlin, we would end up, always end up landing short of fuel at Woodbridge. In fact, one night, when Harris was on this station, we were the only squadron operating that night, so he came to our briefing. [phone ringing]
AS: I’ll pause there. So, after the phone call, we were talking about S-Sugar and its ability to drink fuel.
HH: Yeah, on this night Harris was at the and [unclear] Northrop, our CO was reading out the battle order, you know, and he said, came to, flying officer Mormo, S-Sugar, ‘S-Sugar?’ said Roy, ‘What’s wrong with our Robert?’ ‘Well, that’s got a mark drop on the starboard engine, you’re going to have to take the spare.’ ‘But S f for Sugar, sir, that bloody kite flies like a brick shithouse!’ [laughs] and old Harris was standing there, and he was trying his best not to laugh, you know, his moustache had a twitch and [laughs] you could he’s gonna laugh every minute, you know. But he didn’t, he held it in [laughs]
AS: What was Woodbridge like? Is an emergency landing ground very different from a normal airfield?
HH: Oh yeah, you, huts with the roof off, you know, half off and snow would come in, on a snowy night, yeah.
AS: Not finished?
HH: No, they had just blown off. That’s a nuisance that thing, isn’t it?
AS: Your smoke alarm, yeah. As we got to this time or you got to this time in the war, this was late 1944.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Had the scene changed in terms of aids to navigation, things like Sandra lights and Darky and ground organisation, was there a lot to help you?
HH: [unclear] Much on the ground I think, mainly H2S, Oboe, things like that, you know. And G8, wasn’t it? G8.
AS: G-H, yeah. I didn’t, I don’t know how that worked, I never had that but we were quite content with LORAN. In fact, I got a wind over, going down to, I forget where I was going, Berlin I suppose, but yeah, we were going over to Berlin I think and I got a wind just north of the Ruhr, a hundred and ninety five knots.
AS: Wow!
HH: And what we’d done, we hit a jet stream, you see, and but when I came back, I said to the met man, I got a wind of a hundred, impossible, impossible, impossible, and it went to Group and Group said impossible as well, went to Command and Command said impossible well then when everybody started to get them, they suddenly realised there was something in this jet stream. Now they talk about nothing else but the bloody jet stream and it annoys me that because they ignored their existence during the war, the met people did and we kept telling them, look there is something up there and it didn’t last very long, you see, you were in it and then you were out of it, you know. So you couldn’t use it as a general wind to carry on to Berlin, shall we say for example, and nor could you use it when you were coming back. You might hit it again but it’d be in a different place slightly and.
AS: It must have meant that you had to be on your toes with your fixes all the time.
HH: Yeah. Anyway we,
AS: In your logbook, it suddenly goes from duty as nav to duty nav b. What was the significance of?
HH: Well, I stood in as bomb aimer as well.
AS: Ah, okay, that’s what it was. Tremendous number of operations over the winter of ’44-’45.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So I presume you must have flown in most weather with the nav aids that you had.
HH: Oh yeah, I remember one night, I don’t know if I should say this because it’s a bit derogatory to somebody who’s now dead, and that’s to Don Bennett. He was in the control tower on this particular night and we were getting hoarfrost all along the wings of our, as we taxied out we were getting hoarfrost develop all along the wings, so Roy got onto control and he says, ‘Could we have the de-icing bowsers out, please?’ And Bennett said, ‘Never mind about the de-icing bowser, just get off the deck.’ Well, we didn’t go, we said, ‘No, no. It’s too dangerous.’ Anyway, another aircraft came after us and they ploughed into the end of the runway and they were both killed of course when their bomb blew up. And Bennett never said a word to us afterwards, he was, we came back for briefing that night and he’d left the station. We came back and got the de-icing bowser and got cleared of the hoarfrost. He literally left, you see. And then we went to Berlin that night, I think.
AS: I should think, with fuel and a four thousand pounder you must have needed all the runway to get off.
HH: Yeah, well, there is another tale attached to that, the, you see, we started off with four thousand pounders, I think we were the first squadron to have four thousand pounders, and then they put fifty gallon drop tanks on each wing which were increased eventually to seventy five and then a hundred and then, and then we ran out of four thousand pounders and we had to borrow four thousand pounders from the Americans, which were four and a half thousand pounds. So another five hundred pounds to get off the deck. But the old Mozzie just used to take it all in its stride. No bother.
AS: You had no concerns.
HH: No, and I remember one day when I’d finished tour. I was sitting in the crew room minding my own business and the CO, a Canadian called Bob Grant came in and he said, ‘You doing anything Hughes?’ I said, no. He said, ‘Grab yourself a ‘chute would you and I’ll see you out at the aircraft.’ I said, ‘What do you⸻’ ‘Just bring a local Gee chart and local maps, would you?’ So when I got out to the bay, they were loading a four thousand pounder and I said, ‘Well, what fuel have we got?’ ‘You’ve a got full load of fuel and two hundred gallon drop tanks.’ And there’s a wind blowing right the way down the 330 runway which was fourteen hundred feet or something compared with two thousand feet on the main runway. I said, ‘What are we gonna do then?’ He said, ‘We’re gonna see if we can get off with this wind, the scale blowing, see if we can get off on this, on the fifteen hundred runway.’ So, we got to the end of the runway, and he waited until there was a gust of wind blowing, until the airspeed indicator was indicating about fifty or sixty knots. And we went. And I dropped the cookie on the live bomb target in the Wash and then we came back. And he got a report and said it wasn’t possible. I said, ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ [laughs] it wasn’t possible. And he said, ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t think the crew, you could expect the whole crew to wait’, the whole squadron rather to wait until there was a lull, that’s turned till there was a gust of wind which would get them off the deck.
AS: It’s a good example of leading from the front though, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Doing the test himself.
HH: It was old Bob Grant, he’s dead now, he married a Yorkshire, he was CO of 105 Squadron, amongst other things and he was, when he got back to Canada, of course he was made up to brigadier, I think. He was a group captain here, so he was a brigadier. That was equivalent to air commodore, wasn’t it?
AS: I think so, yeah, yeah.
HH: I don’t know.
AS: And, ah, there it is Group Captain Grant, 19th of March 1945, bombload take off fourteen hundred yards. That was pretty much the end of your operational flying, I think, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: On the Mosquito. Last trip, February, February ’45.
HH: Hanover, wasn’t it? Or Hamburg, Hanover.
AS: Frankfurt, I think, Frankfurt in your log. And did you know that that would be your last trip or you’re just told you’re screened?
HH: Yeah. You knew you had to do fifty on Mosquitos. So.
AS: And what did happened after that? Did you go back instructing or?
HH: No, no, we were sent on leave and when we came back, we’d been posted, several crews had been posted down to Pershore to ferry Canadian built Mosquitos across the Atlantic. And I crewed up with a different, Lloyd had gone back to New Zealand and he used to fly with Air New Zealand after the war. And thanks to me, because someone had put a bottle through his hand and all the tendons had gone. And so he couldn’t, when we were taking off at Whiten once doing a cross country, we got airborne and suddenly the throttle went back and he grabbed hold of them and held it with his hand and because you had to keep the throttle up so loose ‘cause of this weakness in his left hand. So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Roy, from now on I’ll tighten the throttle knot for you when you’re ready. As soon as you want, you just say, throttle knob and I will reach through and grab the throttle knob and turn it and tighten it for you.’ And we did that every trip. And but I, ‘cause I had to reach over, I couldn’t strap in, so I did all my trips without strapping in [laughs]. I never strapped in again, not with Roy flying. So he’d of never, I mean, he was flying with Air New Zealand afterwards he’d never have passed their medical if he’d of disclosed it, you know.
AS: But eventually, not in a Mosquito, but he’d be flying with throttles on the other hand, wouldn’t he? So the problem,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The problem would go away. So you’d had some leave, you were posted to fly to Pershore to fly Mosquitos.
H: Yeah. And we were sent on indefinite leave, Pershore sent us on indefinite leave. And I thought, oh God, I’ll be grounded for sure. So, I got on a train and went up to Air Ministry and saw a wing commander there and I said, look, there is a war going in in the Far East [unclear] aircraft ferried out there, coming back for maintenance and what have you. And he said, what a good idea, you know, come back in the morning, will you? And I got the whole lot posted out to the Far East. Fifteen or eighteen, I think I told you this before, didn’t I?
AS: I think so but we didn’t get in on the tape, I don’t think, no.
HH: No.
AS: I bet you were popular.
HH: Fifteen, oh God, when I got down to Lyneham they were moaning, ‘I’m just due for demob for God’s sake, why the heck do I have to, due for demob any day now.’
AS: I bet you kept quiet.
HH: And here I am, so I kept very quiet. And so, I mean I wasn’t due for demob for some time.
AS: So here we are, Lyneham in July ’45. A huge trip as a passenger on a deck. Thirty two hours flying.
HH: Yeah, back to Karachi, yeah.
AS: So by going, going East, you, did you, before you went, did you see, did you go on any of these trips over, over Germany to see all the destruction?
HH: No, no.
AS: Okay.
HH: I missed all that.
AS: You’d said earlier that you said a prayer for the people of Hamburg. What, at the end of the war, did you reflect at all on the, or during that, on the bombing? And what were your feelings about being involved in it in the war?
HH: Well, I’ve spoken to our vicar about it, you know, and said, do you think Saint Peter’s gonna let me through the gates? Or not. So she sat and he said a prayer for me. Lady vicar of course. Anyway, but I was invited out to Hanover as a guest of the mayor and the local newspaper to commemorate the 60th anniversary of when we bombed them.
AS: And you went?
HH: So I went over, yeah, well, I was asked to volunteer and I remember, at the Bomber Command meeting they said, did anybody go to Hanover, I said, well, I did. When I got home, I found out I’d been to Hanover about eleven times and [laughs] so I was well qualified.
AS: And are you pleased you went, did it turn out well?
HH: Yes, they were very, very, very nice, I like German people.
AS: So do I.
HH: I got two of them coming over now. Here any day now. I think. They stay up at [unclear] castle, ‘cause he’s paraplegic, he can’t get down my steps.
AS: Yeah.
HH: He’s, he had polio when he was a youngster. But they come over by air this time so he couldn’t bring his invalid scooter with him so I don’t know whether he’s gonna hire one when they’re here or not, I don’t know what they’re gonna do to get around.
AS: That should be possible, I think.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And these are friends you made when you went to Hanover?
HH: Yeah. Well, they were both reporters with the Hamburger Allgemeine. And anyway I was, the last day I was there in Hanover I was there for about three or four days, I had to attend a meeting of all the survivors from the raids and all the students from university there and the colleges and what have you and a little girl gets up and question time you see and she gets up and says, can I please explain what was the duty of the navigator? Well if you ask me a stupid question like that, I’m gonna give you a stupid answer, for sure. So I said, ‘Well, the reason why we carried a navigator, because we had to have someone on board who could read and write’ [laughs] and their mouths fell open, he went like this, everybody, so I said to my interpreter, I said, ‘Tell them, it was a joke, will you?’ ‘Ah, a joke, yeah, we got no sense of humour, we Germans, we’ve got no sense of humour at all.’ [unclear] So then, later on somebody, one of the survivors said, ‘Why did you bomb the city?’ So I said, ‘To be perfectly honest, we couldn’t hit anything smaller but just remember this,’ I said, ‘Right in the centre, almost within half a mile from the centre of Hanover there was the biggest rubber factory in Germany, so it made Hanover a very legitimate target.’ ‘Yes’, this man says, ‘But you didn’t hit it, did you? ‘Cause it’s still there!’ [laughs]. I said, ‘Well, and you tried to tell me that the Germans got no sense of humour?’ [laughs] And then I was on their side from then on.
AS: I’ve lived there for eleven years. I’m with you. I’ve lived there for eleven years.
HH: Have you?
AS: Yeah. They’re great people, great people. I think.
HH: In which part were you?
AS: I was in Munich for five years.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And then in Bonn and Cologne, in the Rhineland for about six altogether. Some of the places you visited by air, in fact. That’s the feelings of the Germans. How, there’s been a lot of controversy about how Bomber Command were treated after the war. Have you got any views on that?
HH: Well, I think, first of all, we should never, never have bombed Dresden, I think that was the biggest mistake we made. And Portal should have stood up and said, no! But he didn’t have the guts to do it, he didn’t have the guts to stand up to Churchill and it was Churchill who, on his way to Yalta, he stopped off at Malta, And they’d agreed to bomb five cities within reach of the Russian lines, you know, and I think Dresden was one and what’s that? And Leipzig and one other I think. Anyway he sent back this signal to Portal saying, from Malta saying, where is my spectacular, get on with it. So, Portal looked at the charts and he consulted the Met people and the only target available that night was Dresden. I didn’t go to Dresden, I went to Magdeburg, Magdeburg that night, you can see it on there, in that book there.
AS: You believe it was, that Dresden was the turning point and that?
HH: Mh?
AS: You believe that Dresden was some sort of turning point?
HH: Yeah.
AS: How Bomber Command were treated?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you, do you feel now that it’s changed with the memorials and the clasp?
HH: Yeah, I think so. I think, there was a time just after the war, when the people who were against us were the people who were in the Air Force or in one of the forces and they felt that we were, they didn’t want us to have any publicity, you know.
AS: After the war.
HH: Yeah. And then, and then since then, they’ve suddenly realised that you know, we had the highest losses of any unit in the, our forces, fifty five thousand killed, which is quite a lot, wasn’t it?
AS: Yeah. Fifty five thousand, five hundred and seventy three.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’ve seen a, well, or you see a change in attitudes now.
HH: Yes, I think, younger people are much more inclined to want to hear about it and talk about it and understand why we did it and there is no good saying, well, we were under orders to do it, because that’s what the Germans excuses were, you know, for their treatment of the in the concentration camps. We were under orders.
AS: And you did it because it was right?
HH: Well, we did it because we thought we were, ‘cause we were shortening the war and therefore less people would be killed.
AS: Is it, I agree, you say, that now people want to hear about it, is it good for you and other veterans to be able to talk about it after all this time?
HH: It’s getting more and more difficult, there’s so many books have been written on there, now.
AS: And you are actually in one of the books.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Steve Darlow’s book. How did all that come about? Did you get involved with him?
HH: I don’t know. He wanted, I think I was recommended by probably Bomber Command, you know, Dougie Radcliffe.
AS: Oh, the Bomber Command Association.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Have you always played a big part in that?
HH: No, no, I was mainly in the Pathfinders Association.
AS: Oh, okay.
HH: We were separate from, we were separate from the Bomber Command Association, but I’d already joined the Bomber Command Association when we disbanded. I’d already been a member for several years.
AS: And do you belong to your squadron or 102 Squadron association as well?
HH: Yeah. Yes, it’s, I’ve written a letter to, when I went to the VJ-Day celebrations⸻
AS: Yes.
HH: We had to fill out a form travelling expenses and I got three hundred pounds from the Lottery Fund.
AS: Excellent.
HH: And my son Jeremy, who’d driven me up there and then he got three hundred pounds as well. And I don’t, I hope he hasn’t. So I wrote a letter to the Big Lottery and said, thanking them for their, I said, so, twice a year I’ve got to go to, up to Pocklington in Yorkshire, which is rather expensive for me now ‘cause you got to go up Virgin cross country you know, right the way up to York and it’s a long journey that. It’s an interesting journey but there’s no, there was a little old lady pushing the tray along, pushing the trolley along, you know, that’s all that you get to eat with some coffee and a fruitcake or something.
AS: It’s not the same as a full dining car.
HH: I like the dining cars on, I’m going up on the 22nd of October I think, coming back on the 23rd, I always travel back down on the dining car which, on a train with a dining car which leaves at seven o’clock in the evening.
AS: Do you still have wartime comrades that you’ll meet in Pocklington?
HH: Oh yes, yeah. Most of them are dead now but.
AS: So, a lot of reminiscing and’
HH: Yeah. There’s a friend of mine, who was a previous chairman, Tom Wingate, who, he wrote a book called Halifax Down, ‘cause he was shot down on his second tour, and I used to have a copy but I can’t find it now. I don’t know what I have done with it, I lose things all the time now.
AS: I have a copy at home, I can send you one.
HH: Pardon?
AS: I have a copy, I can send you one.
HH: You got a copy of that?
AS: Yeah, I have.
HH: Halifax Down, yes, it’s not a bad book, actually. Except that he joined the squadron the same time as I did, his crew did. And he’s quoted in his book, as if he was there three or four months before me. He’s quoted various trips and he’s got these out of those old war diaries, wish I could find that. I wonder where I put it?
AS: Well, you’ll have to take your logbook the next time you meet him.
HH: Oh no, he’s dead now.
AS: Okay.
HH: That’s why I’ve taken over as chairman.
AS: After you came off ops, you did this trip out to the Far East, did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: In what?
AS: Did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s quite a lot really. My very first trip was down to Akyab, on the Arakan coast. I think I told you, didn’t I?
AS: Yes, but not into the tape. So, what happened on that trip?
HH: I don’t think that particular trip’s in there, actually, I looked for it the other day and I can’t find it. I must have left it out for some reason.
AS: This was the trip with the Japanese.
HH: Yes, all the way around us were Zeros, you know. We could hear them yacketing away and then this Indian crew comes on with their Hurricanes and the Japanese just disappeared.
AS: What was the radio conversation about with these Indian squadrons, red flight?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the radio conversation story about the?
HH: Oh, well, the Indian crews? ‘Yes, red leader to yellow leader, how do you read me, over? Yellow leader to green, you are not red, you are green, you know? Red leader to yellow leader, I am not green, I am red. And this Aussie voice comes up by the blue, you are black, you bastard’ [laughs].
AS: So, it’s still a combat area that you’re flying replacement aircraft I suppose in to the squadrons?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you get involved in flying damaged aircraft for repair?
HH: Oh, I used to fly back from say Kamila or with two Pratt & Whitney’s engines in the back and a load of ENSA girls as well amongst them [laughs], sitting where they could and trying not to get greasy, ‘cause these, and yeah.
AS: Yeah. Shall we, pause there I think?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And wind it up. Thank you that, It’s been absolutely wonderful to hear.
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 Harry Hughes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Sutch
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-21
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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AHughesWH151021
Format
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02:28:15 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
Harry Hughes volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1940 and trained in America, where he was washed out as a pilot and then retrained as a navigator in Canada, flying Ansons and Wellingtons. In 1942 he converted to Halifaxes and flew operations with 102 Squadron over Germany, being awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying an operation to Berlin whilst on crutches. He recounts the routines of preparing to go on operations and his use of navigation aids including Gee, LORAN and later, Boozer in Mosquitos. He was bombstruck twice during operations. He completed 26 operations including the bombing of Hamburg which he describes as a firestorm and recalls saying a private prayer for the people of Hamburg below. After his tour finished, he then instructed before applying to go back on operations with 8 Group, flying Mosquitos with 692 Squadron and dropping Window for Pathfinder forces in 1944/45. In 2004 he visited Hanover and discussed the raids with survivors of the war. He was a member of a number of post war service associations and kept in contact with his crewmates.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Southeast Asia
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
United States
Alabama--Montgomery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
1945
102 Squadron
3 Group
6 Group
692 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
Anson
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
faith
Fw 190
Gee
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
incendiary device
Ju 88
Me 109
Me 110
Me 262
medical officer
meteorological officer
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
promotion
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Harwell
RAF Riccall
RAF Wombleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
Window
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/49/405/ABencinaA160801.2.mp3
410c33dde5e7246477ad82286630c7a2
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
Bencina, Angelo
Angelo Bencina
A Bencina
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Angelo Bencina who recollects his wartime experiences in Monfalcone.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
Bencina, A
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: Sono Alessandro Pesaro e sto per intervistare Angelo Bencina per l’archivio digitale dell’International Bomber Command Centre. Siamo a Monfalcone, in provincia di Gorizia ed è il primo agosto 2016. Grazie per aver permesso quest’intervista. Sono inoltre presenti all’intervista il signor Tullio Sarcina, Pietro Comisso, Maurizio Radacich, Giulia Sanzina. Prima di cominciare vorrei farle alcune domande per essere sicuro che questa intervista venga registrata esattamente come desidera. È d’accordo che la sua intervista venga conservata presso l’università di Lincoln, esclusivamente per scopi non commerciali, che l’università di Lincoln ne abbia il copyright e che infine essa sia liberamente accessibile in qualsiasi supporto e formato per mostre, attività di ricerca, istruzione e come risorsa online?
AB: D’accordo.
AP: È d’accordo che il suo nome venga pubblicamente associato all’intervista?
AB: D’accordo.
AP: È d’accordo ad essere fotografato per l’International Bomber Command Centre?
AB: E sono d’accordo.
AP: Grazie. Possiamo cominciare. Come prima cosa, vorrei che lei mi raccontasse il più vecchio dei suoi ricordi. Che cosa si ricorda? Qual’è la cosa più antica che riesce a ricordare? Dov’era, cosa faceva?
AB: Innanzitutto bisogna calcolare che mi gavevo quatro ani perciò nel ’44 eh non xe che, insomma go tante memorie de attività che go fatto eccetera eccetera. Quel che me ricordo, la prima cosa che me xe restà impressa, disemo xe appunto il bombardamento de quel che me ricordo. Eh, sì, prima di tutto devo dir che mi abitavo, iero tra la stazion de Monfalcòn, vicin Via Randaccio disemo, Androna Randaccio e Via Romana. In pratica ierimo tra la stazion, la fabrica del gesso, la fabrica dell’oio, dopo iera la Solvay, iera la, in pratica, e dopo el cantier. In pratica, in pratica lì iera quasi tutti quanti. E quel che me ricordo più de tuto xe stà una sera che ga sonà, non xe che mi go sentì che ga sonà l’alarme ma i miei, i miei genitori, a un certo momento, i me ga ciapà, i me ga inbalado, disemo, e mi, qua go anche che ve go fato la cartina dove che abitavimo, in pratica semo circa a cento metri dalla stazion. Da lì se doveva andar alla Caverna Vergine, che xe altri cento metri su, oltre le sine, dove che iera un, intanto iera due rifugi, iera il rifugio della Caverna Vergine dopo là il rifugio iera dei pipistrei, Caverna dei Pipistrei, dopo più a sinistra iera altri ma quel lì xe una cosa che, in Via Romana iera altro, tutta roba della Prima Guerra Mondiale comunque. Quel che me ricordo mi xe questo: ciapado, imbalado, noi gavevimo una, dopo ve mostro lì se ve interessa, se andava da un passagio de un nostro vicin, se andava in Androna Randaccio, se piazzavimo, disemo, proprio davanti al piazzal della stasion, in quel momento lì, i me ga buttado, me papà, me mama iera lì, drio el mureto - che ve mostro anche quel iera fino a poco tempo iera proprio l’originale che xe el bar lì dalla stazion, quel fora - e lì semo stai sò ma mi me gaveva girà e quel che mi me ga restado ma molto impresso ancora oggi iera il ciel carigo de tondi rossi, de luci rosse e bianche, ecco quella roba lì xe quel che me ricordo che non, che me ricordo punto e basta. El resto neanche non me sono accorto che i me ga ciapà, me ga inbragado e semo andai in caverna, no. Ecco, quel se quel che mi me ricordo de quella notte. Per il ritorno neanche, probabilmente dormivo non so cosa, punto e basta. Un’altra roba che me ricordo sempre de quei giorni lì, però non iera de notte ma iera de giorno, andando sò da l’attuale, xe bon iera anche la vecia, xe, disemo la strada che dalla staziòn porta giù verso la fabbrica della pegola quella che xe lì a, ma porco cen, bon adesso non me vien in mente, Via Belforte e non la iera, non la iera disemo asfaltada, el iera de giorno però. In quel momento sentimo un rumor de aerei, vedemo cioè ierimo muli, muleria che zogavimo lì sò per la riva e iera dei apparecchi che gaveva due fusoliere, cioè non iera una sola ma iera due, e quel che ne restà impresso dove che andavimo, i buttava, iera tanti foglietti, non iera foglietti, iera come de argento, biglietti de argento che iera el ciel pien, pien, e luccicava perché era de giorno. E proprio qua davanti me xe passà un pacchetto cussì, che se vedi che non se ga sfoiado, e me xe cascà proprio addosso, dopo gò savu che i diseva che quelli serviva per confodere i radar eccetera eccetera, quella roba lì xe quel che me ricordo. Questo per quanto riguarda i bombardamenti de Monfalcòn. Dopo un poco, siccome mia mama la xe furlana, no, semo andai, questo qui non c’entra coi bombardamenti, penso, se gavemo, semo andai sfolladi in, a Saciletto de Ruda, eccola. Là invece semo stai abbastanza tempo fino a fine della guerra e lì me ricordo altre robe. Ad esempio mi me ricordo, a Saciletto che xe un castel, no, e quel che me ricordo ben ben xe che a un certo momento, bon, del castel me ricordo che verso, per andar verso Saciletto ghe iera un fossato, iera una porta tipo ovale, insomma come, rossa, era un canal, disemo sotto lì e l xe vegnu sò sta porta rossa, xe rivà un con la zampogna e se ga messo a suonare la zampogna. Se vedi che doveva esser sà gli inglesi o chi, quel che me ricordo lì. Dopo un’altra roba che me ricordo, ah sì, iera lì del, sempre nel vicin al castel, iera una piscina e senz’altro iera, iera i americani o inglesi, per mi la differenza no ghe iera. E quel che me ricordo iera che i beveva tanta di quella birra e dopo i faseva, iera la piscina carica dei bottiglie dei birra svode, e i doprava le bottiglie ma non, i ghe metteva un, allora acqua, quel che me ricordo mi, una goccia dei oio, un ferro incandescente, i faseva cussì, saltava la bottiglia, usava come bicier, questa xe quella roba che me ricordo mi. E dopo me ricordo, no, un‘altra roba, bon lì xe morto mio fradel che gaveva pochi anni, xe stà [unclear], xe stado sepellito a Saciletto, non go mai savu esattamente cos che gaveva, i diseva che iera cuore in cinque parti ma comunque. Un’altra roba che me ricordo, sì, un’altra roba de mia mama era, andava a Cervignan, da Cervignan a Saciletto e a metà strada la me ga contà quando che la xe arrivada a casa che, ela e una sua amica i se ga nascosto drio un alberon cussì grosso, che xe dove che xe la strada che da Cervignan Saciletto porta per andare a Gorizia anche. Era l’apparecchio che lo ga ciamà Pippo che le ga mitragliade e se ga salvà drio, drio l’albero ecco, anche questo me ricordo. E altre robe. Bon a parte, dopo la guerra lassemo star che voi non ve interesa naturalmente. Dopo la fine della guerra andavimo a caccia de balini robe varie perché andavimo, cioè gavevo un picon che pesava più de mi e noi lì in Via Romana iera campi e campi e andavimo a fero e poi vendevimo le schegge quel quel’altro. Quando trovavimo ad esempio una cova, la cova iera i balini de piombo, podeva esser quei della prima guerra, ma podeva esser anche roba della seconda e andavimo a venderlo in fondo a Via Romana, no. Un’altra roba, eh, un’altra roba gemo trovà anche armi e noi ierimo, disemo, se gavemo fatto la banda della Via Romana, la banda della Via del Pozzo eccetera eccetera ma dopo gavevimo noi ierimo giovanetti, cinque, sei anni, sette eccetera eccetera, però iera anche muleria anche molto più grande e lì se le davimo de santa ragione, non dico che se tiravimo coi mitra che gemo trovà anche dentro ma insomma andavimo lì. Più de un ghe ga lassà i diti o ghe ga lassà quell’altro, ma naturalmente eh bon. Adesso non vado avanti con le storie [laughs] perché altrimenti e andavimo sù per i monti a cercar roba anche dentro tra i busi, tra le grotte e ancora oggi se trova roba. Anche perché se come faso lo speleologo roba della prima poi ma la maggior parte perché della seconda non mi interessa. Dopo altre robe che me ricordo se quando che xe saltà in aria ad esempio la vecia strada per Trieste, allora faso ancora un passetto indrio. Qua iera, xe, iera stà i quarant giorni dell’invasion, cioè che iera vegniu i sloveni e siccome, e quel che me ricordo ancora xe che mia sia, cioè la sorella de me papà, io avevo due sorelle, el gaveva due sorelle, la xe stada anche e la ga ciamada perché la conosceva tre lingue come interprete tra italiani e sloveni la ga ciamada. Mio papà anche per noi, cioè noi, mio papà e le sue sorelle e la famiglia, lori saveva tedesco, italian e sloven perché i iera sotto l’Austria, i gà fatto scuole tedesche in pratica, no, e a causa de questo i ga podu anche salvar certa gente ecco tanto per, questo xe quel che me ga contà eh me papà e me zia eccetera eccetera. Un’altra roba della guerra meglio che lasemo perder perché altra roba cossa. Beh, andando in giro per i monti lì, andavimo specialmente a miccia, e andavimo a miccia allora se mettemo cominciado, allora il Monte Spaccà che iera una batteria da ottantotto tedesca, dopo la iera vicino a Ronchi a Villa Hinke anche lì iera una batteria tedesca da ottantotto. Dopo iera, quando perché noi andavimo alle terme romane che le iera, andavimo a far el bagno sotto no, e lì iera anche dei, una batteria tedesca doveva esser anche lì, dopo dovessi esser anche, no iera una batteria ma dovessi esser una mitragliatrice sulla rocca, no rocca, rocca e dopo xe la le Forcate e dopo xè la Gradiscata, sulla Gradiscata ancora oggi xe una piattaforma, lì doveva essere una mitragliatrice ancora oggi. Inutile che ve conto che nel andar in giro per il Carso cossa gavemo trovà eccetera eccetera, questo xe il meno quel che me ricordo mi. Perché in pratica fin al ’50 ecco andavimo sempre a cerca roba eccetera eccetera, se non altro per vender, per vender perché con diese lire ciollevimo il gelato oppure andavimo al cine. Ecco, tutto qui. Sta roba poi, ah sì bon, andavimo. Specialmente, dove che adesso xe la cartiera no iera el ponte, il ponte iera saltà, perché iera passà un carico de munizioni in un carro, però lì iera tanti de quei bossoli de cannon che andavimo sò, andavimo sotto anche, li tiraimo sù, svodavimo che iera della miccia bianca, me ricordo non capiso perché la iera bianca, e andavimo a vender i bossoli de otton per, sempre per ciapar qualcosa. E lì se andava avanti, cercar, cercar, cercar. Ah sì! Dopo, sa, nel ’46 go comincià ad andar a scola, anzi go la pagella del governo alleato addirittura prima elementare, se volè ve la anche ve la mostro perché penso de esser l’unico ad averla. E go tutto, perché mi tegno tutto, go prima seconda terza, e quel che me ricordo xè che i americani ne dava stecche de cioccolata, no stecche iera ehm scartossi grande come, no scartossi, scatolette come queste, le iera come se le gavessi cera color verde ma la iera talmente dura la cioccolata che metà basta, questo quel che me ricordo. Dopo finida la guerra, questo disemo periodo ’45, ’45-’46 sì, ’46 go comincià scola, dopo xè stado, ah, il cantier ga incomincià a metterse a posto e i ne ga portà, i ne portava in colonia, anche quel xè, in colonia, in montagna qua, le montagne vicin, e quel che me ricordo xè, mi non so ma quanto buona che iera la pasta sciutta che ne portava i militari, adesso non so se iera la pasta sciutta bona o la fame, comunque me ricordo anche quel. E dopo me ricordassi anche tanta roba ma lassemo perder perché non, non so.
AP: Il primo ricordo.
AB: Eh.
AP: Il suo bombardamento de notte.
AB: Esatto.
AP: Lei la se ricorda un circa le date, quando xe successo?
AB: La guardi, xe stà il primo bombardamento, adesso so che il primo bombardamento lo ga fatto il giorno de San Giuseppe ma adesso non so se xe quel, comunque xe notturno, xe la prima volta che me go ricordà de esser andado via, che me go girà e go visto carigo el ciel de ste luci, me ricordo le rosse senz’altro, sarà stà anche bianche altri colori non so ma le luci rosse se quelle che me xe stade proprio impresse. Son tornà più di una volta lì, no, e xe ancora sto muretto e dall’altra parte, ah sì quel me son dimenticà de dir, dall’altra parte xe cascà una bomba d’aereo. Fasè el conto, questo xe el muretto, no, però qua iera perché la strada de Androna Randaccio andava così, qua xe la osteria, go sentì, no mi go sentì, go ciapà e me ga buttà lì, la bomba xe cascada lì ma non la xe esplosa perché el terren iera mollo, mollo, mollo, perché se la esplodeva noi qua non se iera. E ogni volta che passavo, che passo fino a pochi anni fa perché adesso i gà messo aposto ma non xe che non me son accorto mi che xe cascà la bomba, me ga dito me papà, mio fradel, tutti quei lì no che iera cascà la bomba, iera una roba cussì però non la xe esplosa. Perché a cinquanta metri abitavimo lì noi no. E dopo, ah sì eh, e dopo noi gavevimo la casa li ancora sotto l’austria no, nel ’15, cioè semo diventai paroni nel ’15 ma semo vegniudi qua molto prima perché iera anche de Trieste, gavevimo parenti a Trieste. E quando che ga tirà, oltre a, i gà tirà anche i spezzoni, no, e un de quei spezzoni ga colpì, vicino alla stasion lì, ga colpì la nostra casa. E gavevimo una staletta noi, una stelatta in legno che dentro iera la cavra e un porcell, gavevimo cavra e porcell, addirittura quando che xe italiani ne ga fatto, i ne ga dito che noi semo agricoltori, gemo delle bestie, ne ga subito fatto pagar la tassa per quelle robe lì no. Eh bon, conclusion, le xe morte eccetera eccetera, go anche i documenti per i danni de guerra eccetera, eccetera, perché go ancora le carte de l’epoca, però non me ricordo neanche se ge ga dado perché voleva tante de quelle carte che non go ben capì se ge ga dà rivà a tirarle fora però il spesson lo go qua, perché se te vol te lo mostro adesso perché quel xe un ricordo. Noi non buttemo mai via niente! E’ questo, ailo qua.
AP: La me racconti la storia de questo oggetto.
AB: No, sto qua xe, questo qua ga brusà la staletta con le bestie e dopo un toco de casa. Mi non me son neanche, questo qua me lo ga dà me papà quando gavevo diese anni, lo me ga, lo tegniva, lo tegniva allora me gà spiegà cos che xe. Sto qua iera me par una robetta cussì lunga che li tirava sò per darghe fogo insomma, so che brusava brusava non so cos che iera dentro, sarà stà non so fosforo, cos che iera e questo iera quel che gavemo trovà tra le macerie lì della camera e lo tegnimo sempre come ricordo dell’epoca.
AP: La me ga parlà dei suoi genitori.
AB: Eh.
AP: I suoi, lei la iera piccolo, la me ga contà che la gaveva quattro, cinque anni.
AB: EH.
AP: Ma negli anni successivi i suoi genitori ge ga spiegà qualcosa della guerra, ge ga raccontado altre cose o i xe stadi zitti, che cosa ge ga raccontado? O come ge la ga spiegada?
AB: A dir la verità, me papà, alora, ierimo, roba della guerra so soltanto che me papà, me papà, me mamma, e me sia, allora una la iera a Milano, una mia sia, quell’altra mia sia [unclear] invece se vigniuda con noi e me papà, quando chi gavè, no della guerra non me ga contado niente.
AP: I xe sempre stadi.
AB: Mi so soltanto che lavorava in cantier, però dela guera non me ga contado niente. Però so soltanto che, finida la guerra, lui da Saciletto de Ruda fino in cantier andata e ritorno in bicicletta che sia piova che sia neve che sia perciò non iera tanto semplice la vita a quell’epoca, no. Altra roba della guerra, gavevimo un sio che faseva carabinier, lui ga sempre lavorà in quel cantier ecco. Altra roba non.
AP: La me ga contà prima de gente che ga perso.
AB: Come?
AP: La me ga contà de gente che ga perso diti, tirando su.
AB: Ah, eh, ma sì ma, allora, sì un de, ad esempio Mario, ma xè ancora vivo, Mario Satta che fa il tipografo, che iera uno dei nostri capi della banda de Via Romana ma più che capobanda lui iera me ricordo faseva lotta greco-romana, boxe eccetera eccetera e lì noi gaveimo in Via, gaveimo una grande cortivo che iera sei sette famiglie lì, ierimo tanta muleria gio, picia, dopo iera anche quei più grandi, e lì se davimo da far andar a cercar roba per vender e in più se faseva anche sport, ma sport tanto per dir. Buioi de latta che iera pomodori, una sbarra de ferro, incementà dentro con cemento per far sollevamento pesi, me ricordo che go fatto mi all’età de sette, otto anni, mi non so come go fatto, o diese gavevo, cinquantaquatro chili alsado ancora quel me ricordo. Dopo fasevimo boxe dentro tanto xe vero che go el naso spaccado perché go ciapà un bel carot. E dopo, dopo se zogava anche giochi un pochettin meno pericolosi tipo coi tapeti però quel che iera più de tuto, fasevimo i fusili col lastico, poi le cerobotane coi pomei, dopo le freccie con le ombrelle quelle lì iera gravi, andavimo a sgransi con le freccie e con le ombrelle per ciaparli. E lì se divertimo. Andavimo a fregar erba, ciamemo cussì panocie perché fasevimo anche allevamento de conigli ma ben sui trenta quaranta conigli, ma non solo mi, fasevimo tuti. Dopo fasevimo anche da Stolfa la coltivazion dei bachi da seta, anche quei. Andavimo a spigolar, andavimo a runcola, insomma se faseva de tuto per, questa xe. Apena finì la guerra però eh perché durante la guerra dopo semo andai in Friuli ecco ma dopo se gavemo, zogavimo a balòn le prime squadre, tipo la della Via Romana gavemo zogà tuti, dopo xe cioè e altra roba.
AP: Lei la me ga parlà de scola.
AB: Eh.
AP: A scola I ve ga contà qualcosa della guerra o niente? Come ve la ga contada?
AB: No, a scola, quel che mi me ricordo de scola xe che go sempre odiado Garibaldi! Mi go fato prima, seconda, terza, quarta e quinta. In terza se dava l’esame, non come adesso, se dava l’esame in terza e in quinta. I me ga chiesto de Garibaldi, ancora oggi mi lo odio. Perché per mi Garibaldi xe un mercenario ecco, allora sa quella volta non me andava zò, no perché quando che se rivai qua i ga incomincià a inculcarne in pratica. Inso mma, italian, italian, italian! Ma noi savevimo anche, noi ierimo austro-ungarici anche e mi go sempre sentì parlar ben de l’Austria-Ungheria tanto è vero che oggi mi fazo parte anche dei Freiwilligen Schützen, tra parentesi, no. Come che la conta, perché mi me dispiasi ma non me va, non me va italiani.
AP: E quindi anche gli italiani ghe ga contà qualcosa dei bombardamenti, della guerra?
AB: De, allora della guerra per forza, la fasi conto che ad esempio là sotto, el tunnel sotto la Rocca noi lo conoscevimo quando che andavimo a fregar roba perché lì era, el primo toco xe naturale e dopo il resto i lo ga fatto artificiale, no. Lì andavimo a veder se trovavimo. Sotto lì iera tedeschi, che lì dopo i portava le munizioni, anche le munizioni dove che iera ottantotto e in più so anche sora la Gradiscata perché lì, prima de andar alla Gradiscata iera una caverna che la ciamavimo al Caverna dei colombi e dentro iera cussì e sotto iera ancora, iera un pozzo che dentro iera anche delle pistole, quello me ricordo. E insomma, noi cercavimo sempre roba per andar a vendere ecco. Però tutti i busi che xe qua posso contarghele un per un eh! Ad esempio lì dalla stasion i ga, disemo i ga messo un’inferriata sora un buso perché iera pericoloso. Dopo xe, andavimo alla, ah sì fasevimo raccolto ma roba della prima guerra invece al mulin che iera al lago de Pierarossa, fasevimo raccolta de settantacinque. Li gavemo messi sotto el ponte in un buso così gavemo carigà, un bel giorno se trovemo che faseva lavori, le cose ne ga fregà tutti i settantacinque. Dopo lì dalla cava, ah lì dalla cava, altra roba che me ricordo, braghette curte, sò dalla cava, quella che xe in Via Romana, due bombe in scarsela, son andà in stasion lì dalla polizia, go trovà ste qua [laughs] ghe digo. Ga ciamà mia mare, go ciapà tante di quelle pacche che metà basta. Ecco, da quella volta non le go mai più portade a casa. Messe sempre da parte però. E dopo se ga trovà roba che ancora oggi esisti ma non ge la disemo a nessuno. Roba, roba della prima, roba della prima però. E posti iera roba della seconda. La xe là sepolta e che resti sepolta.
AP: Go un’altra curiosità.
AB: Come?
AP: Lei la ga fioi?
AB: Go due fie.
AP: Sì.
AB: No, la scusi, no due fie, due nipotine. Allora là xe la sacra famiglia se vedi no, ecco, quella là sotto xe mia fia con le due nipotine. Quello là xe suo marì. Sora xe mio fio, quelle là xe le mie nipotine, allora xe mio fio con la mula e mia fia col marì. I abita, son stà, son tornado, son tornado il giorno undici. I abita, allora, mia fia, la xe laureada in fisioterapia e la xe andada in Francia e comunque la se ga sposada in Francia, la xe sui Pirenei, dalla parte dell’Oceano Atlantico, in pratica xe proprio sul confin con la Spagna. La ga comprà una malga insomma col marì tutto quanto, una vecia stala la ga messa a posto e xe ventimila metri quadri. E la ga ciamà la malga la ga ciamada ‘ciapaquà’, forse non la sa cosa significa ciapaquà ma comunque ‘malga ciapaquà’. Due nipotine, una da sei anni, una da nove anni. Le sa el talian, perché ge mandemo su roba de, sa meglio de mi el talian el che, sa el talian, sa el spagnolo e sa el francese.
AP: Ecco, volevo domandarghe, a fioi e nipoti, lei ghe ga mai contado de queste cose?
AB: No, no mai.
AP: Cossa ghe diseva?
AB: No, no, no i me ga mai, a parte il fatto che sia me fia che me, suo marì i xe antimilitaristi, antimilitaristi insomma, i ga fatto baruffa perché ghe iera passà uno per i campi lì la sora de lori col fusil ghe ga dito de tutto, perciò non go togado quell’argomento. Ah, da pici, la parla da pici?
AP: Da pici o adesso.
AB: Allora da pici xe poco da dir perché insieme anche a Tullio lì, a sei anni gemo incomincià a far i scout, in pratica son boy scout ancora adesso. Perciò vita all’aria aperta tutto quanto eccetera eccetera. Go lavorà, allora femo così, go lavorà in Germania anche perché dovevo andar a far il militar ma mi il militar non lo volevo farlo no. Allora me ga mandà rivedibile una volta, rivedibile quell’altra, a un certo momento digo mi son andà a lavorar, son andà alle scuole avviamento che per mi xe le scuole migliori che sia mai stade anche se i le ga eliminade. Lì go imparà a lavorar, go avudo dei professori veramente boni veramente. Se son andà a lavorar in Germania che so far sia il piastrellista, sia il saldador, sia il tornidor, sia il falegname. Gavemo avu un avviamento al lavoro che xe stado qualcosa de bel. A un certo momento, bon, dovevo andar a far il militar. Bon, speta, speta, go trovà lavoro di qua, go trovà lavoro di là, [unclear], bon, speto un anno, speto due, allora un mio amico sempre, oh sempre scoutismo eh, mio amico scout el se ga diplomado in ragioneria, lui faseva la quarta bon allora cosa, me ga imprestà i libri a mi, mi me go messo digo si sa cossa far pet che me metto a studiar anche mi no. Bon. Allora sì, iera semplice studiar però el bel xe questo, sempre per quanto riguarda italiani no. Allora, bon, comincià a studiar. Allora noi gavemo fatto scuola de avviamento industriale, gavemo fato delle sezioni, dei disegni tecnici ma roba ma lavoro de tornio, allora ‘ti non te pol far perché non te ga fatto le medie!’ come non go fatto le meidie? eh non go fato le medie, bon ah, me ga toccà dar l’esame della terza media compreso el latin. Siccome me mancava tre anni prima de, bon allora l’esame de terza media, go dà l’esame della prima ragioneria, son andà direttamente in seconda, go fatto seconda terza e quarta, in quarta go dà l’esame de quinta e su ottantadue de lori semo stai promossi mi e quel che studiavimo insieme. Tiè! Son partì per militar, ah momentin. Quando fasevo scuola a Gorizia, andavo da Viertaler e ghe disevo, la guardi che i miei voti xe cussì, cussì, cussì, posso finir un mese prima? Sì se [unclear], sì. E allora finivo un mese prima, andavo in Germania a lavorar in fabbrica e tornavo un mese dopo. E cussì per i tre anni e cussì go imparà anche il tedesco za che iero, no. Go dà l’esame naturalmente, in quarta go dà anche l’esame de quinta e son andà militar. Son andà militar e bon, go fatto el militar a, allora a Orvieto il CAR e invece a Pordenon coi 132 Brigata corazzata ‘Ariete’, carrista. Sul mio carro gavevo, guarda caso, solo che altoatesini, se parlava in tedesco. Insomma, mi me piasi quella vita lì e po bon. Alla fine ga dito, vuole mettere, se voglio mettere firma, magari, sa, ghe go dito, ma non sotto l’esercito italian ghe digo no. Perché me gavevo, gavevo un tenetin de Roma, no, che ne voleva metter sull’attenti, allora lui voleva punirme mi e mi invece lui lo go punido nel senso che go dito non si presenta all’appello, non fa così, non fa colà, perciò che me capita sotto la naja uno cussì. E dopo, siccome go tutti i, anche tutte le carte, me son accorto soltanto due anni fa, che mettevo a posto le carte, che me volevo far el militar ma se me trovo un maresciallo che me metti sull’attenti. Sa cosa che xe successo? Che nel mio congedo i me ga scritto:’diploma de terza avviamento superiore’. Perché se i me scriveva che son perito, che son ragioniere perito commerciale, i me faseva far l’ufficiale, no. E allora go dito, ecco, che fortunato che son.
AP: Volessi farghe ancora due domande.
AB: Eh.
AP: Quando praticamente, tornemo per un attimo al tempo del, della seconda guerra mondiale, quando lei la vedeva scender queste luci
AB: Sì, sì.
AP: Lei cosa la pensava? Xe delle persone che ghe sta tirando addosso? Che xe una specie dei spettacolo?
AB: Ghe posso dir solo una roba, non savevo cos che iera. E non go capì che iera guerra, ecco. Cioè, mi me son accorto che iera la guerra quando che semo andai a Saciletto.
AP: Dove che la ga capido cosa iera successo.
AB: Esatto. E me ricordo ancora un’altra cosa, me ricordo che scavavimo dove che xe le mura del castel, el porton, non so se la xe mai stada là de quelle parti, ma ierimo mi e mio cugin, gavemo tirà fora dei birilli cussì, iera bombe a man, ancora oggi me lo ricordo ben. E dopo me ricordo ancora lì dal pontisel che iera un toco de coso de bazooka cussì. E lì me ricordo ancora che correvo drio ai carri armati e go ancora una cicatrice qua che son cascà dal bordo di un scalin de, non me ricordo.
AP: Carri armati che iera inglesi o americani.
AB: Oh, per mi iera, se iera quel con la zampogna mi pareva.
AP: Podeva esser inglesi.
AB: Podeva esser inglesi.
AP: E adesso l’ultima domanda. Lei la me ga dito che, quando che la iera picio
AB: Eh.
AP: ghe sembrava una roba che non la capiva, la vedeva queste luci.
AB: Esatto, non savevo, ecco esatto.
AP: Quindi iera soltanto un spettacolo. Adesso xe passà settant’anni.
AB: Lo go ancora come iero cussì. Ancora, uguale. Uguale.
AP: Percui lei non la ga cambià idea sulle persone, sugli aerei.
AB: No. Uguale uguale, come il pacchetto de strisce, disemo, che me xe cascà davanti cussì. Iera de giorno. E, iera che luccicava ma luci, iera una bella giornata de sol e iera sti argenti che luccicava che iera, iera che bel, che bel, che bel, pum! Un pacchetto de roba, iera lunghi cussì, cussì, un paccheto cussì, paf! Larghe così. Quel xe quelle robe che me ricordo più de tutte proprio. Proprio de, ciamemolo guerra perché se i rivava, se i disturbava i radar penso che iera ancora qualcosa, no.
AP: Certo. E adesso, cosa la pensa de chi volava sugli aerei? Perché questi qua ghe tirava bombe in testa.
AB: Eh bon, oh, [laughs], a dir la verità.
AP: La ga mai pensado a la guerra?
AB: No, no, no. Così no. Oh, mi me piasi, ghe digo subito che ad esempio me piasi, allora, me piasi Stukas. Allora i Stukas per conto mio per farli i ga, i li ga fatti drio agli albatros o drio agli oocai, mentre quegli inglesi senz’altro i li ga fatti perché per via della picchiata proprio l’altro giorno che i mostrava sta roba qua. Le rondini senz’altro xe stade, se stade dixemo pensade, cioè i Spitfire pensadi per le rondini perché le ga delle virate che xe qualcosa. E sta roba qua la go pensada anche quando son stado lì ultimamente in Spagna, in Francia dopo in Spagna che la ghe iera tante de quelle rondini, faseva tante virate mi me pensava de veder i Spitfire ghe digo subito. Roba della seconda guerra mondiale, vedo tutti i film, tutto quanto perché me piasi, no. Della prima poi xe tutto altro de quel che posso contar vita e miracoli, ma della seconda.
AP: Questo xe quel che la se ricorda.
AB: Eh?
AP: Questo xe quel che la se ricorda.
AB: Sì, della seconda, oddio a parte, a parte i film oppure i libri che legio.
AP: Certo.
AB: Ma libri della seconda se pol dir che no legio, stago leggendo adesso Rommel in tedesco la guardi lei. Ecco.
AP: Va bene, Angelo. Xe sta una bellissima intervista. Grazie, te ne ga contà delle cose veramente interessanti.
AB: Sì, neanche non, [laughs], ah, forse, dopo me vien in mente sempre a pici no, sotto i portici drio el campanil lì de Monfalcon ghe iera DDT e MCC, iera quando ch’i xe vegnudi e l dava el DDT la sà per disinfettar e vegnu fora la frase:’Duce, Duce torna, ddt, magari con Claretta’. [laughs] Vegnu fora, con cossa che.
AP: Questa xe bellissima.
AB: Quelle robe che, vabbè, eh oh!
AP: Bene.
AB: Queste xe la roba che, sì ma no ma.
AP: Allora, xe sta delle bellissime storie. Le la me ga contà delle cose che mi non savevo, quindi grazie, xe stà una bellissima storia e xe stà una storia che probabilmente anche agli altri ghe piaserà ascoltarla. E quindi semo veramente contenti che lei ne ga fatto far questa intervista, penso che sia riuscida benissimo e non posso che ringraziarla.
AB: E adesso posso offrirve qualcosa de bever?
AP: Molto volentieri.
AB: Allora cominciemo.
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 Angelo Bencina
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Bombing, Aerial
Description
An account of the resource
Angelo Bencina recalls wartime memories in Monfalcone: a cave being modified as a shelter; the descent of bright red and white target indicators at night; a bomb which nearly missed him and didn’t explode; Window radio counter-measures being dropped. Describes how incendiaries hit his parents’ house, which suffered heavy damage and explains that he has kept a spent fragment as a keepsake ever since. Retells the story of his mother being caught-up in a bombing attack with a friend and how they survived by hiding behind a large tree. Remembers American soldiers giving chocolate to him which was difficult to chew. Describes how he and his friends used to salvage shell cases and military equipment for their scrap value and with the money they would buy cinema tickets and ice creams. Stresses his anti-Italian sentiments and his appreciation for German culture, a position compounded by his admiration for the Hapsburg Empire and a keen interest in the history of the First World War. Mentions how he avoids talking of war memories with his relatives, who are avid pacifists.
Creator
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Alessandro Pesaro
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-01
Format
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00:41:36 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABencinaA160801
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy--Monfalcone
Italy
Coverage
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Civilian
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
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
bombing
childhood in wartime
civil defence
home front
incendiary device
perception of bombing war
target indicator
Window
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/438/7769/PToccacieliG1701.1.jpg
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Title
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Toccacieli, Guido
Guido Toccacieli
G Toccacieli
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Guido Toccacieli who recollects his wartime experiences in Milan.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-12-10
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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.
Identifier
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Toccacieli, G
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: Sono Alessandro Pesaro e sto per intervistare il signor Giulio Toccaceri per l’International Bomber Commande Centre Digital Archive. Siamo a Milano, il giorno 10 dicembre 2012. Grazie signor Guido per aver acconsentito a questa intervista. Come prima domanda,
GT: Dica.
AP: Vorrei chiederle, qual’è il ricordo più antico?
GT: Più antico?
AP: Potrebbe essere qualcosa, un ricordo famigliare. Chi erano i suoi genitori? I suoi fratelli? Dove viveva prima della guerra?
GT: Ah. Vabbè, io sono nato a Bergamo perché mio padre in quel tempo lavorava a un campo d’aviazione di Ponte San Pietro che era il campo della Caproni. Lui era specialista in altimetri e volava con gli Sva, [laughs] ancora, era aerei di molto prima della seconda guerra mondiale, della prima guerra mondiale. Erano gli aerei della prima guerra mondiale. Quindi io sono, fino allora sono stato a Bergamo, fino all’età di cinque anni e qualcosa. Poi arrivato a Milano a sei anni, quindi era il 1935. Io dal ’35 sono, abito a Milano. E fino al trenta, dunque la mia vita cos’è stata? Ragazzino che andavo a scuola fino al fatidico 1940 quando è scoppiata la guerra. Dunque avevo undici anni esatti e facevo la quinta elementare.
AP: Che cosa ricorda di quel giorno?
GT: Della mia vita scolastica?
AP: No, di quando è stata dichiarata la guerra.
GT: Ah, ehm,
AP: Si ricorda dov’era?
GT: Anche sì, ero a Milano, esattamente in Via Ingegnoli che è una zona di, ora dicono Città Studi, era allora una zona vicino a Lambrate, alla stazione di Lambrate e lì è cominciata la, diciamo la vita da, in guerra. Il problema della guerra in quella zona era quello che inizialmente, dunque noi abbiamo subito il primo bombardamento, se a lei questo può interessare, nel ’42. Il primo bombardamento nel ’42, dove, se posso aggiungere, poi [laughs]. La mia nuova moglie che, nuova moglie, moglie da sempre, abitava in una località vicino a me a Piazza Bacone e perse la casa anche lei ma questo io l’ho saputo dopo [laughs] quando ho conosciuto lei da fidanzata. Comunque hanno cominciato lì, il primo bombardamento nel 1942. Ma non penso che fossero, non so se, potevano essere francesi o inglesi in quel momento che c’hanno bombardato, questo non me lo ricordo nel ’42. Se erano già, erano già inglesi che sono arrivati, penso che siano, sì, sì, dovevano essere inglesi e quindi lì abbiamo cominciato ad avere dei morti, no? Nella zona di Milano, nella zona che avevano bombardato, anche perché la nostra zona era particolare. Aveva vicino uno scalo ferroviario, quindi alcune fabbriche abbastanza importanti tra queste l’Innocenti che produceva poi armi per la guerra. E quindi da lì abbiamo incominciato a soffrire e fare la vita di quelli che tutti i momenti, in caso di allarme, si finiva nei rifugi [laughs] che organizzavano naturalmente nelle case allora, erano ponteggi nelle cantine proprio per evitare che questi crolli venissero a discapito nostro, ecco. E questo era la, quello che io conosco, il momento della guerra, dello scoppio della guerra adesso, quindi avevo undici anni però eh, quando è scoppiata la guerra quindi. Quello, il nostro problema maggiore era quello e poi è cominciato il problema, vabbè, della alimentazione, mancanza di cose è stato quello che, è stato il mio inizio, la mia, diciamo, la prima giovinezza diciamo, undici anni, un adolescente che si è trovato così però personalmente non tanto. In seguito poi naturalmente cos’è stato le cose meno, i familiari meno importanti, cioè più complicate furono che mio fratello dovette andare militare. E da quel momento, vabbè era una cosa, non ha fatto la, non è andato in guerra, mio fratello è del 1921 quindi nel ’40 aveva diciannove anni, è andato a fare il servizio militare fino. Dunque nel ’40 quando è successo che il primo armistizio che c’è stato? Nel ’42 mi pare, no, ’44, ‘44. ’43, ecco nel ’43. Sì, nel ’43, dunque, avvenne che mio fratello tornò a casa. Tornato a casa e c’è stato pochissimo tempo perché e lì è cominciata subito la Repubblica Sociale Italiana. Mussolini che era stato poi catturato e liberato da Skorzeny, il famoso tedesco che nel Nido d’Aquila sulla, dov’era? Sul Gran Sasso, ha presente che fosse sul Gran Sasso allora. E da quello è incominciato il problema diciamo del fratello che è scappato, si è richiuso in casa ed era considerato renitente allora. Perché poi la Repubblica Sociale richiamò tutti i militari che avevano lasciato. E un bel giorno, tornando da scuola, ero giovanissimo, facevo le medie allora, tornando da scuola trovai la casa circondata dalle cosidette Brigate Nere che erano state create dal fascismo proprio che era, chiamiamola la polizia politica dei, del momento del regime fascista. Riuscirono a scoprirlo perché c’era stata una, come si dice, una spiata ecco. L’avevano saputo. Io sono arrivato a casa, ho trovato tutta questa cosa, mi hanno fermato ehm, e ho visto mio fratello prendere, caricare su una camionetta e portarlo via. S’immagina il dramma in quel momento nella casa. Quindi siamo arrivati al ’44, ’43. Poi mio fratello fu mandato, ricordo benissimo il tempo di guerra, fu mandato a Carcare. Carcare, Savona, sui colli di Cadibona, sì. Fino a un bel momento quello che era successo fino allora, bombardamenti non ne avevamo poi tanti avuti ehm, fino al ’43. E nel ’43, esatto, cominciarono i bombardamenti, quelli pesanti a Milano fatti dagli americani, penso, o forse dalle forze alleate. E lì subimmo dei bombardamenti molto pesanti. Agosto del ’43 è stato un macello, 15 agosto, 16 agosto a Milano è stato un disastro. Milano è sparita in parte, il centro di Milano in qualche via che non esiste ancora più adesso perché [unclear], è scomparsa e da allora, ecco cosa è successo. Da allora mio fratello riuscì a scappare lo stesso da Carcare e fu nascosto dai miei zii in questo periodo e lì andò bene perché poi non successe più niente. Mentre noi eravamo sfollati in un paesino vicino a Milano in una scuola elementare ed eravamo io, mio, mia sorella, sì, mio padre, mia madre. Mio padre faceva avanti indietro perché lavorava ancora a Milano papà e quindi siamo rimasti là fino a che la guerra è terminata. Ecco, altri episodi che diciamo riguardino me personalmente non ne ho, non ho subito cose. L’unica cosa che posso raccontare è stato bruttissima. Finita la guerra sono arrivati gli americani a Milano e io poi, come tutte le altre persone, siamo andati a vedere quella brutta faccenda di Mussolini impiccato, cioè impiccato, era già ucciso in Piazzale Loreto.
AP: Continui.
GT: Dunque, quella è stata una cosa che ci ha colpito non tanto per, ragazzo cosa avevo, ormai avevo quindici, dunque, ’45, sai [unclear] gli americani a liberarci, ecco quello è stata la causa più, a liberarci, sì, ormai avevano liberato tutta l’Italia, i tedeschi erano scappati. Ah, le cose, il brutto che succedeva allora erano le retate che facevano le Brigate Nere, questi della X Mas mi ricordo che c’era il famoso Osvaldo Valenti che era un attore, allora era molto in voga, e coso. Poi, Ah, ho assistito a, dopo la liberazione, a diverse fucilazioni di cosidetti fascisti di allora, io non potevo conoscere tutte queste cose, ero un po’ fuori dal, di questi fascisti che avevano, non so, li avevano fucilati proprio in mezzo alla strada così cioè. Ragazze rapate, pitturate di rosso sulla testa che camminavano in mezzo a discredito di tutti [laughs] che, ecco, queste cose che la guerra mi ha lasciato dentro. I bombardamenti sì, è la cosa più paurosa anche perché un, devo dire un ragazzo non è che si spaventasse per questo. No, questo no, non ho subito terrore per i bombardamenti, no, non ho provato paura. Ecco questo è quanto posso dire del mio periodo diciamo dal ’40 al ’45, quando è stata la liberazione, insomma.
AP: Mi ha parlato prima di un rifugio.
GT: Sì.
AP: Vuole descrivermelo?
GT: Ah.
AP: Come era fatto?
GT: Il rifugio dove, di casa mia?
AP: Esatto.
GT: Cantina. Cantina, paletti di supporto di legno, basta. Tutto lì. Non c’erano cose particolari. Niente assolutamente. Si andava in cantina sperando che reggesse [laughs]. La casa non era grande d’accordo però e dentro, con le donne che magari pregavano [laughs] come in queste cose e i bombardamenti che arrivavano perché l’allarme arrivava molto spesso. Ah, poi nell’ultimo periodo, prima che finisse la cosa, arrivava un certo Pippo. Era chiamato un aereo che non so di che provenienza fosse, se inglese, francese, americano. Arrivava su Milano, sganciava una bomba e basta, e andava e questo è stato per un po’ di volte. Infatti lo chiamavamo Pippo. ‘Arriva Pippo, arriva Pippo’. Ecco [laughs] questo è un ricordo di quella, del bombardamento.
AP: Si ricorda come la gente viveva
GT: Ah poi, il bombardamento, sì, d’accordo posso aggiungere adesso mano a mano che mi ricordo, l’ultimo quello terribile è stato fatto nella zona di Gorla dove è caduto su una scuola. Sono cadute le bombe su una scuola, hanno fatto molti molti morti per i bambini, questo tra i bambini di scuola proprio. Quelle sono state le cose che hanno colpito di più diciamo il fatto che si bombardasse un po’ così e non certo. Gorla è sempre vicino alla stazione centrale, si può immaginare che magari ci fossero però eravamo già verso la fine della guerra. Non so se è stato il colpo finale che volevano darci per, dare a noi, dare allo stato italiano, a Mussolini soprattutto perché allora eravamo isolati dall’Italia noi eh, siamo stati. I tedeschi avevano preso il potere anche su Milano quindi, c’è la guerra, si era formato il Vallo lì in Toscana, Lazio, cos’era, come si chiamava?
AP: La Linea Gotica?
GT: La Linea Gotica forse sì. No, non era la Linea Gotica, forse eh? Dunque, dunque, era la Linea Gotica, possibile. Montecassino, c’era la Gotica, sì, Gotica [laughs]. Gotica, sì.
AP: Questo mi dà l’opportunità di una domanda.
GT: Sì.
AP: Qual’era la vostra percezione? Lei ha parlato di essere, di sentirsi isolato. Avevate la sensazione che le bombe erano dirette a voi? Allo stato italiano? Ai tedeschi? Come vedevate la cosa allora?
GT: Beh, ma, dunque, no, no, [unclear] lo stato italiano senz’altro. Senz’altro. Eravamo alleati dei tedeschi quindi, sì, sì, vabbè. No, avevamo la sensazione che si creasse proprio il panico, proprio di creare qualcosa tra, che, non so, probabilmente che i civili si ribellassero magari a tutto questo stato di cose. Perché ci bombardavano? Perchè venivano a bombardare le popolazioni? Poi abbiamo saputo pian pianino di cose ancora peggiori perché se pensiamo poi cosa è successo a Dresda [laughs], capisci? Quindi era proprio creare questo stato di, forse di sollevazione contro la guerra, certo, non eravamo certo un alleato comodo nè forte per i tedeschi, e quindi presero in mano il potere loro. Insomma praticamente certamente bombardavano anche noi, ma forse per eliminare, più qualche cosa, togliere diciamo una forza, farci smettere per togliere una forza ai tedeschi.
AP: Vorrei riportarla a quegli anni.
GT: Sì.
AP: Sempre tenendo presente quello che mi ha raccontato adesso.
GT: Sì.
AP: Lei si ricorda conversazioni di adulti a proposito dell’essere bombardati eccetera? Che cosa diceva la gente, ad esempio, in negozio, per strada?
GT: [sighs] Praticamente, no, la gente cominciava ad essere un po’ stufa della guerra, cioè stufa della guerra, non si mangiava eh, questo era il problema, quindi. Ma per un certo momento intendiamoci all’inizio li abbiamo odiati questi bombardamenti perché ci bombardavano. Sì, siamo in guerra, d’accordo però. Quello che ritenevamo forse noi della guerra era farla direttamente sì, ma non, non inserendo le persone, le popolazioni civili in questo coso, forse non era il caso. E l’avevamo chiamato questa era la cosa del terrore, proprio creare un terrore in modo tale che qualcuno si, qualcuno che contava si risvegliasse, somma sai [unclear] è stato, forse è stato quello che poi è successo ma [unclear]. Per cui poi il regime fascista è caduto perché qualcuno si era mosso in quel senso lì o forse perché, forse non aveva visto l’interesse particolare di fare una guerra assieme alla Germania non so, [unclear]. Poi io, sai, io sono sempre vissuto in una famiglia che diciamo. Papà ha avuto sempre delle, delle idee socialiste e quindi eravamo un po’ contro questo, poi accettando tante cose perché devo dire noi siamo stati, all’inizio siamo stati anche abbastanza bene. Ai ragazzi non dispiaceva anche andare a fare le adunate, si divertivano, cioè questo era quello che aveva lasciato un pochettino il regime fascista sulla mentalità delle persone. C’erano, alcune cose insomma, c’erano, erano fatte bene insomma perché difendevano i lavoratori, posto di lavoro, cioè tante cose che avevano, bè, questo era un po’, diciamo il fondo fascista di Mussolini, socialista di Mussolini che poi certamente non è, non è proliferato in quelle cose però è quello. Lo stato però, non eravamo con, all’inizio non eravamo proprio tanto convinti che fosse brutto, è scoppiata, sì la guerra è sempre brutta però, mah, poteva anche starci insomma ecco.
AP: E suo padre.
GT: Io non capivo proprio molto bene quella, non c’era quella comunicazione che c’è adesso, quindi era tutto. Dopo ci siamo accorti che era tutta propaganda quindi abbiamo subito un po’, continuato a subire quello che era, diciamo l’inseminazione data da vari anni di fascismo, dal 1922, e vabbè che non era mica tanto, ’29 sono nato io quindi [laughs].
AP: Suo padre come le ha spiegato la guerra, se gliel’ha spiegata?
GT: [sighs] Mio papà, dunque, la guerra lui non l’ha fatta. Lui era specializzato quindi la prima guerra mondiale papà non l’ha fatta, la ’15-’18 quindi. Lui come specialista ha sempre lavorato nelle aziende che fornivano materiale per la guerra. Quindi la guerra direttamente lui l’ha vissuta attraverso il lavoro che faceva, non è che. Ma all’inizio non, posso dirle che non è che fosse contrario, forse aveva, qualche cosa era rimasto di una educazione socialista quindi non era propenso, però neanche proprio completamente alieno devo dire, questo che un ricordo che possa avere io di papà.
AP: La cosa è cambiata quando sono cadute le prime bombe sui civili?
GT: Eh certo, eh certo, eh certo.
AP: Mi racconti questo passaggio.
GT: Eh, le bombe sui civili proprio hanno cambiato un po’ la mentalità delle persone insomma. Si sono proprio un po’ rivoltate dentro, no, in quello che si sentiva dire, ‘ma questi ci bombardano’. Sì, eh, un certo astio per forza, ci bombardavano loro, non potevamo avere però la colpa, la colpa di che cosa? Nostra che abbiamo fatto la guerra. Nostra che ci siamo, ci siamo messi in questa situazione, eh, questi erano i discorsi che facevano loro. Poi è stato anche poi il dramma che non eravamo, sapevamo di non essere, anche noi ragazzi, di non essere all’altezza. Prima di tutto perché ci si misurava con la capacità, diciamo, di fare la guerra dei tedeschi. Noi non l’avevamo questa capacità. Ehm, visto poi quello che era successo e che avevano riportato dei reduci dalla Grecia disastri, cose, l’organizzazione proprio italiana non fatta proprio, assolutamente una cosa così. E quindi, ma abbiamo cominciato a dire che avevamo sbagliato insomma noi italiani a fare la guerra, ad accettare questa, questa guerra così. La punizione, vabbè forse era troppo forte, i bombardarci e morire, eravamo in guerra, vabbè. Abbiamo detto: ‘E’ così, cosa vuoi, non potevano fare niente’. Dovevamo subire e abbiamo subito.
AP: Provi se, se non le dispiace, a ricordare questo senso di impotenza, l’idea di ricevere bombe dal cielo e non poter fare nulla. Provi a ricordare cosa provava quando era bambino.
GT: Eh, difficile. [pauses] Niente. Per me capitava come una, come una, qualche cosa, una disgrazia che doveva venire, qualche cosa. Un qualcosa che non me la, contro il quale non potevo fare niente dentro di me, non potevo fare niente, non potevo. Ma neanche, però neanche il desiderio di mettermi lì, da ragazzo, con un cannone a sparare agli aerei che scendevano, no, no, no. Però un po’ effettivamente bisogna dire una cosa, siccome questi bombardamenti all’inizio quegli inglesi noi li odiavamo un po’ questi inglesi, eh, pensavamo che fossero un pochettino. Non sapevamo cosa poi succedeva quindi questo poi, questo è un paragone che si, non si può fare perché dopo l’abbiamo visto e quindi dopo ci hanno aperto le cose. Non sapevamo cosa subivano gli inglesi, gli inglesi a Londra con le bombe che, Hitler mandava le V2. Eh, potevamo dire, però è una rivalsa contro quello che, ma non c’era, non c’era, non c’era una volontà politica che, aiutasse a pensare una cosa piuttosto che l’altra, eravamo un po’ allo sbando insomma, non eravamo vabbè, subivamo un po’ questo, del partito, queste cose che ti tenevano un pochettino proprio al di fuori di tutte queste cose. Odiavano questo, quello, bisogna odiarli, sì, famoso manifesto, il nemico ti ascolta [laughs], famoso manifesto, grandioso che faceva. Ridevamo perché dicevamo, la lana Churchill si ritira, dicevamo, la lana Churchill perché si ritira, taci il nemico ti ascolta, avevamo dentro tutte queste cose che venivano dalla preparazione che aveva fatto il partito fascista sul popolo italiano. Quindi abbiamo un po’ fatto fatica proprio a uscire fuori dalla cosa. La guerra all’inizio sì, vabbè c’è la guerra, è inevitabile, dicevano. A un ragazzo però, sapere cos’era la guerra, era stata un po’, era un po’ una cosa, non facile da, sì, da accettare sì forse, forse un gioco più grande di noi o forse volevamo partecipare [laughs], da ragazzi, sa, non è semplice, non eravamo adulti capaci di interpretare tutte queste cose che poi sono successe. Molto difficile.
AP: A proposito dell’interpretazione.
GT: Sì.
AP: Mi ha accennato ai bombardamenti dell’agosto 1943.
GT: ‘43, 15 e 16 agosto.
AP: Vuole raccontarmi qualche cosa di più?
GT: Vediamo.
AP: Provi a tornare a quegli anni, a quei mesi.
GT: ’43, sì fino allora non avevamo subito delle grandi cose a Milano, onestamente. Bombardamento che ci ricordavamo di più era quello di, era dell’inizio della guerra nel ’42. Ppi bombardamenti veri e propri non ne abbiamo avuti a raffica come sono venuti lì con questi enormi aerei che arrivavano a onde [makes a droning noise] e forse no. Sono stati i primi che hanno proprio creato proprio un panico assoluto nella gente che c’era. Proprio è stato, sono stati quelli del ’43. Milano ricorda solo, sì del ’43.
AP: Si ricorda le sue emozioni? Che cosa provava lei?
GT: Gliel’ho detto,
AP: Estate, estate del ’43.
GT: Non paura, chissà perché, personalmente come, non ho provato paura.
AP: Le altre persone attorno a lei, della sua famiglia?
GT: Certo, evidentemente, sì, certo. Vabbè, c’erano, [laughs], erano prese, erano preoccupate per i figli tant’è vero che c’è stata il famoso esodo da Milano, tutti cercavano di andarsene via. Ma sì, un paio di notti siamo andati a dormire nei prati perché bombardavano, sapevamo ehm. No paura non ne ho provato, paura vedendo gli altri che avevano paura, a me sembrava che avessero troppa paura. Però non ho provato nè paura nè, neanche senso di odio, sì, bombardavano e vabbè, è la guerra. Ecco, c’era una certa fatalità nel pensare quelle cose lì, una certa fatalità, infatti non ho riportato nessun trauma del fatto di aver fatto, il trauma che si poteva riportare. Ricordare la fame, ma sì, la ricordo ma non è neanche diciamo una causa di queste cose, non è neanche una cosa. Io personalmente non ho portato dei traumi per queste cose.
AP: Mi ha parlato di Gorla prima. Gorla.
GT: Gorla, sì, sì.
AP: La bomba sulla scuola.
GT: Questo ci ha fatto male, sì.
AP: Si ricorda qualcosa all’epoca? Come è stata annunciata?
GT: Niente, dunque, era stata annunciata che, niente, un bombardamento è avvenuto, hanno buttato giù, no, una solita cosa, hanno fatto un raid, no, come si chiama, aereo ha colpito Gorla. Presumo che dovessero colpire la stazione centrale, ecco, questo lo dico io .Abbiamo tutti pensato che la zona, essendo la stazione centrale un certo posto di smistamento per truppe cose, penso non sia stato un bombardamento però tipo, come si dice, come ho detto, annunciato prima tipo terroristico [emphasises] ecco, no, eravamo già un po’ più verso la fine di questo [unclear]. Io la ritengo, non so, un errore proprio grave di, o forse un ultimo rigurgito. Eh beh ma una bomba poteva capitare, poteva spostarsi di cinquecento metri. Non penso che fosse stato un obiettivo ecco, è caduta ma però Gorla come dico era stata la stazione centrale ecco [laughs] perciò c’era un obiettivo. Come le bombe che sono cadute nella mia zona l’obiettivo c’era, c’era lo smistamento di Lambrate quindi era un nodo ferroviario.
AP: Mi ha parlato prima della Innocenti.
GT: Sì, c’era la Innocenti lì eh. Quindi, lo smistamento, venivano fuori le armi dall’Innocenti e subito partivano con lo smistamento ferroviario.
AP: Quindi.
GT: Ecco, una cosa che non abbiamo, che ho dimenticato, ecco questo. Qualche, c’è stato un momento, adesso l’anno però eravamo già un po’ più avanti, dal 40, i mitragliamenti ai treni.
AP: Me ne parli.
GT: Ecco, questa è stata [unclear] quindi proprio c’era una perché i treni erano, in quel momento non c’erano, non treni militari, erano treni civili e questi caccia che arrivavano, non so se fossero americani, inglesi, non, mitragliavano i treni. Questo è stato proprio brutto perché queste cose le ho riviste magari in tanti film dove si vede che mitragliano proprio i treni e la gente scappa fuori. Questo è stata una cosa, ecco, quello lì. Ecco, c’erano questi contrasti che, non capivo quelle cose lì proprio per creare terrore soprattutto, eh, guardi, che hanno mitragliavano i treni. Non erano convogli militari quelli che ho conosciuto, quelli ho saputo io quindi.
AP: Se dovesse spiegarmi la differenza tra mitragliare un treno e bombardare, come la spiegherebbe?
GT: Dunque, la spiegazione che posso dare oggi. Bombardare, bombardare, mitragliare un treno dipende: è un obiettivo militare o mitragliare un treno così solo per mitragliare un treno, pensando che. Bombardare obiettivi militari o una città per fare terrore? Milano è stata bombardata per fare terrore. Non è stata bombardata per, perché c’erano cose particolari, non era. Differenza, vorrei capirla io, come viene, queste pattuglie che vanno su due caccia [unclear] che vanno lì, mitragliano un treno scoprendo che c’è, magari non sapendo che è un treno civile si bombarda, si mitraglia un treno. A Milano, nella zona intorno a Milano, ma che obiettivo è? Per me è per fare terrore, per far cessare, proprio per fare rimuovere la gente, ‘basta adesso, noi non ne possiamo più’, per me. Però strategicamente, non sono uno stratega.
AP: E Pippo come c’entra in tutto questo?
GT: Come?
AP: Pippo. Lei ha ricordato Pippo. L’aereo.
GT: Ah Pippo anche questo qui, che signi, ecco, il significato. Terrore. Può arrivare un bombardamento, crea panico, perché una bombettina non ha mai fatto, ma non credo che sia mai successo un morto per Pippo. Com’era? Come mai arriva questo aereo? Ma sempre per tenere in allarme, cioè, per provocare questa ansia nella gente che si muova, che faccia qualche cosa, che da dentro, si muova da dentro per far finire queste cose. Eh, solo quello, solo quello. Quella è una strategia che. Altro [unclear]
AP: A distanza di settant’anni, è cambiato la sua opinione verso chi la bombardava o chi la mitragliava? Lei pensa che ci sia una differenza tra quello che pensava da bambino e quello che pensa lei adesso?
GT: No, penso che sia stato proprio una cosa per creare proprio il terrore. Per creare terrore e far smettere la gente di, cioè provocare questa, dall’interno questa, questa rivolta, no, contro, contro chi dei nostri faceva la guerra, farla smettere, insomma, farla cessare, farla cessare.
AP: Lei mi ha accennato a sua moglie che ha perso la casa.
GT: Sì.
AP: Questa cosa vi ha unito in qualche maniera? Avete passato le stesse esperienze? Vi siete sentiti uniti? Ne avete parlato?
GT: No, no, no, in questo no perché, beh ma lì è stata un’altra tragedia, lei era una bambina, aveva nove anni, otto anni, nove anni. Hanno perso la casa perché è caduta a Milano in Piazza Bacone e la sua casa è crollata e lei si è salvata perché era in rifugio con i parenti [laughs], con e basta. Da lì è stata un po’ una tragedia per lei dopo, quello che ha subito lei ma era piccola.
AP: Si ricorda cosa era successo?
GT: Sì, dopo lei ha dovuto, eh, hanno perso tutto la casa, hanno dovuto andare presso dei parenti, insomma c’è stata tutta una concomitanza di cose negative per lei, per la sua infanzia voglio dire eccetera eccetera. Questo sì però è lei che, quello che poi ha provato lei io non lo so [laughs].
AP: Prima mi ha parlato di Mussolini e di altri a Piazzale Loreto.
GT: Sì.
AP: Vuole raccontarmi qualcosa di più?
GT: Beh, noi ci siamo trovati, dunque, a Piazzale Loreto perché ad un certo momento, è abbastanza vicino alla zona dove abito quindi [unclear] scesi in strada [unclear], siamo corsi tutti a Piazzale Loreto e abbiamo visto quello spettacolo abnorme, spettacolo orribile. Da ragazzo non l’ho subito però mi ha dato fastidio subito quindi Mussolini, Petacci, Bombacci, c’era un, beh, c’erano questi gerarchi fascisti che io adesso non ricordo mentalmente chi è che era appeso. La cosa più brutta che ho provato. Dunque poi a un certo momento è arrivato un camion, dopo le spiego perché è arrivato il camion, è arrivato un camion e hanno staccato, hanno incominciato a staccare. Quando sono arrivato io la Petacci era ancora con le gonne giù, cioè al contrario e quindi era praticamente nuda o seminuda. Dunque il camion. Su c’era un deposito di benzina, li avevano attaccati tutti sul deposito di benzina alla base di questo striscione di metallo che c’era su e hanno incominciato a tagliare la corda e li hanno calati a uno a uno. Quando sono arrivati a Mussolini, hanno tagliato la corda di netto, non li hanno presi, l’hanno, l’hanno fatto cadere sul camion apposta. E’ stato una roba, è stato una roba pazzesca, la gente che andava a sputare addosso, a calci, urlando cose inenarrabili, basta, dopo [unclear] questa era, una corrida, con tutti i matador [laughs]. Glielo dico visto adesso, con tutti i matador che sputavano, urlavano, imprecavano ancora contro un’ammasso lì poverino, una cosa, poverino dico perché in quel momento poteva fare, ma non mi ha fatto pena in quel momento. E’ stato troppo la ribellione [unclear] perché lì non è più una ribellione perché tu sei nero io sono rosso, tu sei verde, no, no, è una ribellione contro qualcuno che in fondo la guerra aveva fatto morire i figli, mariti eccetera e quindi una guerra che non, che forse l’italiano non ha sentito insomma, l’ha sentito attraverso la, esclusivamente la politica, la forza del fascismo nel fare propaganda, però questo da ragazzo io l’ho capito dopo eh. Il momento io ho vissuto delle cose basta poi il giudizio allora io non potevo darlo, guardavo e basta. Ora.
AP: Resti per favore
GT: Sì.
AP: Con le emozioni di quel momento
GT: Sì.
AP: A Piazzale Loreto.
GT: Sì.
AP: Si ricorda le grida? Si ricorda che cosa dicevano?
GT: Le devo ripetere?
AP: Se se la sente.
GT: Non credo che siano, ‘Porco! Sei un porco! Hann fatto bene! Bastardo!’ E cose del genere. Ne hanno dette di tutti i colori, adesso degli epiteti che non potevano [unclear]. ‘Ti sputo addosso, in faccia, hai fatto morire mio figlio!’ e tutte cose del genere. ‘Porco te e quella puttana della, della tua Petacci!’. [sighs] Poi un’altra cosa che mi ricordo, beh ma quello non [unclear], ho visto catturare Starace, no, che poi l’hann fucilato lì vicino. Dunque sì, in quel momento è sempre Piazzale Loreto, nella zona e a un certo momento proprio, sì, l’avevano catturato, era Achille Starace, segretario del Partito Fascista Italiano. Achille Starace a un certo momento, non so, lo avevano scoperto non so dove l’avessero preso, questo non lo so, lo portarono lì, lo fecero passare davanti a tutto questo spettacolo, lo portarono lì di fronte e [unclear] gli spararono, lo fucilarono lì, poco distante da dove era, il suo capo era appeso. Quello sì. [unclear] ma sono tutte cose che non si sono, diciamo, proprio susseguite in un modo così da una cosa all’altra, che poi ho visto anche lì come le ho detto prima ho visto uccidere dei, in Piazzale Aspromonte ho visto uccidere un certo, allora. Lo chiamavano Pasqualone, era il ras della zona del partito fascista di, di Lambrate, era proprio segretario del Partito Fascista lui, era un, omone, poi andava sempre con la pistola infilata per fare vedere, sempre camicia nera e lì l’ho visto fucilare anche lui poverino in Piazza Aspromonte, portato lì. E’ sempre brutto, è brutto, sono cose che, uno è difficile credere che sia o non sia, hann messo lì e [unclear] niente. Niente, sono cose che mi ricordo della guerra dal ’40 al ’45 poi sono arrivati gli americani. Ah, poi ho fatto un viaggio su un carro armato che arrivava da Via Padova. Arrivava da Via Padova che è una zona [laughs] est di Milano e a un certo momento mi, questi bei americani che salutavano [unclear], ero lì con diverse persone, un ragazzo, [unclear] un americano mi ha tirato su un carro armato, sono arrivato, avrò fatto trecento o quattrocento metri sul carro armato [laughs], ecco. Allora erano cose che poi non so, sì, in questo caso si ricordano perché giustamente come avete voi [unclear] elencato, si ricordano poco poco, è difficile proprio però perché [unclear] risalendo magari ce ne saranno state anche, non eclatanti no perché quelle me le ricordo di più. Insomma, la cattura di mio fratello è stata eclatante, l’uccisione di Mussolini eclatante nel senso della visione di un ragazzo. Quindici anni, salire su un carro armato americano ecco [laughs]
AP: Mi ha parlato di Osvaldo Valenti.
GT: Sì, Osvaldo Valenti, era della X Mas lui, sì, sì, sì. Ah beh sì, Osvaldo Valenti, quello lo conoscevamo come attore, no? Perché anzi, allora non c’era la televisione [laughs]. Lui e la Luisa Ferida che era la sua amante diciamo o sua moglie, non so cosa fosse. E c’era la famosa Villa Triste a San Siro e lì torturavano i partigiani però, ecco, quello sì, quello me lo ricordo. Poi c’erano le Brigate Nere in Via Rovello. Le Brigate Nere c’erano, sì. Ah, una volta, ecco, in tempo di guerra, verso l’ultimo periodo di guerra, mio fratello era tornato da militare e quando era poi scappato la seconda volta, tornato da militare, no, la prima volta, sì, no, la seconda volta perché poi è andato a fare il militare con i repubblichini e poi è scappato e ha portato a casa il fucile. Un giorno mio padre che se adesso fosse qui forse poverino, ha rischiato con noi, perché? Dunque, amico di un, in quel momento già c’erano i partigiani che aleggiavano ancora in città, no? Qualcuno che era dei partiti. Mio padre conosceva queste persone da vecchio povero socialista e un giorno mi dice: ‘Ma qui abbiamo un fucile in casa. Non preoccupatevi, lo diamo, do io, so io a chi darlo’. ‘E vabbè, ma come facciamo? Chi esce con un fucile?’. Di sera non si poteva, coprifuoco [laughs]. Allora ha inventato una cosa. Ha preso il tappeto che avevamo nella camera e ha messo dentro il fucile. Ha avvolto il tappeto e ha detto a mia sorella e a me di portarlo in un certo posto. Cosa che abbiamo fatto. Pensa il rischio che abbiamo corso due ragazzi con il tappeto con dentro un’arma di guerra, con i partigiani che c’erano in giro e i fascisti che cercavano queste cose. Quello me lo ricordo ma non l’ho mica digerita bene con mio padre che c’ha mandato a fare questo lavoro [laughs], per portare un’arma di guerra, fucile poi praticamente figuriamoci. Ecco questa è una cosa che mi sono ricordato di quelle cose lì poi. Periodo di partigiani non tanto perché, cioè sapevo che ce n’erano, che li prendevano, li catturavano e poi naturalmente li hanno fucilati diversi nella mia zona, li hanno fucilati al Campo Giuriati. E lì è stato una brutta cosa e abitavano lì, c’è ancora la targa adesso di questi partigiani insomma, fucilati al Campo Giuriati. Della guerra, del dopoguerra posso raccontare di più [laughs]. Allora incominciamo dalle bande.
AP: Si ricorda.
GT: Della nera.
AP: Si ricorda la sirena?
GT: La sirena, oh, mamma mia! [mimics the high-pitched prolonged sound of the alarm] eccola e poi quando era finite invece suonava [mimics a different alarm sound] continuava a suonare a lungo, questa suonava a [unclear] e l’altra invece dava un segnale di fine allarme. Perché c’era il preallarme, l’allarme e il fine allarme. Sì, questo sì e anche quello, quello era. Ah, bombardamenti, ‘arrivano, arrivano, arrivano!’, poi magari falso allarme. Che poi di contraerea a Milano non ce n’era, non sparavano neanche un colpo, qualcuno così poi, quindi, sì, le sirene, l’allarme, però dopo. Evidentemente ci siamo abituati anche a quello eh. L’allarme c’è però pazienza [laughs], speriamo che non bombardino qui ecco eh. Dopo un certo momento penso che tutti poi in guerra si rassegnino eh, come una cosa inevitabile ma ormai dopo è venuta, è la guerra, l’hanno fatta, ci hanno obbligato.
AP: E’ stato una bellissima intervista.
GT: Ma, non credo [laughs]
AP: Siamo molto contenti, io e i miei colleghi di aver fatto questa bellissima chiacchierata.
GT: La ringrazio.
AP: E’ stato un piacere parlare con lei. Se non ricorda nient’altro, non vuole aggiungere nient’altro, io concluderei.
GT: Cerco, cerco poi. Uno non è mai preparato a queste cose e poi, ma guardi che. No, non è perché ma uno magari soffre non vuole parlarne, no, no, no, gliel’ho detto, non ho. Non credo di aver subito degli shock perché ho subito la guerra da civile ho subito, da civile, da ragazzzo ho subito la guerra, non credo. Ho sofferto solo un po’ la fame, quello mi dava fastidio, non c’era niente da mangiare, a Milano poi assolutamente, i bollini, andare a prendere il pane con i bollini, con, quelle cose, razionato. E’ così dai [laughs].
AP: Va bene, signor Giulio.
GT: Ma io ringrazio lei.
AP: E’ stata una bellissima esperienza.
GT: Anche per me.
AP: E concludo.
GT: C’era una caserma. Quando io prima ho detto che arrivando a casa avevo visto la casa circondata dalle Brigate Nere e mio fratello fu portato, perché era renitente, era scappato nel ’43, mi pare, no? ’43 è venuto Badoglio.
AP: Sì.
GT: Quando venne Badoglio, ecco, e lo portarono nella caserma di Corso Italia. Corso Italia c’era la caserma dove mettevano dentro tutti quelli che avevano recuperato, scoperto che erano renitenti e li avevano portati lì. E lì li avevano fatto firmare poi l’adesione alla RSI. ‘O ti mandiamo in campo di concentramento in Germani o vieni’. E lui Firmò per la RSI perché e l’unica persona che ha potuto andarlo a visitare è stata mia sorella che è andata a visitare appunto mio fratello prima che lo arruolassero nella Repubblica Sociale Italiana e questo è stato uno dei, diciamo delle cose che mi ha colpito di più come ragazzo diciamo come ragazzo [unclear].
UI: Quanti anni aveva il suo parente?
GT: Eh?
UI: Quanti anni aveva sua sorella?
GT: Mia sorella è dunque del ’24, aveva cinque anni più di me. Quindi io avevo
UI: [unclear]
GT: Nel ’43. Aveva cinque anni più di me. Era, sì, sì, quello è. Quella è una cosa che non ti inventi adesso perché, no, no, non ho nominato la persona a chi abbiamo portato il fucile perché era partigiano [unclear]
AP: Va bene.
GT: No assolutamente, nomi diciamo di persone che
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 Guido Toccacieli
Description
An account of the resource
Guido Toccaceri remembers his wartime experiences as a schoolboy in Milan: the day war broke out, food shortages, his father working at an airfield near Bergamo, train strafing, basements used as makeshift shelters, being evacuated outside Milan with his family, fascist militia round-ups, tortures at ‘Villa Triste’, and disposing his brother’s rifle wrapped in a carpet. Remembers the 1942 and 1943 bombings, describes the Gorla bombing and elaborates on his legitimacy. Gives a first-hand account of Mussolini’s corpse being desecrated at Piazzale Loreto and the capture of a prominent fascist leader. Tells of his brother, a draft-dodger, captured by fascist militiamen. Describes a summary of executions of fascists, and female collaborators head-shaven and paraded in shame at the end of the war. Mentions a sense of helplessness, resignation towards the regime, which changed after the bombing escalated, and describes the attacks as the just retribution for starting the war and siding with Hitler.
Creator
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Alessandro Pesaro
Date
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2017-12-10
Format
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00:50:49 audio recording
Language
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ita
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AToccacieliG171210
PToccacieliG1701
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Italy
Italy--Po River Valley
Italy--Milan
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1943-08
1944-10-20
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
bombing
bombing of Milan (20 October 1944)
childhood in wartime
civil defence
evacuation
home front
Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945)
perception of bombing war
round-up
shelter
strafing
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1132/11658/PSmithLeachGP1801.1.jpg
01401ca5a689ce618db9d9542bd38626
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1132/11658/ASmithLeachGP180608.2.mp3
931a30e4939b0edc1877013d978a6ebf
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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Smith-Leach, George Patrick
G P Smith-Leach
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with (5834234 British Army). He was stationed for a time near RAF Honnington.
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
2018-06-08
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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SmithLeach, GP
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: George, anytime at all, if you want me to stop asking you questions, just say so
GSL: No, I’m fine, honestly, I’m used to it, in my [unclear] service
AM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Center in Lincoln. The interviewer is Alistair Montgomery and the interviewee is Mr. George Smith-Leach. The interview is taking place in George’s home in Troon, Ayrshire and his wife Margarite is also present. George, good afternoon
GSL: Good afternoon to you
AM: Right, well, just to get it going, tell me a little bit about your upbringing before the war?
GSL: Before the war, I was born in Chelmsford, Essex and then from there I moved to Clacton-on-Sea and then I went to school in Clacton-on-Sea and then I went to a seminary catholic college and after being there for about six years when war broke out, along with two others, we ran away from the college, went to Ipswich in Suffolk and the three of us said we were eighteen years of age, no questions were asked, no birth certificates was asked, and we joined the army.
AM: Right, and whereabouts did you join the army?
GSL: In Ipswich
AM: And did any of your family have a military background or [unclear]?
GSL: Yes my father, my father was in World War One, came right through World War One and then when war was declared, I think he was on the reserve or something, and he went back into the army about five weeks before me, he was fifty-two years of age, and was approaching the limit where he needn’t have gone back and I was the opposite way, I needed to exaggerate my age to make me older and before that his mother was married to a regimental sergeant major, I don’t, I really don’t know what regiment he was with and he served his time in India and she lived in India and then came home to Chelmsford and she lived in Chelmsford, Essex until she died but I don’t know enough about their background, my father never ever, when I used to say to him, well, is World War Two anything like World War One? He said, you just get on with World War Two and watch what you’re doing, never mind World War One. He would never speak about what he went through, all I do know, he was at Ypres and he was at Gallipoli, where there weren’t many British troops, they were nearly all I think Canadians but I know that when the World War Two finished, he was the second man demobbed in the British Army and he had about eight or nine medals which I think went to my great nephew.
AM: Right. And where was your first posting?
GSL: My first posting was, after Ipswich we did a bit of training there and then the battalion was split up into companies, A company which I was in went to Honington, C Company went to Martlesham Heath and D company went to Waddington and E Company was the what was now known as the company headquarters company and so I landed up at Honington where we were the ground defense troop, 70th Battalion the Young Soldiers Suffolk Regiment.
AM: So, were all Suffolk Regiment engaged in airfield defense?
GSL: Yes, that was primarily and I should say here categorically that this was Winston Churchill’s own idea that he didn’t like the idea of young men being in with older men who’d come back from Dunkirk who were complaining that they hadn’t had the backup that they should’ve received and they were saying well, Hitler will be over here before long and it wasn’t good for morale and he decided with Field Marshall Alanbrooke that these Young Soldiers Battalion should be formed and there was seven Young Soldiers Battalion formed, they received, were treated as men and got men’s pay and it should’ve been eighteen but the majority of us were all under eighteen, I was fifteen years and eleven months when I went to Honington as ground defense troops
AM: And just tell me what RAF Honington was like when you arrived as an airfield, probably never having seen one in your life before
GSL: No, when we arrived there, when we arrived at first, there was a lot of wooden huts and then the other side of the airfield were brick buildings where the RAF were but we were in these wooden huts, hadn’t been in I think since the airfield had been built but that was where we were stationed and the first day we arrived there, we’re marching up the road and the sergeant major is marching us along and the air raid siren went off and up went the red flag and the red flag would meant that the, that the air raid was imminent and the yellow flag that went off you can [clapping] I didn’t want to go [unclear], anyhow and so the yellow flag went up and he said, we were all looking around apprehensively, and keep marching, he said, and we march on and then the red flag went up and the next minute, I think it was a German Dornier we found out, flew over us, firing machine guns at the hangars and that was our baptism.
AM: So, what you, do you know which RAF units were based at Honington at that?
GSL: Yes, the main squadron there was number 9 Squadron which I understand at that time was one of the most experienced in the RAF, so we were told and then about ten months later the Czechs arrived and they were called the 311 Squadron but they were at a satellite airfield about five miles away from Honington and they were there in tents because there was no accommodation for them and they weren’t very happy about what went on there, in fact at one time there was nearly a mutiny and I think it was the prime, the minister in exile came down, I think he was Benes or somebody was called, he came down and spoke to them all and then they started as a squadron, an operational squadron but things were so bad that on their first raid they lost five aircraft and one aircraft actually landed in France and they never had time to destroy it and they ran away from the aircraft and were taken in by French resistance I think but the Nazis used that aircraft again, so we were told, so things got so bad that even when they were coming in to land or take off, there were crashes so in the end they were taken off operations and a chap who was my hero, Flight Lieutenant Pickard, was, took over the training of this particular squadron, along with the squadron leader whose name I can’t quite remember at the moment but I can get it, and between the two of them they took over the training of them but even in training there were some fatalities, crash landings and things like that, and then I think after about six months it was decided that they were ready then to go back on operations so they used to have to fly their planes from the satellite airfield, the name I’ve forgotten but it is somewhere in my records, and they would fly their plane to Honington, be bombed up et cetera and take off from Honington on the operation, land back at Honington and they’d have to fly the plane after debriefing back to the satellite airfield.
AM: And what airplanes were they operating?
GSL: Wellingtons, all Wellingtons
AM: Right, were 9 Squadron operating Wellingtons as well?
GSL: They were operating Wellingtons and Honington I understand, I can’t verify this, were the first squadron to not drop bombs, they went over and dropped leaflets over Germany and I think they were one of the first squadrons to do that but they all got back safely
AM: I better make a declaration of interest here, I’m an ex member of 9 Squadron and that story is absolutely true [laughs], right, ok, so there were two Wellington squadrons
GSL: Yes
AM: Based at Honington and your job was to act as a guard force
GSL: Yeah, we actually were the ground defense troops for the airfield and then we used to do two hours on and four hours off at this dispersal base, so we would guard the plane at night and during the day when they weren’t on operations and we got to know the crews of our particular plane very, very well indeed and all the time Flight Lieutenant Pickard would come round with the Czechs and the Czechs, the only thing most of them could say was wiz-o and they’d pat you on the back and say wiz-o, wiz-o and one of them who could speak English I remember he came up to me, patted me on the back, nearly knocked me over and said, why aren’t you at school? What are you doing here walking about with a rifle? They couldn’t understand these boys were guarding them. But one thing that did come across with them that the difficulty with the training of them, according to Flight Lieutenant Pickard was they would go in so low to bomb a machine gun such was their hatred of what the Germans had done to their country and so some of the planes would come back with bits flapping off them, some they couldn’t get the wheels down, so we experienced many, many crashes and things like that and the smell of burning flesh, I always remember that to this day would hang over the airfield.
AM: So, just tell me if you can, George, what the dispersal site where the aircraft was parked was like
GSL: Well, it was say a big cops of trees and in a horseshoe method, the whole tree in a horseshoe [unclear] would be cut out and the plane would be backed by a little tractor and then it was over to us, the army, to guard it during the night and then when they were ready, sometimes they would come during the day and the plane would go up, sometimes practice but sometimes it would go over the sea and fire the machine guns and then it would come back in and be put back in the bay and then the people would come up and bomb it up ready for night and at night, even if we’d off duty, we would go down and watch the plane one after the other going on the runway and up the flare path and there used to be a caravan towards the end of the flight path and a green light would go on and the plane would go, lumber off and get up in the sky and circle till they formed up and then off it would go and even if we were off duty sometimes we’d go down to the dispersal bay along with the fitters and people like that and they had a bit of a heart there and played darts and then one of them would say, it’s time for, and they’d name the plane to come back and we would go outside and these men were so good at engines they’d stand there and then one would look at the other and they’d say, she’s in trouble, and [unclear] the plane would be appear and [unclear] flying on one engine and then it would land, swivel about but finally come to rest and then the fire engine and the ambulance would go out to it and then I remember once they lifted the navigator out and his uniform, always remember that, soaked, absolutely soaked in blood, lifted him carefully out and the medical officer would come out, perhaps give him an injection I don’t know what it was, they’d put him in an ambulance and off he would go, then they would go round to perhaps the rear turret and I remember vividly this night, and put it round so they could get to the turret from inside the plane and they’d yank out the rear gunner and on this particular occasion he was dead and he went into another van thing and away it went but this wasn’t isolated, as the thing sort of hopped up, so it became a little more frequent. And then after the leaflets were dropped, then they went into bombing and at Honington they had underground network where when the train arrived with all the bombs, they would shunt the whole plane with bombs on it back into this tunnel and if the air raid came, obviously the Germans who I understand had visited Martlesham Heath Air Force and Honington before the war and must have known about this, they used to aim and try to get this underground place where all the bombs were stored and so sometimes if we weren’t on guard at the planes we’d be on guard at the bombing place, where they bombed up and things like that and they used to give us a bit of chalk and we would write obscenities about Hitler on the bombs before they went off to the plane, but so we got to know the aircrew very well indeed and when there was a raid gonna be on, then sometimes these young fellows would come down all kitted out, ready to get in the plane and we’d kick a ball about or they would say lend us your rifle, and they’d take our rifle and as their mates going down, they would jump out of the trees, point their rifle at them and say, halt? Who goes there? You know, laughing and things like that. And the things they did, superstition, one fellow I remember him, he was, I think he was an air gunner and his name was Ginger [unclear] and he used to come round and say, I’m bursting to urinate and he had to go round the plane to the off wheel and urinate over the wheel and he did this every time before he got on the plane, others would come down and they’d give you a book or something that they were reading and say, hang on to that, I’ll get it when I come back and this was them thing, well, I’m coming back and things like that and when they didn’t come back, if we called it our plane and when it didn’t come back I really and truly there was much sorrow round about the place, all these young blokes that we’ve been kicking the ball about with before they took off weren’t coming back anymore but I should say 9 Squadron didn’t loose an awful lot of planes and sometimes planes would come in because sometimes land weren’t at Honington but that’s where they used to come in to land and when they came in, they nearly almost crash landed. So and then, sometimes when they were going away and they’d handed you something, sometimes they would hand you a letter and tell you that a certain girl they were gonna meet at the dance hall in Bury St Edmunds, describe her and they would say, hey, if I’m a little bit late getting back here will you see that [unclear], she’s got red hair and sounds so and so and her name is Maisie or something and so only once did I have to try and find this young lady to give her this letter because he didn’t come back. So you got to know the aircrew very well so when it was foggy and they couldn’t go on a bombing raid, we all used to go down to the Bell and we used to say, there was the men that flew it, there was the men that crewed it and looked after it and there was the ass that guarded it and they would say, come on, drink up and about a pint of beer was my wack in those days and you would be sitting there with all this beer, come on young fellow, my lad, they used to look upon us I think as mascots, all these boys guarding them, men that were going out on a arduous duty like that and we were supposed to be guarding them, these bits of boys. So, and then the, station, I’ve forgotten his name but he’s in writing somewhere, you might to able to get hold of it, the station commander there was an ex flier and nearly every night he used to come down when a raid was on and stand there watching them taking off and things like that and sometimes the padre would come down and he would stand there too and give us all the blessing before the plane took off but they had all [unclear] another one that I got to know very well, I’ve forgotten his, his nickname was Taggy, and he had his girlfriend’s stocking tied round his neck, this was his mascot, and another one had one of those little yellow chickens, fluffy chickens they used to get on Easter eggs and he would have that as his mascot, and he’d be, I’ve lost my chicken and they’d try and say, come on and get, for God’s sake get in or something,up the little ladder to get in and he would insist on, we all had to go and look for this yellow fluffy chicken thing and then about six weeks after that he didn’t come back, the plane didn’t come back and about six weeks after that I was in the guard room and one of the lads came in, he said, look what I found out there, he said, chickens, he said, this is not gonna last an egg, and I looked at it and said, do you mind if I have that? And it was his chicken, that, this fluffy thing that he’d as a mascot and I had that up to about four years ago and I don’t know what happened to it. So there were thing but you had a terrific, you know, we were Army, they were RAF but you had a terrific camaraderie with them and when we came down sometimes, I’ve seen them, one of them going into the wood at the side of the plane and be violently sick and then come back and clamber in the plane and then they were all jostling and joking and pushing each other about but one of them, what the heck was his name, Tommy something, and he was nineteen and he was the pilot and the oldest aircrew ever I knew was only, he was only thirty-one, he was an air gunner and he was, they used to call him the old man, help the old man, you know, been kitted on, they were trying to help him up this little ladder to get him in, cause he was the old man at thirty-one.
AM: So [clears throat], how long did you serve at Honington in total?
GSL: I was at Honington for about twelve months and then was
AM: Right, so what, what did you, what kind of?
GSL: Arrived in July 1940, and we left in the November ’46, we were relieved by the King’s Royal Rifle Regiment
AM: So, November ’41 you left
GSL: Yeah, ‘40
AM: No, November ‘40
GSL: Yeah, were only there a year
AM: Right, ok
GSL: And then I went to Martlesham
AM: Let me just, kind, I don’t, when did you arrive, in 19?
GSL: July 1940
AM: July 1940?
GSL: Yeah
AM: And you left when?
GSL: We left in November 1940
AM: Right
GSL: We were there about a year
AM: Right, ok.
GSL: But, and on top of that, sometimes when they came back, they clambered out the plane with all it to go and get debriefed a little van would turn up with a WAAF driving and everyone had to kiss her, this was part about the thing as well that they were back or something like that, when [unclear] climbed out, hey, come on, where’s my book? You shouldn’t be reading that! And I looked at the title and it was Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I handed him the book back and but not just me, the others things like that went on as well, but they really were, well, I would only call them, I was only sixteen then but they were inspiring people when you saw them going off but all these different things had to do, urinating against the wheel or go around and touch certain parts of it, all this went on and but and then when sometimes when they came back, they’d say, it’s your lucky day, here’s my chocolate, cause they got a bar of chocolate and an apple or a banana or something, not a banana, an apple and they’d give me their rations and they’d say, ohm I couldn’t eat that, you know and I would say walking round, then I got to know Flight Lieutenant Pickard very well and I was always telling him about and he used to say to me, you know more about the bloody Wellington than I do and I used to say, yes, I want a transfer to the RAF, can you help me to do so? And he said, oh well, I don’t know, you can’t do that, now leave it with me or something and then I’d throw sticks for Ming and then he’d say to me,
AM: You got to explain, who’s Ming?
GSL: The dog, this big, old English sheep dog, there’s photographs of him with that as well and look after Ming for a minute, so I’d hold him by the collar, held his head off as he walked away, I’ve got to go to a meeting with the boss, he said and he doesn’t like Ming cluttering along in the room or whatever it was, so finally one day he said, yeah, ok, I’ll give you a flight up but I want it in writing from your commanding officer that he’s allowing you to do so. So I went to my commanding officer, company commander and he said, a flight in a Wellington? I said, yes, Flight Lieutenant Pickard here’s his extension number, if there is any problem you’ve gotta ring that, so anyhow I had to be at the, it’s all in there, I gotta book for you there, magazine and I went there at half past one and he turned up with a Czech crew and they were going up on some sort of flight, so I arrived and they kitted me out, parachute good as well now, and all the Czechs could keep patting me on the back, wiz-o, wiz-o, wiz-o, they kept saying, then we climbed in the plane, he was the pilot and the co-pilot with him, and I laid on that little bunk thing, and then I sat where the navigator sat, and all that, then I climbed through, and they put me in the rear gunners turret, and then we took off and that was in those days, 1940, it was like a trip to the moon. And we took, we flew off, you could look down, I’ve described it all in the article in the magazine, then we went over the sea and then, I was at the back at this time, navigator, was standing by the navigator and one of them came through, he goes, and took me through and sat in the co-pilot’s seat, and Pickard sitting there, still the hat at the back of his head and [unclear] and we went over, took across the shore and the co-pilot was standing behind me, no guns today, no guns, so when got down, sometimes these trigger happy anti-aircraft gunners used to fire at them so anyway we went over sea then I heard the rattling of guns and this was him testing the machine guns or something and then we turned round and flew back and the next thing I saw Pickard was out of the pilot’s seat and this, the Czech chap was in. Then we came back and landed in these, we’re going down occasionally taping like this and going like this or whatever I can’t you know control and it went in the flare path, touched down and that was us and then I got out and again they gave me bars of chocolate and [unclear] well I was the talk of the company, I was a hero, I’ve been up in a Wellington
AM: Wonderful experience
GSL: Yeah, it was, really, it was, but then after that, I went to apply for a transfer and the company commander said to me, I know your real age, he said, you’re only now coming up for seventeen, if I sanctioned you from here to the RAF, he said, my head would be on the block knowing that you’re not even aged to be in the army, he said, wait you live, wait till you’re eighteen. So I told Pickard this, he said, oh well, you know where I am or something, keep in touch and I used to watch as he got his promotions and where he went, the next thing I knew he’d taken over a new Mosquito squadron or something and then the next thing I heard that they went on this raid and after he’d dropped his bomb or whatever it was and knocked the wall down, he circled and was directing the others in and he got jumped and was shot down and killed and he’s buried in near that place wherever it was
AM: I think it’s Amiens
GSL: Is that where it was?
AM: I think so.
GSL: Yeah, and they made a film and I used to say to my then [unclear] oh, I knew him well, I used to throw sticks for his dog, oh yes, and pigs might fly or something, you know but I did keep in, I’d send him occasional Christmas card but he was so busy, you know then, I think he got to group captain rank I’m not sure. But I know when we left there was a great feeling of sorrow among us, you know, and I think we livened up the place with the [unclear] to get up to, that I mean, one Dornier that was shot down and we were mounting guard over or something the dead, the pilot had been shot through the head, he’s, the German pilot, he’s still in the plane and we had to guard it to make sure no one came up and took bits away for souvenirs, so yeah, and then Sam Costa, the great Sam Costa, he was there, there was a raid on one day and him and I were sitting at the same table
AM: And what was he doing there?
GSL: He was in the [unclear], he was a leading aircraftsman, him and Denny Dennis
AM: Right
GSL: Britain’s Bing Crosby and we’re under the table the raid came on, and kippers, I don’t know where they came from [unclear] and well, he said, I don’t think we’ve been introduced, a bomb, a raid going on, he said I’m Sam Costa, I said, I thought I knew your face, he reached up, got the kippers, and we’re eating the gats in my magazine, the full thing, eating these kippers and then the raid was over and we went outside, we’re standing talking and right beside the doorway was an unexploded bomb, so we all took off running in all directions and he was on there on the show one day and I said to my late wife, I had tea with him, she said, another one of your stories? So, in the end, I wrote to him and I got a photograph back which group captain Tate’s now got and in his own writing on the back, dear George, you are so right about Honington and the kippers as well. And I thought, well, it’s no use lying of in the attic and I gave group captain Tate that as well.
AM: Right
GSL: So, he’s got all that
AM: So, tell me a little bit more about the catering you were off duty in the Honington area [unclear]
GSL: Well, in Honington you couldn’t go far because there was still the threat of a German invasion so we had to, you couldn’t go far at all, only in the evening you’d go out and we’d go into the village and sometimes in there you might find some of the aircrew playing darts or things like that, young blokes and we all mingled together in the village we’d put on in a room or something they make it up, make tea and cakes for us, the women would sit there and darn your socks or stuff like that, and then on a weekend we got into Bury St Edmunds and there’d be a dance there at the Corn exchange I think you call it, so all the Czechs and people like that would be there as well, it was right mingling of these army boys, that’s all we were, there were some men, they were on Middlesex Regiment, on these guns, and one of those actually shot a Dornier down,
AM: Gosh!
GSL: Yeah, with a Lewis gun
AM: So, when you left Honington after a year, where did you go to [unclear]?
GSL: At Martlesham Heath
AM: Right
GSL: And they were all fighters there
AM: So, why were you transferred? Was it just a unit move or?
GSL: Well, it was a unit move but I think the authorities, you know, thought that as boys we were getting far too hero worshipping these people, it might do more harm than good and those, I mean, there was things went on like staff they shouldn’t have been taking out of the camp, you know, staff that, you know, they got hold of by unfair means, and we’re on guard supposed to stop all this
AM: Do you mean, black market stuff?
GSL: Yeah, and
AM: Sorry
GSL: But because we knew them so well, we would say, yeah
AM: This is the aircrew doing the black market this or?
GSL: No, sometimes some of the cookhouse people as well, you know
AM: Right, so groundcrew mainly
GSL: Yeah, there was all sorts going on but
AM: And what sort of contraband was been treated here?
GSL: Sometimes petrol, they’d take a couple of gallons of petrol or something?
AM: Right
GSL: Things like that or yeah, but not a lot of that went on you know they, I think they lived for the day, when they went off sometimes one might have a small car and you’d be on guard at the gate, the main gate, before the RAF regiment was formed, that was us, and you’d be beyond the main gate and this little car would come along about twelve of them in it, so hanging on it and everything, hey, hey, cheerio George! And all this and off they’d go and then they’d come back at night, worse for wear with the booze, you know
AM: So you went from
GSL: Honington to Martlesham Heath
AM: Right
GSL: And at Martlesham Heath we’re guard duty again
AM: Right
GSL: But by this time, we’ve taken over from, also taken over from the RAF police
AM: Great
GSL: You had an armband on and instead of your rifle they gave us a revolver and you show you’re on the main gates
AM: Right
GSL: And things like that but and it was where, when we were there, that the RAF Regiment was formed. They transferred some of our sergeants into the RAF Regiment
AM: Right
GSL: And then, after that off we went to Felixstowe as a battalion and gradually they disbanded the 70th Young Soldiers and put us out to other units.
AM: Right. So, what did you do for the rest of the war?
GSL: Rest of the war I was in the, finished up in the war in, what is known as the special service Combined Operations Bombardment unit
AM: Right
GSL: This was Mountbatten’s idea. What it used to be, there used to be an artillery captain, a NCO army sergeant and three naval telegraphists and that was the unit, number 4 unit I was in. Now, when the invasion took place, in Sicily, Italy and France, no heavy artillery was ashore and they were finding that these tank regiments, the German tank could come and knock hell out of the invasion, so what happened? Some of us would go in by air, these units but we were attached to a warship, so we went ashore in advance of the troops that were invading and a brigadier or somebody would come up and say, you bombardment unit chaps and our captain would say yes, and he’d say, right, over there, we’ve had information that a Tiger tank unit is forming up, can you knock hell out of them? Now the captain, through the telegraphist, they would sent back to the warship we were attached to the war spy and they would send back to that and on board the ship was an artillery captain as well and between him and the gunnery officer and we were called forward observation bombardment, our captain ashore, if he got killed, I would have to take over his duties, and then the first shot would be fired, a ton shell would come over and say it landed about quarter of a mile to the left of the target, he would have to correct that, another one would come over and perhaps that would straddle target and the next one would come over and land on it and then the war spy would do a broadside bombardment, you never heard a noise like that and when all the smoke and that had lifted there was nothing there but these huge craters and that was a special training we had to have for that, so some went in with the airborne unit, some went in with the sea units, but we had to have special training for the artillery side of it and then as an infantry man as well, as well as artillery I got an extra 2 and six a day I think. I had to make sure that the, you know, while he was doing all this, that it wouldn’t be because the Germans were keen to get hold of us cause they knew it was us [unclear] the RAF would come in and spot a plane, they were being shot down and they couldn’t give the precise area as well as what we could on the ground, so after they’d gone in out of range of the warships, out of range altogether and heavy artillery got ashore, we were then sent back to rejoin certain units.
AM: Right
GSL: And then, when the, the war was just about half over, in Germany, the Rhine, we got called back home to do airborne training for the invasion of Japan. So we went to India and joined the 44th Indian Airborne Division and luckily for us they dropped the atomic bomb
AM: Right
GSL: Or us and the American 101st Airborne Division were gonna be the first one to be in and [unclear] the Japanese there wouldn’t be many of us left on for sure. So that was my, but of all my service, the way I contributed to most I almost think was at Honington. Yeah
AM: So, how did you feel for you, did you leave Honington by coach or by train or did you march out? How did you feel when you left?
GSL: We left Honington, we went by three ton pickup truck to Martlesham.
AM: Right
GSL: And a lot of the RAF were out, you know, cheering and things like that. And when the, by that time of course, just after that, the Americans moved in and took over and put down concrete runways and God knows what else. But this, I’ll just get
AM: Have you ever been back to Honington since?
GSL: No, when David Tate was here, I did say, not quite, not intended anything, I’d say, oh yes, I’d really would love to go back because he said a lot of the things haven’t changed and he sent us an email that he’d been in the mess where I’d been with Sam Costa and he says, I looked round and saw the same tables and that, nothing’s changed and he said, I just looked and my mind wandered to when you and Sam Costa were having your tea during an air raid. And I did, while he was here, I did say, yes, I would like to go back and see but he didn’t say anything. If he’d said, yes, I’d like to go, I, yeah, you must come, I’d have gone. But most of my time over that period I had a great liaison with Flight Lieutenant Matheson who even gave me a big painting I’ve got upstairs and sent me this nice glass drinking mug, they only made fifty of them or something, and on top of that, he said, well, if your book’s ready for publication, bring all the books down to Honington and we’ll set up a stall and you can sell them here but no, by that time I’ve got it in the attic, gathering cobwebs.
AM: So just tell me what happened to you after the war
GSL: After the war, well, during the war here I was at Troon, up at Dundonald Camp we were training invading the isle of Arran and everything to invade Japanese islands and things like that and I met my late wife, met her, engaged and married in nine weeks and off I went to India. Well, because I’d done a bunk from the college, my education was sadly lacking because I’d done a bunk and ahead was some of the best education that you could get at these colleges, and by this time I married and war was over and I was in India waiting demob and I thought what am I gonna do now? And then my commanding officer said, you sign up for three years, I’ll get you to the Quetta, which was the Indian Sandhurst and I’ll get you, you’ll get a commission, by then I was a sergeant and he said, but you’ll have to sign up for three years and you might not get home for at least for another two years, so I’d just been married and I said, no, I won’t do it, so when I, while I was out there they were looking for police, the police were sadly depleted, so I sat the exam for Essex Constabulary and when I got demobbed, all I had to do was to go and get the medical, that made me a policeman. But the night I came home, my wife was at farming stock, her two brothers who ran the farm had a car accident, real car accident, bad accident, so I couldn’t take her away to Essex, so I had to let it go by, so I joined the police at Ayr and then while I was at Ayr, I then went to transfer to Kilmarnock and then I thought, I studied English law, because promotion in England was quicker and I went down to England to various forces there and rose from police constable up here in Ayr to assistant chief constable and then, after that, I was promoted up here to chief of police of the British Transport Police and that’s where I did thirty-six years, then I came out and did voluntary work at the Children’s Panel, chairman of advisory committee for Children’s Panel and that’s me here, still here. So, I’m now ninety-four years of age and I’ve been very lucky health wise and that was me and now I’ve been married for the second time to a lovely, really lovely lady and that’s it.
AM: Well, that’s more than it
GSL: Couple of years ago, I got a phone call to say they wanted to make me a something of,
AM: Legion d’honneur?
GSL: Knight of honor or something
AM: Legion d’honneur?
GSL: Yeah, of and I thought, I said, no, I don’t want anything to do with that, I got six medals from my own army, that’s it, enough for me, and I got a police medal as well, and I don’t want any more medals at seventy odd years ago and Margaret said, look, if you don’t go, I’m going. So finally, I went and they gave me this medal, I don’t know if you’d seen one, I got that, and that’s it. So me, I don’t, I was asked here to join the British Legion, I said, I’m sorry I don’t believe it, on D-Day I like to go to church, quietly in church and sit there, say a few prayers and meditate cause I lost a lot of good pals, I was on the D-Day landings, I landed five minutes after midnight on D-Day and saw a lot of [unclear], lost a lot of good pals, and then three weeks after that this side of Bayeux I was wounded in the leg and came home and with being young I suppose and fit I was ok again within about a fortnight, I thought of going back to my unit, and I didn’t, I went to Ringway, Manchester as an instructor, and I was desperately trying to get back to my unit and one day the sergeant major came in who didn’t like for some reason, why have you got two names, he said? Only officers have two names. I should call you Leach. So he came in, ah, Leach, you’re getting your transferred [unclear] I thought how wonderful and what happened? I was posted to India. Then I came home from India and that and went into the police, never regretted it, did thirty six years, which I enjoyed and then, when things were getting very political I could’ve gone on it that rank, I could’ve gone on to 65 and I said, no thank you, it was getting very political, I thought it was time I was out of here, thirty-six years is enough, by that time I was in my late fifties, so I came out. But I always look back vividly to my days at Honington with those aircrew, always. All these young men, they were there one day, gone the next and there was a WAAF sergeant and a senior NCO in the RAF that they used to go round when they never returned, put all their belongings in a bag or something, and a new lot moved in, you know.
AM: When a crew was lost
GSL: Yeah. So
AM: That must be a great upsetting
GSL: For them I should think yeah, very, but they used to say, when some of them climbed down out of the plane they would say, can’t stop, I’ll see you tonight or something, my bacon and eggs awaits me, they got bacon and eggs when they got back or something but sometimes we had, their first raid on Berlin, we all had to go to the briefing room on guard outside and anyhow after they’d gone they had a map up, there was a place where you could look through a crack, and a blackout with a big red tape, and they put this tape from Honington up to where it gotta go and then the weather officer, he would come and tell them all about what the weather was to be like, they’re all righting away and things like that and then finally the station commander, he would come up and tell them and the operations, there were these four important men before they went on a raid and then they’d come and they’d say, where’s’ the ball? And start kicking this ball about again
AM: How many times did you sneak to watch this briefing process?
GSL: Oh well, I shouldn’t be telling you that
AM: No, I’d like you to
GSL: Well, about six or seven times
AM: That must have been fascinating
GSL: Yeah, we had a place where there was a crack that very few of us knew about, but we were there on guard, even the RAF weren’t allowed in there
AM: Right, so this
GSL: And this day, this, I always remember, we had a bloke with us called Nobby Byer, a Londoner, was reputed he was only fourteen when he joined up and said he was eighteen, and he stole a pair of long trousers off a line to put on because he’d only got shorts and he was a so and so and there’s bits in there in your magazine you’ll read, anyhow he was on guard and this RAF officer came up and Nobby said, you can’t go in there, and he said, what do you mean, I can’t go in there? I’ve got the weather reports or so, you can’t go in there or something, I’m going in there, Nobby turned around with his rifle, you don’t you go trying going in there and in the end they chap with all these pipes, hammered on the door or something and they opened up, in, yeah, oh yes.
AM: Well, George Smith-Leach, to give you your proper name, or I should say, British Transport chief constable George Smith-Leach, thank you very much.
GSL: Right
AM: That’s a pleasure, I really enjoyed that, George, thank you
GSL: It’s an honor
AM: No, a pleasure
GSL: An honor
AM: [laughs], right, well, that’s gone alright I think
GSL: Well, that’s the first time I’ve spoken like that, I’ve told Margaret bits
AM: Yeah
GSL: Not even my first wife but to her I’ve told her bits like this
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 George Patrick Smith-Leach
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Alistair Montgomery
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
2018-06-08
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
ASmithLeachGP180608, PSmithLeachGP1801
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:47:28 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
British Army
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Bury St. Edmunds
England--Felixstowe
India
Japan
Description
An account of the resource
George was born in Chelmsford, Essex. He then moved to Clacton-on-Sea where he went to school before going to a seminary catholic college. When war broke out, he and two other boys aged 15 or 16 ran away from college and went to Ipswich to join the army. George arrived at RAF Honington in July 1940 and stayed there about a year. Bombs were stored in an underground network. After training he joined A Company 70th Battalion for airfield defence, guarding 9 Squadron aircraft at night. 311 Squadron, flying Wellingtons, were later living in tents about five miles from the station. The squadron lost a few aircraft and underwent further training. George recalled the station commander and padre watching the aircraft take off.
George remembered an occasion when aircraft had come back damaged with a badly injured crew. He said the aircrews would touch part of the aircraft for luck before flying. He thought crews were inspiring and would have liked to be transferred to the Royal Air Force. The crew gave him the opportunity to have a flight in a Wellington, which he described. At weekends they would occasionally all go to Bury St Edmunds to a dance. After RAF Honington the unit was transferred to RAF Martlesham Heath on guard duty. They then went to Felixstowe as a battalion. After special training the unit joined the Combined Operations Bombardment Unit 4 which was attached to a warship. Next they did airborne training to go to India and Japan. He was demobbed in India, married and then became a policeman at Ayre. Finally he became Chief of Police for British Transport Police.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
311 Squadron
9 Squadron
bombing
military living conditions
RAF Honington
RAF Martlesham Heath
superstition
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1102/11561/ARogersH150409.1.mp3
dbd0ef512560ca7e34fc539235de3d90
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
Rogers, Hugh
H Rogers
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Hugh Rogers (Royal Air Force). He was a film cameraman with 463 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
2015-04-09
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.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
Rogers, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Andrew Panton. The interviewee is Hugh Rogers. Mr. Rogers was one of the film cameramen on board a specially modified Lancaster from 463 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force that filmed the sinking of the Tirpitz on November the 12th 1944. The interview is taking place at [file missing], Bristol on the 9th of April 2015.
HR: I recall two memorable days seventy years ago, the eleventh and the twelfth of November 1944. On the morning of the eleventh I was instructed to report to headquarters at Bomber Command at High Wycombe. That surprised me because people like me didn’t go to the headquarters at Bomber Command and also I’d only recently been posted to the film production unit which I now served. In the event two cameramen reported at headquarters, the first Flight Lieutenant Loftus as a Canadian Airforce and secondly myself Flying Officer Rogers RAF of the film unit. We were briefed standing at a small, very small table in a very large room. We were both members of the number one film production unit RAF at that time. We were told at this briefing that we were to bomb the giant German battleship Tirpitz moored in the Arctic and that we were to join the main force of Lancasters at the RAF base in Lossiemouth, Scotland. We were briefed on the very precise route to be taken to reach the Arctic base of the Tirpitz. It was explained to us that following the bombing, the main force would fly west and return to Scotland. The camera Lancaster, which we should be flying, would fly south and return directly to Waddington. So the film could be transported to London by road, processed and as soon as possible, the pictures distributed. The propaganda value was important to the Allies and it was thought would be devastating to the German population morale. Late on the ninth or the eleventh, our Australian pilot, Flight Lieutenant Buckham completed the first part of the operation, flying Lancaster HD399 to RAF Lossiemouth, which is near Inverness, Scotland. HD399 was a Lancaster of the Australian Squadron 463 manned by an all-Australian crew and [unclear] us two cameramen. The aircraft had been modified for our special requirement, the first turret had, the front turret had the guns removed which were replaced with a mounted IMO 200-foot camera. In the fuselage area the mid upper turret with guns had been removed and the fuselage repaired so that the two areas in the fuselage were then available for the second cameraman. The opened panel at the rear of the bomb bay gave a vertical sighting and the second sight on the door edge to the starboard side of the fuselage, the top half of which opened at the time of filming hence required an electrical heated inner suit, I learned that the temperature at my station was minus nineteen ten Centigrade and confirmed my view that I had drawn the short straw. To sustain our fifteen hour flight we did not have a Tallboy bomb loaded but there was a large red fuel tank fitted in the space above the bomb bay. It contained about eighty tons of fuel which I rested on during the flight, my abiding [unclear] memory of the short time in Lossiemouth was to, was being in a badly-lit barnlike room with Wing Commander Tait giving his last remarks to the nineteen pilots on 617 Squadron. We were all standing in the group around Tait, I was standing at the back, he emphasized the importance of the prescribed course which had been designed to avoid detection by the enemy. Over the North Sea the course was to be at fifteen hundred feet and this was to be maintained until the Norwegian coast was approached. So in the early hours of Sunday the eleventh of November, there was a shattering noise as the engine started up in preparation for the three [unclear] take off. The course was to be across, north-east across the North Sea. Round about seven o’clock in the morning we changed course directly east, when we approached the snow covered mountains of Norway. We had been flying at about eight, fifteen hundred feet across the North Sea but the height was then maintained to cover the mountains and we flew direct west into Sweden. Where we turned north so that we could follow the boundary between Norway and Sweden at an altitude which would not expose us to the German radar. We, once we had crossed the mountains, we then reduced the altitude to a reasonably low level. We then had to fly north all along the route between Norway and Sweden until we reached the assembly point at Lake Tornea Trask east of Narvik, some one hundred miles from Tromso. In those Northern latitudes the daylight comes late and I remember, as it got daylight, climbing over the central spire of the aircraft and going into the cockpit. Now, I was very impressed looking out of the cockpit but even at that early hour I could see the path that we were to take, all the lakes were covered by small, lenticular clouds, these saucer like clouds could have been used by the observer to mark his route north to Narvik, that was another of my abiding memories, when all the aircraft had reached the lake Tait fired vary lights at which point all the aircraft then assembled into a battle station and followed Tait on the route to Tromso. As all the aircraft were assembling into position over the lake, we had all gained height to twelve thousand feet, at this height we were able to cross the mountain into the fjord where the Tirpitz was moored. Now, as we crossed the mountain, we were some twenty miles from the Tirpitz, it was a mere small speck at that distance, and of course it was in reverse, we were small specks to the Tirpitz. Now, we know later that it caused consternation on the Tirpitz, not expecting us they suddenly realised that they should call for help and this they immediately did apparently, so I learned later but there was no response to their call, to the call for help from the Messerschmitts. Soon after we were spotted by the Tirpitz they assembled their gun positions and their enormous guns, fifteen inch guns which fired shells of one ton, took a few seconds to get to elevation but in that time they realised that we were too high for the big guns firing one ton shells could reach us but the shells were fall exploding ahead of us and slightly below us. Now in our film Lancaster they were close enough to cause some vibration and movement to the plane, now we had to hold the camera steady in spite of that movement, I think we achieved this, as we got closer to the Tirpitz the ack-ack, small ack-ack guns started and actually it got presumed, because of the panic on board the ship they were not too accurate. As the operation developed John Loftus, lucky chap, was in the front turret and he was able from the front turret to swing the turret round and track the first Tallboys being delivered, being dropped from the aircraft. I couldn’t see that but I was able then to go from the side position and film the first, first few bombs exploding around the ship. As I was working through that open space over the door, I could feel myself getting colder but I wasn’t distracted from what I was doing but I could see the ship being hit, I could see the steam and the smoke coming up and I could see especially I remember at the time it impressed me, that what had happened to the guns on the island when Tallboy landed on the island on the starboard side of the operation. After the last aircraft had gone, I remember walking up or crawling up to the cockpit and looking out of the cockpit and the pilot had dived to the starboard to the right and he was about five thousand feet at the time he’d finished and we could see all the smoke and steam and then he immediately turned on a course which we left because we were going back to Waddington and the rest of the force had gone west of Scotland, but much to our surprise, as we started our course to Waddington, the rear gunner shouted out to the skipper, that he could see the Tirpitz turning over so we turned, the skipper, the pilot turned the aircraft to the starboard so we could see but the pilot was on the other side, sitting on the other side, he couldn’t see it so in order to see it, he dipped the starboard wing and again lowered his altitude and we could see in the distance that by that time [unclear] the smoke and the steam seemed to have gone or there was a haze over the aircraft and you could see that it was upside down. Now, I can’t remember how quickly it was done but the pilot knew that as a squadron Messerschmitts we didn’t know the Germans had been informed by radar but it was time to get out so from that time on we kept on our course back to Waddington. So after that unforgettable operation we headed south across the seas, Norwegian sea, The North Sea and down to Waddington. After a flight of close on fifteen hours where we were met by General [unclear] who collected the film as soon as possible but he was taking it to London to be processed and that was on the Prime Minister, I believe on the Prime Minister’s instruction to get the film out developed as soon as possible for propaganda reasons and also he thought the Prime Minister expected it to devastate the morale of the German people because Hitler had always told them that the Tirpitz was unsinkable. And once again 617 Squadron and 9 Squadron had proved Hitler wrong.
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 Hugh Rogers
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Panton
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-09
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
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARogersH150409
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:13:45 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
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Hugh Rogers was a cameraman during the war and remembers filming the sinking of the Tirpitz in November 1944. Gives a vivid and detailed account of the operation, describing the briefing, the technical modifications to the aircraft and the unfolding of the events.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Norway
England--Lincolnshire
Norway--Tromsø
Scotland--Moray
Scotland--Lossiemouth
Norway--Narvik
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-11-12
463 Squadron
617 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
Lancaster
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Waddington
Tallboy
Tirpitz
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/253/18670/PFellowesD1501.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/253/18670/AFellowesD160830.1.mp3
dd47a976b8ab40995415cad343d49553
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
Fellowes, David
David Fellowes
Dave Fellowes
D Fellowes
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Two oral history interviews with Flight Sergeant David "Dave" Fellowes (Royal Air Force), documents and a photograph. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 460 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Fellowes 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
2014-11-25
2015-04-06
2016-08-08
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
Fellowes, D
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: Ok.
DF: Why did I join the Royal Air Force? Well, we’ve got to go back in time. As a young lad my interest, or one of my main interests was in fact aeroplanes, my father was an engineer and he and I used to build model aeroplanes and fly them in the local fields. So I had this interest in aeroplanes, later I got, I had a bicycle, and when I had a bicycle I was able to ride out to various airfields, places like Brooklands, White Waltham, Cobham and see aeroplanes take off and land and I used to be this happy, happy little boy, well later on as I grew older the ATC was formed and I thought to myself, this is for me, so I joined the Air Training Corps and whilst I was in the Air Training Corps I did pass the air crew certificate of training and when I was seventeen I nipped up to the recruiting office and volunteered for the Royal Air Force. After a very short space of time I was sent off to a centre where I was given various tests and I was passed out as on a PNB course, they said, go home, oh and they gave me a VR badge and a number and that was it, I went home until the time I got called up.
AP: Right, so, when you were called up, can you go through the next bit?
DF: After having been called up I had this railway warrant, to send me to London to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground or somewhere very similar, to ACRC that’s the Air Crew Receiving Centre which were in fact large blocks of flats in the St John Wood area and also of course quite adjacent to London Zoo and it was here that we first got kitted out into uniform and one of the things I can remember about this uniform being kitted out, we went to Lords and we got our greatcoats and we were all standing in a long line with our greatcoats on and a corporal with a yardstick came along the back to make sure that every greatcoat was the same, bottom of the greatcoat was the same distance from the ground, this caused a little bit of a laugh really among some of us but anyhow we did it and then from there of course whilst we were at ACRC so we did various tests, night vision tests, various medical little tests to make sure that we were fit for aircrew.
AP: How about the next bit when you went to Crewe Station, how you managed to get into the RR, RAAF, Australian side?
DF: After I had passed out I was on, first of all let me go back, I was posted to an ITW down in Newquay and it was here that we did all our basic ground training for pilot, navigator, bomb aimer training, things like meteorology, how an aeroplane flies, everything appertaining to the Royal Air Force and aircrew. We learnt the Morse code, but not very well I might say. After ITW you passed out, you were sent then to a grading school and I went to number 15 flying Tiger Moths up at Longtown and it was there that I passed out and I went to Heaton Park outside Manchester, it was winter time, it was a horrible place, it was full horrible corporals, and we did nothing, there was a hold up on convoys going across the Atlantic or down to South Africa and whilst I was there a notice went up on a board and said, you can be an air gunner in four weeks or something like that, and I thought, that’s for me, if I want to get into this war, that’s what I’ll do so I did. I went to the orderly room, remustered and then I got sent down to number one AGS and it was here that I passed out and after passing out, sent home on leave, there I was, a sprog sergeant air gunner and I had a posting then down to 30 OTU at Hixon in Staffordshire. One of the places where we had to change trains was Crewe, to go then, go into Stafford, put on the train and in tumbled three Australian flight sergeant pilots, we got talking as one would and I said to one, whereabouts do you come from in Australia? And he said Sydney. I said, oh, I said, that’s a bit of a coincidence, but I have an aunt and uncle in Sydney they went out after the First World War, they have a sport shop. So he said, well, whereabouts do you know? I said, yes, they live in the district called Marrickville and the road is called Illawarra Road. Mh, he said, this is good, he said, what’s the name of your aunt? So I said, Mrs. Ivy Evans. Mh, he said, you wouldn’t like this, he says, my mother’s a chapel friend. So we had something in common, so he said to me, would I fly with him? And I said, yes, no problem, so there we were in a 30 OTU at Hixon, I was in his crew, the first one, then we set about looking for somebody else, we picked up an Australian wireless operator, Jack Wilson. We also picked up our bomb aimer, he was a Scot, from Glasgow, he was an apprentice telephone engineer, he was a handy lad cause they had a method of back dialling so we got cheap telephone calls, which was pretty good and our navigator, we looked for a studious looking lad, he was, he had a blonde hair, bushy eyebrows and he was a damn good trombone player, which was something else that we had in the crew. Then we found another gunner, after OTU, well, OTU lasted in two sections, first of all there is ground school and daytime flying, you go on leave for a week, come back and then we did night flying and more ground school. We did get into a bit of trouble there, I don’t think we were the best behaved crew, I know the worst case was our wireless operator, we were sitting in the Wellington waiting to take off and he was fooling around with his radio and he managed to pick up Glenn Miller playing In the Mood and of course he put it through to all our crew stations so we could hear it but alas also the authorities picked it up and oh well, we was in trouble for that but we got over it. And then from there we were posted up to 1656 I think it was, Heavy Conversion Unit on Halifaxes and there we converted onto Halifaxes and then from Halifaxes the skipper was told he was going to go onto Lancasters, so we did a three day course, I think it was the same place, could have been Finningley on the Lanc finishing and it was there that our skipper said, you boys had you like to come to an Australian squadron? And we all said, oh yes, that’s a good idea, why not? And so we were fortunate and we got posted to 460 Squadron at Binbrook. Now this was good because Binbrook was a pre-war station and had married quarters, all lying empty because you weren’t allowed to have your wives or families with you, so each crew was allocated a married quarter and ours was number 13, well, we weren’t superstitious so we settled in, you got a coal and coke ration, you went to the mess for your meals and otherwise you were just left to your own desert. The normal procedure when one joined a squadron was in fact that first of all the crew would be allocated to a flight, in our case we went to B Flight, Bob Henderson was the Flight Commander, he was a very nice chap, he then sent us on a, a nav-ex I suppose you could call it, we went on a long training trip, when we came back, what normally happened would be the captain, your skipper would go with a qualified crew on his Op to see what it was all about, but that didn’t happen to us, the Station Commander was a gentleman by the name of Group Captain Hughie Edwards VC DSO DFC and quite a character, and he turned round and said, oh, take Whitmarsh and his crew on their first trip on block, well, he did, the trip in fact that day was to Freiburg, down in South West, yes, South West Germany and away we went, it was very good, he was very good, he just called us by our Christian names and away we went, and we got just past the bombline, this was in 1944, and we were passing over an American sector, apparently, when all of a sudden we got hit by flak from the Americans, well somehow in those days there wasn’t such a very good feeling between the Americans and the Australians and also it upset us Brits too at the time [laughs], anyhow he did talk about dropping a bomb on them, keep them quiet but he didn’t. On we went to Freiburg but were warned that of course when we got there, you’d most likely do his usual trick, go down and have a look to see how main force were getting on. This he did and then of course, after he’d done what he wanted to do, we climbed back up and flew home. And that was my first introduction to operations. On 460 Squadron after you had kind of settled down, proved that you were up to the work and up to the job and you’ve done about five or six ops, you were given your own aeroplane. In our case our aeroplane was O-Oboe. Now the crew that flew Oboe previously came to see us off and we took it over on our first op in Oboe, when we got out there of course one of the things we were introduced to was the ground staff of which there were four, there was an Australian sergeant, he had lovely black, curly hair, he looked more like an Australian gypsy than anything else but he was in charge of the aeroplane, we also had an armourer, engine fitters and airframe fitter, now those boys were always there before we took off, they were always there when we got back and we were part of the team. They used to call themselves the dayshift, we called ourselves if you like the nightshift and it worked very well and of course the sergeant we used to see in the mess, no problem at all but the others, airmen, we used to take out, oh, every ten days or so, we used to take them down to the village pub and have a few beers together, we were part of a team.
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 David Fellowes. Two
Description
An account of the resource
David Fellowes tells of how he used to build model airplanes and fly them in the fields when he was a boy. The son of an engineer, he first joined the Air Training Corps and then volunteered for the Royal Air Force at the age of 17. Describes his training at various stations and converting onto Halifaxes at 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit and then onto Lancasters. Remembers being posted to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook, from where he flew his first operation as an air gunner, when they were targeted by friendly fire on their way to Freiburg. Emphasizes the sense of comradeship arisen between the air crew and the ground crew.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Panton
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
2016-08-30
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
AFellowesD160830, PFellowesD1501
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cumbria
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Manchester
England--Staffordshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:13:55 audio recording
1656 HCU
30 OTU
460 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Binbrook
RAF Finningley
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Hixon
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1053/11431/AOttawayM161121.2.mp3
d38c11a1b8b0125239c232cec6f51ab0
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
Ottaway, Margaret
M Ottaway
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Margaret Ottaway MBE (b. 1933).
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
2016-11-21
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Ottaway, M
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AH: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Anna Hoyles. The interviewee is Margaret Ottaway. The interview is taking place at Ms. Ottaway’s house in Louth, Lincolnshire, on the 21st November 2016. Can you tell me a bit about your childhood?
MO: I can. My mother and father were married before the First World War and they both grew up in Grimsby, Cleethorpes area and my father was one of twelve, and very poor and my mother was one of three and I don’t know why they came to Louth but they came to Louth, well, before I was born and before my late brother was born. But I think there were seven children and I am the sixth of seven. They lost two little boys, one when he was three, I think it was, and the other was three months and of course in those days there was no family allowance or help and of course the standard of the food was very poor and especially in a dock town and so my parents had that to cope with and I don’t know how they coped with it really, they came to Louth and then there was my brother who was seven years older than me, my sister was ten years older than me and I had a brother who was five years older than me and then we had a little sister, Prue, I don’t know when, a long, long time ago now we found out that she was Down syndrome and you can look at the photograph and see she was and we came to live in Louth and they lived in several houses before we lived on the top of Grimsby Road and the A16 as it was and when I was a little girl was a semi-detached house and of course there was not the population and there wasn’t the traffic and there weren’t the dangers even though it was wartime, as a child, you know, and I was always, had this outgoing attitude, I must have had because I can remember going into nearly all the houses both sides of the road, my younger sister didn’t come with me very often but she did come to some of the houses and you know, when you are a child, if you have a community, you are very cherished and I’ve realised that obviously more as I got older cause I love children and I’ve always loved children but anyway, oh, I know my father was in the army although because of his health he actually was registered in the army for a very short time I have some information about that and my mother was, worked in the Toc H in Louth and there were three houses and my maternal grandma who lived in Cleethorpes and was killed with my mum eventually, she spent a lot of time in our house because there was always sowing jobs to do and she used to make dresses for us and all that sort of thing, so my mother didn’t work and we always had a cleaning lady, some lovely cleaning ladies and one is still alive now and we had a very happy childhood from what I can remember, I know my brother who was five years older than me, he was always aggravating me and my older brother that by that time he’d gone into the RAF and in 1941 he was in [unclear] down in Bedfordshire but they were always at me, like big brothers are but I think it’s been a really good training because then of course my father started with a, in the 1920s with one lorry which was solid tyres which of course I’m drawing off and I got a photograph of, that’s a thing I must say, it’s staggering, we all know when photography started, well, I don’t know the exact year, but you know, it’s all these photographs, they are so important, and it’s alright having things on gadgets like computers but they can be wiped off and the hard copies that I am about to show you, it’s amazing, anyway my father started with one lorry and by the time I was around, there were about thirty, which is a photograph over there, and so he had thirty drivers and his business yard at the time was down in what is now Church Street, opposite the bus station but it was called Maiden Road and it was, I can see it now, because as a child, you know, you did lots of exciting things, really, like children do today but a totally different scale. But we had, always had this cleaning lady, the one we had at the time, she had brothers and they either had a small holding across the road, at the top of Grimsby Road, or they were, her father was a farm worker, of course we had a big farm at the back of us, relatively big not like today, called Howard’s, Mr and Ms, Howard and then we had Fanthorpe Lane, which is still there, but it’s dissected by the bypass and I used to go down there to take Sunday papers to this family called [unclear] and this family is been established a long while and people have said to me, in some of the things I’ve done in my life, the stability of families in an area like this does contribute to the community spirit that people that are strangers say, there is, I know there’s a community spirit but they feel it when they come in, so I’m very lucky because I have all sorts of proof about what happened to me because I didn’t know what happened to me except that my godparents were from King’s Lynn and they used to come and stay, we only had three bedrooms and we had, you know, Len, Darcy, John, Margret and Mary and mum and dad, so where we all slept I don’t know, we also had an air raid shelter, cause my father having thirty lorries was a very wealthy man for the time and but the family had a phone call from my auntie in Grimsby to say they were coming over for tea on Sunday afternoon, because one of her brother-in-law’s got a gallon of petrol from the army, that was a fatal thing to do, I can tell you, so they came from Grimsby and there was my auntie Violet, my uncle Walt, Genie, who was five as far as I know, and my uncle’s brother and his wife, they came in this, in the car and parked outside and they stopped for tea, usually one of my sister’s best friends used to come up to the house to keep me, to see my mum as well and my elder brother’s girlfriend used to come, when, if there’s anything on the siren, to keep my mum company and with the children, you see, on this occasion, because they knew the Grimsby family was coming for tea, they didn’t come, so they were all getting ready to get back to Grimsby, according to my late brother, who was in the house and he was upstairs, we were, for whatever reason, downstairs, my sister, my cousin and myself, we’d been put to bed downstairs in the front room, obviously we couldn’t all get into the air raid shelter, but I had no proof of why we didn’t go in but I assume it’s because of too many and as soon as the siren went, my father got his uniform on as a special constable and together with another lady called Ivy Platt who was very, very deaf and who was, the Platt family were big friends with my father’s, even when I was a little girl of four, [unclear] the photograph there and I don’t know how long they’d been friends but I think Ms Platt’s husband probably got into some financial difficulties, he was a grocer in Louth just up the road from where we are now and my sister Dorothy was an air raid warden at seventeen so they went down into the town, they took Ivy to her mum’s, Ms Platt and then dad went on duty and my sister went on duty with the air raid wardens cause they had different areas that they did, I mean, I don’t know cause I never asked her you see, you don’t ask [unclear] and I have all the records and just exactly what the gentlemen wrote Mr [unclear] that roughly it gives the time, it’s the official document, give the time, two screaming bombs were dropped on Louth at the top, at Grimsby Road, we don’t know exactly where but later found out it had dropped on a house and people were killed and injured, we later found out, seven were injured, seven were killed in that incident, we later found out that it was A W Jaines, Arthur Jaines, a special constable, it landed at his house so he’s lost with his daughter who was an air raid warden, fellow air raid warden, they lost seven of their kin and the seventh one was actually the lady who was visiting her daughter next door. And all I can remember is being aware that I was under rubble, trapped in rubble and that’s all I was aware of, you know, then I heard a drill and then I remember very little about being actually rescued and then the next thing I remember is being in one of the either the Toc H houses or the red cross places and you know those little beakers they used to drink out of, with the little spouts, I’ve got an example upstairs. Well, I can remember being offered that and a seven year old, as I say, I must emphasize this, you weren’t like you are today, are today, and I remember the atmosphere in that place, and there was someone brought in on the stretcher, now I obviously don’t know and I’ve never investigated it if it would be one of our family because of course it’s not far from the top of Grimsby Road to the hospital and then, so I don’t know about that, I do know that my brother who died last year, John, who was thirteen, I do know that he went somehow, my father wasn’t allowed to go up to Grimsby Road, which he wanted to do, and obviously my sister would be with him, and they went to Ms Platt’s because Connie was a red cross nurse although she was only seventeen and she was engaged to a police officer and so their home became a sort of centre for my dad and my sister and they had one of those metal shelters under their table cause they lived behind the shop and the shop, you know, is packed with things and they have this metal table and my, Ivy was also under the table and I have a tape where my Ms Connie who became my step aunt, she recorded it with her son cause I kept saying to her, why don’t you write it down? Cause I think, because she was seventeen, and far more aware, she couldn’t face writing it down, so her son, who’s, I think he’s retired now, but he has two chairs at the university, I think one was Cardiff, and I’ve been meaning to speak to him about it really, but anyway, so I also remember, going to my, being taken, I don’t know who took me but to my uncle’s house on Brackenborough Road, just near the post office on Brackenborough because my, a lot of my cousins of my generation have all died and with my father being one of twelve, some of the family came here, four of them came to live here because my father was here, and the others stayed in Grimsby so we’ve like two families. And my cousin who died several years ago now, she often used to tease me, she said, when you came that night, she said, it was about midnight I think, and you got into my bed and it was just like sleeping in a bed where you’ve been eating biscuits, that’ll be of ruttle, wasn’t it? And she said, I remember when you went to the lavatory, it was all lino in those days, the grit fell out of your trousers and she used to tease me about that but I, the next day I went to live at [unclear], uhm, I don’t remember being taken there, I think I must have been in shock, you know, and I think I was traumatised and people have said different things but I went to live with this family called John and Ethel Clark and they had a daughter, Beryl, who was a bit older than me and a son called Jim who was a bit younger and the [unclear] school I went to it has a church and it has a big house and we were in the big house, her mum and dad lived there and John Clark’s younger brother Henry lived there and they had cows of course and gas man and the village at the time had a school, a church, and you used to have and walk up cause it was very deep in the Wolds you’d have to walk up, and there’s a museum out there now, with farm machinery and a smith’s family lived there and a railway line runs through there and I can remember, I never seem to be unhappy, I don’t remember being unhappy there, Jim used to tease us a bit but I those days they used to raise money for the prisoner of war parcels and there was a big barn of course and had garden [unclear] and things like that and we went to church [phone rings]
AH: I just switch off.
MO: We always used to walk up to catch the bus at the top cause there’s several [unclear] you know, they’re all the same but if you look at a map you will see from Louth you can go several ways up to the Bluestone Heath Road, which is one of the longest roads, from, you can go from the Lincoln Road right through to the, if you were going to Alford and Skegness and we used to stand at the top there and it was chalk, you know, and it was freezing cold and things like that and then we used to go and I was sent by Ms Clark, bless her little heart, she was a very, very old fashioned lady and it was one of the best things she could have done for me, because I went in the, what they called the kinder garden which, if you walked down Schoolhouse Lane, and facing you is Suffolk House and it says, I think it’s three or even four stories high and then there’s the cellar, and that was where I went to school and I never achieved anything in exams or anything like but I did use to, but it obviously affected me and my teacher, who was a, taught scriptures as we called it and she became the first major of Louth, she would, she’d died unfortunately, her partner, lady partner, she knew me as the major of Louth, but it was amazing really what influence that school has been and still is because I’m still involved with it now all these years on. Anyway, I had a really happy time there, I used to go on the back with the big carthorse and the, you know, the all sorts of different carts on, and we used to, I used to go with Henry, I don’t know how Henry would be now, must ask his son cause his son’s living in Louth now, and I used to go and take the food with him and I was with them from September about the 9th until after Christmas because my dad, of course there was no house left, and we went to, dad lived at Ms Platt’s I think, just along the road here, and my sister, and we were all scattered really, but I don’t ever remember anybody saying to me, I remember one day when I was in the car with Mr Clark, he always had lovely cars and Mrs Clark was very old fashioned really and he was a bit of a lad I’ll have to say [unclear] my dad could have been as well, as most dads are, although not yours of course, and I don’t know why but I just feel that he might have, I might have been with him when the funeral was on cause obviously I wasn’t involved in that and I never asked my brother whether he was but it’ll be, I’ve got the list of the funeral of mourners and everything so that’s another thing we can, I can look at, but about, be about I think three months and then we moved up into a house just opposite the catholic church, in Upgate, they are very big houses those, and because my father had all these workmen, he had one chap called Sid Day, and Sid could do anything, he was actually like the yardman for my dad and his wife, they lived down in Upgate, they’ve widened the road now, [unclear] flow, you go up, there’s no garden and you go up the side of the house and it was all, there was no car pits or anything and it was like a room, but it wasn’t a room, it was more like a big shed but it was within the house, you see, and then you’d go into the kitchen, and then there was a front room which we hardly ever used and she had a big family and there were three girls and four boys I think, and there was a grandma was always there, but they used to babysit me and I used to wander about, you know, a seven year old, I used to go with my dad, seven year old children in my day, you didn’t and if dad happened to be in the Masons Arms, I was allowed in but girls weren’t even allowed in pubs, children, you see, so I’ve had a very different life from any other child at that age and I think that’s why I’ve got so much confidence you see and the other thing is I’m an avid cook and baker, all normal, ordinary stuff, and I can make meringues, I can make lemon meringue but I’m not into this, all this fancy stuff and Mrs Platt had a big kitchen and we all met up in there, cause of course there was a range and it was behind the shop, behind where they weighed all the soutanes and you know, I had a wonderful childhood and lots of love and still do have love from those families, especially my stepfamily and my dad’s friends, you know, four generations on. And not many people can say that, but I do get on people’s noses and I think it’s, my attitude is that bloody Hitler didn’t get me and nobody else did and I had to be tough, I had to be tough, anyway I obviously went to school, I was at Kidgate school but I was very independent and I can remember my, the cousin that I slept with that first night, she had an older sister called Pam and we decided, I should think Pam decided and I was well for it before the bombing that we would cycle to Grimsby and see our granny who lived on [unclear] Road and so, we didn’t tell anybody, and I had a fairy cycle and she would have one a bit bigger and I can remember doing that as if it was yesterday and we stopped at a house for a drink of water as you do, when we arrived at granny Jane’s, she was a very different cup of tea from my other granny, granny Walt, who was killed, we got told off and she rang my dad and we put on the bus and sent back. Now my cousin that I stayed the night with, on the night of the bombing, she actually married a German prisoner of war, which of course upset my father and, but he was a lovely man, much better than the one that Pam married, but I was sent, as I say, to the girls grammar school when I was seven and I went through the school until I was sixteen but I don’t think I got any qualifications, I don’t remember getting any qualifications, and so I left at, well, of course, and years later none of my brothers really encompassed education. Fortunately they’ve had sensible mothers but my father by this time had married Ivy Platt who was a lovely, lovely stepmother, she didn’t have a lot of maternal things with her son but my father was going to be the major when Michael was eighteen months old and so I was, well, I was told that I, cause I loved him anyway, so I looked after Michael so I didn’t go to work and then when the [unclear] was over, I decided I was going to go on work, I decided, I really wanted to be a [unclear] nanny but my father wouldn’t pay, it wasn’t that he couldn’t pay but he wouldn’t pay and probably didn’t want me to go away cause I always have felt for many, many years that I thought my father was protecting me, see, in actual fact, I’ve realized I’m the one that supports everybody else, I’m the tough one. And because I was always with my father and he died when I was twenty four of cancer but he was a very kind man, he was beneficiary to this little hospital, Crowtree Lane hospital, and St Margret’s children home, children’s home and with a group of the business men of the town, you know, they all and of course the war effort, Louth was an amazing place for raising money, you know, and all the railings were cut down and there was concerts in the town hall and it was, you know, I think that’s why I am like I am because there was so many good influences around, had plenty of bad ones but I’m four and [unclear] [laughs] but it was, it was very hard because I wanted to get a job and I went to the international stalls and made an arrangement to see the manager and my father found out and, oh, he was crossed, he was furious, you are not going to work behind a shop counter! If only he knew the things I’ve done to earn money since he died [laughs]. Anyway, I got a job at the Louth district hospital and, as receptionist, and it was five pounds an hour for forty eight hours and we lived at the time back up Grimsby road in a different house and when Michael was born, we actually lived at the house which is called Mount St Mary’s at the bottom of Grimsby Road where you go over the river lodge and where the floods came down in the twenties and then in 2007 and it’s next to the old cemetery and we lived there and then my father’s insurance man didn’t tell the whole truth about licencing and my father had to go to the high court in London, cause I was not really aware of all this, and he was fined fifteen thousand pounds and so he had to sell the house where Michael was born and we went up to Grimsby Road, so but, you know, my father had a rough time and then in the nineteen late forties, early fifties, the Labour government nationalized all [unclear] so, you know, we had no choice, and it broke his heart, broke his heart it did, cause you know, it was his baby, he did actually start another business for a short time but it wasn’t long, he died when he was sixty two. So that takes me as far as me getting married. I don’t know whether I’m telling you what you want to know or if you want to see some of the photographs of the bombing.
AH: I do in a bit but if you carry on.
MO: Right. Well, my late husband was a watch repairer and he used to park his car near the mount near the [unclear] saw him on a regular basis, you see, and so we started to go out a bit cause in those days you weren’t, you didn’t walk in and say to your parents, oh well, so and so has invited me out so I am going, there’s none of that, and so we used to go very regularly to Grimsby to the cinema or Cleethorpes and then to the lovely hotel called Kingsway for afternoon tea and believe you me, if you ever get a young man like that, enjoy it, because if you get married to him, it’ll all stop [laughs] but he was a gentleman, oh, he really, really was, he was often late, he was very casual about his business and at that time he’d been in the RAF, it never occurred to me that he was a lot older than me, he was actually twenty years older than me and he lived with his mother, his widowed mother in Alford, but he also had through his uncle a huge interest, which he was aware of, when they went fishing in a boat up where Bempton Cliffs is, in that area, and he was taken by all the birds and his uncle was interested mildly but anyway he had been in the RAF conscripted, he could have stayed at home and looked after the shop that they had in his, when his father died, this was before I knew him and he decided he didn’t want to do the shop, he was never interested in being a jeweller in a watch repairer but he’d done the training, eight years he was training at Lincoln at Mannsell’s and I have a letter from his father telling him really to pull his finger out and anyway he, at that time he was friendly with people obviously in Alford and they were starting the Gibraltar Point Nature Reserve and he is one of the people that started it, Charles Lenton Ottaway and a lot of the memorabilia that they sent down there after my husband died of course was washed away in the floods, I’ve never been back but we got engaged down there and he was a gentleman of the top order, he really was and we had a lovely wedding and then, as I say, we were living with his mum, he had a sister who didn’t like me apparently, there’s a surprise but I was shocked the letters she wrote to me four years after my husband had died and I looked after her mum for twenty five years, not all the time, but you know, and she was in a nursing home for ten and died when she was ninety six. You get lots of things like that, you know, you do your best and then I think my sister in law never got over the loss of the father when she was eight, it was very bitter and I don’t, I know that when I was twenty two I remember when we had, we moved from here cause we needed another bedroom but kept the shop and I remember thinking, what sort of woman do I want to be? And I decided that I didn’t want to be one that was a bit of a like [unclear] floozy, I wanted to be a proper mother and wife and cook and do and the lady across the road that, her husband used to be a partner of Eve & Ranshaw’s she, I’d known her all my life cause my sister went there to work when she was fourteen I think and if the children were poorly, she would come across and or if she was poorly needed some shopping I would do it and that’s who really, that sort of person is what I wanted to be and I’m not a warrior and I’ve learned over the years that you have to accept some things that happen to you and you don’t have to respond to people unkind to you, you feel sorry for them, I have a huge faith, I am grateful that I married my husband because he brought intellect, no common sense, I’ve got the common sense and no, hadn’t done the intellect got a bit now with the years and a lovely community with my mum and dad and the families that have been so lovely to me and still are, so that’s on the school. The school, my faith, my husband and my family and community and those are the four things that have stood me in good stead really and I am still very motivated, you know, I like to know, [unclear] my finger on the pulse, I get muddled [laughs], I went to put the milk, [unclear] with the milk just this afternoon, I thought you silly woman, you know, you, I was just tiding up I think and I put it in the cupboard, that’s right, where I bought the new porridge to put it [laughs], yes, but the extraordinary thing about the bombs dropping, there were two bombs dropped in February, February the 19th, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, 1941, and they were aimed at the railway station and I really just started to research the names on the memorial although I knew some of them, over the years I’ve known some of them, and the bombs seemed to roll, or one of them did, so it damaged the railway station and it killed a boy who was a grammar school boy and his father was a vicar, and when you walk down Eastgate, past Morrison’s, you come to, you can just see some of the railway bridge and he lived, they lived on, in a smooth brick house which is now for adults with learning difficulties and that’s, I could tell you, I don’t know if it’s [unclear] but the name is still the same and he and his friend had come home from the grammar school and he was a messenger boy, on a bike he used to that and he, his mother sent his friend home who lived across the road, he was from Grimsby really but their family had been evacuated from Grimsby to Louth and his father was a major in the army and he was under the kitchen sink. Now I think the kitchen sink would be like one I got out there now, an oblong of thick porcelain I’ll call it, you know, not, and he was killed and he was sixteen, another lady, there were two or three names on the war memorial where people were injured elsewhere and then died in Louth hospital, that’s why [unclear] war memorial. It’s all very fascinating, it’s all in paperwork I have but it was a obviously it’s, it doesn’t leave you and because of the way my life has gone and it’s now, you know, there’s lots of lovely people, I mean, this picture here, his name is Drewery who has hedgehog care and her daughter is Swing Out Sister, the lead singer in Swing Out Sister and she’s been a jazz singer and she, when I became the major, which was a huge honour, she send me a card and said that she liked and tried to paint a portrait, could I send her a picture of the, of me in the roads with a nice expression. And it’s on hardboard [laughs] and she brought it in one day, to see if I liked, if I was alright, just, if you don’t like it, you know, just put your plants on it, it’s lovely, I think, and I haven’t really realised because I don’t do things for attention, I really, really don’t but I know and a friend said to me yesterday a lady not, she’s older than me, and of course they still remember they’d been in Louth and she said, you’ve done so much for Louth, and everybody is always telling me that, cross with me now because I don’t ask them to do things for me now, but I didn’t realize I was doing it, you see, I was interfering really, I think it’s an interfering busybody, that’s what I am [laughs]. Yeah, if I was to go out and down the passage and see you off and somebody was mouthing off a lot of language, I’d be shouting, I shout out the window in the middle of the night, they wake me up, you know, I’m not scared of anything but mice, I put my grandchildren, my son thinks it’s hilarious, they really do but I’m so grateful that all these things here, you know, there was an exhibition in March in the museum and without people and then here’s an example, this is a letter, I was just tell you this because nowhere or I think only once have I seen my name mentioned in any of the newspaper accounts, the newspaper accounts they don’t say in Louth, in Lincolnshire, they say an eastern market town and G W Clark actually became my step uncle but at the time he was a nineteen year old police officer, he was engaged to Connie Platt and there was a mix up with bodies and because he was a family friend, which obviously he was because Connie isn’t on there and [unclear] isn’t on there but the little girl that I said was Margaret next to me with more hair than me, her mum is just behind her and she was Connie’s elder sister and Ivy was Connie’s elder sister as well, Connie was the youngest of four girls and two boys but this was sent to Bill although it’s G W Clark, Imperial War Graves, 21st of October 1941, Dear Sir, I have to thank you for returning the forms which was sent to you and for the information contained in your letter of the 15th, a form in respect of the late Ms Ward was sent to you with the other forms but apparently had gone stray I’m enclosing another form and would appreciate it if you would kindly complete it and return it to me. Your assumption, that Roland Hallett’s name will be included in the record of his Majesty’s forces is correct. Well, Roland was the brother of my uncle Walt. And it says, yours faithfully, G W Clark, which is really P C Clark, one of their [unclear], now the tape I’ve got, it’s not all as I have been told, you know, she was only seventeen and she brought this copy of this tape and she sat where you’re sitting, and I think I was sat here and she said, I thought it would be nice if we listened to that together, well, I didn’t want to do that, I really, really didn’t, cause I couldn’t say no, so we had a coffee and after the tape had run, I said to her, Connie, is there mentioned in all the press cuttings I’ve got, about why I survived when Mary and Genie didn’t? We were all in the same, if we weren’t in the bedroom we started, we obviously were very close, so she said to me, do you really want to know? And I said, I do, and of course it wouldn’t be easy for her to tell me she said, well, when Bill was sent, well, he went up there obviously because it is all much more casual then it is now, and I mean the whole, the area, there were a lot of people injured and as I say, Howard’s farm, one bomb dropped in the field just on our hedge and then the other one dropped just outside our back door as our two uncles were getting ready, getting the car revved up and ready to go back to Grimsby and so they took the full force, you see, my auntie Violet, who lost her husband and her daughter, she was trapped in the house and it was, you sort of went in and I think there must have been a sink there but it was arranged like [unclear] and she somehow was blown into the fireplace and a police officer was given an award, he’s only been dead a few years now, and he got a commendation for rescuing us, he was very seriously injured, so she said, do you really want to know? I said, yes, so she said, well, they got Genie out and Mary out and they were going to get, and they got to you and they thought you were dead as well and they protected me so that was a bit hard, really. But if it hadn’t been for Bill being there, and you see, because Mary’s name began with M, but on one of the paper cuttings it does say Margaret, but it’s only one. But so what you just have to think that you, I’m driven, I’m absolutely driven, I won’t say I hate being old because, I mean, that’s something that we all get to be, but I hate it that I can’t do and interfere [laughs], some of my fellow counsellors which I drop off the perch [laughs], they’ve had it [laughs], that’s where the, this house wasn’t there then, there was another bungalow and that’s, they were very seriously injured in there and this is the rebuild, and it’s not 32 now, it is a different number, but that was the site and I’m not quite sure what to do about some of these because, was trying to find the house, and that’s the back of the house
AH: Oh Gosh!
MO: And this is not our house, that’ the neighbours, and if you look, this picture here is a bigger one, if you look at these, the window here and our house is here, and this would have been taken down, our house, our remains would have been taken down because it wouldn’t be safe.
AH: No.
MO: Because my brother was upstairs in all this and so, it wasn’t quite as flattened as that, but that shows you, doesn’t it?
AH: This is completely gone.
MO: And my brother, when he went to, cause Connie was a very regular visitor, I think she got a red cross uniform on, went round to the red cross, that’s right, and John was there and so on the recording, I’ll lend you the recording, I’m a bit loathed to do it but you’ll look after it, won’t you?
AH: Yeah.
MO: And it’s about half an hour long and it’s very moving, it’s not exactly as I‘ve been told but Connie was very, very fond of my mum and when my dad married Ivy and then Ivy died, she, I was fifty, nearly fifty when Ivy died, and people loved to tell you, but of course your father was carrying on with Ivy, I’m not saying that he was, cause I’ve said already, my dad was quite, cause Ivy couldn’t hear, she was stone deaf and she couldn’t get a job very easily so dad let her work at the office and eventually when she married dad, she had the first, really, the first hearing aid in the town and it was, if you have a hand bag that’s like that, you know, one of those old fashioned sort of handbags and the batteries were in there and hearing aids were sort of very, very rare, by the time she, Amplifops it was called, by the time she died, she had these little hearing aids, but I mean she was always with us, always, and she wasn’t , you know, she wasn’t like some of these, you know, when we get themselves dressed up now, cause the young women got themselves dressed up with all the heavy lipstick, so that’s come back, hasn’t it? But the whole family, and I am still in touch with my cousin Margaret and my cousin Anthony, his mum and dad were in the RAF at the time, and I met him and his wife in Lincoln for lunch not long time ago, yeah, so it’s been lovely, but I’ll, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll let you take the tape, now I’ll just show you this, and you’ll see on here, these are the ones that were killed and these are the ones that were injured and some of them, this is all on the night of the September the 7th, you see, it’s amazing, I knew this chap, this is Steven, he was a police superintendent I think,
AH: And this, what’s this? Were they aiming at Louth, do you know?
MO: No, that’s the next piece of, oh, here is one, no incident in area d, that we all did a quick dive for the floor as two bombs streamed down over the town, we could not make out where they had fallen at the time but found later that they had dropped on the Grimsby road, regret seven people were killed and others seriously injured, we express our deepest sympathy to A W Jaines special and D Jaines fellow warden in their bereavement, six members of the family were killed, now there’s
AH: You read that, sorry.
MO: My uncle Walt, he was my, he became my uncle Walt, come in!
AH: Just put on pause.
US: Hi!
MO: When, I’ve been so lucky to get all these cuttings from people and this is a copy of the cutting I got, I think from my auntie Connie, a sympathetic note, I find it difficult to express here in these simple notes the sympathy we all are feeling today for Mr A W Jaines and his family in the tragic loss they have sustained. Ms Jaines was a canteen leader in the second talvert house, she gave herself on sparing [unclear] for this work, and her cheerfulness was an inspiration to us all, it was only three days ago that I was with her at the second house and it is difficult to believe she has passed on. She gave her time to us knowing that other mothers were doing the same for her son who was serving, to all who are bereaved and to the sick and sorry I send these lines hoping they might be of some help in the difficult days in which they are passing. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. And I put, added, one died on the September the 7th 1941. And this tribute was written on the 10th of September 1941. Now, to not have a [unclear], and know, because everybody’s told me, and I mean, the cleaning ladies we had, they’ve all said the same thing, and the funny thing is, the most amazing thing to me and I must give her a ring because I haven’t heard from her, when my mum and dad’s friend was Mrs Whitfield, the one on the left there, holding a little boy, when our mother was killed, my sister Dorothy obviously, well, through dad as well I suppose, used to keep in touch with her, and of course when Dorothy died, I took it up and Mrs Whitfield’s now died so I’m in touch with one of her girls, it’s on that photograph, we’ve been corresponding as families all these years, and her father used to work for Vickers, Vickers aircraft in Newcastle and I thought he was in the army but he wasn’t and this is only coming out recently cause one of her sisters, she was called Evelyn and I’m in touch with her, one of her sisters is called Daphne and my daughter, Linda, was named after Linda Lorden Smith, very elderly lady who used to live in Upgate, and my husband used to do her clocks for her and everything and so when we had Linda, I said, why don’t we call her Linda? Well, Linda’s daughter, Linda Lorden’s daughter died and I remember, Mrs Lorden’s was saying to me that the girl, the lady that used to help her, named one of her daughters after Daphne, Daphne was in her nineties, so I was saying to Evelyn on the phone, I said, cause they’ve bene to see me and her mum must have been born round her but I haven’t quite found out her maiden name, and she came, they came, two of the girls came and stayed in a B&B and went visiting people that they were connected to down on the coast but I never twigged that she’d worked for my mother and it was only a matter of two, three months ago, I said something about, cause her surname, her maiden name is Whitfield, and so she said, my mother used to work for somebody called Jaines, cause she hadn’t twigged either that that was my name [laughs], I said, you’re joking, she said, oh no, and you see, we’ve always sort of picked a lot up as we went along, she went to work for a lady, this Mrs Whitfield, went to work for a lady before she was married, down on the coast and she was a maiden lady and she had two little girls and it was Ms Measures that she worked for and we, Evelyn doesn’t know anything about Ms Measures, so I’m trying to research Ms Measures cause she was horrible to their mum and that’s all come through I think through my sister to me, cause I can’t remember where I’ve heard that, but I wouldn’t make that up and so my mum and Evelyn said that this lady wasn’t very nice to her mum and so that’s why she was working for my mum. And so that tells you a lot, doesn’t it? Now you see, I don’t think for one minute, my, Ivy’s son, Michael will know all about that, he knows all about dad cause he bores everybody to death with it, cause dad was a very, very successful man for his days but I met him the other day, I was with a couple, Michael that is and he just come out of the solicitors, but I was walking arm in arm cause it’s going up a sloop right Rosemary Lane, it’s not much and I, we are only acquaintances really but we are friends if you know what I mean, and then Michael came out the office, he didn’t look down, he just, so I said [unclear] and he turned round and he came back, he never does that, and said, these are friends of mine, that spent half the time in France and half here, so he says, l alright, I said, this is my brother, he says, hallo, he said, I don’t suppose you knew that dad walked down here and walked into the wall cause it’s an adjacent, there’s as wall that sticks out and then you go down a bit and then there’s another wall and he was a special and he had glasses you see and he liked his whiskey and so I said, no, I don’t think I did know that, oh alright and then off he went [laughs], our niece who lives opposite the Brown Cow, where Michael drinks now with his partner, she said, she came in on Saturday and she said, he never says anything, when I walk to the pub which, they don’t go in as much as Michael, he says something to her about dad every time, he’s so boring [laughs]. Anyway there’s plenty more for you to go at, has it given you something to start with?
AH: Yes, that’s lovely, thank you. What’s your date of birth?
MO: My date is the 25th of the 6th ’33.
AH: Thank you.
MO: And I’m lovely with it. Now if you’d like to.
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 Ottaway
Creator
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Anna Hoyles
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-21
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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
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AOttawayM161121
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Pending review
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00:58:49 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Description
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Margaret Ottaway lived in Louth, the sixth of seven children, and tells of her childhood there. Tells of an air raid shelter they had in the house. Witnessed, as a seven year old, an enemy air raid on 19 February 1941, which caused damage and casualties and gives a vivid account of it. Tells of herself being buried in rubble and discovering many years later how she survived the bombing, unlike her sisters. Tells of her family: her father a special constable and a business man, a seventeen year old sister serving as an air raid warden. Talks about her marriage and her husband, a watchmaker who was among the establishers of Gibraltar Point Natural Reserve. Tells of a memorial dedicated to the victims of the air raid.
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Louth
Temporal Coverage
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1941-02-19
Air Raid Precautions
bombing
childhood in wartime
civil defence
home front
memorial
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/896/11136/AInkpenH160712.2.mp3
769d6de8ba72622ffed198bb128df8ce
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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Inkpen, Harry
H Inkpen
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer Harry Inkpen. He flew 33 operations as a pilot with 162 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-12
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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Inkpen, H
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Anne Brodie, the interviewee is Harry Inkpen. The interview is taking place at Mr. Inkpen’s home in [redacted] Ryde, Isle of Wight, on the 12th of July 2016.
HI: Thank you. Right.
AB: If you’d like just to tell us a bit about your service in the RAF?
HI: Now I talk now? What do I do, talk now?
AB: Yes, you can talk in there, and then it’s hearing there.
HI: It’ll pick it up?
AB: Yeah. It’s picking it up. I can see.
HI: Ah yes. I joined Bomber Command in November 1944 and that was one of the headquarters with number 8 group based in Huntington, Cambridgeshire and the commanding officer was Group Captain Don Bennett, subsequently he was an air vice marshal but he was a remarkable man, not only was he an ace pilot but he was a remarkable navigator in his own right. We started to, the operations with my navigator for our first tour together. The tour was supposed to be thirty five attacks on Germany. In the end, we only did thirty three, because the war ended in April and we were two short of the target, not that that mattered, but we joined 162 Squadron, a Mosquito squadron for markers for Pathfinders and we operated from Bourne in Lincolnshire, that was the aerodrome, and we shared the aerodrome with 105 Squadron, another Mosquito squadron who were master, master markers, they marked the target before we went in. The, when we were first into the Mosquito, as a pilot I fell in love with the aircraft because I’d never seen such a beautiful thing in my life. It had two Rolls Royce engines and the body was all wood and it was called the wooden wonder because it was a real wonder. I think the top speed, straight level, was four hundred and fifty miles an hour. In that day, that was very fast and this was how we had no defence against enemy fighters because we relied entirely on our speed and nothing could catch us. The German Air Marshall Goering was our main enemy, he was, they were very, the Luftwaffe were very, very good but our, really our very worst enemy was General Winter and that was the weather. Because from 1944 to over into ‘45 the weather was atrocious, on our operations, the thirty three trips we did we never lost, personally we weren’t even harmed on those trips but we had terrible troubles with the weather. And our number 162 Squadron, if I remember rightly, never lost an aircraft over Germany, but we lost twelve aircraft on take-off and landing because of ice, snow, fog, et cetera and that was our real enemy. The, can I pause there?
[recording paused]
AB: Okay [unclear].
HI: Of the thirty three raids that we did, Joe and I, seventeen of them were onto Berlin and Berlin, we never talked about Berlin, it was called, it was called the Big City, we used to say, we are going to the Big City and it was seventeen times we went there. It was very well defended because as the war was drawing to a close, it was in the last six months and Germany was being forced back towards Berlin, all of their anti-aircraft guns, all their searchlights, most of their defences were concentrated on Berlin, so when we were told it was a Berlin night, we knew we were in for some fight. They were very clever, the Germans, they had, they could pick us up on radar and on our instrument panel there were three little lights, if one of them, there was two red lights and a white light, if the red light first came on, it means the radar was actually picking us up, if the red light came on, it means the actual guns were firing and within a few seconds there will be a burst and if the white light came on there was a fighter on your tail, which was very, very helpful, now I only had once, when the red light came on, and the immediate action to do was to turn away smartly and drop down and just above you would be the bursts of the anti-aircraft fire, very clever and I only once had the white light came on which was when a fighter was on your tail and the only fighter that could catch us was the new Messerschmitt 262 which was a jet aircraft, now he could, he could catch us easily, he actually had to throttle back so that he could stay on our tail, now he got on the tail, the white light came on and the tracer went over the top, ‘cause immediately I dropped down and the tracer went over the top so that was really the only problem we had with the defences but the, so if you got caught with the searchlight it was rather remarkable, they had four blue searchlights around Berlin, North, South, East and West and the blue searchlight was radar controlled, if it came on, you could look on the end of it and there was an aircraft, it picked it up straight away and then all the other searchlights were white and they were called the slaves, that was the master searchlight and the white lights were the slaves and they then came right onto the plane, now once only we happened not, we weren’t personally caught but one of the slaves caught us in the light, it was a remarkable experience because one moment you’re in total darkness and the next moment you’re in blinding light and it is blinding light and the only way out of that is to go down straight down the searchlight so when it, when we were in this terrible light, I went straight down it to about five hundred miles an hour and then pulled up and lost it but quite an unusual experience and the other amazing experience was coming back from Berlin when we had dropped our bombs and we got as far as Hanau, H-A-N-A-U, which was a fairly big German city and they had some, a few good defences but we were roundabout thirty thousand feet, that’s nearly six miles high and quite unknown to us, both of the engines stopped, now if you can imagine, nearly six miles high an engine stopping, that is something very unusual, now not only did the engine stop, but the aircraft flipped over and it dropped from thirty thousand feet to eighteen thousand and not because of me but my hand was on the throttle and actually hoping to God the aircraft would come back again the engines and suddenly they came on and the relief was unbelievable and the power of the engines shot us forward, my navigator had disappeared down at the bomb bay and he came up rather shocked and I said, ‘I can’t believe it, Tom, we’re flying’ and the aircraft righted itself and flew on and we stayed at eighteen thousand feet and came home. Now, how that happened we checked afterwards to think what could possibly have stopped two Merlin engines and the current thought was that there’d been a burst of enemy anti-aircraft fire, a big burst and it had left a vacuum in the air and we had flown into the vacuum and because the engine could not get oxygen, the engine stopped and that was, that was the technical reason, the explanation but I was only too happy to say we were alive and home. And that was another remarkable explanation. Now the other, I’m telling you the highlights not the general, just run of the mill but the other experience we had, we got as far across the North Sea on another occasion and as we’d been two and a half hours away, by the time we got to the English coast, the North Sea fog had slowly crept in and the whole of the east coast, all the aerodromes were blotted out with ground fog which came up to a thousand feet, we went down to a thousand feet and we were completely blotted out in fog, we got through on the radio and from Bourne and they told us we must go to a nearby aerodrome thirty miles away which was not clear but it had FIDO on the aerodrome, F-I-D-O, and that’s Fog Instant Dispersal Operation and it’s, there’s two lines of metal strips running down the airfield perforated with flames coming out and it burned the fog away and it was quite remarkable, they gave us a course to this aerodrome and as we were going through the fog, which was grey and white, grey and white colour, as we got nearer to the point where we knew the airport should be, it started to turn yellow and then it turned bright yellow and then we realised we must be right over the aerodrome but we couldn’t see it, but what I did, I did a four minute time course on instruments to go round the airport and coming in on my last leg, I lowered down to five hundred feet and at five hundred feet suddenly the fog stopped just like, as if somebody had lifted a cloud and right in front of you was the airport with these two strips of flames, now these flames were six feet high each side and we landed, you could feel the heat, and there was a few gaps down the side where you get off and Joe said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t swerve’ because we should be roasted because we’d have gone into the flames so we found a gap and got off and the first time my navigator really any showed any great emotion, he just put his arm on my shoulder, he said, ‘Thank God we’re down’, I said, ‘Joe, I couldn’t agree with you more.’ And after that, we went in and saved the night and forgot all about it. Can I stop there for a bit?
[recording paused]
AB: Right.
HI: Aircrew are very suspicious, superstitious people, they’d all have some little gimmick that they carry with them, hoping it might give them some luck, in my case, on my right hand, I always wore my father’s gold ring, and on my left hand, I wore a silver ring which I had made from a silver dollar in America where I was learnt to fly in 1941 I gave an Indian, Navaho Indian a silver dollar and said, would you make me a silver ring?
US: [unclear]
HI: And that and he did and that flew with me and my father’s ring all through the war, all through the operations against Germany and I think it did me very, very well. In the case of my navigator, he was a bit of a lad on the ground was my navigator but in the air he was a remarkable man and quite so capable that I had fully reliance on him and what he did I saw he had something round his neck when he was flying and when I looked at it I said, ‘What’s the scarf you’ve got on then?’ No, no, no,’ he said, ‘That’s a petticoat.’ I said, ‘Oh yeah?’ ‘Yes, a silk petticoat, it’s a blue silk petticoat, and it’s from my current girlfriend’, and he said, ‘I always fly with that.’ I said, ‘I’m so pleased you got something to hold onto even if it’s only a petticoat’, well, halfway through the tour, I then noticed it wasn’t a blue petticoat, but it was a yellow petticoat, and I said, ‘You know, what’s the change of colour?’ ‘Well’, he said, ‘We had a little bit of a tiff, and I’ve moved on.’ So that was why, that was a little bit of unusual thing,
US: [unclear]
HI: About superstitious [recording paused]
HI: When I think that there was, in Bomber Command, those terrible losses, all of those fellows on average would have been carrying something and all those little gifts and [unclear] had gone forever and never been recorded but in my case they did me a favour,
[recording paused]
HI: As far as I can remember, because security was so great in the war, nobody said anything about anything but as far as I know 162 Squadron was, the Mosquito squadron that I was on was the only one that never actually suffered a loss through the enemy, we suffered a twelve, a loss of twelve crews through bad weather, fog, ice, snow and crashes, particularly running short of fuel and going into the North Sea and but we only lost through, purely through weather, bad weather and the weather was so bad, up to nowadays people wouldn’t be flying in it, they wouldn’t be allowed to fly in it but in the war, you didn’t question it, if you flew, you went and that was it, that was, that’s and therefore I can’t remember hearing of any other Mosquito, Pathfinder Squadron who actually lost a plane over Germany, they all lost through bad weather.
[recording paused]
HI: Okay, we are now talking about the last leg into the target, which had to be very accurately flown because the bombsight in the nose of the aircraft was pre-set before the actual aircraft took off, so in the, on the bombsight, if it was Berlin, let’s say it was set at thirty thousand feet and the speed had to be four hundred and fifty miles an hour, the wind had to be, already been calculated, that was put into the bombsight and heading for the last leg, say had to be three hundred and sixty degrees, now all that was actually put into the bombsight before we took off but on the last leg into the target, when the navigator went down to drop the four bombs, which were incidentally were four five hundred pound bombs, he had to know bomb is watch, exactly the time when he pressed the button and said, bomb’s gone, because it was dictated by the bombsight, we were, what we were doing exactly what the bombsight told us to do and that was most important, we actually dropped four five hundred pound bombs, three of them were instantaneous and the fourth was had a twenty four hour delay on it, which was a hope to confuse the enemy when they were trying to clear up that another bomb went off but when they were released and you lost a thousand pounds worth of bombs, the aircraft would jump quite visibly and it was a very pleasing sight.
[recording paused]
HI: To qualify for Mosquitos, certainly for Bomber Command, you had to, a pilot had to have a minimum of a thousand hours flying experience and also had a very high instrument rating because as everything was at night you’d require, you relied entirely on instruments, you you must have an absolute trust in instruments to qualify for this and that’s why it was very difficult to get on to a Mosquito squadron but I was very, very happy that I did because it was an experience I’ll never forget and those qualifications came in very useful in the end, also my lucky rings were a bit of a charm,
[recording paused]
HI: In the Air Force were really going back to school because you were always in class, always learning navigation, mathematics were very high on that and aircraft recognition, firing guns, all all ground work and studies took quite a year on the ground and then suddenly you were selected for, to be a pilot, which was the what you were trying to get to and been aiming all the time, when you, when you became selected to be a pilot, you, they put a white flash in your helmet to designate that you were a pilot and not anybody else and then of course we were sent over to Canada and we went from Gourock on the Clyde out into a troop ship, which was SS Louis Pasteur, which was commandeered from the French, we pinched one of their liners, and we ‘propated it into a troop ship, we went up by via Greenland to try and avoid the submarines and then ended up in Halifax near Brunswick
US: Nova Scotia.
HI: As a gathering point and from then on we moved into New Brunswick to Moncton, New Brunswick which was for pilots only, selected for pilots only and the destination from there could only be Florida, South Africa or America. Now, everybody wanted America because, number one, America hadn’t actually entered the war, we were still at war with Germany but, they had never declared war on America so we were sent down by train right down the Saint Lawrence to Toronto, then on to the East Coast line, the West Coast line to Texas, through Texas to Arizona to the little town of Mesa, Arizona, which is an offshoot of Phoenix and Mesa was where the aerodrome was. And of course, we were, there was only fifty of us, fifty English boys, all in civilian clothes because we weren’t allowed to wear a uniform, we were we were entered as visitors and treated as visitors so to get us a training at that time they wanted fighter pilots because it was 1941 and we were seconded to the American Army Air Force as a fighter pilot under training and that was only for a few days and in December, the 8th my birthday, Pearl Harbour happened, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and America, and then Germany declared war on America, and at that point we were allowed to have uniforms flown down from Canada and suddenly we became air force people and not civilians and then we went to the English British Flying Training School at Mesa, Falcon Field and we were trained there as fighter, to be fighter pilots and my instructor was a civilian, American civilian, he’d been a crop-duster, he’d been an aerobatic pilot in air shows and he’d signed on with the Americans to train pilots and my fortune was that he trained me and he was old enough to be my father and to me, I respected him as my father, and that man taught me to fly and he did me the biggest favour anybody can ever do, and he got me solo in six hours, which was almost a record, but he’s taught me always, because I taught thousands of people to fly after that, and he always taught me to tell them, when you step into an aircraft, you become part of the aircraft, you are not an alien, you are part of it, do exactly what you do with it and from then on I used to tell everybody the same story, and that man taught me to fly, now when I eventually went solo at six hours, we passed on to advanced training to really high quality Harvards and then that was the end and we were told we had our wings, we were made sergeants and we, they pinned the wings on our chest and we were on our way to go home to England. And of course I went back to Canada and this time still to Halifax and this time we got on the troop ship called the Duchess of Atholl, and she was nicknamed the Drunken Duchess because she was a pretty bad ride, she was a luxury liner commandeered as a troop ship but she was pretty rough and we had a very rough passage going over, we went as far as we could up to Greenland and back to Europe but on the way back, we sunk the, had four destroyers as escorts personally for our boat and they left us and went off to laying minefield, depth charges in a circle, and I witnessed the most amazing thing because all these depth charges exploded and suddenly a submarine appeared in the middle, they’d actually got him and when he, when the submarine appeared, every gun from every ship fired at this because they were so delighted and they sank the submarine and after that, we went on quite peacefully to Gourock and from then on we went to Bournemouth, you know that was another point, and there we were sorted out into groups, they’d suddenly realised in 1942, they didn’t want fighter pilots, so we’d been trained as fighter pilots, so here we go, what are we gonna do? So they selected, were you good at instrument flying? Yes, okay. So then, I then went on a course on twin engines because they wanted bomber pilots, so when I did the course on twin engined Oxfords they realised, I did a lot of night flying, and they realised I was fairly good on instruments and also they thought, I could well teach people to to actually fly at night so then I went to Upavon on Salisbury Plain which was the Central Flying School of the RAF and that dated back to the First World War and the mess there had a big fire in it, in the fireplace and over it was a vast propeller and it was from a Zeppelin [unclear] shot down at the First World War, so that was the Central Flying School of the RAF and I had to pass through that to become a flying instructor. When I became a flying instructor, I was sent to Flying Training Command which was at South Cerney in Oxfordshire and South Cerney was the base but they had many satellite aerodromes which were all training aircraft for Oxfords, twin engine aircraft and from then on I trained people on twin engine Oxfords at night flying so I gathered a hell of a lot of night flying hours and hence a lot of night night instrument flying and in that time I was quite a few years with Flying Training Command doing just that, I had one slight respite when I was taken away to train people to fly Horsa gliders, for God’s sake, and they were army officers or army sergeants drafted from the army to just learn to land an aircraft, that’s all, you had to take them up, show them how to take off, but they wanted to know when you cut the engine, how to glide because they were going to be glider pilots and for about two months I trained people to fly that, just fly the Tiger Moth and glide till they knew the angle and from then on I moved on from there back to Flying Training Command and then to twin engines but for me in that little period they took me to Brize Norton and let me actually get in a glider, a Horsa glider so I had the experience of being co-pilot in a Horsa glider with thirty five men in the fully armed back and a landing jeep and a machine gun at the back of me and I remember being towed up by a Lancaster and then at the point of return everything suddenly went silent, the nose dipped and the aircraft took a very steep dive, I reached about a hundred miles an hour and all I could think of was thirty five men in a jeep and a gun in my back and are we gonna land alright and he made a perfect landing and that’s the first time I’d ever been in a glider but I had the experience, I think that was it. So, you see, it’s varied.
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 Harry Inkpen
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anne Brodie
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
2016-07-12
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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AInkpenH160712
Format
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00:31:54 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.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
United States
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Inkpen joined Bomber Command in November 1944 and flew 33 operations on Mosquitoes as a pilot on 162 Squadron. Tells of how, in his view, his squadron had more losses because of bad weather conditions than because of encounters with the enemy. He flew 17 operations to Berlin and talks about the German defences and searchlight organisation. Recounts a harrowing experience of the aircraft’s engines suddenly stopping while returning from Berlin. Tells of aircrew superstitions: he wore his father’s ring as a lucky charm; his navigator carried a silk petticoat. Remembers being caught in fog returning from an operation and managing to land thanks to FIDO. Recounts travelling to Canada and America, where was trained as a pilot. Mentions the sinking of a U-boat on the way back from Canada. Remembers training army officers to fly Horsa gliders.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
162 Squadron
4 BFTS
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
FIDO
Horsa
Mosquito
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
radar
RAF Bourn
RAF South Cerney
searchlight
submarine
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1166/11731/PTrappSV1602.2.jpg
443e0c534de38a79f813a6eb5cd84076
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1166/11731/PTrappSV1601.1.jpg
13bbfb007925149e773d77f3bb9218d5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1166/11731/ATrappSV160405.1.mp3
4f41b08244813c9ff4f04dad3fb96c65
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
Trapp, Sylvia
Sylvia Vera Trapp
S V Trapp
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Sylvia Trapp (nee Needham) (b. 1922, 488420 Royal Air Force) and four photographs. She served as a wireless operator in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force at RAF Waddington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Sylvia Trapp 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
2016-04-05
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
Trapp, SV
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok, so today is Tuesday the 5th of April and this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command Centre and today I am with Sylvia Trapp and we are at Sylvia’s home in Mansfield. And Sylvia was a WAAF so we are going to get Sylvia’s story now. And just to start, no, go.
ST: I wasn’t Trapp until the end of the war.
AM: Right, I’ll get your maiden, well, right, you tell me then if we start off with your maiden name.
ST: Needham.
AM: Leedham.
ST: Needham.
AM: Needham. Needham. Ok. And we’ve already got your date of birth so we know that you are ninety four.
ST: Ninety four.
AM: Ninety four and can you tell me where you were born, Sylvia?
ST: I was born in Mansfield, 216 Victoria Street. Mansfield.
AM: Right, there we are. What did your parents do?
ST: My dad was a miner. My mum, before she was married, worked at the Lawn Mills.
AM: Right. And what, did you have brothers or sisters?
ST: I’ve got, I had two brothers and two sisters. My brother, John Thomas was the oldest, and he worked at Hermitage Hosiery factory, on Hermitage Lane. And my next brother Fred, he worked, he was a butcher, [unclear] the butcher on Regents Street and my sister Eirene she worked at the Hermitage Hosiery factory and me, I worked, oh, I went, Hosiery Mills, I was in the sales office [unclear]. But before, the war started, I worked at the Quartex, up Sutton Road, a big hosiery mills that was owned by Germans. And when the war started, they turned it into a munition place.
AM: Right.
ST: And that’s where I worked, yeah.
Am: Where did you go to school?
ST: I went to Moor Lane School and then up to High Oakham School.
AM: And how old would you be when you left?
ST: How old, fifteen when I left.
AM: Fifteen?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Right.
ST: Then I went to work at the hosiery mills.
AM: Yeah. What did you do there?
ST: I was in the quality control.
AM: Right. Checking the stockings.
ST: No, jumpers.
AM: Oh, it was jumpers. Alright.
ST: And I didn’t tell you, the Germans, when the munition came to the Quartex, the Germans were taken away, the boss was taken away and they were on the way to being deported to Canada and the boat was sunk by a U-boat. So after that
AM: But you were there from being fifteen?
ST: I’m trying to think, I
AM: Cause
ST: Yes, I worked at the Quartex from being fifteen. Then when I grew up to twenty I, my brothers had been called up, Tom went first, then Fred, then my sister went and she went into the Air Force and I asked if I could go into the Air Force and they wouldn’t let me. But I did. They wouldn’t let me join my sister where she was, they kept us apart and I went into the Air Force and we had to meet, we had to meet this officer on Nottingham Station and there was about ten of us, all met on the station and they took us down to Innsworth in Gloucester and then we did the basic training and we had to sit these written exams, and everybody was being allocated and then he told me to stand on one side and there was about six of us had to stand on one side, and we kept wandering, what on earth are we going to do? Anyway he came to us and he says, I’ve chosen you because I think I can rely on you. As you know, we are losing men and they are getting very short, and I’m going to put you onto a man’s job, he says, and I put my faith in you, that you will be able to do it. Then we were allocated to, I was sent to Bottesford, was sent to Bottesford and we, no, no, that’s wrong, I was, we were sent to Compton Bassett and we learned all about radio, how to send messages and code words and things like that and we did about five weeks there and then went up to Blackpool to learn the Morse code and I was there from, I can’t remember how long I was there but we learned the Morse code and how to print, you know, the messages and what have ye and after that I was sent to Bottesford and from Bottesford I stayed there for a while and then I was moved to Waddington.
US: You know Bottesford, was that the Bomber Command base? Were you actually on a base?
ST: Yeah. Isn’t it a base now?
US: Bottesford, no, it’s just fields. So, you were actually sent to Bottesford?
ST: Yes.
US: As a wireless
ST: Wireless operator.
US: Operator.
ST: Yeah. You know, Bottesford is not on the map now, then?
US: Well, Bottesford is on the map, but it’s not a Bomber Command base, it’s not an RAF base anymore.
ST: Oh, ok.
US: So, what happened when you got to Bottesford, obviously there were Lancasters or Stirling bombers flying from there.
ST: Ah, there were Stirling, yeah.
US: Stirling. Yeah.
ST: There weren’t Lancasters and then we were sent to Waddington and I think that was, was that an Australian base? I can’t remember. There were Australians.
US: 44 Squadron. Yeah. There could have been Australians there.
ST: Anyway I was there and
AM: Can I ask you about the training. You know when you said you did the training, and first on the radios and the Morse code, what was it like doing that?
ST: Oh, you know, I was a bit, I was really scared going into the Air Force. I’ve never been away from home before in my life and anyway, it was, no, I thought I was determined to prove to him that I could do it so I
AM: I’m on this job.
ST: Yeah. Yeah, I thought, if they can do it, we can do it, sort of thing.
AM: So, what was it like, how did you start to learn how to, the wireless?
ST: Wait, that was down in Compton Bassett.
AM: Compton Bassett, yeah.
ST: Yeah, no, we had classes, we had to march to classes, used to play these [unclear] marches, you know, we marched to class and but they were mixed classes, mixed, and yeah, we, they taught us how to sort radios out and
AM: What do you mean by sort them out? You mean, built them into bits and put them back together?
ST: Yeah, if there was any wires lose to solder them on, you know, we were taught all that and then, I think I can’t remember how long we were there but it must have been weeks. And then once we were able to do that, they sent us up to Blackpool and
AM: Where did you stay in Blackpool? In digs?
ST: Private digs, you know, like boarding houses and she was very strict, we had to be in at ten o’clock at night. Well, you know the ballroom where we used to go dancing and what [unclear] and there was every nationality in the world, out of Europe and everywhere and so
AM: What did you get up to then?
ST: So, we used to take it in turns to, if anybody didn’t go they would unlatch the window down, one of the windows so we would get into the window [laughs] and, yeah, she was very strict she was. But I guess she had to be, you know
AM: Were you all girls in your boarding house?
ST: Yeah, we were all girls. Yes.
AM: What was it, what was the ball dancing like then?
ST: Oh, it was marvellous, you had that many partners when you were dancing, you know. You never did a dance with one person, you were excused and then next one.
AM: They cut in all the time.
ST: Oh, we had a lovely time there, yeah.
AM: What did you, did you have to go in uniform or could you put a dress on?
ST: No, I went in uniform.
AM: In uniform. Smart girls in uniform.
ST: Yeah. I don’t think, I don’t think we were allowed to go in
AM: I don’t know
ST: I can’t remember that. Or perhaps I didn’t have any [layghs]
AM: Maybe not. Did you have to do marching up and down the front? I know the men did.
ST: Yeah, that’s right, yeah. [unclear] uniform. Yeah, we had a great time there.
AM: And you said this was the first time you had been away from home as well.
ST: Yeah. When I was down in Gloucester, I wasn’t the only one who cried all time [laughs] but you could hear everybody crying. You know, cause I suppose we all lived in the same boat and. But then, after Blackpool, I really enjoyed that and I, when we passed our, we had to sit these exams and pass them and
AM: Was it, when you said sitting the exams, was it a written exam or did you have to literally put a radio together and
ST: Oh, we did that, yes. After we’d been taught, we did that, yes. We had to do that. It sort of got into me then, you know, I knew I’d got to do this sort of thing though. That was great.
AM: Did anybody not manage it? Could you not
ST: Yeah, yeah, quite a lot, yeah.
AM: So what happened to them?
ST: They were put to other jobs. Maybe in the cook house or driving or something like that. Yeah, they [unclear] dropped down, yeah. After we, when we got to Blackpool, we learned the Morse, you know, it was, we were there way to go at eight o’clock in the morning, we’d have Morse all day, it was headphones on and in fact when we used to go home on the train, every time I passed a station, I’d been doing it in Morse. I must admit, I began to enjoy life after that, yeah. And then, after, Bottesford, I guess, then Waddington, and then, oh, I know, then I was in the air traffic control, you know, in the air traffic [unclear]
AM: At Waddington.
ST: And there was Canadians, they were all Canadians and the sergeant Canadian in charge said to me one day, I’d like you to come with me, as you are going to learn something new today so we went into this great, this hangar, you know how big hangars are, and they’d fixed up, there was sort of a line, oh, on the floor was a big map of Newark and Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire and the rivers were all in like silver foil and the bush, the trees, they’d made like little trees, so that you looked at the land from up there sort of thing and they’d got this wire going along and this machine, supposed to be the aircraft I should think
AM: In the air.
ST: And as it went over the, they were able to see what they were bombing, if you know, you could [unclear]
AM: Like a bird’s-eye view.
ST: Yes. That’s right, yeah. And that was interesting but there were all aircrew and me and this sergeant, I was, I think I was scared, you know, petrified, cause he asked me to switch something on and I couldn’t move, where is it? I forgot. And, because he’d showed me but I forgot and then this nice young Scottish man came and he did it for me.
AM: I’ll see about the Scottish man in a minute. Just, let’s go back to the beginning of Waddington. How did, so you’ve done your radio training, you’ve done your Morse training, how did they then decide where they were going to send you? Did you just, were you just told where you were going?
ST: We were just told, yeah.
AM: So you were told Waddington.
ST: Yeah.
AM: How did you get to Waddington then?
ST: Do you know, I can’t remember.
AM: No?
ST: I guess they took as there, yeah.
AM: Yeah? And what was it like when you got there? What did you think when you saw it? How did it look like?
ST: Strange. We had to go up a spiral staircase to, you know, up into the air traffic control [unclear].
US: So you operated out of the control tower?
ST: Yeah.
US: Were you actually talking to the bomber crews?
ST: No, no, no. They, as I say, they are all Canadians and
AM: Yeah, describe what you actually did in the tower.
ST: What we did, I just sat at this table with earphones on and received messages and sent messages.
AM: Received them from where? From whom?
ST: From the aircraft.
AM: From the aircraft.
US: So you didn’t [unclear] Morse code?
AM: So you’re receiving the message in Morse
ST: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: And you’re translating it and
ST: I didn’t translate it, I just passed it on.
AM: No. You just passed it on. By radio.
ST: Well, to the sergeant in the room. The sergeant and officers in the room. Mostly it was the sergeant that dealt with us and
US: So the aircraft would send a message back to Waddington in Morse
ST: I would take it down
US: So and the radio operator in the plane is tapping out a message in Morse, which you receive and then it’s passed on to be deciphered. So [unclear] plane
AM: So, did you know what the messages were saying or did you not have time to even think about that?
ST: Not a clue
AM: How long were your shifts? What were the shifts like?
ST: Eight till four. Four till midnight. Midnight till eight.
AM: And what were your digs like?
ST: Oh, we were in a hut, there was about, I don’t’ know, about ten of us I think in this hut, yeah.
AM: All girls.
ST: We had our own bed space and our little cabinet, you know. Yeah.
AM: And what about eating. Where did you eat? Did you eat with the men or were you kept separate?
ST: We were quite good, we were separate, you know when all the ground crew went in, we went separate and we seemed to get nicer meals [laughs].
AM: How many of you would there be in comparison to the men? Ish.
ST: Gosh, well, up in the air traffic control there were just two of us and about six men.
AM: Right.
ST: And I never met anybody else after that, you know, we just, unless you went to the dance at night, when I was on the right shift, we would go to the dance.
AM: Right. Where was the dance?
ST: In the
AM: On the base.
ST: On the base. Yes.
AM: On the base. So, I imagine there were a lot more men than women at the dance.
ST: Oh, hundreds more, yeah.
AM: What was that like?
ST: [unclear] Four of us to the whole base sort of thing.
AM: What was that?
ST: There was the cooks [unclear] everybody.
AM: Yeah. I bet you danced off your feet, weren’t you?
ST: Well, it was lovely, yeah.
AM: It was lovely [laughs].
ST: I had never been to a dancing. [laughs]
AM: And you mentioned to me that you’d actually been in an aircraft, what
ST: We used to climb in to see if, when they came back, if we had to go and check the radio, see that it was [unclear]
AM: When you say we, you girls from the control tower.
ST: Yes. We went, yeah.
AM: So, what was that like then, climbing into a plane [unclear]?
ST: There were no steps, you know, we had, I don’t how I got in, I used to hang onto things that somebody had thrown in [laughs]. I was only about seven stone seven when, you know, I was only little and I could never manage up there. Anyway it was fun and we had fun.
AM: You had fun. So tell me about this Scottish person then.
ST: Oh well, yeah.
AM: From the beginning.
ST: Oh well, we were, oh I told you, we watched this thing work and take pictures
AM: Ok, the bird’s-eye view of the map
ST: And then we were dismissed and we went to the naffy and the sergeant went into the naffy and then this nice young airman came in and said, come and sit with me, would you like a coffee? And I said yes please and he says, come and sit over here with me and that was the beginning of romance [laughs], yeah. We went on the bus into Lincoln and he proposed to me and I bought a ring there and everything. We went to the jewellers and there were no rings there for me, only about three earrings in the whole shop [laughs] but there were a lot
AM: How long did this romance last before you were married? Because he would be going on operations all this time.
ST: Oh yeah.
US: What was his name, Sylvia?
ST: I only knew him six months before
AM: What was his name?
ST: But we were married [unclear] for our fiftieth wedding anniversary. We went to New Zealand and
AM: What was his name?
ST: Harold
AM: Harold
ST: Harold James Trapp. Yeah.
AM: So what was it like then, when you first met him and he got you a coffee and then you went straight to the jewellers, but it must have been a bit in between when you went to dances and stuff like that? What was it like when he was going off on operations?
ST: Ah, not very good.
AM: No?
ST: You used to pray that they came back.
US: Can you remember what squadron he flew with?
ST: [unclear]
US: What did he do on the plane? Was he?
ST: He was a bomb aimer.
US: Bomb aimer.
AM: Was the bomb aimer. But he obviously came through it. If you were married for fifty years.
ST: Yeah. Thank goodness, yeah.
AM: Watched him go out and watched him come back.
ST: Yeah. We used to wait, [unclear] we used to wait for him coming back, yeah [unclear]
AM: So, when did you get married? Did you get married during the war or?
ST: December the 4th 1945.
AM: Alright, so just after the end.
ST: Yeah. 1945, yeah.
AM: How long did you stay in the WAAFs for?
ST: Well, the year after we got married I was expecting [laughs] so I came home. Our daughter was born.
AM: You must have lots of other stories, things that have happened. Come on, let’s hear some of them.
ST: [laughs] well, another thing. They used to, there was a firm from Mansfield that repaired the runways, kept the runways in track. Well, Mansfield was my hometown, so, I got talking to and, I can’t remember, it must be when they went at four o’clock at night, when I was eight till four and I used to get a lift home and then come back with him next morning and [laughs]
AM: Were you allowed to do that or was that a secret?
ST: I don’t think so, no, they didn’t know [laughs]. No, they didn’t know. But it was handy, you know, it was quite handy, I knew they [unclear] went straight to Mansfield, came back the next day and my friend, oh, I had a friend in the hut named Pearl and she used to look after my, you know, if come round
AM: She just [unclear]
ST: She was just standing in for me [laughs]
AM: [laughs] Did you do, another WAAF I talked to, Bassie, she talked to me about everybody about the WAAFs doing each other’s hair and makeup and stuff. Did you do that or were you not into?
ST: I didn’t do it, I didn’t use, you know, we just rolled our hair up and we had to roll it up
AM: Yeah, and [unclear]
ST: Grips [unclear] cause [unclear] straight, you know,
AM: Roll [unclear]
ST: I think [unclear] a lot of makeup in those days. No, I wasn’t into that.
AM: No, Bassie definitely [unclear]
ST: Pearl and I, we used to, perhaps go for a walk, she came from Coalville in Leicester and we were really good friends straight away, you know, and
AM: Was she a radio operator as well?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
ST: Yeah. But she was sent to a different place after a while, she was sent to
AM: Were you ad Waddington the whole time?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. You stayed at Waddington. So you get to know lots of the men and obviously you had [unclear] you get to know lots of the different.
ST: Yeah, yeah, but, you know.
AM: Did you go out with him and his crew?
ST: No, no.
AM: Did you not?
ST: No, I didn’t, no. Cause I say, I kept nipping home to my mum [laughs]
AM: What did your mum and dad thing about having two dancers in one?
ST: My dad died, [unclear] he died, that’s why I kept going home.
AM: Ok.
ST: She liked it when [unclear] but she used to do my washing [unclear] the next time I did [laughs]
US: What happened to your two brothers? You said you had two brothers. Did they?
ST: Oh Gosh, the oldest brother was stationed, he went to India, he went to India, but my
US: In the Royal Air Force.
ST: No, in the army.
US: He was in the army.
ST: He wasn’t fighting, he was
AM: Engineers?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Royal engineers?
ST: And then my younger brother, we never saw him for five years. He just got married because like the dough and he went into the army, he was put into the Essex regiment and he was sent abroad and we never saw him again for five years, never came home, he was in the Eight Army.
US: Right.
ST: And never saw him, he was so different when he came back. Nobody waving [unclear], when he came back he was bald and spoke a different, you know, sort of a different accent.
AM: A different accent. They both did come home, though.
ST: They came back, yeah and she had a baby while he was away. He’d never seen his dad for five years. Never didn’t even
AM: When you said he was away for five years I thought you were going to say he was a prisoner of war. But he wasn’t. He was just far away in the army.
ST: He was in the Eight Army. They just moved them place to place.
US: In the desert, probably in the western desert and then Italy and [unclear]
ST: Yeah. You see
AM: Too far to come back.
ST: Professionals you know, they wouldn’t let them come back, they kept using them until
AM: Yeah.
US: Your sister, was your sister?
ST: My sister? She went near Sheffield and she was a parachute packer [laughs], she was ok, yeah. When she got married, her husband [unclear] and he was sent to Norway fighting, they were fighting in Norway, their regiment, yeah.
AM: Crickey!
ST: So, I don’t know how my mum, I don’t know how she [unclear]
AM: [unclear] especially If your dad had died, early in the war did your dad die? Or did he die before that?
ST: ’36 he died.
AM: So before the war
ST: 1942
AM: But you said he was a miner.
ST: Kidney, kidney trouble.
AM: Yeah.
US: So it was good that your mum had you in Waddington
ST: Yeah,
US: [unclear]
ST: [unclear] that’s why I kept going home
AM: Well to [unclear] four children away,
ST: Yeah.
AM: This was unheard of before the war
ST: Yes it was and she tried to get me to stay at home, she tried to get me out of it and I wouldn’t listen to her.
AM: No.
ST: And then I tried to go with my sister and they wouldn’t let me [unclear]
AM: They wouldn’t let you do that. But all in all you sound like you enjoyed most of it.
ST: Oh, I did, I did. [unclear] different, if I hadn’t gone I was really very shy and never mixed much but that did me good going in the Air Force, it really did, yeah. And I spread my wings, you know, I’ve been everywhere now, so.
AM: Tell me a little bit about what, you met Harold and Harold was in the, a bomb aimer and obviously you got married in 1945 and then you had your [unclear] by having your daughter and what did Harold do at the end? Cause how long was it before he was demobbed?
ST: What was it, he was before he demobbed [unclear]
AM: Yeah, how long, because quite a lot of them went for another [unclear], weren’t they, before demobbing.
ST: He didn’t come out till ’47 because they were bringing VIPs back from Far East, you know. Yeah, they were bringing
AM: Where did you live then, if he was still in the RAF? While he was still there in ’46 and ’47?
ST: Where?
US: Did you go back to your mum’s or?
ST: I went to my mum’s.
AM: You went back to your mum’s.
ST: And then I went up to Scotland to live cause he worked for the electricity board and they were building a big hydroelectric scheme on Loch Lomond and so we moved round to, lived on Loch Lomond side for about three years. And then it was very lonely [unclear] so I wanted to come home to my mum so we got a transfer down to Mansfield, yeah. So
AM: Right. And then, because you were telling me you’ve lived all over the world, how did you end up?
ST: Yeah, the same crew as Harold was Joe Bradshaw, he was a flight engineer, and he was an Irishman, my husband was Scottish and they were buddies, you know, friends, and in fact he was my daughters godfather when she was born but he went back to Ireland, then he went to Canada, he emigrated to Canada and he met a lady there and got married in Canada. And then he worked for a car industry or something and he got a chance for a job down in San Diego in America so he was always saying, why don’t you come over here, this is the land of opportunity, so we did [Laughs]. We, first of all, my daughter went over for a holiday and she met a young man while she was there and she was a schoolteacher she had got [unclear] and she wrote and said, mum, I’m getting married and she came back, gave a notice and went back. So, then we went over to see her in San Diego and a younger daughter and her husband went as well so he liked it in San Diego, so he got, Joe got him a job in San Diego so they went over to San Diego, so I was living, we were living in a little [unclear] there and [unclear] my husband retired, he was sixty five and he said, we may as well go, so we packed up and went. So we were all in San Diego which is, have you ever been there?
AM: No.
ST: Paradise there. I don’t know why I left. And daughter and husband lost his job in San Diego and his mum lived in Burbank near Los Angeles so they went back and then my youngest daughter, he wasn’t getting very much money and he was offered a better job in New Jersey so they went over to New Jersey and we were left in San Diego so then we moved up further up California to Simi Valley, where that’s where my oldest daughter was, up at Simi Valley and we bought a house there and we live there and I’m twenty six years there.
AM: Wonderful. In retirement.
ST: In retirement. It was wonderful.
AM: You sound like you’ve had a lovely life.
ST: Yes, I have.
AM: You have a lovely life.
ST: And it’s while we were in San Diego that it was our fiftieth wedding anniversary and I said to my daughter, we don’t want any, we don’t want a party because all the family is in England. I said, we are going away, we are going by ourselves and we are going on a tour around New Zealand, cause we are doing bus tours, you know. So, we went and booked and we went, well, on December the fourth, that was our wedding anniversary. We got on, this coach, we were on the same bus and there were people from all over, you know, South Africa, Holland, everywhere, on this coach and we got on and everybody started singing happy anniversary to us [laughs]. So I said to the bus driver, how did you know? Cause we never said anything. And he says, a little bird told me that. So I think we went to see those hot things
AM: Springs.
ST: Yeah, hot springs and we went to see them and when we got back and went into the hotel and dinner, dinner was late that night he said, so went down for dinner. When we got into the dining room, it was decorated [unclear] happy anniversary.
AM: Wonderful.
ST: My daughter, my oldest daughter had sent a fax over, cause there were faxes then
AM: Yeah. The emails now, but faxes then.
ST: Sent a fax to the hotel. I don’t know if she sent money but there was the biggest wedding cake, three tier wedding cake and you just couldn’t believe it, [unclear] I just wanted a quiet
AM: A quite wedding
ST: We didn’t want to, no. [file missing] And I hadn’t asked for leave and I got two weeks at the same time and married December the fourth and we travelled, my mum and my sister and me, we travelled up to Glasgow by train which was full of troops, all, you know. It took as about eleven hours to get to Glasgow but when we got to Glasgow we’ve got to get to Gourock to get the ferry over, so we got to Gourock, it was dark, pitch black, not a thing and ferries had stopped running because it was gale, the gale blowing and I thought, what do we do now? So we stood there in the dark and I just didn’t know what to do and this American came over and he said, where are you heading for? I said, Dunoon. He says, I’ll take you. And there was in the Clyde of Dunoon there was a big submarine base, you know, American submarines and some of the crews had gone into Glasgow for a night out and he was, got the liberty boat waiting to take him home [laughs]. He says, I’ll take you across, well, there’s my mum, me and my sister and the gale blowing and we are going up and down, my mother was ever so sick, she says, I’ll never come here again, never again, she said. Anyway, got to Dunoon, and he got a car, they were allowed petrol, you know, and he came and met me, I phoned him and he came and met me. And then I got into trouble for not going to look for a hotel but we couldn’t see, it was pitch black, you know and anyway. Got married on the Tuesday and on the, on the Tuesday, maybe next day, Harold had booked a sleeper down to London, cause Harold’s sister had married a sailor and was living in Portsmouth. So we got on this sleeper and we went down to London but we had two bunks, one on top and then [unclear] me, if two army officers, they come in and [laughs]
AM: So that was your honeymoon.
ST: That was my honeymoon night. I got two army officers, my husband up there and me down here. Anyway we got to his sister’s and my leave was off so I sit down, I’m not going back, I’m not going back, I said. So he says, you’ll have to go back, I said, no, I’m not, you know. Anyway, we got a phone call from his mum and then [unclear] police had gone up to Dunoon for me [laughs]. So, I thought, well, I better go back, I said, I’ll get my husband in trouble, you know, you’ll get worse trouble [unclear]
AM: You were still in at this point.
ST: So, he took me back, he took me, we went back and I thought, oh God, I’m going to go to prison or something [laughs]. Anyway, I went in and it was, commanding officer was a woman and she came round and she put an arm round my shoulder and she says, you know, my dear, I would have done exactly the same [laughs].
AM: Brilliant.
ST: So, apart from having military police after me, I really [unclear] [laughs].
AM: [laughs], so, but all the way up to Dunoon?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Which is a long way [unclear] west coast of Scotland. And all the way back to Portsmouth.
ST: Yeah.
AM: Crickey! I knew there were stories in you.
ST: [laughs] you didn’t care in those days, did you? It could have been his last leave.
AM: He’d gone through the war, yeah, and he was still flying.
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 Sylvia Trapp
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
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
2016-04-05
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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ATrappSV160405
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:38:17 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Sylvia was born in Mansfield where her father was a miner and her mother had worked at Lawns Mills. She had two brothers and a sister. Sylvia was 15 when she left school to work at the hosiery mills and recalls the German manager being deported. She joined the WAAF and completed basic training at RAF Innesworth. Away from home for the first time, she cried a lot.
She was selected for wireless training and trained at RAF Compton Bassett and Blackpool, where she used to go dancing. As a wireless operator Sylvia was posted to RAF Bottesford and then RAF Waddington, working shifts in the Air Traffic Control tower. She also had to check the aircraft radios.
Sylvia's accommodation hut had ten beds and on many evenings, she was able to get a lift home to Mansfield and back with a contractor. At RAF Waddington, she met and fell in love with Harold, a bomb aimer and says it was hard to watch him depart on operations. But he survived and they married when the war ended and they had two daughters.
In 1947 the family moved to Scotland for three years but Sylvia found it very lonely so Harold transferred to Mansfield.
Harold's flight engineer emigrated to North America after the war and was always suggesting they do the same. Sylvia's daughters both went first and then, when Harold retired, he and Sylvia went to California
Sylvia says they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in New Zealand and then recalls how she had spent her honeymoon on a train to Glasgow with two army men, before travelling all the way down to Portsmouth, where she became absent without leave. Worried that she might be imprisoned, she returned to RAF Waddington where her WAAF commanding officer took sympathy on her.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Andy Fitter
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Mansfield
Scotland
Scotland--Loch Lomond
United States
California
California--San Diego
California--Simi Valley
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1945-12-04
1946
1947
Absent Without Leave
aircrew
ground personnel
love and romance
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Bottesford
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Innesworth
RAF Waddington
training
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/PPayneG1702.2.jpg
2f46ef1a16000254b14a168175fe9b28
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
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Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Conforms To
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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/860/11102/AHarrisNG160128.2.mp3
617dde8eedd97b1d29cf4bc164b586a4
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
Harris, Neil
Neil Gibson Harris
N G Harris
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Neil Harris (b. 1920, 56027 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 578 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
2016-01-28
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
Harris, NG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: Alright. This is Brian Wright, I am interviewing Flight Lieutenant Brian Wright DFC of Bomber Command on Thursday, the 28th of January 2016 at his home in Lidham and the time is twenty past three in the afternoon. Just to start us with a formal question, if you wouldn’t mind so, could you just confirm your full name, rank on leaving and your service number please?
NH: Neil Gibson Harris, 56027, Flight Lieutenant.
BW: Ok. And I believe you are born in November 1920 in Bournemouth.
NH: 27/11/1920, yes.
BW: What was your family like, you lived with your parents, of course, did you have any brothers or sisters?
NH: Yes, I had two brothers and one sister we, fairly wide range, my eldest brother was nine years older than me and my sister was six years younger than me. So, was a spread of fifteen years between us, we are a working-class family, thank you, but very close.
BW: And what was the area like where you were growing up, was it [unclear]?
NH: Very pleasant indeed, oh, suburban, but very pleasant. Although basically a lower middle-class type area.
BW: And you were at school in Bournemouth during that time?
NH: Yes.
BW: I understand that you left school at fourteen.
NH: Fourteen, school called East Howe.
BW: East Howe.
NH: Yes.
BW: And did you have any qualifications?
NH: No, there weren’t, there were no qualifications available in those days. Not at fourteen, no, just, you just left school at fourteen and started working. And I went to work in the East Dorset brickworks as an office boy but by the end of nine months, I was rang into [unclear] office and my salary went, my wages went from seven and six to fifteen schillings, the works manager didn’t, gave me all his work to do [laughs]
BW: Just [unclear] you with it.
NH: So, I went from there to Bowmakers, which is a banking facilities company in Bournemouth, where I upgraded my position quite a bit, I was a proper clerk, a junior clerk.
BW: And from there I understand you went into the civil service.
NH: No, not the civil service, no, I went straight into the Air Force from there.
BW: Oh, I see, so you were [unclear]
NH: As an apprentice, as an apprentice. No, I’ve never been in the civil service, No, I went, that was, I was fifteen when I went to Bowmakers and I was nearly seventeen when I joined the RAF as an apprentice at Halton.
BW: Ok, and this would be 1937, so that would be
NH: That would be 1930, no, earlier, yes, ’37, that’s right, yes, ’37, September ’37.
BW: And what attracted you to join the RAF, what was your interest in that?
NH: Well, there were half a dozen or so, junior clerks, they all had had benefit of grammar school type of education, which is different to the one that I had and I, three or four of them were interested in the RAF, two of them, like myself, became apprentices, and one of them became an acting private officer
BW: I see.
NH: And a man named Haynes, he was a Battle of Britain pilot eventually, he was killed eventually too, got a DFC, shot down five, after that I don’t know anything about him but he didn’t survive the war, that’s all I know.
BW: A shame. And so, what prompted you to join the RAF, did you sense that the war was coming or did you [unclear]?
NH: Well, I think It’s the effect of three or four of us talking about the RAF and doing quite a nice job, had a pleasant working situation at Bowmakers but we wanted more excitement, I think. And of course I wanted more education, I, leaving school at fourteen I still felt I’d liked to have gone to a public school, there’s no chance of me doing that but RAF Halton provided a fairly good substitute, we had school and workshops and plenty of sport, which is what I wanted.
BW: And was there a good social life as well?
NH: Oh, no, social life, no, you weren’t allowed out [laughs], no, there’s three years hard regime but you had plenty of sports, but never saw a girl [laughs], no, we were all frustrated [unclear] [laughs]
BW: And so you
NH: It was a good training, excellent, marvellous training of course.
BW: And so, your trade in the engineering branch was what?
NH: I was a fitter 2A, a fitter to airframe.
BW: Ok.
NH: I managed to get in because the expansion scheme had started and the entries became much larger so I [unclear] an examination of three set papers, quite large, got a couple of them here somewhere, and I’m quite impressed by the standards that they required. So I did a lot of private study, my second brother was a very clever man, young man, he helped me a lot, he was an, he was a really highly, he became a highly qualified engineer and he helped me a lot, I managed to scrape in and but by that time, entries were getting to something like nine hundred or a thousand, so two entries a year, and of course the expansion scheme has started because of the threat of Hitler and there were, so, we were, before that time it was, you were called fitter twos and you did both engines and airframes, they split us up, the aircrafts were becoming more complicated and so you either became airframe, a fitter airframe or a fitter engine and then you did your three year, it’s a three year training, you did your three year training either as a fitter to airframe or a fitter to engine, and then the scheme was that after you’d been out on a normal squadron, and had practical experienced, you went back and did another year and that would be a conversion, if you did airframes before then you did a year on engines or vice versa so then you became a fitter one, so that’s basically how the training worked.
BW: And so, you get a good grounding not just in the structure of the aircraft but also the powerplants as well.
NH: You would, by that time but of course the war intervened from my entry and we stayed as fitter 2A’s of course but I got off and I took the easier route and managed to get onto aircrew. And but they wouldn’t let me, as soon as I finished my training, I volunteered for aircrew, but they wouldn’t release me until enough people, the war started by then but they wouldn’t release me to go onto aircrew duties until they had enough people in from, to be converted to trades, you know, as engineering trades and I could leave, so it took me nearly eighteen months from the time of being selected to being called up.
BW: So they needed enough people to be in the pool to replace you
NH: That’s right, that’s
BW: Because they could allow the engineers to move on.
NH: Yes
BW: [unclear]
NH: That’s right, yes.
BW: And what attracted you think to aircrew, was is, there simply more money, cause there was flying pay [unclear] or was it [unclear]?
NH: I wanted the glamour.
BW: Alright.
NH: A little bit it was there but I [laughs], I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
BW: I see.
NH: Yeah.
BW: And did that involve more tests and [unclear]?
NH: Not until you got onto, when I was eventually called up of course then by that time of course there the whole process was so huge that there are bottlenecks and so every stage it took time because you had to wait until you could move on to the next stage, the, either, whether held up training or something of that sort so, we start off at the ITW, which in my case was, well, first of all it started off in London, at the air crew receiving centre and we were all there, we live, we ate at the zoo, I remember,
BW: At London Zoo.
NH: At London Zoo, and lived in flats, in luxury flats in North West London and marched to the zoo for our meals.
BW: Right.
NH: But that, again, took a long time before we moved on and the next stage was to go on to the Initial Training Wing, where you did an eight week course and learned navigation and various other skills but there was a bottleneck there, I remember I went down to Brighton for a, just to occupy time, and eventually, although I’d been called up in November, November ’41, that’s right, and I was at Wick at the time when, as a fitter, on the, we were protecting the convoys coming into Liverpool but we’d been stationed at Stornoway on the Outer Hebrides,
BW: That’s where Wick is, is that right?
NH: Pardon?
BW: That’s where Wick is.
NH: No, Wick, no, Wick is on the north east coast.
BW: Ok.
NH: And now we moved over there with Hudsons, we had started with Ansons and changed over to Hudsons, when we moved up to Stornoway and then from Stornoway, we moved over to Wick. But whilst we were at Wick, I was called up for aircrew duties and that was in November ’41, I happened to be on leave at the time in Bournemouth so I got recalled from Bournemouth to Wick, which was to go back to London [laughs] to start my aircrew duties and as I say, then, we had, we hung around in Regent’s Park waiting for the next stage, well the first stage of training and that didn’t happen, this was in November ’41 and we didn’t get to Stratford until about the end of January, February ’42 and then we had this eight week course at Stratford learning navigation, doing drill, all RT and all the rest of it.
BW: So you travelled in a very short time to the length and breadth of the country cause you’ve gone from a short period of time in Brighton right up to the north of Scotland to work on aircraft protecting the convoys and then, across the other side of Scotland, then back down again, and called for [unclear] training
NH: Well, just go back a little bit, when I left, when I graduated from Halton, well, I graduated as a, what’s the right word, as an aircraftsman first class, normally I’d have an entry at, say, of a hundred, well take a hundred, apprentices leaving but ten would pass out as leading aircraftsmen, ten or fifteen would pass out as leading aircraftsmen, aircraftsmen first class, about sixty or so would pass out as aircraftsmen first class and the remainder would pass out as AC2 but the rate of pay was quite significant, a leading aircraftsman would get forty two schillings a week, which was a big rise from five and six pence,
BW: Yeah, absolutely.
NH: Yeah. So, I passed out an AC1 which is 31, 31 of 31 and six pence a week, which is quite good, I, [laughs].
BW: And was that more than you were earning in the bank previously?
NH: Oh, yes, oh yes, in the bank I was getting seventeen and six, I think it was, might have gonna up, to nearly a pound, but no, seventeen to six a week, yes,
BW: So you almost doubled
NH: No, I, and of course, as an apprentice, I’m only getting three schillings a week, for the first two weeks and then five and six pence for the last week, that’s the third week. And then when I passed out as an AC1, I would have jumped up to thirty-one and six pence a week, which is magnificent,
BW: I believe at some point during your early training, you caught pneumonia and had to be sort of
NH: Oh that was before, that was at the end of my training,
BW: Oh, I see.
NH: Yes, this was, the war had started October, November, I caught pneumonia almost [unclear] they had to, they called my mother to come up because they thought I wouldn’t live but M & B was the new drug which they’d produced and that saved my life I think because but always touch and go anyway, when I recovered and I came out, my entry had, the whole thing was telescoped, you see, did a three year course, when the war started, all sports afternoons were stopped, we worked longer hours, and the whole thing was telescoped from the three years to a much shorter one but so we were on that at the time that I went into hospital with pneumonia and when I came out, my entry had finished and they’d gone, so I was left on my own, they gave me some Christmas leave and when I came back, I just studied on my own for a few weeks and passed out on my own as an AC1. I probably had passed out as an AC2 [laughs]. So, I’ve been lucky that way.
BW: So, there was no parade for you then, unfortunately, they just allowed you
NH: No, I just, no.
BW: So you graduated [unclear]
NH: I went down to Thorney Island under 48 Squadron, which is at Coastal Command, we had Ansons then, as I said, and then we, as an AC1. Is it all getting a bit garbled for you?
BW: No, no, that’s perfectly fine. So, during your time at Thorney Island then, which is near Chichester,
NH: Yeah.
BW: You were still as a tradesman, you were an aircraftman
NH: That’s right
BW: First class
NH: Yeah.
BW: What was it like there, what sort of air, you said Ansons then, have other aircraft there too? [unclear] and Blenheims, would you work on them at all or?
NH: No, only Ansons.
BW: Ah, ok.
NH: Yeah. And of course we were there to protect the shipping coming up to Southampton and to the docks along the south coast but then, when the invasion of the low countries came, it was too dangerous and the shipping was moved up to Liverpool, Liverpool and Glasgow and so we followed the shipping up to Liverpool and we were stationed at Hooton Park.
BW: I see. So around the time of the Battle of Britain and when the invasion was looking imminent during the summer of 1940,
NH: Yeah.
BW: You and your squadron, 48 Squadron, actually moved up to Liverpool.
NH: To Liverpool and we were there for about a year I think before we moved up to, because then there were all bombed badly and the submarine menace became bigger and we moved, and so the shipping was moved further up into Glasgow and so we moved up to Stornoway,
BW: I see.
NH: And then to Wick. Don’t quite know why we did that, we were on Hudsons by that time.
BW: How did you find them to work on?
NH: Well of course [unclear] much, they’d hydraulics of course which you know, on the Anson it was a wind up undercarriage, took a hundred and twenty turns to get the wheels up, well of course there was much more hydraulics on the Hudsons, very modern by comparison with the Anson.
BW: And so, you mentioned earlier about having completed your trade training, you were called up for aircrew which is in November ‘41 thereabouts, did you apply to be a pilot or did you?
NH: Yes, I wanted to be a pilot, yeah, I wanted to be a glamourous pilot and go out with girls [laughs]
BW: [laughs] And what happened to enable the change [unclear]?
NH: Well you see that, everything, as I said, was taking so long with bottlenecks everywhere, they decided to change from being a two pilot crew to one pilot and introduced bomb aimers and bomb aimers very often failed pilots, [unclear] capable of getting an aircraft back perhaps in an emergency as the pilot was no longer capable, that was the, so, the some man crew then became a pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, engineer and two gunners, that’s a Halifax or Lancaster.
BW: Ok.
NH: And so then of course they had a business of what they called grading and so all of us who wanted to be pilots, we had to go to a grading school and fly Tiger Moths and be graded and although we went solo, I did a very poor final test so they graded me down, I’m afraid I messed it up, I made a mess of the spin, that sort of thing but so that was very disappointing but so they transferred me to being a navigator.
BW: I see.
NH: And others who were the same, were either navigators or bomb aimers did navigator or bomb aimer training.
BW: Ok. And so, until this stage you’ve been training on Tiger Moths
NH: Tiger Moths
BW: As a pilot
NH: Yeah
BW: But I believe you were sent abroad to Canada so you
NH: Well then, then of course I went to, yes, that’s right, I went to Rivers, near Winnipeg, went over on the Queen Elisabeth, just newly constructed, that was in, that was in September ’42, yes, September ’42, oh, because of the bottleneck we gone down to Eastbourne for further navigation, for navigation training, so we did a further navigation course down there, that was after we’d failed, we failed to become pilots and went down and became navigators, this is the start of our navigation course at Eastbourne, so did a few weeks there and then we moved across, up to, somewhere near Manchester, where we stayed there before we were shipped up to Glasgow to get onto the Queen Elisabeth.
BW: And what was it like going across to Canada?
NH: Oh, quite good, I mean, we were only a few thousand aircrew going across to, a mixture of pilots and navigators, most of the pilots went down south to Texas or somewhere like that and we went to a place called Mana, called Rivers in Manitoba, in the middle of Canada, about a hundred and twenty miles from Winnipeg and so we were only going out, we were only about two or three thousand I think aircrew under training or going for training. Coming back, I, and I came back on the same boat, we landed in New York, then went to up to Moncton in Canada on the East Coast and then across to, had two or three weeks there, it’s all bottlenecks all the time before we were posted to Rivers at Manitoba, that took a three day rail journey from
BW: Wow.
NH: And we got there about the middle of September.
BW: So just in time before the winter set in.
NH: Just setting in, yes, a week or two later they froze, they sprayed a compound of water and that was the ice rink for the rest of the winter, yeah.
BW: So, did you get much flying in during that time?
NH: Oh yes, yes, yes, in Ansons again, bitterly cold because we had to do astro training was the big feature and we had to open the hatch and these pilots of course shuddered at the cold air coming in but we had to take our, take these, you know, all these [unclear] and stuff, fortunately in Canada, you know, you get these wonderful clear nights, and the stars and everything so visible, it was a, for doing astro navigation, it was ideal.
BW: So you had to
NH: But it was still to bloody cold.
BW: So you actually had to open the hatch mid flying in order to take reading the stars.
NH: Yeah, and take the reading, well, the stars you wanted, yeah. But navigation was simple in Canada because the nights were clear and the days were, cold and brisk, you know, you could see for miles, you could, you get airborne at Rivers, hundred and twenty miles from Winnipeg, and of course you could see Winnipeg because it is, all the lights were still on in Canada
BW: No blackout.
NH: No. And there’s only a few towns there anyway and you knew exactly which town, by the size, so navigation was simple.
BW: What was life like there in general, did you manage to travel out or did you meet any Canadians, at least some aircrew were stationed off base or b&bs and things but presumably you [unclear]
NH: Oh no, we lived, oh no, we were right in the prairies, we just the camp,
BW: So just yourselves and
NH: Place called Brandon, was about twenty five miles away, [unclear] I never went there, once or twice, we did get down to Londa, to Minneapolis [unclear] at Christmas there over the Christmas period but we managed to work our way down there for a, for the Christmas break
BW: And did you stay
NH: Rather special
BW: And did you stay over in hotels and things and [unclear]
NH: No, we stayed with, while went to the US the United States organisation, you know, like the Red cross naffy or whatever but being American at that time was very well appointed, we had written to them before saying we are coming, and they phoned us out, we stayed with a professor, while he was away, on national service, he was a Lieutenant colonel American Air Force but he was a professor at Minneapolis University and we stayed with him, with his wife, five of us.
BW: And was that your crew that you went with then?
NH: No, not, we weren’t crewed up then, we were just five navigators under training.
BW: Ok. And from there you, I believe, you passed out as sergeant observer navigator
NH: Sergeant observer navigator, yes,
BW: You graduated while you were in Canada.
NH: That’s right, yes, came back to Moncton to wait for our journey home, which again was on the Queen Elisabeth from New York. And then back in Glasgow, by avoiding the U-boats, but because we were so fast, they couldn’t, they couldn’t get any nearer but both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elisabeth both scootered across the Atlantic, coming back it was very different than coming out, we brought all the American troops, about fifteen thousand American troops on board.
BW: So this is pretty much at the height of the Atlantic war, then, isn’t it? When the [unclear]
NH: Yes, this is, this would be March ’43 now and we are just beginning to get over the U-boat, we are just beginning to get control of the U-boat menace, it was in ’42 the U-boat menace was at its highest, and it was a serious problem, well still was but we, yeah, we are getting on top of it by the time I came back in ’43.
BW: And so from there you went to
NH: We went to Harrogate, we were all, Harrogate was the assembly point and we were all assembled, officers went into the Majestic and sergeants went into the Grand Hotel in Harrogate, do you know them?
BW: Yes, I’ve been
NH: And the Majestic
BW: I’ve been to one, yes.
NH: Yeah. So
BW: Very nice [unclear] hotels
NH: We didn’t mind that at all, this was March, we had a couple of weeks leave in Bournemouth and back and then we were kept hanging around again, waiting to go on to our onto the OTU, which is the next step in our training, operational training unit, and that took some time, I remember, in order to occupy us they sent us up to Perth, to a flying training school that flew Tiger Moths around the, the name of the river near Perth, do you know it? Tay, is it, Tay?
BW: Tay.
NH: Lovely, anyway, lovely week, I think it was only a week or ten days, just a way of keeping us amused, before we, eventually we did get to the operational training which was at Kinloss, in northern Scotland.
BW: And was that number 19 OTU, [unclear]
NH: I don’t remember the number, [unclear] on my log book. But it’s, yes, operational at Kinloss and we were on Whitleys, so we are on a different aeroplane now. And this will be, by the time we did that, it’s August, August ’43, so it’s already taken me from November ’41 and now we are in, at August ’43,I got my navigator’s brevy but I still haven’t got, I’m still not operationally trained, that we did on a Whitley.
BW: Right. So it’s taken you, as you say, approximately two years, they needed two years
NH: yeah.
BW: To get to that operational training unit.
NH: Yeah. That’s right, yeah. And that finished for about the end of October, beginning of November ’43,
BW: Ok.
NH: So I think it be the end of October, we were posted, we were crewed up there, that was the big feature and I, you all join up together, you look around and you see who you’d like to fly with. I joined up with a chap named, sergeant, he was a sergeant, Sergeant Wilkinson, we liked the look of one another I suppose, so he and I joined and that was the usual pattern, you and the pilot joined up and you skited around and gathered in the rest of the crew which at this stage we would be five, wireless operator, gunner and a gunner.
BW: And this I believe commonly took place in just a big hangar, they amalgamated all together
NH: No, that’s right, yes
BW: And they just left them
NH: Left us to sort ourselves out, yes, a funny system.
BW: And so, you crew up with Sergeant Wilkinson,
NH: Sergeant Wilkinson, yeah.
BW: And do you recall the names of the other crew members?
NH: No, I can’t. No, I’m afraid I can’t. Oh, George Dugray, yeah, a French Canadian, oh, that was later, no, he’s the bomb aimer, oh yes, he was there too. Did George Dugray? Anyway, he joined us on the next one, the heavy conversion unit, when we got on to the Halifaxes.
BW: So
NH: He was a French-Canadian bomb aimer
BW: So if you were five crewmen initially, what were going to be flying at that point when you initially met Wilkinson and Dugray?
NH: Well, we only knew that we would probably Halifaxes or Lancasters were most likely.
BW: I see.
NH: Well the possibility of a Mosquitoes if we were lucky.
BW: So, where were you when you were looking for your crew and when you were getting yourselves together, was this at Burne or was this elsewhere?
NH: Oh no, this was at the operational training unit at Kinloss
BW: Kinloss.
NH: At Kinloss,
BW: I see.
NH: Yes, that’s when you came together
BW: I see.
NH: And up to that time we’d all been navigators but as you know you are split up and you find your crew, so with them we flew as a crew then, pilot, navigator, did we have a bomb aimer? I suppose we did have Dugray as bomb aimer, wireless operator, not an engineer, gunner. That’s right, yes, that’ll be it. That’s the five, isn’t it? One gunner, engineer, no, one gunner, bomb aimer, navigator, pilot. And wireless operator. So then, then you had to do, you went through the whole, all the daylight flying, night flying and of course very different flying conditions in Kinloss in Scotland, the blackout and very few aids and it was a very difficult and hazardous training period and a lot collided into the mountains through inexperience cause that’s what we were, totally inexperienced and there was a lot of fatalities there. So, it wasn’t an easy time.
BW: What sort of aids were you working with as a navigator then at this point?
NH: I’d be twenty-one, twenty one.
BW: What sort of navigational aids or equipment were you using at this time?
NH: Oh, hardly any
BW: So was
NH: Radio, we could get the old radio bearing, navigation and that’s it
BW: Was it all dead reckoning
NH: Otherwise dead reckoning, yeah, and that was one of the troubles as where people, they got lost and they sended through cloud and hit the high ground.
BW: And roughly how long were you on the OTU?
NH: That’s about six to eight weeks, we went the end of August, it’ll be eight weeks and we finished round about the end of October, beginning of November.
BW: So, this is October, November ’43.
NH: That’s right, yeah, yeah. And then of course we still hadn’t finished, then we got to go to the heavy conversion unit, flying the sort of aeroplanes we were going to fly on operations, which in our case was the Halifax and that was when we were posted to Rufforth to a heavy conversion unit at Rufforth which is about four miles out of York.
BW: And you were onto Halifaxes at that point.
NH: Yeah.
BW: Did you acquire any more crew members at all [unclear]?
NH: Oh yes, that’s where the engineer came, and the second gunner, that’s it. Yes, that’s right, Dugray, he did join us up at [unclear] and so were five when we went down to Rufforth and then we were joined by the other, by the mid upper gunner and by the flight engineer.
BW: Do you happen to recall their names at all or?
NH: No. I can’t.
BW: That’s alright.
NH: I can’t. Hardly anyone finished, I was the only one that finished the op, a full round of ops, they all disappeared one way or another. Well, you see, Wilkinson who I became, who became a good friend, splendid, a good looking chap too, and he became, he was going to go to university, he, when we finished our training at Rufforth, preparing to go to a squadron, we had finally finished our training and now we are fully qualified but it was quite usual for pilots to go on an experience exercise and he was sent on to do a run on on an operation on Berlin and that was the end of him and so we didn’t have a pilot and that kept us waiting again.
BW: And do you recall who eventually came
NH: Yes, I’ve got his name, what’s his name? Oh Gosh, my memory’s gone, I’m afraid,
BW: That’s alright.
NH: It’s in the logbook, he was a flying officer, so now as a sergeant I was being teamed up with a flying officer, who’d been posted from Hemswell. Well, Hemswell was a station, was a Bomber Command station in 4 Group and it achieved a terrible reputation for not pressing on to the target and Harris, the Bomber Command chief came up, called them all sorts of names, and closed the station down, Hemswell, everybody was posted, and I got one of those.
BW: I see.
NH: And so we did our, we did [unclear] game, so we had to train together again on the Halifax from Rufforth and that took us until well after Christmas, during which time I met my wife, who, the girl that became my wife.
BW: And how did you meet her?
NH: Oh, I met her at a dance, and she’d gone with, oh, she had arranged to meet a girlfriend at the Grey Rooms in York, I don’t know if you know it.
BW: No, I don’t.
NH: Oh, it was a lovely place, oh, we all got there, all the, York was full of aircrew, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians particularly and Brits and a few Americans and of course there wasn’t much in York then, everything was closed down but there was a lovely dance place, the Dugrey Rooms, and that’s where we all went, to meet girls and that’s where I met my wife.
US: Sorry, after Williams your pilot, you then had Houston.
NH: Williams, Williams, that’s right. Flying officer Williams, he was the one who was, came to Rufforth from Hemswell we, I having lost Wilkinson and what you say the name was?
US: Williams.
NH: Williams. Oh, he had, I eventually found out he was called Turnback Williams, we are not going to the target? I’ll on that, busy
BW: Part of the reason Harris talk to these guys.
NH: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right so I did all my, I completed all my training with, as a, with him, with Williams, and from there at the end from February 44, now is it? End of 44, yes, Paul Williams of course, when he was sent out on his second Dickey for experience, that was at the height of the Berlin raids, and the losses were huge, we’d been, we’d been on those of course, if he’d come back from his, from his trip of experience
BW: Second Dickey means like a second pilot
NH: Second pilot experience, yes, yeah, so he didn’t come back and I wrote to his father and I got a nice, I might have it somewhere a nice letter from his father who is a stockbroker in London and anyway so I saw that with Williams then we completed another bit of training before we went off to the squadron which I say was about the end of February ’44.
BW: And this was the newly formed 578 Squadron.
NH: And that was the newly formed, yes, they were only formed about three months before
BW: And they were specifically
NH: From Snaith.
BW: And they were specifically flying Halifaxes Mark III as they were one of the first
NH: I was jolly lucky to get on one of those cause it was just as good as the Lancaster, radial engines Bristol and they could get up to the required height and carry a similar amount of bombs, splendid.
BW: So, your first sortie with 578 would be in February as you say,
NH: In March
BW: In March
NH: Then in February, then again the training was so much, I mean they wouldn’t escort, again got ourselves familiarised with the Mark Iii and done a couple of training runs before we were then considered to be operational and that took place in March and it was during that time the Nuremberg raid and of the pilots at Burton on the squadron, he got a posthumous VC.
BW: Did you know him?
NH: No, I didn’t know him, no, no, I’d only been on the squadron a week or so but I didn’t know him, I know, no, I didn’t know him, I didn’t really know him, I didn’t know anybody really, we kept to ourselves a
BW: You tend to associate with your crew if anything
NH: Just with the crew, didn’t mix much with anybody else, you stuck pretty close into the crew and as I had a girlfriend now in York I scuttled off there [laughs].
BW: So, it was looking pretty serious with your girlfriend
NH: Already started to look serious, yes, yeah, we got engaged in April, after I’d done about five operations. I took her down to Bournemouth to meet my family.
BW: Right. And so, what were the accommodation facilities like at Burne, this is where your 578 Squadron
NH: They weren’t bad, it was a brand-new place, you know, all Hudson.
BW: Were you billeted with the crew?
NH: Oh yes, yes, I, we were in huts of course but as sergeants we had little privileges, the sergeant’s mess and that sort of thing, reasonably comfortable of course, we were well-fed as aircrew, the local people, we always had eggs before we went and that sort of thing, things which people couldn’t get on the ration we had plenty of, plenty of chips too cause at the age of twenty one, twenty two I [unclear] of chips [laughs]
BW: [unclear]
NH: [unclear]
BW: And were you the only crew in the billet sometimes or there were two crews in there or?
NH: I think we were the only one, as far as I can remember we were the only one.
BW: And at this time there was a CO in charge
NH: Yes.
BW: Wing Commander Wilkey Wilkinson, do you recall him?
NH: Oh, I do very well, yes, he’s one chap I do remember, and I’ve never been a hero worshiper but I would think I would put him into that category. Marvellous chap, good looking, tall, great sense of humour, great, young, handsome, had every quality, but you knew that if Wilkinson was flying it was gonna be a bad one, he’d only, he wouldn’t take the easy ones, he’d always took the bad ones, great leader, he was on his second tour, too, very nice chap too because then of course I, to going on a bit further, I was with Williams, I did two operations with Williams, I didn’t remember what it was I didn’t like but I didn’t like it, I went to see Williams in great trepidation but I didn’t know what Williams I never spoke to Wing Commanders, they were far too elevated, but I went to see him and so I did my night flying with Williams so I said, we must have talked a bit, I can’t remember, so he said right leave with me, I’ll fix you up with somebody else and I went then to, I was teamed up then with Houston, Jock Houston, and we stayed together all the time, finished together, got commissioned together, got a DFC together.
BW: And so, you when you went from your crew flying with Williams at this point
NH: Yes
BH: To make the change to another crew
NH: Yes, the others all, I [unclear], yes, yeah.
BW: [unclear]
NH: [unclear]
BW: [unclear]
NH: Well, Williams did finish his tour, yes, but I don’t know who he flew, he finished the tour.
BW: The other members of your crew didn’t pick up your sense of
NH: No,
BW: [unclear]
NH: Not as far as I know. No, no.
BW: And you mentioned about Wilkinson, there’s a description here which seems to chime with what you commented about it and it’s only a short description if I can read it to you, it says, he was described by those who knew him as a tall, loose end fellow, the first impression that a stranger might have of him was that he was rather irresponsible, care-free, vague individual, but on closer acquaintance he would seem that he had one of the kindest, gentlest and most sympathetic
NH: Oh, I think that was pretty accurate
BW: Could possess
NH: Yes
BW: He had the knack of inspiring confidence in his crew, when flying I can’t remember anything disturbing him, he was huge with his men
NH: No, no. There’s my little story in that book he’s flying a strange aircraft, an unusual aircraft and he’s got an army man, and army major alongside him but oh, they couldn’t get the flaps down and the army major says to Wilkinson, can you fly this without flaps? He said, well, you are just about to find out [laughs].
BW: And it says of him because he was awarded a DSO he said, he inspired powers of leadership, great skill and determination, qualities which have earned him much success, his devoted squadron commander, his great drive and tactical abilities used in large measure to the high standard of operation to assume the squadron
NH: Yeah, he did, yeah, briefing were always made a pleasure by him being here, he made them quite different, we quite looked forward to his briefing
BW: And when you, you mentioned about him when he going out on a bad raid, were you aware that if he briefed it, it was gonna be a bad one or was it the case [unclear] the raids?
NH: No, not particularly, no, but you knew that if he was on it, it wouldn’t be an easy one.
BW: But he, he always gave the briefing whatever the raid was.
NH: Oh yes, oh yes.
BW: There was only a few at the time
NH: That’s right, yeah, yeah. Yes, I remember his briefing, that is one thing I do remember quite well. Always something to look forward to. I remember a young WAAF officer looking at him I think, Gosh, I’d like a young woman to look at me like that [laughs].
BW: So, by now you are on the early part of your tour and initially it looks like you got operations mainly over Germany, are there any other particular raids through March that you recall?
NH: No, they were all a great big jumble mainly, I, oh, there is one when we lost a lot of aeroplanes.
BW: That night be Nuremberg presumably.
NH: No, not Nuremberg, I didn’t do Nuremberg, there is some, somewhere like, oh, retro memory for names, the size of the Ruhr, a fairly long trip and I remember coming out, they’d briefed us to come down from the target area right down to five thousand feet, it seemed odd tactic, I remember going up with another navigator to Nuremberg, I don’t like this and he said, I wish we weren’t doing this one and he didn’t come back. We lost six that night. So, I don’t know what that tactic was all about.
BW: So, at this time, when you
NH: Oh, I’m trying to remember the name, that, Karlsruhe,
BW: Karlsruhe. And so at this when you were doing operations, you’ve gone from the billet to the ops room to be briefed, you’ve had your briefing, just talk me through then what you would do from there in terms of boarding the aircraft, the checks you would do, what sort of things would be going on then.
NH: Well, we had our own, quite a lot of instruments, we had Gee for example, the bomb aimer would have his stuff but I would have all my charts, gee charts, ordinary plotting charts, what were they called? [unclear] and then the Gee charts, all rather luminous, astro navigation, [unclear] anyway, waste of time most of the time but always had to do it, sextant, all the stuff had to be checked and so, you know, that took up quite a long time, you did that some with the pilot, checking the routes and marking off certain points on it.
BW: And H2S was coming in at this time.
NH: Oh, we didn’t have H2S.
BW: That wasn’t on your aircraft.
NH: We didn’t have it, no,
BW: And was the Gee equipment located right where you position were?
NH: Right in front like that
BW: Ok.
NH: Had a table, table, yeah.
BW: In some aircraft [unclear] different.
NH: And that, that was an incredibly, wonderful instrument I had, of course the Germans were jamming it as much as they could and you’d lose it, you’d, what it did help you to do was to get an accurate wind, cause that’s so incredibly important, if you got an accurate wind then doing jet reconning isn’t going to be too bad and you could get Gee fixes right up to inside the Dutch coast so it gave you a whole string of fixes and a whole comprehension of the wind you know was established by the time you got there. And then, the same thing coming back, you, I’d have, I’d be searching madly to get the signals eventually appearing and it’s marvellous when the, when they just started to appear on your radar screen, and you’d, and you’d get a proper fix, because when you tried astro navigation or even wireless, there were so many errors involved.
BW: Was your pilot good in terms of sticking to the course? Was he [unclear] following your instructions?
NH: Oh yes, of course, oh yes, oh yes, very good, you know, if I take an astro shot, they had to keep very steady because you have a steady platform to get, I don’t know if you know about sextant?
BW: Yes.
NH: You know, yes, getting the star dive into the bubble and holding it there, if the plane lurches up you’ve lost the, it, you’ve gotta get it back again,
BW: And so, you found that you worked quite well presumably [unclear]
NH: Oh, very well, with Houston, terrible memory for names, I even forget my own sometimes
BW: What was it like actually in the environment of a Halifax then, was it pretty roomy, has a reputation of being a fairly roomy aircraft.
NH: Not bad, not bad really
BW: [unclear]
NH: No, no, not when you compare it [unclear] like the Whitley
BW: And I believe the heating, say for example in a Lancaster kept the wireless operator and the navigator pretty warm
NH: yes
BW: Is it similar in a Halifax or not?
NH: Ah, yeah, pretty I was never cold, I never remember being cold,
BW: How did it feel in your flying kit? Was it [unclear]
NH: I didn’t wear much, had a Mae West on, and a parachute harness of course and that was, oh, and an aircrew sweater, and that was about it, don’t [unclear], I think flying boots, yes, yeah, flying boots, cause you could if you were, if you bailed out and you landed, you could cut the top off and they looked like ordinary shoes, ordinary boots
BW: And so you were pretty comfortable in the interior of the Halifax.
NH: Oh, pretty, reasonably comfortable.
BW:
NH: Yes, yes, I had a good desk and all the instruments that I needed. Wind thing, what you call, wind setting, forgot what they called, wind, don’t they use that much, you had to be [unclear] sort of view the sea at eighteen thousand feet, you can’t do that
BW: Did you find that you had to use oxygen much if you were above [unclear] feet or?
NH: Oh yes, about ten thousand feet, most certainly.
BW: Were most of your ops above that [unclear]?
NH: Oh yes, as soon as you get to, well pretty well from five thousand feet or even before, I can’t remember exactly but you certainly wouldn’t want to be [unclear] oxygen above ten thousand feet
BW: You noted as well one particular date you were in the air on the night of D-Day.
NH: Yes, yes.
BW: Do you recall the briefing for D-Day primarily?
NH: No
BW: Were you aware that is was gonna be the start of the invasion?
NH: Well, we were all suspicious but nobody knew anything definite but of course so much everybody knew that D-Day was gonna come soon but that anything definite not until we, well, we were, the target was an easy one on the Northern Coast of France, just inside, gun batteries of some sort, and we bombed that but as we are coming back, and as we are coming back near [unclear], both the gunners shouted out, all the shipping that they could see and so all this shipping was just on the invasion, that was June the 6th.
BW: What sort of time would that be, was it early morning?
NH: About three or four o’clock in the morning. It be in the logbook there. Be about that time.
BW: The gun battery that you mentioned, was it Mont Fleury,
NH: Right.
BW: And that was covering Gold Beach, which was one of the British invasion beaches.
NH: Yeah, yeah. Cause we did two or three, Montgomery, that was later on, after the armies had got established but got held up by the Germans and Montgomery requested Bomber Command to drop their bombs on the German, where the Germans were and we did that, we got a letter of thanks from him because that’s form where the armies could move on.
BW: Were you made aware of the results of the bombing on that particular D-Day mission?
NH: Not really, no, not until we got this letter from Montgomery thanking us for, yeah, I can’t think that we got any particular, no. Of course, we were taking photographs all the time, and we were given some sort of marking for the accuracy and the standard and that was posted up on the boards.
BW: Did it feel like a competition, where you
NH: A little bit like that, oh yes, a little bit like that. Bomb aimers, you know, we, in that book [unclear] claims that we were used for these targets because we had a bomb aiming accuracy record.
BW: Quite [unclear]
NH: No, but, I think that, what is, my God, the insignia of the squadron has got
US: An arrow
NH: A arrow, isn’t it? A bomb aiming accuracy or something is called.
US: Just called accuracy.
NH: Accuracy, yes, yes. So we had this supposedly reputation. I don’t know [laughs].
BW: Well, the gun position that was there at Gold Beach was actually a target given to the Green Howards, the army regiment that was to assault that.
NH: Oh, was that? Oh, was it?
BW: And that particular action was where sergeant major Stanley Hollis got the VC, [unclear] boxes near that battery. So coincidentally the raid that you were on happened to be the target which sergeant major Hollis was the only VC on D-Day.
NH: That’s interesting too. Yeah, yeah.
BW: There was only one [unclear] I can see on that raid and that was a Halifax flown by squadron leader Watson
NH: OH yes.
BW: Who was shot down
NH: yes.
BW: [unclear]
NH: I think I’ve seen the name but I don’t know him. No, no.
BW: So, at this time during April, May, June, most of your targets are in France
NH: Yes
BW: With the idea of supporting D-Day [unclear]
NH: Yeah, D-Day the invasion, yes, yes,
BW: And that continues
NH: [unclear] targets of course, by comparison with the Ruhr and Berlin
BW: And by easy that I assume that they were lighter, more lightly defended, is that right?
NH: Not so much that they’re but quicklier have a long, the big thing somewhere like Nuremberg or Berlin, even if you got to, you had a long trail back to UK and the German fighters knew that and would wait for the trail of bombers coming out of the target and shooting them out then but so and they had a long time to do it whereas going to somewhere Paris or somewhere like that, they didn’t have that length of time to do it.
BW: did you encounter many fighters that you [unclear]?
NH: No, I can’t remember, well, I think the most famous of course was the concentration, I did a daylight on the Ruhr in September and then you saw the concentration, what a concentration of bombers looked like cause we flew at night and we didn’t see how it really looked. But on this occasion we flew daylight to the Ruhr in September and I flew with a strange crew, which is slightly unsettling, their navigator had gone sick or something, and but then you saw aircraft colliding and of course you saw all the bombs dropping from other aircraft dropping so, you know, getting so close to releasing their bombs on you and the gunners would be shouting out, you know, he’s right over, he’s right over us now, and quite often it did happen that bombs from one aircraft hit another one, underneath.
BW: Did it happen on that occasion when you were?
NH: No, no, I never saw it actually happen,
BW: Just [unclear].
NH: No, I did, I did see aircraft, the other thing was collisions, when you got several hundred aircraft, well, at nighttime you don’t know what has happened, whether there’s a collision or whether they’re being shot by ack-ack, but at daylight you could see and I did see a collision, two aircraft hitting one another,
BW: And what, how could you describe what [unclear]?
NH: No, I can’t, we turned away and it was gone but didn’t see anybody come out.
BW: And so during [unclear]
NH: No explosion, that’s all.
BW: And so, during the raid on Stuttgart, during the daylight, could you see, did you get a chance to see clearly the formation? The bomber formation?
NH: Oh, not really, no, you know, of course you know that they are at night because you get into their slipstream, so you know and that’s what you want, of course you want to be close, you don’t want to be isolated that’s when they can pick you off, the whole object of flying in a gaggle or stream was to protect one another with your, what’s the stuff? Window and, you know, confuse the enemy defenses radar so you were conscious at nighttime, but you didn’t see the full horror of it.
BW: And what was your impression during the daylight raid?
NH: Well, I thought, how the hell can you get through that lot? Approaching the Ruhr, this is a lovely September afternoon and you could see the smoke hovering over the Ruhr from such a long way away, I got a feeling we could see it almost from the Dutch coast, and then you think, then of course within the smoke, which is just the puffs of smoke from the ack-ack, you could see the brusts of the showers, well, there’s no penetration, you cannot penetrate that lost, but looks, it probably looks worst than it really is.
BW: In each case your pilot kept on, there was no consideration of turning back [unclear] target?
NH: Oh no, no, but no, no, we were, I think we were pretty that way, we did what we had to do, and although it is nerve-racking when the bomb aimer is insistent on, you know, my God, why doesn’t he press the bloody button? It was he said, bomb’s gone, yeah, that we could turn away.
BW: Were there any occasions where you had to make a second run over the target or not?
NH: Not exactly the, I ‘m not quite sure but I do know that we’ve been approaching the target and we’ve been told to hold off, the Pathfinder, the master bomber is directing us from underneath, usually in something like a Mosquito and he is calling us by our codename whatever, main force, main force, whatever the code, and he said and he’d be telling us, the bomb, overshoot the red TI’s or bomb the green markers or in one case he couldn’t tell because of the smoke and he couldn’t get accurate and he told the whole force to orbit, that was a nasty experience too,
BW: And the whole force at this stage [unclear]
NH: Would have to turn and wait and come in again until he could give the instructions on which markers to attack, they were of course people like, who has got the VC?
BW: Cheshire?
NH: Cheshire, yeah. Incredible people they were. They would stay, I mean, they would stay on the target for the whole time, going round and round, giving the directions to the main force, and asking for new TI’s or something like that if he wanted it.
BW: So, moving on from the D-Day operations, the squadron was then tasked with hitting the V-Weapon sites
NH: Yes, we, those were fairly easy targets, just inside the Dutch and French coast, yeah. We [unclear] several of those, three or four of those.
BW: Do you recall much about what was explained to you about the targets, we know now that they were being [unclear], did you know that?
NH: I don’t think so, I can’t remember, no, I just know that they were, well eventually of course when the flying bombs came up cause they came up, they came off fairly earlier, in was about August wasn’t it? July, August? Well, after, well then we knew them, that sort, they were that sort of targets, not until they, they’d actually arrived.
BW: So, from there through July and August, I think in total you flew thirty-nine operations, right?
NH: Thirty-nine altogether, yes. And of course the normal operation, prior to that., had ben thirty but because we were getting these easy French targets, they made us do thirty nine. And I, when they did say you’re finished, I was quite surprised, I’d thought they’d keep me I wasn’t all that bothered, I was getting used to it and it think sorry there won’t be an end you just carry on to the end and I accepted that I think.
BW: So you would have gone on for the duration of the war.
NH: Yes, I was slightly surprised when they said, you can stop and get.
BW: And what happened at that point, how was it explained to you your tour would end? What happened [unclear]?
NH: No explanation, I was just told that I would be posted on a certain day to in this case to Marston Moor as an instructor. But of course before that I’d been commissioned, Jock Houston and myself both got commissioned and we both got and then shortly after that we both got DFCs. Oh, we got that after I left the squadron, we got them afterwards, we were commissioned before we left the squadron, about a month or so before and then we got the DFC about a month or so after we left the squadron.
BW: And did you go to the palace to receive the DCF [unclear]?
NH: No, it came in the post, it came in the post with a letter from King George, signed by King George and that was stolen, we had a burglary and some bastard stole it, including the letter which was in some respect more important than the DFC. I got the DFC changed
BW: And that was soon after, that was soon after you’d been awarded it, it happened or was it
NH: No, no, it happened, oh, about twenty years ago.
BW: So still, right, still, as recently as that.
NH: Yeah, but we were in Muscat in Oman and this burglary happened whilst we were away.
BW: But you managed to get a replacement for
NH: I got a replacement, yes, they charged me a hundred pounds for it but it’s not quite the same cause I haven’t got the letter from King George.
BW: A shame. And so how was your relationship at this point with your girlfriend, cause you’ve been on pos, a pretty intense period through [unclear].
NH: Oh, well, every, you see, I suppose, in some respects I missed out a bit, I was very friendly with Jock but the other I, I went and had a beer occasionally with them but I was so eager, I was so wrapped up with Dorothy that every opportunity, I just speared off into York and I didn’t spend much time on the squadron but I, I used to take my inflight rations, because we got chocolate and chewing gum and other things and I couldn’t eat them, I was too frightened to eat them, and so I’d take them into York ands give them to her, I ran up to her office, which is on the fourth story of the LNER headquarters building in York and bang on her door and give her my inflight rations, sweets and chocolate mostly cause these things were rationed at that time.
BW: And that must have made your visits special for her.
NH: Yeah [laughs].
BW: [unclear]
NH: Yeah. Well if I wasn’t flying that night, I’d rush into York and rush up and tell her I’d be there and wait for, meet her after she left work.
BW: At what stage during the day would you find out whether or not you were on ops or not?
NH: Well, usually in the morning, you round about, just round about midday as I remember you’d know whether you’d go and operate that night or not. I do remember one occasion when we, we thought we were going to operate and that was when the flight engineer we’d, it was in June cause its, the nights were brighter, I think we were due for a take-off about ten o’clock and it was getting dusk and as usual everything goes very quiet, you wait for the start-up pistol and all engines would then start revving up, start the engines up and revving up, make a crescendo of noise of course when you’ve got sixteen or eighteen four-engines, all going and on this occasion there is always a little pause, you see you check your aircraft, you check everything and then you sort of hang around for a few minutes, I was there waiting for the [unclear] pistol, signal to get in and start up and on this occasion the flight engineer, we’d done about fourteen trips, he said, I’m not going tonight, and he wouldn’t, he said he wasn’t going, so of course the tower had to be informed that we weren’t, we had a crew deficiency and everybody came out then, the CO and the flight engineer leader and the medical officer and they took him to the rear engine to talk to him and took him off and we thought, well, by this time all the other aircraft had started up and are travelling round the peri-track looking at us curiously wondering what, why we hadn’t started up and we are waving them to say, well, clear off, we’re not going but then the engineer nearly came rushing out saying I’m [unclear] [laughs] so we had a start-up and all we did like that.
BW: So you then got, were you having to get back in the aircraft at this point?
NH: Oh, of course, yes. And off we had to go but then we were Tail End Charlies and that’s another thing you don’t like you don’t wanna be amongst the gaggle.
BW: And so you, how did you feel being at the back of the bomber stream then?
NH: Well, I suppose we must have made it up, you know, put a bit [laughs] more throttle on and we, I think we reached them in the end because what you do, you assemble at same point or something like that, that’s the usual thing, the squadrons all take off from the various aerodromes, say in Yorkshire and Spurn Point was a favorite assembly point and you’d set off from there, which there is no formation, you just keep in the stream, and so of course by the time the assembly had taken place and they had set off, we were catching up.
BW: How did you feel during the flight having had [unclear]?
NH: I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it [laughs] I [unclear] much more nervous, well, I’ve always felt nervous but felt a lot more nervous that night and that’s a clear memory of one flight I do have, yeah.
BW: You mention that just feeling nervous and feeling that you could have your inflight rations when you were airborne, you managed to overcome that, did you [unclear].
NH: [unclear] do it, no, chewing gum, I had the chewing gum but didn’t need anything else, coffee, I’d have, I’d drink the coffee and eat and the chewing gum but I was too frightened to eat anything else [laughs]. I waited for my eggs and bacon, egg and chips like got back.
BW: Did you recall the rest of the crew felt in a similar way?
NH: I think they felt similar, fairly similar, yeah, I think so, I think we all felt pretty much the same.
BW: Did you ever talk about it?
NH: No, no, that’s a strange thing, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve ever talked about it, Dorothy never wanted me to hear me talk about it and I never did, I never thought about it and it’s only sort of more or less than she died that I’ve given it any thought.
BW: And at the time did you talk to your crew mates or did they tell you how it felt on the operations night?
NH: No, never talked about it, never, never, no, it’s a, I look back a lot of it and I think, this is a bit strange really cause I think about it a lot now and talk about it quite a bit but for thirty or forty years never thought about it, hardly, hardly, [unclear].
BW: And how does it feel now, reflecting back on that time?
NH: Well, it’s a different time, you know, it’s something which I didn’t, something which is very different to anything, but you know it’s an experience which you’d never imagined that you’d go through really.
BW: And you mentioned now at this stage of your career that you’d come off operations, you were then posted to Marston Moor as instructor.
NH: That’s right, yes, for six months, six months tour and then we got married in June and when I came back from my honeymoon, I was told I was posted back onto operations to go with Tiger Force against Japan.
BW: And is this June ’45?
NH: This is June ’45, the war, the European war had ended and that ended in May, was it May? Yeah, is it.
BW: That’s right.
NH: Yeah and I’ve finished my six months rest and so I was posted back onto a second tour which happened to be with, what I called the force?
BW: Tiger Force.
NH: Sorry?
US: Tiger.
NH: Tiger Force, with Tiger Force. Yes, [unclear] to, and we were going to do something similar to what we did against Germany. That was, but that was on Lincolns, was it Lancasters or Lincolns? Wasn’t Halifaxes? Either Lancasters or Lincolns, I got the feeling it was Lincolns. Cause then after the war I flew in, I was on 50 Squadron which was at Waddington.
BW: At Waddington.
NH: Yeah, that was after the war, that was in 1950, talking about 1947, ’48, no, ’48.
BW: So you were earmarked to go with Tiger Force out to the Far East
NH: Yeah. We did
BW: Did that happen?
NH: yeah. No, no, we did our training and we didn’t have to do much, it was, you know, becoming acquainted, with a slightly new aircraft and we were all experienced people, all done our tour of ops, all being instructors so we are a very experienced crew we did, we just did a little bit of familiarization and we are ready to go and then they dropped the atom bomb so we didn’t go and we all got split up then.
BW: So you were all prepared to go and then you continued your post first to a training as a crew
NH: Yes
BW: Together and I guess you were all I guess earmarked at the same to go to the Far East but
NH: Yeah
BW: But you said it didn’t happen
NH: No, and we would have gone of course if they hadn’t dropped the atom bombs.
BW: And so, just talk us through your subsequent career which I believe involved transport command, fighter command
NH: Well of course [unclear] lot of funny little jobs like on a recruiting center and I was eventually had a sort of a career posting as an instructor at the RAF [unclear] at Cosford which was, if I’d played my cards right, would have done me some good, but I didn’t, I volunteered for flying, I have tried to go back on flying and they posted me back on transport command, but then Dorothy was expecting her babies and after a while I asked much to their irritation I think and it never did me any good, they posted me back to Bomber Command.
BW: And where did you get posted to?
NH: To, well, first of all I did a conversion, I became a navigator, bomb aimer, I did a bomb aiming course at Lindholme, near Doncaster and then from there I was posted to 50 Squadron at Waddington and that was when Dorothy had her babies, twins, and we all moved into quarters at Waddington and I became adjutant to 50 Squadron and my Co’s a man named Peach and that was a most enjoyable experience, I really enjoyed that time, we flew Lincolns.
BW: I was going to ask actually because at this time Jet aircraft are becoming more widely [unclear].
NH: [unclear] was just coming into service, yes, in Bomber Command.
BW: Did you get a chance to fly in it?
NH: No, I didn’t. No, no.
BW: And so what happened after that, were you involved at all in the Berlin airlift for example or not?
NH: No, because, as I say, I would have been if I stayed on transport command, that’s where I didn’t do myself any good by asking for this, but I didn’t know that Berlin airlift, I would have I wish I could have done that now but I got this request answered and was posted to 50 to Bomber Command but I made a mistake though.
BW: And at what stage did you become flight controller?
NH: Well, this is a, from Waddington I was posted to Scampton as an instructor, again I wish I’d protested and I and stayed on longer but I, we were posted to Scampton, as an instructor and then I hadn’t been offered a permanent commission but they did offer me a restricted permanent commission but it had to be either in the air traffic control branch or the fighter control branch, so I chose the fighter control branch, I wish I, somehow I wish I could afford that more and stay, and let me stay on aircrew and I think I’d have prospered more so then I, I did the course on fighter control and yeah that’s and from there I was posted to Patrington, how do we call those units? Fighter control unit.
BW: And this was at Patrington?
NH: Patrington, yeah.
BW: Patrington.
NH: In East Yorkshire.
BW: Ok.
NH: And then I went from, from there I became training officer and that was a nice post I became training officer to the Hull fighter control unit, [unclear] unit, based at Sutton, that was most enjoyable.
BW: What did you like about it?
NH: Well, I was my own boss, I was both adjutant for a long while, was adjutant and training officer, I had the use of the staff car, say I was my own boss, we had a nice house in Withernsea, no, not in Withernsea, in
US: Wasn’t Cottingham?
NH: Cottingham. In Cottingham, yeah. Nice house in Cottingham, we had some pleasant friends in the village and that was a most enjoyable time, I was very, I became very popular with the people, with the auxiliary people who were of course all civilians but I enjoyed their company I got on well with them so that was quite a nice [unclear], from there so I did a full tour there and then we were posted to Germany doing, well doing an operational job, you know, fighter control unit first of all at [unclear] and then at [unclear].
BW: And that I suppose saw you through to, through the Sixties and
NH: Yeah, and right up until
BW: The Seventies
NH: Yes, I did a year in Borneo on my own and joined the confrontation, nobody knows about that, do they? When we fought the Indonesians I’d, of course that was a year what they called an unaccompanied tour, we were based on a little island called Labuan on the north coast of Borneo, which is enjoyable up to a point but I didn’t like being separated all that time from the family.
BW: What sort of things were you doing out there?
NH: Oh well, the Indonesians were trying to control the whole of Borneo and they were claiming it but we said no, the northern part, including, what’s the oil rich place? Begins with a b. Brunei. Kuching and, that’s Kalimantan and then, we said, no, that all belongs to Malaysia, Malaysian federation which at that time includes Singapore but the Indonesians wanted the whole of Borneo as part of the Indonesia so we said, no, you can’t have it, this is all, so we had a four year war, we didn’t call it a war, we called it a confrontation.
BW: Is this the Malaysian insurgency?
NH: Yeah. Yeah, well, it is an insurgency, but of course Singapore was part of it and Malaysia so we eventually Indonesia gave up and accepted the status quo as we said it should be and we had Javelins at that time so we were controlling Javelins along the border, which was way undefined, you couldn’t and of course we had Gurkas out there and Indonesians were scared stiff of them and it was good jungle warfare, very good for anybody who wanted an army career it was ideal training, not too many casualties, a couple of hundred or so were killed, but we had, but we have radar jamming, Lincolns, not Lincolns, Hastings, we had Hastings out there doing our radar jamming and we controlled the Javelins, we had our Javelins which would come onto the island and jet airborne wherever we saw anything that might be a useful target. So I commanded that little unit, I had about sixty or seventy men and all radar equipment, that sort of little encampment of my own, was quite nice and six officers, and seventy men and we had a marvelous time, laughed like anything, all the time, oh yeah, drank a lot, we drank the hell of a lot. Dorothy never stopped saying how shocked she was [laughs] [unclear].
BW: And so after late Fifties through the Sixties
NH: Yes, that’s the Mid Sixties, the confrontation finished in ’66, well, that’s when I came back, I came back in June ’66, and the confrontation stopped just after that and then I came back to, oh, Scotland again, to, up to Buchan, is it Buchan?
US: Peterhead, yeah.
NH: Peterhead, yeah. Peter, yeah, Peterhead, Buchan. Onto a, well, there we are looking at, we are looking after, looking at Russian aircraft, that was the interesting part there was watching for the Bisons and what not coming out of the Russian bases up at, you know, beyond.
BW: Beyond Murmansk and.
NH: Beyond Murmansk, yeah. They’d come out into the Atlantic, they’d be picked up by the Norwegian radar and we would [unclear] them then to come down between the Iceland gap and the
BW: Faroe islands.
NH: Faroe islands, Shetlands, my memory is terrible, anyway we were waiting for them to come through, past the Iceland gap and they’d go out into the Atlantic while we had a flight of, what were they in those days, not the Javelins, what was after the Javelins? Hunters, Hunters? What were the ones before the Lightning? No, it was the Lightnings, the Lightnings, of course it was. Yeah, the Lightnings, we had Lightnings up at Kinloss, or Lossiemouth? Lossiemouth, they were up there on the and the Americans had Phantoms in Iceland so we would scramble when we, as soon as we saw these coming, being handed over, they were handed over to us by the Norwegians, we probably couldn’t see them then but then when we knew they were there and eventually they would appear on our radar and certain time after that we would scramble the fighters from Lossiemouth and the Phantoms from Reykjavik and at first the Lightnings didn’t have the range to get to them and very frustratingly they would turn back because of lack of fuel, the Phantoms would come on and make the interception and then come onto Scotland and land, but then when the Lightning Mark VI came in, we could make the interception properly and return. But that was quite interesting for a while because we also had radar up on top of the Faroes, right on top, no, not the Faroes, the Shetlands, right up on the top island, Saxa Vord, that’s, there’s a radar station up there, so there, that was a bit of an interest and then I was finally posted back to Germany and that, did my final tour in Germany on a NATO, on a NATO post. We had a German commandant then, Brigadier, German, he was, by that time the Germans had bene reconstituted but we had control of the fighter element, the Germans weren’t allowed to control, we were [unclear] of course for, to intercept the Russians in case there was any sort of attack but we had, but they had to have RAF controllers out there, the Germans, under all their constitutional rules weren’t allowed to do this so although they provided all the manning for it, we did the actual operating of the stand-by fighters, what did we have then? Lightnings, did we? Lightnings, yes, Lightnings, and they were at places like Laarbruch, Bruggen and somewhere else, there were three, Gutersloh, yes, we had the triangle of those three and then of course Monchengladbach.
BW: And so
NH: So I finished my tour there and made a lot of good friends, [unclear] we were Germans, Dutch, British and that very pleasant finished my career really, made some good friends who stayed friends right up till now, those who survived, even the Germans, the German commandant of the German regiment, he became, I still talk to him every week on the telephone [laughs]
BW: And so
NH: Oberst Wolfgang Ostermar
BW: Wolfgang Ostermar
NH: Wolfgang, yeah, we went on holidays together, became very close, you know.
BW: And is he a similar age to you?
NH: A year younger.
BW: So he’d been around the year, presumably in opposing forces when you [unclear]
NH: He was, he was, and he was taken prisoner by the Americans.
BW: Really? Did
NH: But he’s an Anglophile, speaks excellent English, same as his wife does. Did his training, of course he became a fighter controller but trained by us in Britain.
BW: Do you recall briefly what his wartime service was? Was he a pilot or a gunner or [unclear]?
NH: No, he was ground staff.
BW: Right. So there was no chance of him being
NH: When we’d been on holiday together, people made romantic conclusions, you know, a German and a British exile, sorry, good friends,
BW: But it wasn’t
NH: Not like that, no.
BW: And so you left the RAF and NATO
NH: Yeah.
BW: What was your civilian career, what did you, did you [unclear]?
NH: I enjoyed the last couple of years, I did a correspondence course which is organized by the service, my [unclear], what did I do?
US: Agency and business studies.
NH: Agency and business studies, that’s right, yes, and it was such an easy posting in Germany I was able to do this with a lot of enjoyment and I thought, well, I can go in human relations or something like that, I’m made for that and it meant a two week course in a [unclear] to start with, then about eighteen months correspondence, finishing up the six weeks again at Chelsea and we happened to be in the Chelsea barracks near the Chelsea officer’s mess but we were told, the Chelsea officer’s, the guards officers not the, not any ordinary mess it’s the guards officer’s mess and we were told very strictly we were not, we may be officers but we were not entitled to go into the guards officer’s mess [laughs].
BW: You mentioned before we started the interview you were security on the ton air project
NH: Well I, having got the H&C, I wrote lots and lots of letters people offering my services and I got reasonable replies from quite a number and I was offered several jobs, I eventually left the air force in November 1970 and I came up here, [unclear] they seemed puzzled as I, I wanted to come up here, why do you want to come up here then? [laughs] because I suppose hopefully you are going to offer me a job. So, they did in fact, I became assistant to the chief designer, they offered me two jobs actually, they offered me a job on Tornado cockpit which was still on the drawing board, I could have either be that job or be assistant to the chief designer, so I said, I’m not qualified to cock pit design work, so I think I better take the other one so I did that, which was quite a nice job, I learned a tremendous amount cause I worked in the main drawing office with him and got to know all the chaps and what they were doing and of course I say the Tornado was still on the drawing board it goes now in production but that was still very much a live product. And so I got to learn in eighteen months so I did that [unclear], I learned a lot and then the chap who is the chief security officer was an ex wing commander and I had, and he still, I want, I want to retire very soon, do you want to take my job over? So, that’s promotion anyway, so I did, I took, George Kennedy, wing commander George, he’d been an ex apprentice like me, but much earlier, and when he, well, I went and joined him as his assistant, first of all about eighteen months, two years, and then took over completely when he retired and that really was a splendid job because the Tornado was still not flying but it was full of classified information and working with the Germans and the Italians, our own Ministry of Defenses and who of course were very hard on us if we gave any information away it was all very and of course the Cold War was on, you know, and Munich we had plenty of Cold War suspects and [unclear] around Munich, eager to get hold of the information about the Tornado.
BW: And so, you were very limited about what you could and couldn’t say at the time.
NH: Oh yes, very much, yes, but it’s very, eventually I did get hold of because these technical people and engineers [unclear], the last thing they wanted to know was about is security, they want to show off their knowledge and they want to write papers and get their names noticed and things like that their ego, you know publicity, whereas we of course, the security side, wanted to restrict it, well, not because we ourselves wanted it, the Ministry of Defense, they provided the contracts and if we broke the rules, they would start threatening that there would be a loss of contract work. So that’s I, I managed to, because I had experience in aircraft all, you know, I think I was able to work all the people like flight test engineers, the flight crews, the [unclear] like Paul Millet, who is the chief test pilot at the time but he took over from, oh, famous wartime pilot, forgot the, I’ll get it in a minute, anyway I had a good time because I got on well with these people.
BW: And so, looking back at your career and the association you have with Bomber Command, how does it feel now looking back?
NH: Well, occupies my thoughts continuously cause I’m on my own now, I’ve been on my own for nearly elven years, it occupies a tremendous amount of time, I can’t read but I do have listening books which I enjoy and music but otherwise I, I have to use my own thoughts to pass the time and I do it a lot.
BW: And have you been able to keep in touch with progress in terms of the memorials to Bomber Command, how do you feel about the tributes and memorials that have been paid these days?
NH: Well, I love it and Dorothy and I went once to St Paul’s, that would be about, oh, about the year 2000, and I can’t even remember what it was for, is for, I know the chap who was the, oh gracious me, trying to remember, he was head of the air force, and he was also president of Bomber Command.
BW: The name that speaks to my mind are Paul Enteder.
NH: No, long after him, no, long after them.
BW: I see.
NH: He’s about my age.
BW: I see.
NH: Oh Gosh, anyway, we did go to this ceremony at St Paul’s cathedral, it be about three or four years before she died so, be about 2000 or something like that, we had a Lancaster flying over York, we all came out of the service and assembled on the steps, but what was the question?
BW: Have you been to Hyde Park memorial [unclear]?
NH: No, I’d like to, near the Green Park one, you mean?
BW:
NH: No, I haven’t, but I know of it and I and Tony Iveson , who was, this is how I did have a connection with, because he was in 4 Group the time as I was, and he led all the staff to make the memorial, he was on, I heard him on Desert island Discs, he’s dead now, but I couldn’t see it if I went I couldn’t see it.
BW: yeah.
NH: I used to, well, I am a member of the IMF club still but I haven’t’ ben there for three or four years.
BW: How do you, what are your thoughts about the memorial center that’s been set up in Lincoln, the International Bomber Command Center?
NH: I don’t know anything about it.
BW: They have now unveiled the memorial spire and the walls which have the names of all the fifty five thousand and something aircrew who were lost during the war and they are now building, or going to start building the Chadwick Center which will house documents, artifacts, there will be audio recordings as well such as this one, the digital
NH:
BW: That will be in the memorial center in Lincoln
NH: Is that a new purpose build
BW: It’s just outside, it’s on one of the hills outside of Lincoln.
NH: Oh! When is it going to be opened?
BW: The center should be opened later this year
NH: There will be a lot of publicity attached to that one. Pretty sure I can’t see much.
BW: I just wondered whether you’d be informed of it and today
NH: I haven’t been informed of it, I’d like to know about it but I can’t do, I can’t see it, so , you know, provided, I hope I shall hear about it.
BW: Well, I can post the details out to you and the information
NH: Right, yes,
BW: You know
NH: I’d like that. Because if I can’t read, Anthony can read it out to me.
BW: Yeah. So
NH: But I’m restricted in movement and everything else now, I don’t really want to go anywhere.
BW: I see. The, there aren’t any other questions that I have for you, are there any other particular recollections that may have come to mind you wish to talk about or else, anything else I may have missed?
NH: I’m sure there will be when you’re gone [laughs], I can’t, I think, oh, I’ve surprised myself [unclear]
BW: Well, it’s been very interesting to talk to you, you’ve given an awful lot of information
NH: Is it?
BW: [unclear] very happy with that.
NH: [unclear], I seen, I’m very happy with that. That’ll give me a better pleasure anyway.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
NH: Ok.
BW: [unclear] Thank you.
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Interview with Neil Harris
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Brian Wright
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-01-28
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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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AHarrisNG160128
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:53:47 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
An account of the resource
Neil Harris wanted to join the RAF because he was looking for an exciting life experience and an opportunity for further education. He started as a flight mechanic before training as a pilot. Remembers being trained in different locations across the country, from Brighton to Kinloss, in Scotland. Mentions a particular night, when they took off late and had to catch up with the bomber stream. Flew with 48 and 578 Squadron. Shares his memories of D-Day, when he was targeting a gun battery in Northern France. Remembers his life after the war, when he was sent to Indonesia in the 60s during the Borneo confrontation.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Scotland--Wick
France
France--Ver-Sur-Mer
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
50 Squadron
578 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
fitter airframe
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Hudson
Lincoln
love and romance
Master Bomber
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
promotion
RAF Burn
RAF Halton
RAF Kinloss
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Rufforth
RAF Waddington
Tiger force
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/708/10106/ABerrieD161031.1.mp3
9ca35d7198f5ebebcfee1fba69629f9f
Dublin Core
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Title
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Berrie, David
D Berrie
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer David Berrie (b. 1922, 1368457 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 576 and 300 Squadrons and Coastal Command.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-31
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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Berrie, D
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BB: Ok, here we are. Right, so, if you would just like to speak into that, from the very first day you thought you were gonna join the Royal Air Force right away, just, no just, just, it’ll, you can just leave it like that
DB: Oh yes. You’ve ever seen, that’s a piece of the aircraft, my own aircraft shot down
BB: A bit of Lancaster, oh
DB: Just the last four or five years
BB: [unclear] a bit of paint on it. I’ll have a look at that later. So, if you’d just like to speak into the microphone [unclear] and I’ll make the notes the things to ask you later, thank you
DB: Just want sort of detailed from when I went to Bomber Command
BB: Yeah. No, when you joined up, how you joined up, did you go, were you enlisted or did you volunteered, from the day you said I’m gonna join the RAF, that will be fine, thank you.
DB: I just, [unclear] understand, I’m very deaf, even with the
BB: If you want to put it on your lap there
DB: [unclear] even with the hearing aid [unclear]
BB: Well, I’ll talk to you when
DB: I’ll give my rank and then
BB: Yes
DB: David Berrie
BB: Don’t worry
DB: David Berrie, [file missing], Stirling [file missing]. I joined the Air Force in February 1941 and I joined up, enlisted then I went to Blackpool for training as a wireless operator. From there went on to Compton Bassett in Wiltshire for [unclear] training
BB: So, Blackpool was the
DB: Initial Training Unit
BB: ITU and you were there, you were taught all the basic stuff, you were given your uniform, given all your injections, and marching, parading, and all that, and how long did that last for?
DB: Well, I think the
BB: A month, something like that?
DB: I think there were six weeks [unclear]
BB: Six weeks, ok. And then you obviously managed to pass that and [unclear] all your problems, then they sent you off to Compton Bassett
DB: For about three months
BB: Three months, now, was that at them, was that an OTU?
DB: No
BB: No, that was your training for
DB: And then, from there I went to Aberdeen, [unclear] Aberdeen, which was an operational station
BB: Right.
DB: At Coastal Command.
BB: Right.
DB: Served as a wireless operator there, quite often on the main frequencies [unclear] squadron
BB: How long did you spend in [unclear]?
DB: Went from September I think till about March, that was six months.
BB: That was what, 194
DB: ‘41
BB: ’41, ok.
DB: And as I went from there, I was posted to Ireland, Northern Ireland, again as a radio operator, wireless operator
BB: Was that Ballykelly?
DB: No, wasn’t [unclear],
BB: Alright, alright.
DB: It was more or less like
BB: A signal’s
DB: Yeah, a signal
BB: Ok
DB: For picking up
BB: Yeah, I understand, so you were there [unclear]
DB: I was there possibly three months, can’t really remember cause I moved [unclear] a bit, was country areas
BB: Right
DB: We lived in old farmhouses, some had a Nissan hut with a sentry come near observatory, you know, observer corps type of thing, and that was there and then called up for aircrew, I got sent to the Isle of Man, Jurby on the Isle of Man.
BB: Right, you were called up rather than volunteer.
DB: Well, I volunteered.
BB: Volunteered, then you were called up, ok. And you went to RAF Jurby. Right. How long were you at Jurby for?
DB: I did the air gunnery course, got my brevy there at Jurby.
BB: Right.
DB: And then, from there I was posted to Pwllheli Penrhos in North Wales, which was only a very short period because we, there were no runways
BB: No
DB: And so we moved over to the aerodrome at Llandudno, [unclear] end of the [unclear] straights and spent a long time in training command, quite some time, which involved flying two day tours, one day and one the next alternatively a week about and then
BB: In Ansons?
DB: Pardon?
BB: Ansons? Avro Ansons?
DB: Pardon?
BB: What were you flying, what aircraft were you flying?
DB: Ansons.
BB: Ansons. Flying classroom.
DB: And quite reliable, they were very reliable.
BB: Yes,I mean, they were the main stay of Coastal Command for a long time
DB: We were flying two-day tours, one day and then one the next, one was seven till ten and then other one took off at ten and was, and they did a three, that’s all but just as [unclear] stay in the air
BB: Wireless operators and air gunners and navigators
DB: And then we were instructing wireless, we were instructing trainee wireless operators and the pilot was instructing a navigator,
BB: Ok.
DB: So we were both known as start pilots and start wireless operators.
BB: Ok, thank you, And then you must at some phase
DB: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
DB: All of a sudden we got, it was a peculiar thing because they did a trawl looking for wireless operators, they were willing to train up as navigators quickly, flying Mosquitos
BB: Right, ok.
DB: And then all of a sudden, I was cancelled and I got sent to [unclear] became, it was [unclear] and then it changed it I think because it was too close to High [unclear]
BB: Right
DB: And then there was a sort of episode where somebody committed suicide
BB: Oh dear
DB: And it happened to be named [unclear] so it was a Canadian crew or something and everything went well cause the pilot decided to raise a question [unclear] and of course the Canadian government held onto but when they notified the relatives in Canada, they were very, very annoyed that these people volunteered, come all the way here and got killed and somebody committed suicide and they blamed us we should have picked that up. While the officers [unclear], so then we did OTU and normally we
BB: So, this suicide, this guy was flying an aircraft with people in it when he decided just to crash it or something
DB: Pardon?
BB: This suicide
DB: Well
BB: There was more people killed
DB: There was
BB: [unclear] aircraft
DB: He crashed the whole aircraft
BB: Alright, that’s what I was saying
DB: Near Shrewsbury
BB: Oh, ok. So, it was [unclear] an Anson.
DB: I think he tried to put it into the [unclear]
BB: Oh
DB: Which was a well-known landmark
BB: Ok. Dear, dear. Anyway, after that, what happened?
DB: Well, we were then to OTU, we went to conversion unit, heavy conversion unit at Sandtoft and of course Sandtoft near Scunthorpe, [unclear] Doncaster.
BB: Yeah.
DB: [unclear] we clashed twice in twenty-four hours
BB: So, you went from the Anson to the OTU
DB: Yes
BB: Where it was Wellingtons, the flying [unclear]?
DB: Yes
BB: [unclear]
DB: The OTU was peplow
BB: Yeah, but what was the aircraft?
DB: Wellingtons
BB: Wellingtons and then you graduated from Wellingtons, went to the heavy conversion unit, where you went on to Stirlings, and Halifaxes and Lancasters
DB: [unclear]. The other thing I [unclear] going to the conversion unit because of the accommodation difficulties, we [unclear] four or five aerodromes in a few weeks
BB:
DB: Lindum, Hemswell, [unclear], there was a [unclear] officer, there was quite a lot of [unclear] actually sat on the Sandtorft [unclear] Christmas 34, 43 [unclear]
BB: Right.
DB: And then well, as I say, that was conversion on the Halifaxes
BB: Halifaxes
DB: Up to the heavy conversion unit, and then we went to Hemswell, back to Hemswell for conversion to Lancasters
BB: They called the Lancaster finishing school. Right, so, when the time you got to the Lancasters, it would have been sort of Mid ’43 or something like that?
DB: [unclear] when we were finished, I think we went to the squadron, about 576 Squadron about May sometime in ‘44
BB: That was 576
DB: No, 576 was at Elsham Wolds, of course, and then we got transferred to the Polish squadron
BB: Three hundred, so how long, how many, so when did you start flying your ops then? Your operational?
DB: Just, I think at the end of May, in May sometime
BB: Yeah, yeah.
DB: Cause the first one was to Dortmund [laughs]
BB: Yes, ok, and how many ops did you do with 576? Roughly, roughly?
DB: I would say about six or seven
BB: Ok. And then got transferred to the Polish squadron. And were they flying, what were the Poles flying?
DB: They’d been flying Wellingtons up to then when they went onto Lancasters they wanted to bomb Berlin, this was a [unclear] but when they went on Lancasters all of a sudden their losses went from a hundred [unclear] to quite [unclear] and the morale had dropped
BB: Dropped, yeah.
DB: After they told us privately but
BB: So you had to go and try to get it sorted out [unclear]
DB: So they both, we were the first two crews that went there and then they built it up the full flight
BB: Right. And built it up
DB: But when I was up to Sandtoft, well, I understand later that it was known as Planktoft
BB: Planktoft
DB: Because it had so many crashes, but we crashed twice in twenty-four hours, once in take-off and once in landing.
BB: Gosh!
DB: In twenty-four hours and that’s when I broke my knee
BB: was damaged
DB: Because [unclear]
BB: I’ve talked to other veterans, both within Fighter Command and Bomber Command, who worked with the Poles, mainly in Fighter Command, cause when I was in the RAF reserve, I was in RAF Northolt, which was a big Polish base and they found them unruly on the ground, sometimes lacking discipline but in the air very focused, get the job done, kill Germans, [unclear], that was it.
DB: Well we
BB: How did you find them?
DB: We do trouble with them now but biggest was the language difficulty cause they had a problem the first time we went to the cinema because when they coming out, we used God save the King, but what we didn’t realise was that immediately followed was the Polish national anthem and of course we, on our way walking out, of course that was a major crime to the Pole
BB: Of course
DB: And of course we got lined up the next day and we just said, well, we didn’t know what that was so they had to be taught the Polish national anthem apart from orders were all in Polish
BB: Yes, yes
DB: So, we had to learn all
BB: Sure [unclear] Polish
DB: [unclear] and all that sort of thing
BB: Of course, they’d have their own Polish NCOs and everything, yeah.
DB: But I mean, the groundcrews [unclear] were terrific and some things were more, I would say more thorough than even our own squadron because some of the staff, they were still doing, was a lot about [unclear] wireless operators swinging the loop, while you never did that on a British squadron [unclear] I think, when things were a bit more antiquated, I would say
BB: Right. Ok, so you find yourself going all through that, now, tell me something about the crewing up process at
DB: Well, we crewed up at Peplow OTU, that was a normal place
BB: Yes
DB: And all that was [unclear] a big hangar, I mean, I see this, had a big room, whatever it was, and you were just taught to crew up yourself this big [unclear] and well we started off, my bomb aimer and I, who were close along, we sort of lined up together, and then we saw the pilot and somebody recommended up to us so that was that and then we just build up from that
BB: Yes
DB: The first the mid upper gunner was [unclear] he could recommend and he told us about his [unclear], he came out top on our course so that was a good thing and the navigator, he was the last and the engineer wasn’t too bad because he heard my scorched voice so he was quite happy to join the crew there
BB: Yeah, could you, correct me if I am wrong, but the mid upper gunner and the flight engineer, you said joined the crew at the heavy conversion unit
DB: No, they joined then there at the OTU
BB: Did they?
DB: The whole lot
BB: Because in the earlier part of the war, they, when the flight engineer [unclear] came in because of the heavies, they used to meet them at the heavy conversion unit
DB: Well
BB: [unclear] obviously streamline by then
DB: Of course, the engineer was flying alongside the pilot
BB: Yeah
DB: Wellingtons so the other thing, there was two gunners and only one turret
BB: Right
DB: So they had to do
BB: Yeah [unclear]
DB: Well, circuits and bumps, things like that
BB: Yes, yes
DB: But
BB: And so, your time at the heavy conversion unit was how long, roughly?
DB: Roughly, was six weeks
BB: Six weeks, ok.
DB: More or less, was circuits and bumps
BB: Yeah. Did you do, did you do any sorties?
DB: [unclear]
BB: Sometimes they’d take you on a soft target over France [unclear]
DB: Finishing, finished the OUT you did a sortie [unclear], ours was to Paris and dropping leaflets
BB: Yeah.
DB: Still, that was from Wellingtons still at OTU.
BB: But it gave you the experience and all of that, [unclear] as a crew under operational conditions. Ok, so converted to the Lancaster at the HCU and with your new crew, part of your new crew and then off to 576 Squadron
DB: We went from OTU to heavy conversion unit and then ended up at 576 Squadron at Elsham Wolds
BB: 576, yeah. And how did you find that?
DB: Oh, well, I liked 576 Squadron, we were very sorry to leave it but they’d just been selecting crews sort of semi-experienced I would say that they wanted experienced crews but then went up too many operations then
BB: I understand
DB: Which makes sense, there was nobody very happy about but we were, there was two crews here, we were the first, who weren’t too bad, but Polish food didn’t agree with us to start with
BB: No
DB: [unclear] Got sorted out and it was, I think everything we got [unclear] every day, I think, a toast and cheese and the Polish soup was fat and [unclear], you know that?
BB: Yes, yes, yes
DB: [unclear] fat, so that didn’t suit us at all but fortunate enough to send black cookery [unclear] and she was asking [unclear] so when I got cheese very quickly [unclear] and a soup [unclear] was sick but apart from that, I mean, we got on very well with the groundcrew, had a good groundcrew
BB: Yeah?
DB: [unclear] Another thing, [unclear] revolver practice every week, you never heard that, I mean, you could carry a revolver if you wanted but usually the only one who did it was the pilot usually but [unclear] up to do it yourself, he wasn’t forced
BB: No
DB: But I never carried one because I wouldn’t have shot a civilian anyway so what was a point? But no I thought it was quite, 576 was a happy atmosphere and then you knew, there were two squadrons which made [unclear] quite busy of course and then we were nicely set [unclear] between Scunthorpe and Grimsby cause there [unclear] went there so that was
BB: Weekend
DB: I mean, the station was a bit away from the airfield but [unclear]
BB: Did you have a normal aircrew bike?
DB: Pardon?
BB: Did you have the bikes to go from the domestic site to the airfield?
US: Bikes, bicycles.
DB: Oh no, no. [laughs] One bicycle was the Polish one, Polish squadron and that was quite handy.
BB: Yes, cause some of these domestic sites were quite away from the
DB: Yes
BB: From the airfield
DB: One was quite good, Elsham Wolds was very far from the airfield to the mess so they got sleeping accommodation, cause something too close to the hangar because running up the engines during the night was something difficult to get sleeping
BB: Yes [unclear]
DB: But, apart from that
BB: Yes
DB: But a good, had a very good CO to 576 Squadron, Tubby Clayton, his father [unclear] in the First World War
BB: Alright.
DB: Now
BB: That at 576
DB: Yeah.
BB: Right, ok. And how did you find, did you like the Lancaster? Did you like flying the Lancaster?
DB: No.
BB: Lovely airplane, I’m told.
DB: How did I find the Lancaster?
BB: Yeah, the Lancaster.
DB: Oh, a fantastic aircraft, oh, I mean, we had a sort of demonstration think of [unclear] De Havilland, we didn’t normally fly in them but it was fantastic, I mean, flying on one engine, turning over, stuff like that, the only thing was the one engine, when [unclear] damaged one engine, you had to turn into
BB: Yes
DB: You turned, you couldn’t turn the other three engines
BB: No, no.
DB: But it was a terrific aircraft, much better than the Halifax, the Halifax was, well, [unclear] anyway, in fact it never seemed to be [unclear] for some reason, the engines didn’t [unclear], Hendley’s engines made all the difference but
BB: The good old [unclear] with the Merlins, fine
DB: It was a terrible aircraft the Halifax for swinging and take-off and landing
BB: Yes, I heard that from other veterans, yes
DB:
BB: Yes, must have been quite frightening and coming back to OTU, some of the veterans I’ve talked to said there was an awful lot of crashes at the Heavy Conversion Unit, they were on and they lost a few crews, did you, was that a true statement, as far as you’re concerned?
DB: I think so, Sandtoft I think had a bad, a very bad reputation to us, we had, well I said, landing and take-off but it wasn’t from a great height and that was engines [unclear] sometimes from the [unclear] down I think but the engines were clapped out, the aircraft were clapped out
BB: So at the HCU they
DB: I mean the aircrews, the groundcrews must have been breaking their heart trying to keep them going, but as I said, while we drove off to aircraft, our pilot [laughs] and he ended up flying civilian aircraft for Aer Lingus when from the very time they started cause he, after the prisoner of war, he stayed in and funny enough he was made an instructor which didn’t
BB: Ok, so, how many ops did you do before you were shot down?
DB: I
BB: Roughly
DB: I am a bit confused there because I reckon, we’d done about twenty-one, but I don’t think officially we had done because I hadn’t my logbook
BB: No, no, no, but you were an experienced crew, you got over the five trip [unclear] and then gone onto others, now, what shot you down, was it flak or was it night fighter?
DB: Night fighter, a BFF, a UbF110.
BB: Ok. Right, and where was that? Roughly? Over France or?
DB: We hadn’t got to Stuttgart
BB: Ah, you were on the way to the target?
DB: It was a bit I think a bad thing because in the first place was to fly a raid on D-Day, Caen
BB: Oh, of course yeah, right
DB: At low level all the way round until we came sort of more or less at Brest [unclear] I would say I don’t know possibly fifty, a hundred miles and then they decided to turn and up towards Mannheim, go north towards Mannheim and climb from four thousand feet to twenty thousand feet reaching the time limit which [unclear] some of our pilots raised the question how do you get a fully laden Lancaster from four thousand feet to twenty thousand feet? And they just said, oh, I wouldn’t consider that, climb as high as you can get but whilst when we got up near Mannheim and turned to go south, this was our diversion supposed to mean and elst we turning south approaching Stuttgart we got shot
BB: Was it a beam attack or an under attack?
DB: It was an under attack.
BB: It would be the Schrage Musik, with the upper pointing
DB: [unclear] music
BB: Schrage Musik, yes, piano music
DB: But they came underneath, obviously
BB: Were you still carrying your bomb load at that stage?
DB: Pardon?
BB: Were still carrying a bomb load?
DB: Oh yes, the bomb load
BB: So, went up like a lighthouse
DB: Well, actually, funny enough, well at that time, [unclear] night fighter equipment [unclear]
BB: Oh, ok, [unclear] Rebecca and stuff
DB: But the top of all was, because it was so low down
BB: Didn’t work, then
DB: [unclear]
BB: It was [unclear] the system
DB: And, well actually, knew it was [unclear] cause I reported to the [unclear]they had thought they’d seen it at one time but then as you said, dived underneath and came along
BB: Yeah
DB: And I think it was one thirty in the morning, I can remember that cause I recorded it in my log just automatically and then
BB: What date was that? Do you remember the date?
DB: Twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, morning, one twenty in the morning the twenty fifth
BB: Of?
DB: Of July
BB: July, God!
DB: And then they came round again, I don’t know whether they hit us the same time or not cause one wing, both engines and the flames were flown back on the starboard side
BB: Who was killed in that attack?
DB: Nobody
BB: Nobody?
DB: We never lost anybody.
BB: Excellent.
DB: But, because you end up as one of the very few, that there was no casualties.
BB: Wasn’t?
DB: Because they hit the tanks and the engines,
BB: Right.
DB: I think they came again, I’m not a hundred percent certain of that and went for the other side and I think it was there once [unclear] wouldn’t have had much chance
BB: No
DB: Because I recorded one thirty-two
BB: Right.
DB: That could have been explosions
BB: Right. But the Me 101 went off somebody else after that.
DB: So, then because, there was two or three things, the [unclear] hadn’t been, didn’t go up to the full height maybe could be allowed a lower height twenty thousand feet, getting the length of the aircraft, was a complete lack of oxygen,
BB: Yes, of course
DB: So cause that was one thing, and just a [unclear]
BB: I mean, he got, did you all get out?
DB: All got out
BB: And did you try and regroup on the ground or did you all split up?
DB: Well, we were scattered all over the field but because the pilot and I were speaking to each other just at the last minute and he said, he was going out and I said, well, I’ll go back because the engineer and I went to the rear
BB: Across the main [unclear]
DB: And, well, he was sitting there on his [unclear] and locked to go so that gave him a lot
BB: [unclear]
DB: He wasn’t restrained, it was just, the flames were so frightening, you know, flames got and as I said, there was now or nothing, so I had to [unclear] so he went and I was behind him but on the ground I landed and my parachute had caught in trees and I couldn’t get down that was my biggest problem and I was undecided whether to present a pressure leach or not
BB: Break a leg
DB: Cause I didn’t know how far
BB: No
DB: But what I managed to do was get one sided and pull down one side and that slipped down
BB: Right, right [unclear]
DB: So I did drop but not very far and then I pulled it down and I’d cross a bit grass, about six, well, a hundred yards, [unclear] across under a fence, started to run up through the trees, all of a sudden I’ve seen my pilot put thirty yards ahead of me and I shout to them because I could see there was some wrong, but he had lost his boots on the way down, [unclear] is not uncommon for people dropping from a height and [unclear] a group clearing, had a bit buried our parachutes
BB: And all that stuff
DB: And the same [unclear] had to do something about his feet so we cut the top off, mine because his boots [unclear]
BB: That’s right
DB: Cut them off and parachute silk for the cord and made a rough pair of sandals for him and that kept us back
BB: Yes, I see.
DB: And
BB: But nobody was wounded, everybody got together and
DB: No, the rest of them were all scattered
BB: Ok.
DB: [unclear]
BB: All split up but you linked up with your pilot
DB: Yeah
BB: And did you have a plan? Did you have a [unclear]?
DB: We decided the place, he had opened his map and he knew quite where we’d been shot down and as it so happened, he made a mistake but that was beside the point
BB: Do you know where that was incidentally?
DB: Well, it was a bit [unclear] aircraft
BB: Aircraft
DB: Ochsenbach was the name of the place, OSCH
BB: Oschenbach
DB: I’d been there [unclear] and had my lunch and [unclear]
BB: Oh, ok, good for you. So how long till the Luftwaffe arrived to take you away?
DB: Oh, well, we didn’t get captured for nearly a week
BB: Oh, you got [unclear]
DB: We were, we kept on and as I say, I think Schaffhausen was the place in Switzerland we were actually heading for
BB: Right
DB: But I think he thought and he had the map so I didn’t bother getting mine out
BB: Right
DB: And he, obviously he could see, I couldn’t see and the idea was to head for the Schaffhausen in the northern part of Switzerland. But then of course something wrong, we’re head, because they bombed the next night as well and I said, oh, there’s something wrong, we seem to be heading in the wrong direction but we were doing quite well, I think the lack of boots and shoes was a big handicap because we were troubled tying up, making something to protect his feet, was always a handicap, plus the fighter I don’t think he was a great outdoor man
BB: No
DB: No, he hadn’t much physical
BB: Was this an all British crew or did you have New Zealanders or anybody else in your crew?
DB: No, they were all British,
BB: All British
DB: Because by that time the Canadians, they decided they wanted their own group
BB: Right.
DB: So, they made up their group and moved people [unclear]
BB: Yes, that’s right
DB: Cause we had to go and pick up the Lancasters and take them back again
BB: Right, ok
DB: [unclear]
BB: So there you were on the ground, you’ve got your crew, got your crew roughly together split up how long, you’re on the run for a week
DB: I think [unclear] but I think [unclear]
BB: Ok. How did they get you in the end?
DB: Well,
BB: Were you betrayed by the resistance?
DB: We were doing quite well [unclear] the Black Forest but we had to break cover and we couldn’t get water and it was scorching summer and that was, trying to get water but couldn’t open farmhouse trying to get these wells but then the dogs started barking so we had to get away on the road but what actually happened was along this road and we decided to go through a field to get to the field on the other side there was a road there and we had to break cover to go over the road somebody I think must have seen we didn’t see anything but there was a truck came along loaded with troops they’d obviously been in [unclear] with the fires in Stuttgart and somebody must have spotted them because they stopped them and then we had to run through the field and the [unclear] said, we succeeded to go, [unclear] the lorry [unclear], we got into some cover but obviously they were after us and they must have caught other people and then eventually we saw an airfield [unclear] and we decided we could go there, lie low, and see if we could possibly get on the aircraft cause they were training aircraft, they were single seaters on the but there again we had to get across was a, ground was a sort of road, a ravine, I would say and we had to get down the bank and across on the other side but just when we were got out on the road we heard a voice saying
BB: Hande hoch!
DB: [laughs] for you the war is over [unclear].
BB: Yeah, and were you well treated, I mean, were you abused in any way by them or?
DB: Ah, no, well,
BB: Showed around a bit
DB: We got taken in because it was an aerodrome,
BB: Yeah.
DB: We got taken in there and all we wanted was water and no they wouldn’t give it to us but they gave us plenty of stuff like spaghetti with possibly a sort of gravy in it so we had, we didn’t eat, we couldn’t eat the spaghetti, we couldn’t swallow
BB: No, no.
DB: So we asked for some more and the chef was very, the cook was very angry then but they handcuffed us to beds
BB: Right
DB: But as I say I can’t see there was any odd treatment there, [unclear] but then they took us into a place and there was a big hall and we had to lie down on the floor with hands and legs wide apart
BB: [unclear]
DB: And then we found out was being used for people coming in after being held in the [unclear] and shelters they were coming in for tea or coffee and then some of the civilians [unclear] but one or two [unclear] but not but, but all of a sudden some of the Wehrmacht come in and they were getting rifle butts in the kidneys, kicking in between the legs and one or two of them in the head but I can’t say, I mean apart from that and then we got taken into, go taken into a place and interrogated by a Wehrmacht major
BB: Not a Luftwaffe?
DB: Not at that time and that was, you’ve seen the films footage
BB: Yeah
DB: Dancing on the top of the table with temper, the [unclear] of the German officers dancing with the [unclear], well, that’s exactly what he did, I would never have believed it but he was so annoyed because we wouldn’t give him answers he wanted and then a fortunate thing, a German lad, a young lad, they had him imprisoned, they took him out to translate and of course the major didn’t agree with what he was telling them, you see, so that was that, and then the Luftwaffe came to take us away. They were, we had to go to Stuttgart and the station was bombed so they took us to another station just outside Ludwigsburg
BB: Who?
DB: Ludwigsburg. Just about two or three miles out, that was a bit frightening because all the civilians were being evacuated to Ludwigsburg cause Stuttgart station but [unclear] nobody, we didn’t, the Luftwaffe protected us so we weren’t
B. That’s good
DB: And eventually we arrived at Dulag Luft near Frankfurt and had about a week there I think.
BB: That was the interrogation centre
DB: Dulag Luft
BB: Yeah
DB: We had to spent, well, I spent all my time there on [unclear] and [unclear] just across the road, possibly you’ve heard of that before and
BB: Yeah. Right, and then, so, once they were happy, well, once you’d, they’d satisfied themselves with you were what you were and all the rest of it, you went to a camp?
DB: [unclear] interrogated each day
BB: Yeah.
DB: And one of the things, cause they knew everything about our squadron and everything, they could practically tell you your address, how they get the information I don’t know must have good [unclear] but went there and of course was [unclear] tell me about how good the Germans treated the RAF prisoners I said, well, we never were [unclear] medical and he says, what’s wrong? and I said, well, look at my ears, my eardrum had been bust by anti-aircraft shells so by this time I was suppurating because we’d no water so, oh, [unclear] so, went back to the cell, and the next, somebody else came along [unclear] two men with medical orders just put my straight and then [unclear] straight like that and then of course all the pus and every had gone out so when I went, we went from there to camp Stalag Luft VII
BB: And where was that?
DB: Bankau was the village, Kreisberg was the town which was fairly nearer.
BB: Ok.
DB: And that was a new camp, there was no proper hut so just the way you there [unclear], there were just like by ten by eight sheds, so, I think it slept six and well, you just lay down on the floor, there was no other,
BB: NO.
DB: Just [unclear] latrines outside the thing, there was not toilets
BB: And it was Luftwaffe guards or Volks?
DB: Luftwaffe [unclear].
BB: Ho Luftwaffe, ok, and how many were in that camp, is that a new camp?
DB: I don’t know, we didn’t even [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
DB: With just a table at the center of the square [unclear] but then the new camp, the main camp opened, they’d been preparing it so we move in and that was much better. A proper camp
BB: There was a temporary camp. You were there for some weeks or something
DB: Well, we were there from until 18th of January 1944
BB: Right
DB: No, 1945, I should say
BB: ’45, right, ok, did you travel around in trains, when you were?
DB: No, we were marched
BB: Marched
DB: Oh, I got the whole history, the medical officer, we didn’t have an RAF medical officer, was an army one, an REMC, he would [unclear], he was excellent, and him and the camp commandant had kept a running record and reported it to the [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
DB: But we [unclear] the Stalag for a year and that’s where Stalag III escape [unclear], they’d arrived a week or two before us, but we had [unclear] about twice or three times but when we ran a trade the last four or five days I think, that was pretty rough
BB: Yes, I can imagine. And who liberated you?
DB: Russians.
BB: Russians. I bet that must have been
DB: 21st of April.
BB: And what were they like?
DB: The first line troops were excellent, I mean, the only thing they did was to put our tanks and [unclear] where the barb wire was, run around and I don’t think they were doing a good thing taking them down, [unclear] the lights were all electric [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
DB: So, the first thing some [unclear] among the prisoners, the officers in our camp and interrogate some [unclear] but very well, they got all our own documents, the Germans had carried their own documents so we got, arranged them all, got our own documents back, we got our own valuables back, so the Germans must have carried them all the way from
BB: [unclear] One they’re very, write everything down, two, they were very thorough
DB: Oh yes.
BB: And, you know, so, alles in Ordnung, alles klar, you see
DB: I know we got these back, and
BB: Well, that was good, and well treated by the Russians, no problems?
DB: Pardon?
BB: Well treated by the Russians?
DB: Well, as I say, [unclear] the political troops and the atmosphere changed completely
BB: Yeah
DB: From night and day. A lot of our chaps were leaving the camp and trying to get on the road, now although they’d been instructed by the CO and by the radio not to do it, a lot of them were beginning to be a bit frightened of the Russians, especially the likes of Poles and things, they didn’t like them but provided that you just didn’t go and say [unclear] because you could go and they’d seen you with a ring or a watch, they would just take it from you [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
DB: It didn’t happen to me, I mean, but some of them did happen to but [unclear] they kept us low, low as we should have been
BB: Yeah, you were a bargaining chip
DB: Because, as I say, they were just, the kept, well, I got home the 28th of May on the [unclear] the 21st of April and while it took about two or three days to come because the Russians took us out five o’clock in the morning, took us to the river Oder, Wittenberg was the place they handed us over the Americans and we stayed one night in [unclear], went to Brussels, the next day [unclear].
BB: Right, ok.
DB: And we spent overnight in Brussels and then flown back to Dunsfold landed
BB: Dunsfold
DB: South of London
BB: Because several of the guys I’ve talked to before went to RAF Westcott, that was another, Silverstone and Westcott, were the other two airfields where they took the POWs.
DB: That was quite surprising because we landed at Dumsfield must have been after lunchtime and obviously they hadn’t expected such a big crowd of RAF prisoners at that stage of the war, so, nothing was organized but they were very well organized, had civilian women and everything and helping, [unclear] the only thing was we objected, no, we didn’t object and laid down in the grass and they came nurse DDT up your legs [unclear]
BB: You got new kit there and all the rest, yeah.
DB: Oh, we had a new kit, I got a new kit in Brussels.
BB: In Brussels, oh, ok.
DB: But then they organized a train, must have bene just after teatime, and went off for Cosford, near Wolverhampton
BB: Yeah
DB: And we arrived there at about one o’clock in the morning
BB: Now, were you, as ex POWs, were you interviewed by Mi9 people, you know, the people who were interested at what happened in the prisoner of war camp, so, did you get any of that?
US: He interviewed with other people.
DB: Oh yes, I was.
BB: Oh, about your time in the.
DB: Were interrogated when we landed at Cosford.
BB: Right. Ok, at that time
DB: They told you to go and have a shower and drop [unclear] your clothes and when you came back, all your clothes were away, cause they’d taken them away and had a beautiful army uniform I got in Brussels [laughs], a Canadian army officer’s [laughs]
BB: Right, just [unclear]
DB: No [unclear] but they got us up at five o’clock in the morning, wanted to [unclear] and they started, I don’t know where they got the people but everything, medicals, clothing, [unclear] ranks and we were alone away during the day as ready, and some of them could get home, they got away fairly quickly, [unclear] we couldn’t get a train till the evening so we were kept back and some of the [unclear] Londoners [unclear] North London, people who had to go to London, down to Cornwall they kept them later as well because obviously they couldn’t get home that night.
BB: No, no. That’s right, so, it was, it all went fairly smoothly for a wartime situation with that massive, hundreds, thousands of prisoners to contend with so it worked visibly ok and so
DB: [unclear], what were you saying, I’m sorry?
BB: I am saying that the whole, it may have seemed chaotic but it worked ok, you came in one end and you went out the other
DB: Even the letters there other people that did the same thing, everybody said it was excellent and I mean [unclear]
BB: No, did you get all your back pay?
DB: Yes, no, not the [unclear]
BB: No. not [unclear], no, no.
DB: They got some enough to carry back home again,
BB: [unclear]
DB: Some [unclear]
BB: And so, you came home, and where was home then?
DB: Down at the other end of the village
BB: Alright
DB: [unclear] called, well, it was used, it was known as the Westend at one time, was part of main street really
BB: Ok.
DB: But the older people was referred to its original name. But the village was much smaller.
BB: Of course. It would have been, yes, yes and then you obviously, what did you do before you joined [unclear], was it your?
DB: I worked in the quarry which was a work similar to a mason
BB: Ok.
DB: A stone mason.
BB: Yeah. And that’s where you went before you [unclear]
DB: I got taken out there and put in [unclear]
BB: Yeah, ok.
DB: Shifting furniture, but then I was underage at that time.
BB: Right, ok and then, you went back to that job when you came back or did you do something new?
DB: Yes. But, first, four or five winters to kill, every November till about February, March usually flu [unclear]
BB: Well, that’s right, your resistance [unclear]
DB: Flu, pneumonia, well, flu, bronchitis, pneumonia, pleurisy,
BB: Whatever you had it [laughs]
DB: Well,
BB: But you obviously, that was a result of your
DB: Well, I think
BB: camp, POW camp
DB: I think I was, possibly delayed
BB: Well, you have more likely delayed shock and reaction, all that stuff, you know, bailing out of an aircraft and landing in a foreign place where people are trying to kill you, it’s pretty stressful and I know you were young, but you know, you got through it but there is a price at the end of the day [unclear]. Yeah. I interviewed one guy who was a quiet, nice man and we were interviewing him, I’m interviewing him, and he’d also be a prisoner of war and he went from being very calm, nice sort of guy and I said, how was the camp? He just, so he, I think he had a bad experience one way or the other with, you know, interrogations and one thing and another, but in the main the Luftwaffe very fairly, fairly fair, you know they were doing their job but there was no animosity, they seemed to like, you know, the RAF and I’ve heard this from German prisoners saying how the RAF treated them well.
DB: Well, funny enough, I [unclear] a letter from my bomb aimer who, he was the last one, well, he was the only one who really had close contact after but he had gone in [unclear] and gone to Germany, so he married this German girl but one of the letters he’d written that he’d seen [unclear], some of them were [unclear], badly treated and tortured and all, and he said, well, he said, I don’t know about you but he says, I’ve never seen or felt any of that sort of thing
BB: No.
DB: Intimidation
BB: Sure
DB: And then quite honestly on the march we had to leave, woken up [unclear] there was snow was possibly minus twenty-five, mostly around minus twenty but one of these places [unclear] and the padre was a tall man, six foot nine, the tallest man ever [unclear], and [unclear] was in him and he was standing near [unclear] and he says, don’t mind him, he’s frozen stiff. A German said to him, had been standing there and just got frozen died, standing up, he still had his gun. And then we were crossing the river, Elbe or Oder, a German, the Russians had bombed the bridge, and that was damaged but to get across that, you know how the, [unclear] coming over and then there’s a walkway [unclear], well, we had to go across there for a bit and it was German Luftwaffe chaps, they were standing ever so often with a rope to stop you falling into the water but then they were standing, at least we were getting across and I understand some of the later ones was the Germans that fell in the water, was so cold and frozen but they still did their job, so I mean
BB: So, yeah, well, that’s, so, that was your war then. And you were lucky
DB: Well, I was
BB: Very lucky, you could, first of all you had the training which was, I mean, I’ve been reading some of the statistics on the casualties during training
DB: Oh yes, they were
BB: Yes, and so, that was the first hurdle to survive that, then the operational tour, then jumping out an airplane then evading, then the camp, then all the problems at the end of the war, how unstable everything was and who was going to release you and who was going to come and whatever
US: And now he’s still living
BB: Yes
US: And now he’s still living.
BB: Yes, so it’s wonderful. So, well done.
DB: Oh, I mean,
BB: I congratulate you on your life
DB: Well, of course a lot of the, I mean, a lot of the stories, I mean, I’ve been [unclear] said, I mean, nobody could say the word sort of [unclear]
BB: No, no, no; I’m not making that assumption, I’m saying that the Luftwaffe compared to other guards probably better than most [unclear]
DB: I mean, no, I thought, when you look back now at some of the time, it was intimidating and frightening
BB: Oh sure, would it would be
DB: Apart from that place in [unclear], nobody sort of kicked me
BB: No
DB: [unclear] of course, some says, how did you feel the suffering there? But then [unclear] passed out, you didn’t feel the next one sort of thing but my back still shows [unclear] and my back had been badly damaged, I mean, well, subject to a lot of, but then again they [unclear] hospital, they usually asked me if I’d been in a car crash because it was still showing
BB: Yeah, sure, sure
DB: And, well
BB: I mean, after the war, when you came back, as a matter of interest, you obviously had a medical, did they send you off to RAF hospitals and things to?
DB: No, just, they sent, I got sent for a medical after but four to six weeks home
BB: Right, ok.
DB: And funnily enough, I passed the medical, but then, I’d always been in the athletics
BB: Yeah
DB: And I kept myself
BB: Fit
DB: Fit.
BB: Yes, yes.
DB: [unclear] as prisoners as much as I could, I kept as far my knee would allow me because I used to settle down and [unclear] until they operated, it was only in 1995 before I eventually got an operation
BB: I see.
DB: But even in [unclear] I don’t know, you see, I’ve written a diary there which is quoted in one of the books, the books there
BB: Oh, I need to have a look at that
DB: And it’s mentioned that quite often and that was one of the reasons I didn’t make any effort to leave the camp
BB: No
DB: I’ve been having trouble [unclear] and then eventually the Russian, well they blew out one night and taken to hospital during the night because they don’t know what happened and their own [unclear] was going to take the knee off, pin it and put a plate in and that was a Friday, all of a sudden he said, look, he says, the Russian medical officer has a lot more practice than me, is better than me, agree to let him operate, so I said, fine, they whisked me at one o’clock on a Sunday morning, when they came at five o’clock in the morning and I got taken away, we all got taken away but they wouldn’t move me on a stretcher, [unclear] strapped up and then just hobble along but I mean, you think back at it, you wonder how you survived
BB: I think you just take each day at a time and you build up the resilience to cope with that, I don’t think you look, you know, I mean, I’ve talked to a number of [unclear] guys on ops, then they were sorted by next week, [unclear] next week they may not be here, that was their mindset and I think some of them in their post-war life, because of what they’ve been through in Bomber Command, it’s only my personal opinion, they didn’t really bother about, nothing could worry them anymore
DB: No.
BB: You know, I, I know several veterans who have said, look, before I was, joined the RAF, I used to worry about this, worry about that, I went, did my tour, you know, we’ve seen what the casualty rate was in Bomber Command, we said, right, ok, you know, I’m alive, I met this lovely woman, I’ve got married, I’m gonna go back to my old job, and nothing seemed to worry them.
US: [unclear] and he was shot down in July.
BB: God!
US: [laughs]
BB: So you [unclear]
DB: [unclear]
US: [unclear]
BB: So, you got the missing telegram.
US: Oh yes, yes.
BB: And then, then you would get the red cross thing, he’s in the camp and
US: Actually, actually no, it was my father, was my father although he didn’t, it was a lady down at Dumfries my father always listened to Lord Haw-Haw
BB: Did he?
US: Every night he listened and this night something happened in the the town, cause a bomb dropped in the town and he was in the fire brigade so he didn’t listen, but next morning we got a letter from the women and down south to say that she overheard a Lord Haw-Haw that David and his number was in it and to get home and to safe flight and safe and well.
BB: That was good.
US: Very good.
DB: The photographs [unclear] I don’t know if you’ve seen them but they started, my granddaughter was at school and there was a sort of program or thing [unclear] on [unclear] and she said, oh, my grandad was a prisoner of war, [unclear] and he’s got original German documents of it, so of course she went and it was put on the internet, wherever it was, this is quite a few years ago now, and then, oh, start again, people contacted me [unclear] and someone saw the, got to America, this professor Leo Goldstein but he, because he saw it, it was his father had been in the war, his father wasn’t in the American Air Force, he was in the army, but he had been captured I think at the Battle of the Bulge, and he ended up in Stalag Luft III but when he’d seen this thing on the internet, he contacted Claire, Claire contacted me and [unclear] and was like this, I don’t know whether [unclear] must have gone [unclear] but I gave up very, oh, was beautiful [unclear], Professor Leo Goldstein, he went, I think from Orleans up to San Francisco [unclear] but it was quite fantastic, what he was pointing out was I mean, the different camps always [unclear] but he ended up in Stalag III the final camp we were on but he was detailing all the camps we went and he says, nothing the [unclear] better than land coming in a camp that was run by the RAF because they still kept it very strict [unclear], you know, was then bombed, was American camp just a shambles, nobody seemed to organize anything, well, I must admit, for some reason they kept discipline I would say, there wasn’t one two [unclear]
BB: No [unclear]
DB: But
BB: You know, discipline, [unclear] you know, you had leadership and you had all that other stuff
DB: Well, there as the same thing, some of the other camps were liberated, they broke into the orderly rooms and tore everything through apart but [unclear] camp, they just everything down, even their own documents so I ended up [unclear] the German documents and then I got, I don’t know the actual forger that was in the film the great escape, the real forger was a man, Duncan Black, he worked for the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch and after that, after the war went home, he’d written to, I think he’d written to everybody who was in the squadron [unclear] anyway and offered them photographs of it, he had twelve photographs, wasn’t there any chance of it but I had to pay for the
BB: Postage
DB: Transport, postage but
BB: Well, that’s good, so thank you, thank you for that
DB: I’ve got a photograph
BB: I just want to ask a couple of questions, where were you educated? Educated in Stirling?
DB: Mh?
BB: Were you educated in Stirling? High school?
DB: [unclear]
BB: At high school or?
DB: No, well, Lucas School in Riverside, secondary school.
BB: And you got married before you went on ops?
US: Married the 18th of February. Had seventy, seventy second wedding anniversary.
BB: Congratulations. Ok. [unclear] Had anybody else in your family been in the military?
US: Our son.
DB: Our son [unclear]
US: [unclear]
DB: He’s out now.
BB: [unclear] by the time you joined?
DB: No
BB: When you joined there was no family kind of
DB: Apart from my father in the First World War
BB: Yeah, well, what was he in the army?
DB: I don’t know what he was in, I know that he was called up in the Bannockburn cycling corps, in those days they were on the cycles carrying a Lewis gun on the bike and the cavalry took the fields
BB: There we go then. Now, one thing that I asked guys and it’s because I am interested in it myself, you don’t have to answer it, in, on your squadron, or do you know of it happening on squadrons, guys going LMF.
DB: Yes, there was, well, I knew one, two, not by name cause you didn’t see, you didn’t see them
BB: No, no
DB: Our own engineer landed one time and he wanted to go LMF, he said he was no, no longer going to do it, but however I was just, I had more flying hours then the rest put together because being on training command,
BB: Right, right
DB: But because there was a [unclear] there we went to see the CO, Tubby Clayton, and he just [unclear], sir, I’m not going to take any action just now, but, he says, take him out tonight and get him really drunk and come and see me the next morning. So, the next morning, we say, well, don’t [unclear] Aberdeen, Aberdeen named for George, what are you going to do then? No, no, I’m nothing to say now and that was all, we never had any more trouble. The only thing the pilot had a bit shaky thing but we never [unclear] but when we landed one time a great medical officer, Henderson, squadron leader Henderson, [unclear] anymore but he must have detected something was wrong of the pilot, [unclear], there again got said, the boatman was, he was next senior and Tubby Clayton said, the CO has mentioned [unclear], the pilot, that he doesn’t think he just [unclear] had he not [unclear], [unclear] he said, no, not really, ah well, he said, just keep an eye on him, we’ll see how it goes, but looking back at him you could see well, he was a bit upset, but he wasn’t go to let it show through, and he got over it very quickly but I think there was two or three operations, it was touch and go, I would say,
BB: Yes, I mean, it was, well, my late uncle, my mother’s sister’s husband, he was a young flying officer in the Royal Australian Air Force and she met him at a dance in Newark cause he was at 9 Squadron at Bardney and of course he knew better to dance and all the rest and my mother was, my mom and dad were down in the Midlands, and of course everybody came to stay and so on and so forth, but anyway they, he became serious but he wouldn’t marry her until he’d come off ops, he didn’t think it was fair, and he finished his ops, they got married, he went off to, instructor to an OTU, as a staff pilot, and was killed about a month later in a midair collision with a Stirling. She was left pregnant, young lassie, twenty years old, and I was brought up with his picture on the mantlepiece in his rather dark blue Australian uniform, cause the uniform was a darker blue, almost black, I wouldn’t say it was black but it was
DB: A shame
BB: It was very, yeah, and anyway, I was brought up with this and I just, my aunt remarried but I decided, when my granny died, oh, years and years later, went back, cleared the house, found the photograph, I thought, I never did find out about this bloke, so I spent the last five, the last next five years in researching him and he left home at seventeen and a half for Australia, went to train, initial training in Australia, was selected for pilot, went to Rhodesia to train, got his wings in Rhodesia, then came over here to go to the AFU, Advanced Flying Unit, with the Oxfords, and went up to this training thing till he got to 9 Squadron and he, his OTU was at Kinloss and just as you described through them all into a big hangar and it was his navigator, that was to be his navigator, a chap called Corkie [unclear], he’d been the postmaster in Ballasalla in the Isle of Man, and he was about thirty, I mean, he was old, you know, compared to young bomber guys of eighteen, nineteen, twenty, he was thirty, [coughs] so, he was the old man in the crew, and he kind of, was the father of the crew and he helped my uncle a lot and helped the whole crew a lot, but they got a rear gunner, who was a chap called Clegg and Cleggie had been a jack of all trades before the war, joined the RAF, became a full time RAF person, was doing very well, was a warrant officer, which in pre-war RAF was pretty good but he took to the drink and the women and he was knocked down several times and they said to him, right, you wanted to, you either remuster as an air gunner, a rear gunner, air gunner, rear gunner, or you go to the RAF prison. Up to you. So, he volunteered, the Cleggie was a bit of a lad but in the air, stupendous, I mean, you know, he saved the crew’s life on countless occasions
DB: [unclear] I can remember one particular [unclear] post me up to Elsham Wolds, on the [unclear] I wouldn’t go up flying that night but had operations on the radio [unclear] control tower over there and an admiral up from [unclear] to sort of be there, just witness and with a chap Pattock and the [unclear] was saying he was notorious for getting into trouble but a great pilot, coming back this night and two engines on one side were out and of course he came round a circuit, well, he didn’t even come round a circuit but he asked and they gave him a merit to land and to come in and [unclear], he’s just coming down and the next thing, aircraft commander Nathan, sort of hedgehog, hysterical [unclear] and of course Paddock had to try and go round again on two engines, he got up, up and he turned around he was [unclear] again, oh, he was cursing and swearing, [unclear] and you could hear on the loudspeaker, [unclear]
BB: Yeah, yeah.
DB: On the loudspeaker. And the admiral was killing himself laughing, he didn’t know, and the CO didn’t,
BB: [unclear]
DB: When he came round, he got round and landed alright [unclear] terrific pilot and then he was taddling into the good engines, which was lucky [laughs], they called him upstairs to fly [unclear] when he finished and of course the CO, the group captain in charge of the station, said to [unclear], what you’ve been up to [unclear] when he finished he said [unclear] and the admiral was in hysterics
BB: [unclear]
DB: [unclear] That was Paddock but [unclear] had a great [unclear] got into any trouble, police used to say, [unclear] we’ll put him on a train, alright, [unclear] and Paddock used to call him in a night’s morning, get all your flying kit on and make them walk right [laughs] and of course the pilot would be in the pilot’s parachute, he was
BB: [unclear]
DB: [laughs]
BB: Tell me, your ground crew, how did you get on with them?
DB: Both were lucky that the ground crew we had at Elsham Wolds were terrific, ah, the corporal was in charge of, I met him after the war actually when I was up at [unclear] but they were very good, and their way, you know, they would, one of the times where you would get engines changed because Elsham Wolds were just a new aircraft with the American Packard engines and similarly they were much superior to our own we had to get a change instead of [unclear] in the hangar getting down, our own crew up to do it themselves and they were then, worked together and done, you know, get the engines changed, they didn’t want to lose these engines
BB: No.
DB: They wanted the same ones [unclear]
BB: Yeah.
DB: So
BB: So, having a good ground crew was [unclear]
DB: The Poles were quite good but most of them couldn’t speak English
BB: No
DB: But I can remember the first time we went there and [unclear] one of them was really [unclear] but it took us long to the aircraft and I put a saucer down and put some fuel in them, hundred octane petrol and he walked away about so many yards and just like that and went up and just demonstrated who dangerous it is to smoke near the aircraft and that was
BB: Right
DB: And that was a pretty good lesson
BB: [unclear]
DB: But was a good station
BB: Yeah [unclear] could have gone badly wrong. Ok, well, thank you, for talking to me, and allowing me into your home, we’ll terminate the interview here, and then I’ll look at some of the documents if I may, so thank you very much
DB: [unclear]
BB: And thank you. Right, all I have to do is switch it off.
DB: [unclear] piece of the aircraft.
BB: Yes, I’m gonna get a look at that again.
DB: And there again [unclear]
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 David Berrie
Creator
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Bruce Blanche
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
2016-10-31
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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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ABerrieD161031
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:14:17 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
David Berrie joined the RAF and served as a wireless operator. He flew six operations with 576 Squadron from RAF Elsham Wolds. Shares his experience about living on the station with Polish crews. Remembers crashing twice in twenty-four hours and on this occasion damaging his knee. He was shot down over Germany in 1944 and managed to survive for a week before being captured and placed in a prisoner of war camp, where he was interrogated. He was then transferred to other camps before being liberated by the Russians. Mentions an episode of LMF in his crew.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
Great Britain
Germany
Belgium--Brussels
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
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1941-02
1944
1945-01-18
576 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crash
Dulag Luft
evading
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF Elsham Wolds
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/878/11118/AHolmesEA160129.2.mp3
6370a9b710f91955ac01de568b0cbea5
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
Holmes, Ernest
Ernest A Holmes
E A Holmes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ernest Holmes (1921 - 2021, 1058581, 157389 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 35 Squadron.
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
2016-01-29
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.
Identifier
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Holmes, EA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BB: Testing one two three. I’m here in Perth to interview Ernest Holmes, ex Pathfinder pilot, what we’ll do Ernest is just, I’ll get you just to tell me your name, what you did in the RAF in your own words, just try and tell your story as best you can
EH: What story is it you want?
BB: When did you join the RAF and just not in great detail but just talk it through.
EH: I am Ernest Holmes and at the age of nineteen I volunteered for service in the RAF to train as a pilot and on the 10th of June 1940 I then left home which was on my mother’s birthday to go down to Padgate. From there I eventually did training in Blackpool, the square bashing, then I was posted to Hooten Park where I was working in operations room. Then I eventually got interviewed and accepted for training as a pilot. I went to Desford where I did the, sorry, I went
BB: That’s ok.
EH: Squire’s gate I think it was to ITW, from there I went to Desford to do the initial training on Tiger Moths after thirty hours accomplishing, then went to Canada for further advanced flying on twin engine aircraft, I went there on a [unclear] factory that was called Swen Fine and that was torpedoed in 1943
BB: God!
EH: But I went there on a I think there is a photograph
BB: We will have a look at those later. Thank you.
EH: I don’t know where I then
US: Can I just interrupt, do you take sugar?
BB: I take sweeteners.
US: Perfect. Right.
BB: Thank you very much. So, you went to Canada.
EH: Went to Canada. And then returned to the UK after six months in Canada
BB: You got your wings in Canada.
EH: Got my wings in Canada [unclear] sergeant. Then I went to Abindgon on Whitleys
BB: That was number 10 OTU.
EH: Yes. There I was assessed as exceptional and proof is in my logbook [laughs] and from there I went to train on the Halifaxes and from there I went to 76 Squadron
BB: So, that was the Halifax XCU.
EH: Yes.
BB: Where was that? Somewhere in Yorkshire?
EH: Outside Oxford.
BB: Outside Oxford, ok. Remember that. And then from there you went onto the squadron which was 76.
EH: 76 Squadron.
BB: So you crewed up at the OTU.
EH: We crewed up there and from 76 Squadron I had asked to go onto the Pathfinders so we eventually moved, I can’t recall the actual dates but the logbook [unclear]
BB: Right. Was that the whole crew or just you? Sometimes the whole crew would [unclear]
EH: The whole crew, the whole crew went.
BB: Ok. Now was that a end of tour discussion well chaps what we do [unclear] or do we go onto Pathfinders?
EH: No, it was just a posting.
BB: Oh, you’re posted?
EH: But I had already asked.
BB: [unclear] Oh, you requested it. Ok. That’s good.
EH: And we went.
BB: [unclear]
EH: And then we had to do the training on the Pathfinders and then from there I was moved to 35 Squadron. [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
EH: So we’d already completed about twelve operations or so on 76 Squadron, then we started the training with
BB: Pathfinders.
EH: Yes, the operations with 35 Squadron.
BB: And I suppose that was pretty intensive, all the instructing the markers and sky marking and ground marking and all that.
EH: Yes, it was just a job for us.
BB: Yes.
EH: But I still recall quite clearly the change of attitude of each person, we were all friends, we referred to each other by name, nick names, I was known as Shirley, short for Sherlock, for a long time I was Sherlock, and there was no Holmes came along, so differentiate I am Sher-ee.
BB: Ok, I got you, yes. Ah, ok.
EH: No. And times operations you had on the crews and on my last operation when I was shot down we had a mixed crew. I had two Canadian gunners, my navigator became station officer now deceased and he had DFC DFM and the engineer DFC DFM also deceased., they became chief engineer and also chief navigation instructor, so they came off my crew and I got Johnny Stewart, Derrick came with me but that night I had eight of a crew, not seven.
BB: yes, I counted that up on the [unclear].
EH: Pardon?
BB: Were you carrying an extra wireless op?
EH: The wireless operator wanted to learn how to use the radar
BB: Right.
EH: There was no special training so he came along. Training, been trained on operations and I had a second wireless operator
Bb:
EH: But I also had two gunners. The two Canadian gunners had previously had asked for me to finished their tours with me, they finished, the Canadian scheme was after thirty ops they went back home, they were no longer required to do anything or get involved in any activities in the war unless they chose so but they too wanted to go back home [unclear]
BB: So they did.
EH: They went back home. So I had two new gunners and also a new engineer, the engineer was on his first operation
BB: God!
EH: And I’m not quite certain if the gunner was. David has my logbook.
US: Yes, I got wartime and I’ve also got the flight plans.
EH: You have.
BB: That’s
EH: No. You’ll have to know. Ask the questions and I’ll give you a brief [unclear].
BB: Ok. From the information that I had already, from David, plus my own research material, I’ve sketched out here a tabular form, your career is by unwonded from the information I had.
EH: Yeah.
BB: You enlisted on the tenth of June 1940 as an AC2.
EH: That’s right.
BB: Service number 105851.
EH: Yes, 105851.
BB: And you were a UT pilot basically at that time.
EH: Yes.
BB: And then you went to ITW and then on to number 7 EFTS at Desford.
EH: That’s right.
BB: Where you learned to fly Tiger Moths and they had some Miles Magisters there as well.
EH: That’s right.
BB: And then you went to number 35 AFU North Battleford, Saskatchewan
EH: That’s right.
BB: Where you learned twin engine aircraft on the Airspeed Oxford.
EH: In the Oxford.
BB: In the Oxford. And you were made a sergeant at that stage.
EH: Yes, when you got your wings.
BB: Yes, that’s right. And then you went, came back to the UK, you went to number 10 OTU at Abington Whitley
EH: That’s right.
BB: And your station commander was group captain H M Massey, who happened to be later on in the same prison of war camp as you, as the senior RAF officer in Stalag Luft III.
EH: North compound, yes.
BB: Yes.
US: Did you know that, Dad?
EH: I did, no, I didn’t know it.
BB: He was senior British RAF officer, he was shot down and taken prisoner, I got it here, I can let you have all of this and then you went to HCU on Halifaxes and was promoted flight sergeant.
EH: I was a flight sergeant at Abingdon.
BB: At Abingdon, ok, so, ok, [unclear] and then you went on to the squadron and were commissioned pilot officer on the squadron shortly after you arrived, I think.
EH: it’s on 35 Squadron.
BB: Yes.
EH: Yes.
BB: Yes. And by the time you got to 76 you were already commissioned, you were promoted to pilot officer with the new service number 157389. And then you did your Pathfinders, you went missing on the 22nd of May in Holland on a raid to Dortmund
EH: That’s right.
BB: Shot down and evaded capture, fought with the French resistance for a while but you were betrayed by the Gestapo and taken to Stalag Luft III.
EH: Yes.
BB: Prisoner of war number 0288.
EH: I don’t know the number of prisoner of war.
BB: Here we are. And you were involved in the long march.
EH: Both two marches.
BB: Two marches. Ok. Your aircraft was MD762 code E for Edward.
EH: Can’t recall
BB: Yeah. And it crashed, obviously a night fighter got you and you had to get out of the aircraft and landed in a place near Middlebeers in North Bravent.
EH: Yes.
BB: At 0522 in the morning.
EH: Yep.
BB: And then obviously you made it on the 21st of May ’44 you became an acting flight lieutenant [unclear] gazette illustrated on the 10th of October 1945.
EH: I knew nothing about that till a year later.
BB: I got all this stuff for you. And then you were liberated at Lubeck and then you opted for a permanent commission and went on to do lots of other things, flying on Yorks and
EH: yes.
BB: All sorts of nice things and then you were at [unclear] in Kinloss for a while. I was a member of the RAF reserve for thirty three years, in the maritime world and spent a lot of time at Kinloss briefing and debriefing crews as an intelligence officer and then I went on to, after maritime I went on to fast jets, doing the same with fighter [unclear], I did that in both Gulf Wars and it is very interesting and If I hadn’t actually researching the RAF for years and years and years, I knew about the intelligence cycle and debriefing crews and that interest stood me in really good sted when I had stop the aircrew to deal with in their flying suits, and they just wanted to get to the bar and I wouldn’t le them go to the bar [unclear] they had been debriefed so it’s funny how life but that’s a fascinating story.
EH: That I was [unclear] again.
BB: So.
EH: Can I speak about?
BB: Of course you can. Yes.
EH: When we were shot down, there was no warning, no indication, there was no warning, interception, [unclear] just [mimics a noise] and I lost control of the aircraft, went into a dive, I had my feet on, trying to pull it back but one thing fortunately, I had the loose fissing harness, eventually I was on the [unclear] panel trying to pull the aircraft up, what I was doing of course pulling myself out of the seat, now I had already abandoned the walk southwest, I was somewhere getting near the coast and I choose south west but if I was near the coast walk around the German defences and I also broadcast on my radio so that crews would recognise my voice and this was so, whilst I was on the underground, now is this the part that you are interested in?
BB: yes, yes please, yes.
EH: They started and I landed and I started walking but there was a lot of cloud around, I had to stand and wait to wait till I could see the North Star decide which was North South East and West and I walking South West and I saw someone, this is out in the countryside, light a cigarette and I heard dogs barking so I walked away from that, the person lighting a cigarette a later found out was Derrick, we went away [unclear] because at the time that the second explosion took place where the engineer was in the hatch [unclear] under the escape hatch, Derrick was there, standing with his parachute clipped on, Donnie Stewart the navigator pulled the curtain back, touched me on the shoulder, which was the sign and I am still trying to point [unclear] and then there was a third bang, big explosion, I lost unconscious and I woke up hanging over the nose of the aircraft still strapped to my side with the loose harness fitting your arm and your arm [unclear] I pulled myself back and found my legs were trapped with the control column so I kicked them free, released my harness from the seat and then eventually released my leg and pushed myself off and then pulled my parachute and I just waited, I didn’t know where it was going to land and lot of mud, I don’t know if you [unclear] at that time, we could wear what we liked on our operations, I had an old style army trench coat but I used to use it as cover, the Canadians had leather jackets, leather coats, so some of us did dress up in the hopes that if you were shot down some camouflage, now whence I came across this farm and I knocked on the door, didn’t get an answer but there was a well, water well, I didn’t get an answer so so I opened this gate and the thing about the gate that struck me was a concrete bomb had been used as a pillar to the gate unknown to me the Germans had been using that farm area as a precious bombing range [laughs]
BB: Gosh! [unclear]
EH: So I continue walking and I hear dogs barking and I start walking through water think if there were dogs they would get my scent water would help, remember I am still I once shock I was fighting
BB: Sure but you, you know, it’s a big experience that kind
EH: And then I came to a wood and I started going through the wood, it’s amazing the noise you make at night time when you walk through and I heard dog was barking again, so I came out of the wood and I continued walking
BB: You still have your flying boots at this stage
EH: No, I never used my flying boots
BB: [unclear]
EH: Normal shoes.
BB: Ok, right.
EH: In fact the only gear I had was the roll neck clover on my blazer and my roll neck clover on my jacket and underwear I had my pyjama trousers on, that was all. And my shoes but in my socks I had a Bowie knife, I lost that and I know when I landed and [unclear] I was [unclear]
BB: You couldn’t find it
EH: And then I came to this [unclear] and was the only [unclear], I could hear noises and I thought it was a blacksmith that must have been, I heard this and I thought that’s a blacksmith I think I was thinking that’s the blacksmith and he will have a big handkerchief with a sandwich and I think I was going to steal that, however I came to this [unclear ] and I could see this church steeple and I thought I gotta find a place to hide, twelve hours earlier I could have just jumped across I couldn’t I was so worn out, so I waded across up the ankle deep, knee deep [unclear] to the other side to get rid of any dog scent now I saw walking up to this park, the corn was growing high now and then oh I hate this bank noise I heard and there came a girl, she must be seventeen, eighteen cycling, she was going to and she had a runny bicycle which had small wheels in the front with a flat tray and she had a milk and she was the one that was and when she passed she said, Guten Morgen, and I thought she spoke to me in English, and I said, you speak English? nein, so I said, RAF, Flieger, and she pointed for me to hide in the corn and she went off back to the farm and I’m hiding in the corn as she was quite high at the time and I heard all the voices come by and eventually I stood up and there was [unclear] the father, he was a little man and along with him was [unclear] and was Jan, the elder son, well, the elder son was probably be about thirteen, fourteen, that was Jan, and then there were three others with him, they were all students, one was Willy [unclear], he was hiding form the Germans because the students were over the age of sixteen were to go to work in the defences so all the students went into hiding and [unclear], he was actually studying medicine at the time and he was in hiding and then there was another [unclear], we called him the painter, he was an artist, we could pick him out in a million, he wore a [unclear] type hat, it was a huge hat and a cloak, he didn’t speak English and I took an dislike him because he spoke to the others who spoke English [unclear] and [unclear] and
BB: Willy
EH: Willy and they laughed and then they asked me, I said, what did he say? He said, he wants to know if you have a gun, no, have you got any cigarettes, don’t smoke. And then it was laughter when this related to the artist or painter, I took an dislike to that chappie because he had said, he hasn’t got a gun, he hasn’t got any cigarettes, he is no bloody good to us, let’s kill him.
BB: I could see you take to dislike him, yeah.
EH: I took an instant dislike to that chappie, I met him once or twice after that, but then he said that they were going to help me so they took me to the farm and there they had the old tin bath hanging on the wall, they had to untie my shoelaces and help me take my clothes off and when my clothes were off of course I’d been circumcised, no reference me to that, far my concern, from the RAF and they were trying to help, well, a few things happened, I would say, I mean, I would say they had a fireplace, a brick thing found underneath water in this and on the top of that was a lid and that’s where they used to put the milk [unclear] once it had been because it had been and taken away but they held in that for a couple of days and then I went in the pigsty and that and then he came up to me one day and this is up to six days that’s the farmer, he came up to me with a bottle, a small bottle of whiskey and sixty gold flake cigarettes 1944 didn’t have the money to buy it, any ideas?
BB: Black market.
EH: SOE.
BB: SOE, oh yes, of course. The escape alliance.
EH: And he was tied to the SOE and was the only way he could have got it but anyway I didn’t drink and I didn’t smoke so I told him he could have them. And then they walked me into they called it the orchard, there was and there were about six beds there, this is where the students [unclear]
BB: Right.
EH: They were hiding, came to sleep and during the daytime they disappeared, look the headmaster of the village school had a spare room and the headmaster go to the library to get the medical books for Luke that continued his study and but I only saw him at night time and at meal times so I’m on my own most of the time but then Naty I come across at one time used to buy the biscuits came in a big tin box, in packets inside that box, and she used to bring one of these different types of grain and my task was to sort out those that were edible for humans and the rest for the animals so I used to sort these out, this she would have to do it cause she, she run that farm, she milked the cow, she did the shopping, and she was the one that had to go to the to get the licences to get the nes free papers for the family because the sons couldn’t go otherwise they were under and [unclear] himself couldn’t go so that, you know, she was the real workhouse I can write a book about her but I can tell you what happened I was there and eventually became when I was to get go to the next place, no whilst I was there I had a haemorrhoids and the doctor to come and he prescribed just a little tablet to insert
BB: Yes
EH: And he wanted something to remember me the only thing I had was a small protector [unclear] to give to him and then on the sixth of June which by chance was to be the date I was to be best man at my wife’s, at that time my girlfriend’s brother who was in the RAF, he was getting married and I was to be best man but [unclear] thought it was my marriage
BB: Right.
EH: But he came up to me and envasi, envasi, I knew the invasion had started
BB: 6th of June, D-Day.
EH: On the 6th of June, yes, so I said to him, whiskey so he went back and we had a little drink, just he and I, had a little drink and then, when I had to leave the farm, decided to take me a photograph, now a business man provided Frans with a suit, is that the photograph?
BB: That’s the photograph of Frans.
EH: Of Frans?
BB: Yeah, yeah.
EH: Yeah, well, the photograph of the dog,
US: [unclear]
EH: So this business man provided me with a suit but said to me, leave here, leave, get away from here or all be killed, they’ll all be killed, they and he give me ten guilders which was no use to me, I couldn’t use anyway but then my conscience risking their lives but they had to make the arrangements or point me in the right direction, true enough they made arrangements and the next place I went to was [unclear] the family Faro, the family Faro, they are all deceased, a woman, she had a son, she ran at a village a shop and to a different people coming in that’s people hiding and moving to the next place, I was then moved from there to, it was a big house and a little Dutchman but he had an American wife she was very tall and I don’t think they were happy to have me hiding in their house I was only there I don’t think forty-eight hours and I don’t think they were happy but he himself said that he flew aircraft in the First World War
BB: Alright.
EH: But then I got the impression this American lady, she was a bit concerned about me staying there, then I moved from there to a farm, it was just a single wooden building and there was an old man wearing clogs he didn’t speak English but his son I did discover was in the Dutch navy and this chappie asked me, you know, could I get him shoes, of course ration back here and he also on the tie of that suit I was wearing, he wrote his son’s name and address, service number so that if I got back to UK we could contact them through the embassy. Unfortunately I must continue now and then from there I was moved again, I lived in Holmegrun, you see, that’s a drawing, it’s a forst, and there was a hole on the ground and they actually made it into a, lined it with straw and then so that the wooden perch with and we were locked in there and at night time they would come give us something to eat and drink and then we would wonder round the woods to attend to mother nature and then come back and were locked and meantime I knew from the underground, four members of my crew had been killed, one had been captured, that was five of us, myself was six, then I was introduce to Derrick, is tappest, tappace place, Moregas I think was the name that, we later went back, Derrick had been hidden inside in this monastery and we were brought together with the underground to see if we were the persons we claimed, he recognised me, I with him, so from then on that accounted for my crew, there were seven now, the sixth man, the eighth man must still be evading capture, that was my hope. And the only man I wanted to hope was the original, Mack was the original wireless operator but he wanted to learn how to operate the H2S so that’s why unfortunately didn’t find discovered after the war was also dead. But then to this the last place in Holland I’ve forgotten the name now but somewhere in the records of my and there I gived them ten guilders that I had, that I couldn’t use into Belgium eventually came along and was a female and came half way and we were told she doesn’t speak English, she doesn’t speak French, for a person living in Belgium, however we were not to try to speak to her but just follow her so I was unhappy because this wasn’t the sort of reception that I had when I was moved to another place I was introduced, I wasn’t even introduced to this person, eventually we, to the bus and sitting on the back of the bus were youngsters, seventeen, eighteen years of age, all dressed the same, I think that they were Hitler Youth movements and they were all sitting at the back of the bus, we the only ones, I think that they were part of the ploy, that we were being betrayed, and they were there to ensure that tried anything funny they would have shot us, I’ve no proof of that, just a feeling, hunch I had, thinks are not going the way they should and I said to the French Canadian, he’s the navigator, he came from Montreal, I asked to speak to her in French but she declined, she didn’t understand, she didn’t understand English, she knew fine well what was happening, I didn’t but Derrick and I were a bit suspicious so we eventually were driven into Antwerp and she got off the bus and we followed but we went together, we just followed so he followed, I think the French Canadian first, then Derrick and then I behind, eventually we take into this large shop, it msut have been a big shop like McEwans, shop or something, but it was a coffeshop high ceilings and everything, lots of people in uniform and three people in civil clothes and there was an empty table with four chairs or fice chairs and we were told to sit down, then a chappie came and sat beside us, the girl we had followed, she produced a piece of paper and he produced a piece of paper, put them together and I knew straight away this is not, this is not right, Derrick knew, he wasn’t happy and the French Canadian, he didn’t pass a word about it, but I felt that there’s something not right, al these people around me, there was a slight hope cause I had been told underground possible at some stage in German uniform and take me down to Switzerland I was hoping that was it.
BB: But it wasn’t.
EH: But eventually this girl got up, they put the two pieces of paper together word or something it was a poor imitation of the real thing however the chap she went off and we were told to follow this chap and we went through a back entrance so this, just let me borrow something
US: There’s a photograph. You’re ok?
EH: This was the shop, you see, the woman here and we were taken through the back road down here and directly opposite was a church and the church was not on level ground, was raised, visible wall around it but raised.
BB: yes.
EH: I didn’t get the name and they went three people standing there and we were introduced to him, this chap that had met us inside and then we were told to get in the car so the three of us got in the back of this car and some girls went by in uniform, I hadn’t seen a female in uniform and I asked that young girl, oh, are those young ladies Germans? No, they were girls that work on the telephone section, they had their own dress.
BB: Uniform.
EH: So we start the car and we start driving on oh I would say about four, five hundred yards and they just pulled into an archway and they are standing outside with two [unclear] and this chap gets out of the car, follow me, we follow, I’m still thinking, oh, they gonna put me in a German uniform and take me into, when he got us inside he turned around, right gentlemen military police.
BB: Luftwaffe police?
EH: That was it. And they separated us and they put me in a room upstairs, I would say, it reminded me of my old school, a big room, high ceiling
BB: Master study.
EH: But aside of that, triple bunk beds and I was posted into a single room, there was one window, I tried to open the window which had been screwed tight, oh, I couldn’t open it, but in any case there was only, there was [unclear] downstairs, a space between the buildings and I could see a drain of pipe running from upstairs on that wall but I couldn’t open the window even trying and I wanted to try and go down but I was so exhausted by this time, I just [unclear] and fell asleep. And I was woken by kicked, of course I jumped up then lying dreaming rifle pushing my teeth.
BB: Were you still in your
EH: Civvy clothes?
BB: Yeah, but did you have your uniform underneath your civvy clothes?
EH: No, just civvy clothes.
US: That’s the suit, my dad was wearing, you can see the double two tails
EH: That dog belonged to the business gentlemen’s
BB: The one you didn’t like.
US: The one who, the business man who gave him the suit
BB: Who gave him the suit, sorry, [unclear]
EH: So, he then took me, stripped me and he took me I was both individually to this and then he turned round, he says, right, who are you, you are a spy. I got my dog tags, he took the dog tags off, he just threw them across the room, and he said, [unclear] my grandmother, I will see with lots of and two dog tags oh I am so and so this, I’m meaningless, said he. So I am now without my dog tags.
BB: Was he Gestapo or Luftwaffe please?
EH: Just something, the German military police, I think he was trying to
BB: Provoke you into something
EH: Well, it wasn’t physical but then he said, you’re a spy, we shoot spies, and then he stripped so I was stripped naked, he saw I was circumcised, he said, ah, you’re a Jew! Oh, we have special treatments for Jews. Note, at that time we didn’t know what was happening in the concentration camps, so we had thought so I could either be shot or there is a special treatment for Jews. And there was a little pressure put on me, asking questions but they are trying to scare you, frighten you and then they pushed me into a separate room, this big room with lots of bunk beds, obviously they were using it as a sort of barracks but there was no, I think it must have been a school or something at one time, but they put me in this room and I put my head out the door, everything was quite at the end of the corridor was a guard, German guard and he had a rifle and he start pushing the [unclear] up and down, Jew, Jew, [mimics a noise] obviously [unclear] from Berlin, we were in a terrible mess and I went back to the window was a chappie, I think he was a blacksmith cause he had a little fire there and I sang, my name is Ernest Holmes, I am RAF, just singing, [unclear] and there was only one occasion when he turned round, he was nodding but I hoped that would be the a blacksmith not a German but I think I got the message through to him that I was there but I didn’t want to be there and then, eventually from there they put us in a truck, it’s a fifteen hundred trucker [unclear] and there’s a gate and we had to go, they closed the wired type of gate so that we were trapped and then sitting outside there was a German with a machine gun and from there they took us into from Antwerp they took us to Brussels and they took us to a place called the castle, that used to be prisoner of war camp, no, used to be a prison, but then the Germans had taken and the three of us were then locked in a room and then you could see quite clearly a microphone and the window like a prison was high and we were given little food, little liquid, and we had biscuits, we can buy them over here, they’re nachabrot, it’s just, that was it, no food, no meat.
BB: How many of you were there at this point? How many people were you at this point?
EH: Three of us in this room. And then we were taken out, I can only speak for myself, I can tell you what happened to Derrick cause we were separated and then I was taken downstairs naked, no, before that the intelligence officer was there and he was dressed in an RAF type uniform but he had buttons with a red, white buttons with a red cross on,
BB: Oh, ok.
EH: He spoke very good English but he was huge. I think I described him as a fat however he [unclear] you know, oh they want to know who you are and I said, I clear my protection to the Geneva Convention, prisoner of war
BB: [unclear]
EH: No, he was quite content to sit and just wanted me to sit and speak, you know, and get frightened cause you know, then he started putting [unclear] oh, you’re a spy, we’ll kill you, Jew special treatment we are building up and when he stripped me and I was taken into the dungeon, when I got into the dungeon there was a German with a machine gun standing and he [unclear] on, what’s the name of the thing that you are standing on? You give, someone is giving a talk,
BB: A [unclear].
US: [unclear]
EH: There, against the wall, was a was this person but dressed as a [unclear], you could smell the newness of the suit, and I thought, no, I’ve seen that shape before but I didn’t want to admit he was the chappie the first as a red cross man you see but this chappie, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude, and then I was there for some time, five, six minutes, with this harassment coming from this coming and there was this person and I think this is part of the ploy to actually test me to see if I was a Jew, cause he had been dressed in this suit there is no other a Jew in Brussels in 1945
BB: Very rare.
EH: So, I just as I went by, I said, don’t lose faith, don’t lose faith but in such a loud voice, eventually I was taken back and then I was asked to sign a form and this was to be a form that was printed from the red cross, but printed on the top of that form was printed in Berlin, so I knew straight away this is a show trying to get information so eventually we were, Derrick went through the same process, Derrick also had bene circumcised, now I don’t know about the Canadian cause from then on we were separated but eventually he decided that we were prisoners of war and this was after about seven, eight weeks, we were then, we were going to prison of war camp and it was whilst we got in the prison of war camp the escape had taken place on the 23rd of March,
BB: Great escape.
EH: I wasn’t shot down until the 22nd of May. And the prisoners were wearing black armbands they told me the story of what had happened but I was in the same hut, have we got the book?
US: I’ve got it, yes.
EH: There is a little logbook I was given.
BB: Yes, I [unclear]
EH: Now, I had been was given a logbook and the first thing that was in my mind was my crew, there’s lots of just the people
BB: Gosh, yes, go on. [unclear] the shower.
EH: The first thing I did was thinking of my crew, I tried, I was mainly concerned about this eighth men member and I hope that it was Mike, can you find the page David?
US: [unclear] which is the poem?
EH: Yes. One left.
US: Carl wrote a poem expressing his feelings about what had happened
EH: The drawing was on that side, the poem’s on the right.
US: Do you want me to read it out, Dad?
EH: Yes. It was [unclear]
US: [unclear] to sent a photograph of the crucifix
EH: Oh.
US: So, it is in memory of those members of the crew flying Lancaster E for Edward who sacrificed their lives for their country on the 22nd of May 1944, so I will remember, when the sun sets and darkness falls, I will remember, when the sun rises and another day is born I will remember, for remembrance is all that I possess of those I knew so well, those who flew with me into the silent night to fight the foe, they asked not for bloodshed nor did they start the fight, but when they heard the bugle call they jumped to fight for right, after they prepared for missions flying into the sleeping night to bring death and destruction to those who called right might, they did their job right, they did it well but this couldn’t last for on the 23rd of May we fell and became as the past, four aviator missing, these we know are dead, three more accounted for, the eighth man is still ahead, making his way for his own homeland, keep going, my friend, Tommy, Johnny, Mac and Jock have left this earth but we who live will remember, I with Derrick and Ron, from the setting of the sun to the rising of the [unclear] we will think of those who kept up England’s fame, will you and England remember.
BB: Moving. And we do remember and Bomber Command [unclear] a very bad deal at the end of the war
EH: Yeah.
BB: And I blame Churchill for that. Cause Harris, Harris had defied Churchill on a couple of occasions and Mr Dowding had done as well sending more Hurricanes to France and I think he was quite vindictive in that respect occasionally, great man but I think you know he’s human when he’s doing things but I think that Harris and Dowding got a raw deal.
EH: The whole of the RAF got a bad reputation but for what has taken place but if it hadn’t taken place, we would all be speaking German.
BB: exactly.
EH: Ah
BB: I mean, when you listen to contemporary newsreels of that time, particularly after the Blitz, the Blitz on other cities, the populations of those saying, go and give it back to them! Go and give it! And so Harris did exactly that, he was doing what he was bed by the war cabinet and by Churchill and he went and he fulfilled that as best as he could and then it all got [unclear] after the war cause [unclear] so well. But that’s all been, I think, Bomber Command went through that darkness
EH: Yes
BB: And then it came out at the other end and here we are
EH: There is a little gap
BB: That’s what these guys at Lincoln are trying to do
EH: Yes, but there was a little gap, someone [unclear] resentment as I did because a medal was produced that cost fifteen pounds and this was to, and I bought one
BB: This was the Bomber Command memorial, this
EH: No, no, this has nothing to do with Bomber Command,
BB: I beg your pardon.
EH: Someone had produced to say a thank you, to say that we had done a good job
BB: Oh my god, Right, right.
EH: But that was replaced seventy years later with the Bomber Command crest.
BB: Clasp.
US: The bar and the
BB: That didn’t [unclear] till 1945, yeah.
EH: So in a fact, I have, I told you about this medal, it’s now meaningless but that was the resentment that we had and that’s why I bought it
BB: Quite right.
EH: I have it, it’s hidden
BB: [unclear] let down by
EH: The thing
BB: Did you apply for your Bomber Command clasp?
EH: Yes, I have, we have the medal, but the sad thing was, after the war I went to Bomber Command, to Pathfinder headquarters [unclear] give me the choice of either going back at the squadron or going into Transport Command but he warned me, the squadron is preparing to go out to the Far East and being [unclear] tropical [unclear] I said at the time I think I have had my fair share of war, I remember that two forced marches and [unclear] so he arranged to go to Pathfinder, to the
BB: Transport, Transport Command
EH: To [unclear], I’m sorry Bournemouth, I went there with the squadron and who was the CO of the squadron? The squadron leader and Wing Commander Dan [unclear] he sent me on my last op and he was waiting for me coming back from that last op to show me the London Gazette and he gave me my ribbon to put on
BB: Oh, how wonderful.
EH: And he repost me, he said, you are improperly dressed, oh, I don’t know what I had, all I had was the thirty nine forty five, and he, from there he didn’t tell me but he took me with his we sat down and we went through all my operations experience through, I finished up with up with a France Germany medal and also the Italian star and I was wearing them until Kinloss when a group captain Caddy, a Canadian, he was a gentleman, he wanted normal story to, [unclear], the reason he wanted me was there was the coronation and there was seven medals allotted to Kinloss and I was to get one of them, so I had to get my other medals, when I applied for them I discovered I wasn’t entitled to the France Germany medal because I’m in Holland trying to get through, but I wasn’t in France, I wasn’t entitled to it, and also I had done [unclear] to Caen to [unclear], there is a bridgehead to Italy and the railway lines from Caen were feeding that and we went to destroy that railway line in Caen itself and we went down to four thousand feet to bomb and it was in aid of the [unclear] bridgehead
BB: Right
EH: And so I took those down, I had to apologize to the CO I had been wearing this because they told me I wasn’t entitled and he got really annoyed with the and he said, oh, I’ll speak to the OC, we already trained through the Pathfinder force [unclear] you went there so you didn’t get it, so I wasn’t entitled to the France Germany because I hadn’t been stationed in Italy, I couldn’t
BB: But you clearly got the France and Germany clasp, you get the aircrew Europe?
EH: No. No, I haven’t got a France Germany at all.
BB: No, I met sometimes
EH: I got a victory medal
BB: Right, didn’t get the aircrew Europe?
EH: Didn’t get the France because I am in Holland
US: But Dad, listen to the question again. Listen to the question again.
BB: Did you get the aircrew Europe star?
EH: Oh yes,
BB: Cause that would have been where you would have worn the France and Germany clasp on that star, had you been able to
EH: No, I didn’t have the, there was no recognition at all for the France Germany, the, I got the victory medal
BB: I see [unclear] put that right
EH: I actually, the many things that freshen my mind but when I think of my story that I have, can I tell you a little more?
BB: Sure, of course you can.
EH: Frances, Frances von der Heyden,
US: [unclear]
EH: After I left
US: She was Francis daughter
BB: Francis daughter
EH: And she was the girl that found me, she was the workhouse on the farm, she looked after us, she made food for us, and [unclear] for us, for the undertakers and there were six children, she was the elder but let me speaking two separate stories [unclear] after I left, the bridge too far does it ring a bell?
BB: Arnhem. Yes.
EH: Well, the aircraft going passed nearby, near the [unclear] where I was and [unclear] and she comes across an American airman who was wounded on a shoulder ands he made arrangements and she took him in the farm and he was in the pigsty where I had been but then [unclear] by this time the troops were not too far away and [unclear] went across, no, I didn’t see this, I am told by the family, he went across the fields to the British and said he had an American and he wanted help, take him away but they didn’t believe him, they thought that it was a trap and the Germans would be [unclear] of him but they gave him some dressing [unclear] so he went back somehow somewhere the Germans found out he crossed the line and they came to the village and there they found them in the church and they were going to shoot the whole family and France argued, he was master of his house and the family had to do he was [unclear] not them and they shot him in front of them
BB: Yeah, was that ever followed up after the war because if they went in and did all this stuff after the war [unclear]
EH:
US: There is a memorial to Frans
EH: Well, what did happen with I had to be taught but they what happened when I first went back however the family unfortunately went [unclear] dispersal remember was nature and young baby sister I think she is still alive and one of her brothers and that’s left and there’s grandchildren after them [unclear] I’m in contact with and I have been on contact with her family for over seventy years
BB: Oh, that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. Other Bomber Command aircrew I have interviewed, were they, had they similar experiences to yours, have kept up with their people as well. It’s amazing the bond that existed, you know, there was these young, frightened aircrew, had the horrendous experience of getting out a bomber, landed in a foreign country, had done all the theory about what to do and you know Mi9 teaching them all sorts of things but at the end of the day, you know, they were given help and shelter and food and help you know by the resistance, well the escape line I should say.
EH: But what they did for me is not my story, it’s her story, there was Frans murdered cause he had helped this American, the same thing could have, if I had been there the same thing could have happened to [unclear] but there at one point came when I will switch now from Frans to [unclear], [unclear] was invited to go to America where the some Dutch friends of hers and while she was there, she fell in love with the brother in law of this couple she was staying with and she wanted to get married but she was visiting the States and was not allowed to stay so she in actual fact gave us a [unclear] I should have it somewhere, the second page of the [unclear] Express, and this was where they had approached someone in the government to ask permission and she was told by the senator that if she could prove that she was a fit and worthy person to enter the States, he would try to do what he could for her and she sent me the cutting of the paper where this article was in and I went to my lawyer and explained to him the position and he then [unclear], he actually wrote the letter and she got permission to stay and they got married. But that wasn’t the end of the story because Jan and her brother who was back home he found, he didn’t speak English but he and I, he and I could converse, we understood one another but he, he had an American correspondence [unclear] information so he approached this person and he give them the name and address and the service number of the American that was there and law and behold that American was [unclear] and the family went across, Nat was living in the States, and the family, members of the family, they went there and they actually saw,
BB: Oh, that was good.
EH: Yeah, Jan asked them, [unclear] and make sure so he showed them the wound and he asked, why didn’t you, oh, I thought you were all dead, I thought they shot all, he hadn’t even reported the fact that [unclear]
BB: Yes
EH: So that was a sad tale.
BB: That was a very sad tale, yeah.
EH: Yes.
BB: Well, Ernest, thank you very much
EH: Can I tell you one, just one more?
US: Dad, just two seconds. We are going to have fish and chips for lunch.
BB: Right.
US: I was just going to go and pick them up.
BB: Yes.
US: Would you like to join us? You will join us.
BB: I’d be delighted to, thank you very much indeed. Yeah.
US: I’m going to slip away to get some lunch. Alright?
EH: [unclear] tell the story that I could see it as a [unclear] for a love story [laughs]
BB: Ok, on you go.
EH: [unclear]
US: [unclear] if I leave at this point.
EH: When we were, when we had our last meal, you know, after operations and before operations you go and you have your meal, there was normally sausage, bacon and eggs, well, that night when we sat down, Derrick and I sat together and there was no eggs, and I said to the [unclear], you’ve forgotten the eggs, and she said, Jock he said, [unclear] I can’t go ops without eggs, I got the chop, and she said to me, I’m sorry there’s no eggs and I apologised to her
RH: While we are on the subject of things that crews took with them, good luck charms, whatever you want to call them, my uncle was in 9 Squadron during the war, Australian, he flew from Bardney and did his full trip with 9 and then married my mother’s sister and then he went off to an OTU to instruct staff pilot as an instructor but unfortunately he was killed in a mid-air collision at the OTU, he flew, he flew with apparently, the photograph of my aunt, was later his wife, which he put on the panel of the Lancaster in front of the control column and he swore that got him through every op that he did but that [unclear] did the last one at the OTU [unclear].
US: These are letters that we found that have been written by somebody from [unclear]
BB: Right
US: After the war and we don’t know anything about this person, perhaps Dad will tell you
BB: Okay.
US: I’ll get some lunch.
EH: Can I finish this?
BB: Of course, you can.
EH: I was telling you about this that was on my conscience, when I was hiding that [unclear] that girl
BB: Yes
EH: Was on my mind and I was [unclear]
BB: I can imagine.
EH: [unclear], received the [unclear], I mean I am an emotional person, but by God if anything gets up my nose I just [laughs] however when I went back to see Bennet after the war, he said to me, give me the choice and I said that I’d go back to Holland and he said, right [unclear] go back, go to [unclear] and tell the CO to fly you to Holland but you make your own way back, oh, I accepted that but then when I went onto the squadron I didn’t know a face a part from the navigator I had previously
BB: Right
EH: Gibbs and the [unclear] saw me and he called, don’t move! [unclear]! She’s still here! And he disappeared through the door of the kitchen and he came back with the girl that had served me last meal and the one that I’d said would get the [unclear] and she came right across and the mess
BB: Full
EH: I didn’t know a face other than the [unclear] and my crew member he came across and flung her arms around me and I held her, I [unclear], I apologised for [unclear] and she had seen the [unclear] and she said, oh, I’m glad you’re back and she turned round and tears streaming down her face and they were also mine but I left it to the navigator and the [unclear] to answer any questions about my [unclear] was, there was no physical connection
BB: No, no.
EH: Just that eggs [laughs]
BB: Yeah. That’s interesting. Well, that’s a very interesting story now David passed me this letter, must be to do with someone in the Netherlands, that’s interesting. Anyway thank you for talking to me
EH: No
BB: And it’s a fascinating story and it’s probably the best interview which describes the whole prisoner of war initial interrogation
EH: right. I hope it hasn’t swamped you
BB: Not at all, not at all, because
EH: [unclear]
BB: That’s probably the bit than your Lancaster
EH: Yes, that’s the bit of my Lancaster because after the war we went back this is years later because I’m in Transport Command
BB: Yes, flying your
EH: And then the [unclear] had started but before that we went, [unclear] came with us, and we went, the, Jan, that’s the elder son, now deceased, he had [unclear] with some [unclear], every year the [unclear]
BB: Yeah.
EH: And he had mentioned the fact to these people that he called me Shirley [laughs] and he told his folks that that was, where the aircraft was and we were the undertakers that were alive, Willy and Luc and [unclear] and Jan and they came with us to the farm and the farmer, the farmhouse [unclear] and I couldn’t recognise it, if this is the place, my aircraft came down there and I was in the field here and I came across [unclear] but there was a well here and the farmer said, you are standing on it, the story was lightning put the farm on fire so the farmer had to [unclear] the whole place and [unclear] not just the farm building [unclear] the animals the whole and there was another personal build, I have a photograph of that, we have a photograph of at the farm at [unclear] and we also have photographs of [unclear] got after the war but I had to give everything to David because with my sight gone
BB: Yes, yes
EH: I felt so helpless
BB: I know but I mean, well, fifty-five thousand [unclear] aircrew in Bomber Command didn’t make it
EH: Didn’t make it, no
BB: And the chances of survival of a bomber crew in at the height of the Battle of the Ruhr was four trips
EH: yeah
BB: Four trips
EH: Yeah
BB: So, if you survived four you were already dead.
EH: That’s right
BB: And all the aircrew that I interviewed and tracing my late uncle’s crew as well, who survived the war, they all had mechanisms that distanced themselves from that [unclear] and it was to live for today, everything
EH: [unclear]
BB: Everything was that, don’t think about tomorrow, don’t think about the next op, don’t think about the Grim Reaper, no, it’s just live for today, and they said, they guys that worried about it, were the ones that, you know, that weren’t concentrating, that made a mistake or something and it was just, I don’t know, a luck of the draw, but there was a certain, I perceived a certain mental attitude which got people through,
EH: Well, but after the war I [unclear] because there was only one survivor, Derrick and I, Derrick and I were in contact, but Derrick now is dead and but the chappie who was my wireless operator, her also has died but I got he was interview by a chappie who collected stories from DFCs and DFMs.
BB: Alright.
EH: And he, the same chappie asked me more information and he told, I said ,there was no indication [unclear]
BB: God!
EH: Yeah, seconds
BB: Was it Schrage Musik that got you at the end? You know, the night fighter with the upper firing gun? Below the Lancs?
EH: Yes. You see, I can’t
BB: You can’t answer that because it just so instant
EH: I can’t answer
BB: Yeah, it was just one big matter
EH:
BB: It probably sounds like Schrage Musik because as you know, they went underneath the [unclear]
EH: Yeah
BB: Between the two inner engines, straight in the bomb bay [unclear]
EH: Well, we had two close encounters, but we never had to fire the guns
BB: No
EH: Never
BB: No
EH: So the wireless operator [unclear] had been fighting this [unclear] and the other but there was no guns fired, there was no warning, within thirty seconds the whole lot was over
BB: Yeah. Lucky, you were lucky.
EH: He, no, is dead so I can’t, but I went round to visit the families of them so [unclear] the widow of Johnny Stewart, he was the navigator, he kept a diary and he’d written every time in his diary trips that he went on and he always mentioned my name and his wife asked me who Shirley was, he spent, a lot of people thought my name was Shirley
BB: Yes, yes, yes.
EH: Was Sher-lee
BB: Eee, yeah, and the wife was wondering who Shirley was.
EH: Now then we, this is part of the aircraft, the farmer after the Germans had taken away the aircraft, bits and pieces so David actually took this as a memento
BB: Oh, that
EH: That’s it, I found the aircraft, I’ve been there, and this
BB: You went back to the crash site for the family
EH: Yeah
BB: Not only that, my great grandson, my daughter lives in Belgium and she had a daughter and she was [unclear], Alison was my [unclear].
BB: Gosh!
EH: And but he’s a great guy but he died playing tennis
BB: Heart attack.
EH: He and I got on fine and a lot of people use do think, oh, any with Alison [unclear] but there was no, in fact when he wanted to get married, he wanted to come over to us for my permission, I thought it was pointless in coming just for me to say yes or no.
BB: Yeah.
EH: So I said, don’t bother coming. You come over and have the marriage here and that was all over. So their daughter, so my granddaughter, my grandson and Alison went to the place with, along with one of the grandson of the Van de Hayden family, Hank, this is his name and he’s the one that kept in contact, he is the one who actually took them and they went to the farm and they walked all the way back to where I found, where [unclear] found me but instead of wading across the stream there is a bridge [laughs] and of course there’s no well, is all covered over
BB: All covered over, yeah. How interesting. And of course, you took a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force and you went on to do lots of other things. I mean, flying the routes with Avro York, long haul to Singapore and all sorts of [unclear]
EH: Yeah,
BB: And everything in between
EH: Yes
BB: How did you find the York, cause the York was really a
EH: Well, the armed forces
BB: Basically a Lancaster
EH: The armed force thing was, either the country flying and I’d be away three weeks, back for a few days, come up to Scotland and flew back again, so I couldn’t keep in contact with Derrick, he could go to Holland, I couldn’t
BB: yeah
EH: Cause when I was [unclear], I was [unclear] the CO to take me there, I said, I, eventually you realise that you can’t go empty handed
BB: Yeah [unclear]
EH: You can’t go empty handed, I need money, I didn’t have any money, I don’t think I had my check book with me at the time and we didn’t have cards at that time and I thought, I can’t go across there empty handed so I decided not to go. And then [unclear] Berlin airlift of course, my boss Ben was flying his own aircraft there as a civilian
BB: Yeah.
EH: So I met
BB: Avro Tudor [unclear], is that American Airways [unclear]? No, he started up the South American
EH: That’s right
BB: Airways
EH: That’s right. But then he was
BB: Tudors, Avro Tudors. And Lancastrians and Yorks.
EH: Yeah. He was flying [unclear] petrol
BB: Yeah.
EH: And now, when I visited the other members of the [unclear] I found that the widow of Mack who was the original wireless operator now training on the H2S, he had written a farewell letter to his wife which I gather he wrote every time and kissed this is my last trip, I didn’t know that till his wife told me she was most concerned because he had a baby and there was something wrong with the baby I remember that when we went out as a crew, we, they gave us some little bottles of oil of olive,
BB: Yeah
EH: For the use, for the baby was something wrong but her problem was she didn’t have access to a bank account, it was in his name, she couldn’t get it and I was only visiting there for a short weekend and I couldn’t help her so [unclear] so trying to get the Pathfinder club, he wasn’t even a member, he was in the Pathfinder but he wasn’t a member.
BB: [unclear]
EH: He died so I hope someone did have a [unclear] because Derrick tried to find her living in London, went back, no one in the area knew what had happened to her but the humorous part was that I went to Derrick’s folks, his father was a navigator in the First World War, and he too was shot down, he too became a prisoner of war, now, my story is we were having a dinner with the Pathfinder organisation and now where was the dinner?
BB: RAF club?
EH: No
BB: Pathfinder club?
EH: I, we had, I couldn’t go to the many [unclear] living, I was flying back and forth [unclear] whenever I had time and [unclear] I was with the Pathfinder club in the [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
EH: But with Derrick’s father, there’s a book written by [unclear] Broom.
BB: Oh yeah, Broom. Yeah [unclear]
EH: [unclear] The Battle for Berlin.
BB: The Battle for Berlin.
EH: [unclear]
BB: Alright, I’ll make a note of that [unclear]
EH: And at this time, I was now pilot officer.
BB: Alright. And of course you clocked up seventy hours on Yorks and so the transition to civil aviation was multi-engined experience flying the routes with Transport Command
EH: Yes, but my experience was an actual fact trading fuel, I did a tour with [unclear]
BB: Yes, [unclear]
EH: [unclear]
BB: By the [unclear]
EH: Unfortunately, you see, I held senior appointments but not the rank, I was interviewed by the but I have forgotten [unclear] Scotland [unclear] Scotland at [unclear]
BB: Yes, I used to be at [unclear]
EH: And he, it was a good [unclear], thought I had a raw deal, you know, interview with him
BB: Yeah
EH: But then he said to me, you should just tell the fuckers to stick it up their [unclear] ass, that was the words he used to me, yeah, [unclear] at the time but then I later met him again when I was on Glasgow University [unclear], when I went there the [unclear] was actually using the old typewriters typing things and printing, print out with these
BB: Yes, yeah. [unclear]
EH: And I said, oh, this is nonsense, [unclear] so I want and I got a lot of equipment, I got a camera, projector and also a [unclear] and my esteem went up with the squadron and eventually the OC at the time, I’ve forgotten his name, he came round and I heard wing commander [unclear], not a nice man, he was singing my praise and the OC said to me, [unclear] we are in, and I thought, well, and I think I should have said, Coastal Command. But I said Transport Command cause it [unclear] the end, if I had said Coastal Command and he would have brought precious memories up and that was a third recommendation for me [unclear] so I held senior posts but not the rank.
BB: Yeah, well that was, that’s a shame, no, I went, I started my intelligence work at [unclear] Castle, it was sent HQ NORMA, Northern Maritime Region
EH: Yes.
BB: And I reported directly to the admiral and they received [unclear] the coast of Scotland and Northern Ireland [unclear] and yes, the black huts, the black wooden huts, [unclear] we used to sleep in those and walked down to the pits, down those stairs, yes, it was interesting time, was very busy but ,[unclear] mainly spent hunting Russian submarines in the North Atlantic. With Shackletons initially, the MR 1 Shackleton and then of course [unclear] and so on.
EH: Well, I flew the Shackletons at Kinloss.
BB: Was it ten thousand rivets flying in formation?
EH: When I first came to Kinloss and were only doing coastal cross I was [unclear] at the time.
BB: Yeah, so you were [unclear]
EH: And then I suggested, [file missing] Winston Churchill was coming back on the Queen Mary I think it was from America and I arranged for a flight on Shackleton to go and greet him
BB: Excellent
EH: We got full of praise for that.
BB: Excellent. Yes.
EH: That was the first time the Shackletons had actually flown over [unclear] wartime, was just doing coastal crawls all the time do to the intensive trial period but was an easy aircraft to fly
BB: Yeah
EH: And I flew them, I didn’t fly as captain but I flew the aircraft, take-off, landing and flying around and I did even did practice bomb runs on the Moray Firth
BB: Yeah, yeah.
EH: And well I didn’t do a lot of flying in it but I did fly the Shackleton.
BB: [unclear] it was [unclear] the Lincoln, you know, it went from Lancaster, Lincoln, Shackleton
EH: Yeah
BB: So it was lovely aeroplane.
EH: Oh, Yes. Oh, the Lancaster.
BB: Shackleton, [unclear] Shackleton.
EH: Well I had Mark I, II, Halifax, and the Mark III, now the Mark III was a complete change, it was a [unclear] aircraft, it had sixteen hundred horsepower Hercules engines radials
BB: Yeah.
EH: It was a heavy aircraft, what a difference was from the [unclear] so I got three stitches of [unclear], and then the Lanc, I flew the Lanc, that was a beautiful aircraft to fly.
BB: Did you fly the maritime version as well?
EH: Pardon?
BB: Did you fly the maritime version of the Lancaster as well?
EH: No.
BB: No.
EH: No. No, but I did visit one, there was one in a museum here
BB: Oh, that’s right [unclear]
EH: David was nursing at the time, was training at the time, [unclear] hospital and he heard about it and we went out to visit and there’s a photograph and on that photograph there’s the name Holmes and I reckon it’s a pity they hadn’t put they date on and I reckon as a photograph of an operation, you know, the names were taken off.
BB: Yeah, what a shame.
US2: Can I interrupt? Sorry. We need to [unclear]
BB: Ok, right.
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 Ernest Holmes
Creator
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Bruce Blanche
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
2016-01-29
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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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AHolmesEA160129
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:37:23 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
Ernest Holmes joined the RAF and served as a pilot, flying operations first with 76 Squadron and then on Pathfinders. Gives a vivid and detailed account of when he was shot down over Holland: how he was given shelter by a farmer’s family and moved to different locations; his eventful escape to Belgium; his capture and interrogation by the Gestapo and internment in a prisoner of war.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
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1940-06-10
1943
1944-05-21
1945-10-10
10 OTU
35 Squadron
76 Squadron
aircrew
animal
anti-Semitism
bombing
evading
fear
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
Resistance
Shackleton
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/303/3460/AMcPhersonWhiteR150901.1.mp3
0e5df7f42951c97fd20e9aa7362cf89e
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
White, Roy
Roy McPherson White
Roy M White
Roy White
R M White
R White
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Roy McPherson White (1925 - 2018, 3006061 Royal Air Force), his log book, Service and Release Book, and five photographs. He joined the RAF in 1943 and after training, served as a wireless operator until 1947.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Roy White 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
2015-09-01
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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White, RM
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Stationed at RAF Yatesbury (No.2 Radio School),
RAF Aqir (No. 76 Operational Training Unit and No. 26 Anti-Aircraft Cooperation Unit), RAF Abu Sueir (1675 Heavy Conversion Unit),
RAF Khormaksar (Aden Communication Flight).
Aircraft in which flown: Proctor, Dominie, Wellington X, Liberator VI, Baltimore, Ventura, Albacore, Beechcraft, Mosquito, Anson.
Roy White was born in Perth, Scotland in 1925. He lived in Scotland until the age of nine, before moving to London, after he received a scholarship to the London Choir. Roy performed with the choir at the 1937 Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
Roy left school at fifteen and went to work in the fabric trade at 16, he joined the ATC as a Volunteer Reserve, before joining the RAF in 1943 at the age of 18.
Roy recalls going to Lords Cricket Ground on the “Hallowed Turf” to join up. Roy was accommodated in some near by flats by the RAF. Roy’s brother was also in the RAF, in Costal Command and was a Navigator.
Roy was stationed at RAF Yatesbury (No.2 Radio School), RAF Aqir (No. 76 Operational Training Unit and No. 26 Anti-Aircraft Cooperation Unit), RAF Abu Sueir (1675 Heavy Conversion Unit), RAF Khormaksar (Aden Communication Flight).
Aircraft in which he flew: Proctor, Dominie, Wellington X, Liberator VI, Baltimore, Ventura, Albacore, Beechcraft, Mosquito, Anson.
At RAF Yatesbury Roy could easily do the required twelve words per minute in Morse code, and had an excellent American trainer who could do forty words per minute, along as sending and receiving the messages. At certain times, Roy was allowed to teach the class, but was mocked by his fellow classmates. Roy also learnt about the different parts of the radio, how to take them apart and fix them, along with how to fault find on the radio. The signaller would receive a message every thirty minutes, on the mission flight. This message could be about the target, or the weather condition, or even to return to base. The radio waves could also be used to help the Navigator find the correct location. As the Signaller was listening out constantly for messages, he wasn’t on the main crew radio.
Roy also learnt how to take a gun apart blindfolded, which he struggled with but found useful. Roy and his best friend Billy failed the initial training exams, and had to resit them, wit the next unit that arrived. While waiting to complete his exams, Roy worked as a porter at the local hospital, moving the wounded solider sent over from France.
Once Roy had passed all his exams and training, on his passing out parade, he borrowed a uniform for the parade. His uniform was having his brevets sown on by a WAAF on the base.
As part of the Air Crew training for a Signaller to correctly use the radio on board. Roy had to learn about the theory of radio waves, and learn to complete different sounds tests, along with the PNB system test.
When training as an Air Gunner, Roy learnt about the different parts of a .303 riffle and did some clay pigeon shooting. He didn’t receive much Air Gunnery training, as he was to fly on B24 Liberators (the main bombers used in the Middle east) and they used .5 guns, which he didn’t train on until he was in the Liberators.
Roy sailed to Egypt via Gibraltar, as he was a trained Air Gunner, the ships Captain on the merchant convoy, appointed him Ships Gunner and told him to expect to fire the guns. Roy did daily four-hour shift, U-Boat watches on the journey.
When Roy finally arrived RAF Abu Sueir, along with all the other crews. They were locked in a hanger for twenty minutes and told to crew up for the Vickers Wellington that they were to fly. Roy joined a crew with four South Africans and two other Scotsman. The South African crew mostly spoke to one another in Afrikaans.
When Roy was training on Wellingtons, due to a fuel tank problem. The Wellington crashed on landing. Roy banged his head on the radio set and was in hospital for a few days. After the crash, they were assigned a new pilot. The rear gunner got stuck in the Wellington, due to the mechanism being broken.
Roy and the crew then converted to B24 Liberators, which he flew until he left the RAF in 1947. After the war he returned back to his pre-war job in fabric, before running a Antiques shop with his wife before retiring.
Daniel Richards
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 I am doing an interview with Roy White and we’re at [redacted] Haunton near Banbury and we are going to talk about his days in the RAF, about how he got to that position and what he did afterwards. So, over to you Roy, if you’d like to gives us your history please.
RW: Right, I was born in Perth, Scotland 1925. I lived there till I was nine years old, then I came to take a recital in London to join a London choir in Margaret Street in London. So I did join the choir at the age of nine and I continued there until I was fifteen. I managed to get into the coronation choir during my experiences there and it was a marvellous experience in actual fact then. When I left the choir I went to the Mercers’ school for a couple of years but I left there and joined a firm that was making fabrics and I was there until I joined up in 1943. I joined up and went to St John’s Wood, Lord’s Cricket Ground on the hallowed turf, we were actually allowed to go across there and we were billeted out in the flats at St John’s Wood from there and kitted out and all the rest. After we’d done all our initial pieces we then went on to Bridgnorth for our initial training wing, which was drill, which didn’t come as a great surprise ‘cause I’ve been in the ATC and we’d done it all before, you know, but the Morse code was alright because we were supposed to do twelve words a minute when we left there but in actual fact I could do twelve when I started, ‘cause I done there, but I found it more difficult with the, with the gunnery in actual fact taking 303s to pieces and what not there because used to have, undo the breechblock with a blindfold on and put it back together which sounds stupid but in actual fact the lighting was very poor on aircraft so in actual fact if something goes wrong it was quite difficult to see so, in actual fact it made quite a lot of sense. So we were there till about the end of the year 1943 and then went to the radio school at Yatesbury and we were supposed to get up from twelve to eighteen words a minute on there and we also did training in arms, we rifles, Sten guns, we did hand grenades as well, what not there to, general training, what not there and my best pal, Billy Wilson and I, when it came to the exams we both failed the same thing on [unclear] and so we had to drop back a week and join the next unit, which came as a big surprise for us because that unit had been marked down for overseas unit, they sent us home on leave again for a fortnight but we joined the unit there. During our period waiting for embarkation we spent a couple of nights at [unclear] hospital, portering the wounded coming back from France, the convoys and we worked all night during operations helping out which was quite an experience ‘cause it really brought it home to you what it was all about when you saw the condition of some of these people who were there, you know, quite difficult, but it was a good experience and we embarked on the ship and we, I’ve never been sailing before, I’ve been across the Isle of Wight, that was my total knowledge of sailing, we thought, oh, lovely, easy trip on there and we saw the sailors loading up shells and wondered what on earth they were for, the first officer came on board, was just walking past us and he said, ‘you gunners?’ And we said, ‘well, air gunners’, and he said, ‘oh good, you can be the [unclear] gunners for this ship.’ And we all looked at each other as if to say what’s he talking about? He said, ‘let me explain, we are classified as an armed merchant cruiser’, he said, ‘that destroyer over there will be looking after one side of the convoy and we should be looking after the other side.’ He said, ‘we’ve got two 4.6 guns on the end of this ship’, he said, ‘you will be firing them at some time’ and whatnot [laughs] ‘but in the meantime you’ll be submarine watching as well on four hour shifts’ [laughs]. So we started our voyage doing submarine watching shifts from midnight till four in the morning on the, dead man’s watch I think, we called it in actual fact [laughs]. So we did that there and we did actually fire the guns so [laughs] much to the amusement of the rest of the people on board the ship but so, yes so that was the voyage. Then we went to Aqir we were from Cairo, we were based there for about a week or so and then went through Aqir just started our training there and from there we went to the gunnery school at Ballah, then came back and did our OTU at Aqir and then finishing that we went down to a Heavy Conversion Unit down Abu Suweir onto Liberators after that, we were flying Wellingtons at Aqir but Liberators down to [unclear] and then after that we, came the end of the war in the Far East ‘cause we were due to go out there on our next trip but the atom bomb dropping, we then faced with nothing to do so, we got posted out to Aden then, to a communications unit there where we flew all over the Middle East, all over the Arabian continent what not, did quite a lot of flying there and did a year there and from there we went to 26 ACU army operation, cooperation unit and that was helping the army in Egypt, we were target towing to, for there so we did that for about nine months. And then we came home in 1947, and I got demobbed up in, on the coast, up north. And came back to my job in London after that.
CB: Ok, so when you returned to your job in London, what did you actually do?
RW: Oh, we were inspecting, we used to make rolls of cloth, and when we, they came back to London we used to inspect them all to make sure that the quality was good and what not, and then
CB: Then what?
RW: And then the firm split up, I went with one director and went with another and I eventually became the director of the firm on, you know, in London.
CB: So what were you supplying? You -
RW: We were supplying the wholesale trade, dress making trade, the fashion trade in other words.
CB: And so becoming a director, what were your responsibilities when you were the director?
RW: Well, re the stock and travelling as well, I used to go and see customers and we used to do the buying and what not you know for each year, ‘cause you are working six months in advance all the time, picking the next seasons, materials, fabrics and all the rest of it, you know, so.
CB: Sounds good.
RW: Quite a good job. Very interesting.
CB: When did that come to an end?
RW: About 1973 or 4 I think, something like that.
CB: Ok, so you were only fifty then, so what did you do next?
RW: Yes. We went into antiques then, you know. My wife had a hat shop and when she left that, we started doing antiques.
CB: Ok. And you did that till when?
RW: We were still doing antiques I mean we came here so till about, I suppose, twenty five years ago, something like that, you know.
CB: Then what?
RW: So we retired then [laughs]. We’d had enough [laughs].
CB: Ok. And did your wife keep busy after that?
RW: Yes, she, she enjoyed her hat shop and she was an extremely good French polisher, which very handy in antiques trade.
CB: For antiques.
RW: And she was very clever, extremely good needle woman, ‘cause her grandmother had been a court dressmaker, you know, so.
CB: Ok. Thank you very much, so now going back to the early days. How did you come to join the RAF rather than the army or the navy?
RW: Well, I’d been in the ACC [sic], my idea was to join, ‘cause my brother was in the RAF as well, he was in Coastal Command.
CB: What did he do?
RW: He was navigator.
CB: Ok. And is he still about, is he?
RW: No, he died unfortunately when he was about fifty odd. He had a heart condition and those days unfortunately there was nothing they could do for them, you know. Today could probably just put a stent on again.
[Other]: It was a different matter.
CB: Quite different.
RW: Unfortunately then he died but he was also very lucky because he was in a crash as well, in a Mosquito went up with a strange pilot because the aircraft had been in for an electrical fault and then this pilot said, would you come up with me because you weren’t allowed to go out without a wireless operator so they went up and after about twenty minutes or so went totally out of control and wouldn’t recognize any of the signals and what not and they just crashed on the runway and while I saw the pictures of it, all you could see was the radio, that was all that was left there and luckily, say luckily, he broke his thigh quite badly. And so reduced him to grade three and so he had to give up flying, you know, after that but the pilot was lucky, he just got nick out of his ear, that was all [unclear].
CB: Right. What happened, what was, did they find out what was wrong with it?
RW: No, as I say, it had been, I think, for an electrical fault so whether it was still there or what not, you know, is hard to know.
CB: We are going back to your situation.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So you’ve been in the Air Training Corps at school.
RW: Yeah.
CB: And you left school at fifteen.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So you stayed with the Air Training Corps throughout that period.
RW: That’s right.
CB: When you were doing what? You were at -
RW: Well, I joined the textiles when I was about sixteen, you know, so I’ve been with them about a couple of years.
CB: That was a company.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So, you volunteered, you were being called up at eighteen.
RW: Yeah, I was in the RAF for, you know, [unclear]
CB: Yeah, ok, so how did that go? So, they called you up or you just said, I am joining, I want to join up?
RW: No, they called me up when I was eight, after eighteen, you know, because as conscription after you were eighteen.
CB: Yeah. Ok, so what happened then? ‘Cause you talked earlier about grading, so at what point did you undertake the grading system for aircrew, because they could have put you on the ground you see?
RW: Oh, when I went to Cardington.
CB: Right.
RW: That was it, I just got the notice to stay and we were there two days, most of the first day was medicals and what not and then the second day was all the various testing and then we had a board interview with the wing commander I think who went through all our details and said, yes or no, you were suitable.
CB: And what sort of testing did they do to decide whether first of all you’d be aircrew rather than ground crew and secondly which type of aircrew?
RW: They’d give you some educational test and for wireless operators they’d just give the difference between different sounds, you know, to pick it out as to say whether you could tell the difference [unclear]
CB: Yeah, sure.
RW: But that was the basics of it.
CB: Right, because they had the PNB system, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer
RW: That’s right, yes, and I think they had different things for each of them, you know
CB: Yeah. And had you volunteered to be a wireless operator air gunner?
RW: Yeah, because they said, why do you want to be a wireless operator? I said, well, I’ve been in the ATC, I enjoyed [unclear] I want to be a wireless operator, you know [laughs].
CB: Ok, good. So then you went on to do gunnery.
RW: Yeah.
CB: And how did that go? So,
RW: It was quite good, the training was quite good but it was fairly short course ‘cause they knew we were going onto Liberators and because different guns, instead of the 303s you’re on the point five, so there wasn’t a lot of training for that because they knew you’d be going over to the other ones afterwards.
CB: But how did they train people to be an air gunner? What was the first thing they did, because you hadn’t been in the air before so what was the process that you went through?
RW: Well, just mainly the basics of the 303 machine gun, you know, to learn all the bits and pieces of it, that took the most of the time.
CB: And when you start, when did you start shooting with an aerial?
RW: Well, we only did a little bit of shooting there.
CB: Was that, clay pigeon or initially, or how did they do it?
RW: Yeah, we did clay pigeon shooting and what not at Yatesbury as well as Ross rifles, what not, we did all that sort of thing.
CB: What rifles?
RW: Ross rifles, Canadian rifles they were.
CB: Oh, right, that was shooting at targets.
RW: Yeah, that’s right.
CB: Ok. So they didn’t put you in any turret at that stage.
RW: No, not at that stage, no.
CB: Ok. Good. So the point you were making earlier about the Liberator is that it is an American aircraft so it’s got different guns and they are .5 machine guns
RW: That’s right.
CB: And a completely different setup.
RW: Yeah.
CB: But when you got to the end of the course they recoursed you because you and Billy Wilson didn’t get through, what caused you to fail?
RW: It was a radio test, what you did, you tuned up the transmitter to get the maximum aerial, and you had, you were supposed to retest it, to make sure that you were on the right one and not on the reverse signal there and it was one of the few tests that if you failed that was it, you had to, the other things you could fail but it didn’t matter quite so much.
CB: Ok.
RW: But this particular one we both failed on the same thing so all we did was just retrain for a week and retake it all again, you know.
CB: Ok. The reason why we’re asking the questions is of course people have absolutely no concept of what is involved in the individual trade specialities.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So when you came to do radio training how did that work? They started you said earlier with the Morse code.
RW: Yeah.
CB: But then you got on to using radio, so could you describe please what was the process of training to be a wireless operator?
RW: Well, you had to learn all the innards of the various sets, all the various valves and what they did and they went through all the theories of what radios waves were and how they worked, all of the rest of it, you know, it was, quite involved learning all of that you know, something new completely to me at the time and of course in those days with the big old valves and what not not like the modern things now, and it was quite a complicated business fault finding ‘cause they used to do testing, putting faults in the system and find out where they were, all that sort of thing, and it was quite complicated you know to do it all but -
CB: So there was a lot of theory?
RW: Yeah, a lot of theory.
CB: And then there was practical, so how did that work?
RW: Practical. Very good in actual fact I enjoyed you know Morse code for my sins the instructor used to let me take the class when he was getting tired, usually [unclear], used to start a bit of a riot with all the class, they said, don’t you go too fast now! [laughs] Oh no, so, I used to take the class occasionally [unclear] but I enjoyed Morse code.
CB: So, Morse code you needed to know because of the signals coming in.
RW: Yes, that’s right.
CB: And going out but what was actually the job of the air signaller, the radio operator?
RW: Well, on half hour used to get the messages from coming in, I mean it might say return to base or weather bad or whatever, the rest of the time you could use the radio compass to find out the way back to base and stuff like that you know and you could find your position by contacting two different stations and asking them to verify what your position was [unclear]
CB: So in practical terms you were helping the navigator, were you, in position and indication?
RW: Yes, in an actual fact, you could pass it over to him, say what it was [unclear]
CB: And did the navigator ask you to do that?
RW: Not that, not that I remember.
CB: Later on.
RW: But I used to pass it on to him anyway, you know, see whether there was any commonality [laughs]
CB: So you were teacher’s pet in this business of the training for being a wireless operator?
RW: I don’t know about that! [laughs]
CB: But -
RW: No, he was, mainly, he was on an American, he worked for Wells Fargo, he was absolutely fabulous operator, quite incredible.
CB: And he had operational experience, had he?
RW: Yeah, I think he could do about forty words a minute actually on there which was absolutely incredible and he could send messages and receive them at the same time, you know.
CB: But had he got aircrew experience?
RW: No.
CB: Oh, he hadn’t. Oh, ok. So what about the other people who were on the course, so they were barracking you not to go too fast, so what were the people and what were they like? What sort of people?
RW: Oh, they were great bunch of fellows, as in actual fact you know, wonderful sense of humour, all pulling the leg if they had to [laughs] but oh yeah, great bunch of blokes in actual fact.
CB: And presumably they had some kind of aptitude, did they, to do this work because.
RW: Oh yes, they did, in actual fact, you know, we all [unclear] in different ways, they all come from different backgrounds, all sorts of things.
CB: Had any of them got radio experience before?
RW: I don’t think so, oh yeah, one chap had, I think he worked for Marconi or something like that but most of the others never had, you know so [unclear]
CB: So you and Billy Wilson were recoursed.
RW: Yeah.
CB: What happened to the other members of the course? I mean, where did they go?
RW: Oh, I think they must have gone straight on over here to OTU gunnery school and probably onto a squadron you know [unclear] left behind, you know.
CB: So you kept in touch did you, with some of the people so -
RW: No, I didn’t, actually, in actual fact, you know [unclear], so I don’t know quite where they all finished up, but I have no doubt they finished up in a squadron somewhere round about.
CB: It’s interesting that you then being recoursed, you went to a different unit.
RW: Yeah.
CB: That meant you had to go in the convoy system.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Out to the Middle East.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Did you go around the Cape, did you?
RW: No, went straight, went straight through Gibraltar, a long way to Port Said [unclear]
CB: Right. Ok. So when you then got to Egypt, what was the routine then because you’d done your basic training including gunnery but you hadn’t done .5 machine guns, so what did you do as soon as you got to Port Said?
RW: I think we went to Cairo, as I say, for about a week or ten days, something like that and then straight to Aqir, to the base I think there, and then from there to Ballah, you know, to the gunnery school after that, they did that first to get that out of the way before the OTU, you know.
CB: So how was the training, how did they do the training in those two places, at Aqir and Ballah?
RW: It was mostly paper work, you know for the biggest part of the time, you know, in actual fact, fill in all the different bits and pieces that were there.
CB: And the gunnery, how did they do that?
RW: I’m not sure we did a lot of that because I think what they were thinking, we were going on to Liberators anyway so wasn’t gonna make a lot of difference to do that, you know, so in actual fact I think we curtailed it.
CB: So at what stage did you crew up and where?
RW: Well, what they did when we went to Aqir, they marched us all up into a big hangar, said, ‘right, we are going now, we are locking the doors, we’ll come back in twenty minutes, sort yourself out a crew’ and that was it [laughs], that’s exactly what you did, you all talked to each other and finished up going on to a crew.
CB: So this is crewing up for Wellingtons?
RW: Yeah.
CB: So you don’t have an air engineer, you don’t have a flight engineer.
RW: No.
CB: So, how did you -
RW: We had a second pilot.
CB: Oh did you? Who took the initiative in making the crew up?
RW: Well, you just sort of walked into people and said, ‘well, can I be with you’ [laughs] and they said, ‘oh yes, why not?’ You know, my name is Roy, you know [unclear]
CB: ‘Cause you all got brevet so you knew what your specialities were.
RW: Of course, some of them I knew but others most of them I didn’t know at all you know so because our crew was, there were four South Africans in it, you know, it’s unusual, you know [unclear]
CB: So tell us about who were the people there then, in the, individual, the pilot, who was the captain, the pilot, who was he?
RW: The pilot was a Lieutenant Van Sale.
CB: South African.
RW: And there was Lieutenant Erasmus was the co-pilot and there was a front gunner and a rear gunner, they were both South Africans.
CB: Right. The navigator?
RW: Two Scots, and then one Englishman, [laughs] that made up -
CB: So, did you class yourself as a Scotsman or an Englishman in that?
RW: Well, as a Scotsman, you know.
CBN: Right, ok. So, how did the others go then? Who was the navigator?
RW: Navigator was the Englishman. Yeah, he was an officer as well [unclear]
CB: And what was his experience?
RW: I don’t know really, in actual fact where he’d come from, in fact. I think like everybody else he just arrived at Aqir you know, [laughs] sorry I don’t know where from in actual fact but -
CB: The reason -
RW: We were all a great bunch anyway.
CB: Yes. And so you crewed up and you did your, you did then gunnery training when you were in the Wellington, did you?
RW: No, I did radio, just radio, that’s all.
CB: Ok, right. So you didn’t do gunnery normally, it was just a secondary -
RW: No, no, I was just filling in.
CB: Right. Ok. And then how long were you there at the OTU?
RW: A sheet somewhere.
CB: Because it took a little while to do all the training on the Wellington presumably.
RW: Yes, it did, in actual fact.
CB: Just looking at the form.
RW: We finished in June ’45 at Aqir OTU and then we went to Abu Suweyr and finished up in September ’45 there, just one day after they dropped the atom bomb, you know, so.
CB: Yeah, but by then you went to Abu Suweyr because of the Liberator?
RW: Yeah.
CB: So, that took more crew, so how did that work?
RW: Yeah, we made up, because, I don’t think I said but [unclear] the aircraft, as far as we know, a bomb exploded on board, I think it got caught up in the release mechanism and they were all killed.
CB: On the ground or in the air?
RW: In the air, you know and about three days later our pilot was told to switch over tanks, he switched over to an empty one, cut both the engines and -
CB: This is in the Wellington?
RW: In the Wellington, that’s right.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And so we finished up in a field on that, how he managed to control it I don’t know but -
CB: This was without an instructor?
RW: We had an instructor with us, thank God.
CB: Oh you did?
RW: So, yeah, so we finished up in the field and the laugh was I didn’t know anything about it because I’ve been on my radio ‘cause I cut myself off from the rest and the first thing I knew was my going straight into the radio thing front there and I was livid because I thought, what kind of a landing is that? [laughs] but it was a fantastic piece of work, in actual fact, how he did it, and I mean, we were just lucky to be over some fields, if we’d been over a built up area we, you know, there’d be no way out, but just lucky that was a field there.
CB: What did they do with the pilot?
RW: I think, he left us after that, yes, that’s right, got a new pilot as a matter of fact, so.
CB: As a captain.
RW: Yeah, captain.
CB: Another South African.
RW: Another South African, yeah, that’s right, slightly older so, so we got a different instructor, we had a squadron leader, the chief instructor then so.
CB: Interesting, so how did the crew gel together?
RW: Oh, very well really, considering they come from all different backgrounds, you know.
CB: Did they South Africans, because of their names, it sound as if they were Afrikaans? Did they?
RW: Yeah, they spoke to each other in Afrikaans because it was better for them, I mean they speak English very well but they tended to speak to each other in Afrikaans some of the time.
CB: But you didn’t mind.
RW: No.
CB: But you knew a bit of it after a bit.
RW: Not really [laughs], I had enough trouble trying to learn Arabic! [laughs]
CB: Did they give you courses in Arabic?
RW: No, just picked it up, you know, from bits and pieces during the day.
CB: Right, right. So you finish on the OTU,
RW: Yeah.
CB: You go to the HCU,
RW: Yeah.
CB: To go to change to heavies and you’re going onto Liberators.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So what was the process there?
RW: Going on to Liberators, just getting used to, ‘cause they were quite complicated the American sets, they were very good, the Bendicks was a marvellous transmitter, they used to ask us not to transmit over the station because it used to drown all [laughs] communications in actual fact but it was very good, in actual fact.
CB: So now, you were just allocated other aircrew because for instance there was no engineer on the -
RW: Yes, I think one of them was off, Billy my friend’s crew that got killed ‘cause unfortunately they had to drop one out when the instructor was with them so there was one crew member left, one poor gunner left on his own so we took him on as one of our spare ones, on there.
CB: How many crew were there on a Liberator?
RW: Eight on there.
CB: Ok. Where did the engineer come from? Was he a South African as well?
RW: Well, he was second pilot, you know, Lieutenant Erasmus [unclear]
CB: Ah right. Ok. Good. Now some of the difficult things in the circumstances were obvious in Britain but in some cases they were also abroad. One of them is LMF, lacking moral fibre.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So, did you come across that at all?
RW: No, there was a slight bit of it because when we had our crash, the rear gunner got stuck in his and couldn’t get the turret to move, you know, I think he was scared [laughs] it was gonna go up, you know, without him, so there was some talk at the time that he was going to give it up but in actual fact he didn’t, he went back again but I think there were odd cases of people who did give up.
CB: And what did they do with them?
RW: I don’t know what they did, I presume they put them down in the ground staff job, but I don’t really know.
CB: ‘Cause in Britain they had a very firm way of dealing with them.
RW: Yeah, they didn’t like it you know ‘cause obviously it wasn’t good for morale.
CB: No.
RW: No.
CB: The other is the STDs, the sexually transmitted diseases. So how did that get dealt with?
RW: I remember that they had somewhat horrific films they showed you at St John’s Wood when we first went there [laughs] but I think that was their method of dealing with it mainly you know, in actual fact, but it was really all the confrontation we had with it, you know.
CB: Ok. Good, I’m gonna stop there for a mo. We are restarting now just to talk about some extra items.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So what about accommodation?
RW: Accommodation was quite good, you had your own space and locker where you keep all your own private bits and pieces, you know, photographs and letters from home all the rest of it you know and the food generally was very good, you know, we enjoyed it and what not, nothing really to complain about, it was really, really quite good.
CB: Did you get better food because you were aircrew?
RW: Yes, I think so.
CB: Even in training?
RW: Yeah, I think so, yes, on there. ‘Cause at a sergeant’s mess you know and what not there, so used on your own, quite decent but we reckoned it was better than the officer’s mess [laughs] so we didn’t know.
CB: So you had lockable lockers but were you in Nissen huts or what sort of accommodation did you have?
RW: Yes, sort of Nissen huts, you know, there, and yes in Aqir.
CB: So, were they insulated?
RW: Not really, because it was very hot, you know, all the rest of it, the climate was quite hot out there so, don’t really [unclear] much from there,
CB: No.
RW: But they were quite comfortable, I must say.
CB: Right. And in the UK, what about the accommodation there?
RW: No, fairly basic there, I remember polishing the floor [laughs] so corporal used to come and dump a great load of polish on the floor and say, ‘polish that’ and it took about an hour to get it [laughs]
CB: With a bumper and a liner.
RW: That’s right, a bumper up and down and one sitting on it and going up and down but yes [unclear]
CB: Now you started as an AC2.
RW: Yeah.
CB: How did the promotion system work?
RW: Well, when you finished your course at Yatesbury, you got your promotion to sergeant, used to be quite funny actually because what we used to do is borrow somebody else’s uniform for the parade that day and get the WAAFs to sew all our stuff on there so the minute we came out for our parade we could put our new jackets on with all the rest of us so we were all in borrowed, borrowed gear [laughs] when we went on parade then.
CB: And your brevet was what?
RW: Pardon?
CB: What was the brevet?
RW: The brevet, that originally it was air gunner and then it went to signaller later on they changed after about a year to signaller.
CB: And so you are now a sergeant, how long were you a sergeant?
RW: Till, till I was down in Aden when we took a board from there, got flight sergeant.
CB: And how did the pay change?
RW: It was more, I can’t remember what it was [laughs] wasn’t a fortune but it was better than it was before, you know.
CB: You knew where you were going to go when you left the RAF. Were you waiting to get out waiting for demob or did you just say, I want to be demobbed now? [emphasis]
RW: No, we just got sent home, that was all afterwards, no sort of forecast or anything, we just, we were 26 AACU, they just said, right, you are posted home you know and that was it, little or no warning [unclear]
CB: And where did they send you?
RW: To Lytham St Annes.
CB: And what was the process there?
RW: Just got all your civvies which we hadn’t seen for donkey’s years [laughs], you know and all the bits and pieces, got your vouchers and your travel warrants and all those [unclear] and I was due about six or seven weeks leave I think something like that, you know, so I didn’t take it up [unclear] but yes that was the end of that you know.
CB: So, the war’s ended, you’ve been demobbed two years later.
RW: Yeah.
CB: You then go into civilian life, having been in the ATC and joined as a volunteer reserve person, what was your commitment for future years?
RW: Well, I quite liked the job that I went to, you know, so I decided I’ve been toying with the idea I might stop in the RAF but I decided, no, I’d sooner go back to the textiles so, in a way I’m glad you know that I did, because I enjoyed textiles so it’s very good you know.
CB: But you were required, as a VR man, you were required to remain in the VR,
RW: Yes.
CB: That’s what I meant. Till what age?
RW: I got my release, release thing, I think all the dates and what not are back there, how many years I’m on reserve ‘cause they said [unclear], you might be eligible for call up in an emergency and what not.
CB: And did you join any air force associations afterwards?
RW: I was in the RAFA for a while not long after, played cricket for them, while, I enjoyed that in actual fact [laughs]
CB: Did you do much cricket when you were in the RAF?
RW: When we were down at Aden I played cricket down there you know, we’d to play the officer’s mess, we used to like beating them [laughs]
CB: Good, Ok, thank you very much, I’m going to stop there for a mo. Right, you mentioned earlier about the aircraft that was downed because of a hang-up.
RW: Yeah.
CB: And the bomb, were you in formation with that or was it a separate and what happened?
RW: No, we weren’t flying that day, we were between lectures and I just came back at lunchtime and as I say next door were just empty bedsprings, nothing on the locker nothing I said you know, where’s Billy’s stuff, and he said, haven’t you heard? No, and he said, oh, you know he’s gone and got killed, you know, I was shattered you know.
CB: This is your friend Billy Wilson.
RW: Yeah, that’s right, so as I say, we never got an official report, you never did with these things, but that was what we heard, and it sort of ties up with the fact that nobody got out, it was an experienced pilot on board, an instructor, you know, there were no survivors, nobody parachuted out or what not there so must have been something disastrous that happened you know, so that was it.
CB: So how did you all feel as a crew after that?
RW: Oh, a bit shattered, especially when we had our own one a couple of days after [laughs], wasn’t a very good week in actual fact.
CB: So when you had your own engine failure because of fuel starvation, that was, what height was that?
RW: I’m not really sure but all I can think was that the pilot had to keep the nose down because they daren’t let the nose go up, go out of control so if we were flying, say six thousand feet, take what, two, three minutes with the nose down, something like that so he had to find somewhere in about two or three minutes.
CB: And he wasn’t able to switch, he wasn’t able to switch the fuel correctly and restart.
RW: No, there wasn’t time because I mean he had more than his job, ‘cause it was a heavy aircraft the Wellington but to keep control of it with no engines it must have been a heck of a job, you know, to do that, just to try and keep it level and what not there and at the same time try and find somewhere you could put it down, you know, so.
CB: What did he say to the crew on the intercom?
RW: I don’t really know ‘cause I wasn’t on it, you see, I didn’t know anything about it, you know.
CB: You were listening out, were you, on the radio?
RW: I was listening out, ‘cause it was more than your life’s worth, to miss the messages on the half hour, then, you know, if you came back and your logbook had got no messages, so, what goes on, you know,
CB: So that’s an important point as you’re, now you’re flying, your role is to listen out to signals.
RW: Yeah.
CB: What did you actually have to do? You were listening to signals but how did that work?
RW: Well, as I say, it might be just trial messages that you think on there but as I say occasionally would be something like return to base, weather bad or something else like that which you of course you would then pass on them back to them on there so that was why they absolutely insisted that you got the half hour messages, you know, didn’t miss them.
CB: Because they would send particular messages on the half hour.
RW: Yes, they did on Bomber Command I think, if they had anything there had a registered time to send the messages and you had to make sure you got them.
CB: So we are talking about this crash, how, who else was hurt in the crash?
RW: The front gunner broke his ankle but that was the worst of the injuries, which is absolutely incredible really.
CB: And was the bomb aimer also a gunner?
RW: No. No.
CB: He simply was the air bomber.
RW: Yeah, yeah.
CB: Ok. So, thinking of your flying experiences in total, what would you say were the best times and what were the worst?
RW: I think, flying in the communications unit down at Aden was the best time in actual fact ‘cause it was so varied, you know, all sorts of things, we actually took an air vice marshal round on a tour of the thing, the CO called us up one day and he got a letter in front of him and said, ‘I’ve just had a note from the Air Ministry to say that they are sending Air Vice Marshal Sir Charles’ - I can’t remember what his surname was – ‘on a tour of inspection and we’ve been given the job of taking him round, so I don’t want anything to go wrong understood?’ [laughs] So he says [unclear] so we’ve, I’ve never seen so much top brass in my life ‘cause they all appeared, the Governor’s car turned up, his Rolls Royce and they were all involved.
CB: This is in the Liberator?
RW: No, so, no, it was a Wellington converted on [unclear] so, yes so, and a very nice lady officer with him as well there, which cheered everybody up but yes so we took him round, we actually had dinner together the evening which surprised me [unclear]
CB: He was a flying man, I take it?
RW: Yes, I think he was one of the top handful of people in the end, the chief of technical training command I think he was something like that you know, so.
CB: What was the worst experience you had?
RW: Let me think now, I should think probably the day Billy’s crash I think it was probably about the worst day of it all really, rest of it, you know, was bad, that was the sort of low point from the time but get over it, you know.
CB: Had you known his parents, before you went out?
RW: No, unfortunately not, no, and the worst thing was I wanted to go on his funeral parade but we were all on sick leave you know, they wouldn’t let us go on parade you know so I didn’t get the chance to, well you know, say goodbye.
CB: You were on sick leave. What sort of sickness did you get?
RW: Ah, well, I had a sore head [laughs] for about a week afterwards but you know apart from that it wasn’t bad you know.
CB: Yeah. From the crash. Yeah.
RW: Yeah, but they obviously decided, you know, to give us some days off.
CB: Yeah. Right. We’ve had a good interview now so we are looking at pictures and various things and we’ll wrap things up.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AMcPhersonWhiteR150901
Title
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Interview with Roy White
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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:53:22 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-01
Description
An account of the resource
Roy White was born in Perth, Scotland but grew up in London. He joined the Air Training Corps, went on as a volunteer reserve and then served as an air gunner in the RAF. Tells of his brother serving in Coastal Command and surviving an aircraft crash. Gives some insight in aircrew roles such as radio operator and air gunner. Mentions various episodes of his service life: training in England and Egypt; an aircraft crash in which a friend got killed; flying with a South African crew; being assigned to submarine watching and manning the guns on his journey to Egypt; towards the end of the war, being posted to the communications unit at Aden. He served as a wireless operator in Egypt post war.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Egypt
Great Britain
Middle East
Egypt--Ismailia (Province)
Egypt--Alexandria
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
aircrew
B-24
crash
crewing up
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
RAF Aqir
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/693/9240/PBarnettWE1701.1.jpg
7c713abda4f42e7135e9e634f0cfee24
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/693/9240/ABarnettWE170328.1.mp3
d760a82e33d828a0e77867096443f1cb
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
Barnett, William Edwin
W E Barnett
Description
An account of the resource
an oral history interview with William Barnett (b. 1924). He grew up close to RAF Westcott and was nearly killed when a Lancaster crashed. He served in the Royal Navy 1946 - 1952.
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
2017-03-28
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Barnett, WE
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 28th of March 2017 and we are in Woodham, near Aylesbury and I’m talking with William Edwin Barnett about his days in the war as a resident on the edge of the airfield at Westcott. So, Eddie, what are your earliest recollections of life?
WEB: Well, earliest recollections really is going to school at Westcott School and I went to, you know, walked to, down to the village and get educated there. And from there we were then transferred to Waddesdon and that’s where I finished my education, in Waddesdon. So that’s as far as that goes.
CB: And what did your father do?
WEB: My father was a signalman on the railway and he, all during the war, he was at Ashendon Junction signal box
CB: Right. So, which railway was that?
WEB: That was like, that’s, I don’t know the railway, that’s the Oxford, is that the Oxford one? It goes, anyway, it goes below Ashendon Hills
CB: Yes
WEB: And on its way to Oxford and [unclear] perhaps I used to come from there through to here, Woodham and
CB: Yeah
WEB: And on to, on to
CB: Went on to the mainline
WEB: Mainline and onto Quainton
CB: Yes
WEB: Joined up with that one
CB: Yes
WEB: That’s as far as I know
CB: Which was the London to Wragby line
WEB: Yeah
CB: Yeah. Ok. And at what age did you leave school, Eddie?
WEB: I left school at the age of fourteen
CB: Ok.
WEB: And I, my first job was William Fenimore’s farm, which is this one down here, down, where Mr. Adams lives now, that’s where I first had my working experience and we used to get up and do, had to get down to the farm around about six o’clock in the morning to do the milking and finish it around [unclear] and come home for breakfast then and then continue the rest of the day onto the farm.
CB: And what did you do on the farm the rest of the day?
WEB: Just general farm work, cleaning out the stables and cow [unclear] and things like that and do the milking and all that sort of thing
CB: So, was this an animal farm effectively or was it arable as well?
WEB: It was until the war years, when the war started it became any arable, the ploughing and things like that, that was the first time that I ploughed and done things like that
CB: So, what animals were there, apart from the cows?
WEB: The cow. Oh, all animals like, they didn’t have horse, they had one horse, I think, one horse, and that used to take the milk from the farm up to the [unclear] on it and the rest of the day it was in the stable and [unclear] things just, you done the normal things with haymaking and all that sort of thing and the hay was all stacked in ricks and these were cut and delivered to the [unclear] as they needed it. I think that covers that sort
CB: So, in the wintertime, there was enough hay, was there, to feed the cattle?
WEB: Yes, yes, that was enough, all stacked in what they called ricks, ricks we used to call them
CB: Could you describe a rick? What’s that like?
WEB: Well, it’s built from the ground upwards and it’s round about, what, [unclear] about the size, half the size of this building long and about the same width and you take it up, build it up and then you come, when you get to round about ten, fifteen feet from the ground, something like that, you [unclear] it in which to make the roof and then you thatch it to keep the rain out
CB: So, the thatching is done with
WEB: Straw
CB: Straw. Ok. Where did the straw come from?
WEB: Straw was with the, in the fields like, where you thrashed out the corn
CB: Yes
WEB: What you call it, you thrash the corn out and then the straw was what was left
CB: Yes. So, they grew corn effectively to create straw, did they, for thatching
Web: Well, it would, it got that and then of course corn was used cause poultry and that, they had in [unclear] farm in what they called them I forget now, it was a thing that you could move and the chickens were in there
CB: Yes
WEB: The chicken, with a run and it was moved gradually about the field the chickens to get fresh grain to be on. This was, and that was all done usually nothing to do with the men farmer, just usually done by the daughter, something like that which in down here was Carrie Fenimore, that was the daughter’s name and she looked after the chickens
CB: Did they have sheep as well?
WEB: They had sheep, a few sheep
CB: Any goats?
WEB: Not goats, never had goats
CB: Right. And what numbers of cattle were involved in this? Roughly
WEB: The actual, I think it was around about up to twenty-five in, for milking purposes and that sort of thing
CB: Right
WEB: And then they did, did they have beef cattle as well?
WEB: Pardon?
CB: Did they have beef cattle?
WEB: Yes
CB: Raised for meat?
WEB: Yes, well, yes, they, that in a was a sort of a separate place because they used to have some fields that were down here but over the railway, over the top of the railway were a few more fields and those cows used to run wild there and were just, you went up with a horse and a cow straw and hay and that and you used to feed them during the winter
CB: Right
WEB: With that and they used to fatten up there and then, when they were ready they send them off to market
CB: Did the farm have a tractor?
WEB: Well, he, well
CB: At that time when you joined?
WEB: Had a tractor of a, yes, they did have a tractor, yeah, but it was a big, powerful one and it was a steam driven one they had, like, it was more like a steam engine then with which they towed anything they wanted to tow
CB: So, could that go on the road?
WEB: That did go on the road, that steam engine
CB: So, would you call that a traction engine?
WEB: Traction engine? Yes
CB: Right
WEB: And that was, that was used to take [unclear] job to describe the farms because they had another load of field round on the [unclear] road
CB: Right
WEB: And things like that and all these [unclear] just wend round and some of the sons and daughters used to look after that
CB: Right. So, how many people were running the farm?
WEB: Well, the actual who, the head of the farm was Will, William Fenimore and then there was Algernon Fenimore, he used to run and what was the other one? Algernon and I forget the other man’s name but he was married to a schoolteacher, now I can’t think of his name now but
CB: So you were supporting the family effectively. Were there other farm workers in addition to you?
WEB: Oh, there was, yes, there was
CB: How many?
WEB: Other people, was Leslie Jones and he was a real farm worker, well, he used to do that plus he used to look after me
CB: He looked after the animals
WEB: He looked after the hedging, and hedge cut
CB: Oh yes
WEB: Anything like that, he’d step in and do that sort of thing
CB: Was there a lot of hedging, hedge cutting in those days?
WEB: Only when it was necessary and he’d done, it wasn’t done on a regular basis in this day that was done very occasionally
CB: So, you were born in 1924 and you joined at fourteen, so that’s 1938, what do you remember of the next year, when the war started, in September 1939?
WEB: What do I remember? Not very much mainly actually [unclear] it was, the thing was there and that had to be dealt with I presume but it did make differences to us because we, for instance we had to join the home guard that was, if you couldn’t join, if, what I mean to say is if you was in a reserved occupation, let’s put it that way, you were not called up to do military service
CB: Right
WEB: As it goes but you were conscripted into the home guard and you’d done military training [unclear] and one odd day in the week and at no time, no time when you was later on you were let, we had to patrol the A41 of [unclear] and [unclear] you have done that for, would say, from midnight till four, and then from four till you went, four, that was, four would be the last watch, and you then, from then on you went to work so what you done, what you’re trying to do is to get you the end and the beginning of the day, merge into one so you could do the job, then go home and have your breakfast and then carry on working for the rest of the day. Does that make any sense to you?
CB: It does, yes. So, you were on four till eight, were you, and then had your breakfast
WEB: Yeah
CB: Ok. And what was the watch before that, before the one at twelve, was it eight till twelve? Were they four-hour watches?
WEB: These four-hour watches, they, you were drawn from, they started by midnight, more or less,
CB: Yeah, right
WEB: We used to think but that probably, started a little bit earlier than that but you’d done so long and then you got relieved and you left
CB: Yeah. So, at what stage did the farm operation change because of the war and why was it changed? How was it changed?
WEB: Well
CB: Because they started doing arable crops, didn’t they?
WEB: Well, this is all before the war, before the war [unclear], it was more or less just have a few cows, let them run around in the fields and do things like that, there weren’t much given to ploughing or anything that I can remember before the war
CB: No
WEB: Not, on a
CB: On a
WEB: On this basis
CB: Yeah
WEB: It weren’t really come necessary to do, what is it, to substitute the corn and that we were getting from the [unclear] and that sort of thing were coming in before the war for breadmaking and all that, it wasn’t until after when the war started and we had to make deal with bread and make bread out of the wheat and we started making bread of our own
CB: Did you?
WEB: We’d have our own wheat is what I mean [unclear] it was all done by imported corn wheat stuff
CB: Yeah
WEB: Does that make sense?
CB: Yeah, absolutely. So, then, Westcott became an RAF airfield, so when did that happen, when did they start building that and what was the reaction?
WEB: Dates, I can’t remember those dates and what was it, who was when? [unclear] to say
CB: Well, we can look up the actual date but what do you remember about it happening because your house
WEB: Yes, yes, as a matter of fact while, before that happened, I was happily working on the farm down here and then I got talking to some lads who was on the, doing the ministry job as I call it and I know he said, well, if they are getting that much money, I think it’s time I went in and had some [unclear], so I left the farm and went into the [unclear] and started doing this job and at that time I was, I was taken a surveyor [unclear] on a dumper to [unclear] we went up and came up to the bridge and what was the boss from the farm spotted me and that’s where my problems started then because he immediately went back and phoned the employment agency [unclear] I was immediately told to go and see them to get myself back on the farm, I was more important to them on the farm than the [unclear] so I was virtually took back to the farm and made to work on that farm until the wartime was over. I couldn’t please myself where I went [unclear] I had to be there. Do you understand this?
CB: Absolutely. So, there you were, in a house, a row of three, is it, next to the airfield, so did that map out as they were building it?
WEB: Well, it was, no, it didn’t affect us to in a lot of ways, you know, I mean, the only thing that we sort of did fall into was it all these, making these rain rings and putting them on where the aircraft standings were which what they called the one [unclear] behind the hazes, where I lived, was given a number of sea flight, that was its number and that’s where a lot of the fellows worked and that’s where a lot of the fellows used to nip out and go absent to drink without anybody else knowing [laughs] [unclear]. Mother used to be [unclear] nipping and give them plates of food and things like that they didn’t want give mother on a plate said, yes, you can use that more than we can, which take me now to, down on this road as we go down to Mote farm
CB: Right
WEB: Just as you go down [unclear], there they got as machine gun post, a machine gun nest then for Canadians, the Canadians were stationed in the old drive, driveway down at Lodge Garage they went that, they were stationed there, the Canadians were and they had a machine gun nest, machine gun [unclear] the bloke and what was it, and he came and he made friends with us, with myself and my brother, used to go down to [unclear] and for a pint or two of milk the farmer didn’t know about, he, they used to give us a bit of corned beef [laughs], which I, which people don’t know about, they shouldn’t have known about it then so we used to get a bit of corned beef for giving a pint of Mr. Fenimore’s milk and all went on during the war that sort of thing
CB: Nobody ever knew
WEB: No, well, I supposed they guessed I mean, Mr. Fenimore, what was it, he got these as I said, as I said the daughter of the farm, Carrie Fenimore, she used to be in charge of the chicken in these, I forget what they used to call them things, you could [unclear] them with the [unclear] and [unclear] with the [unclear], I forget the
CB: And they were called arcs, were they?
WEB: Well, [unclear] that anyway, and they shipped them about the farms and she looked after that and all the, what was it, and after, when you’d done all the those, all the milk was in churns which stood about that height from the ground were filled up and we, they had to be taken from the farm and up to the road here and stood on the road where Nestle’s milk lorries would pick them up and Carrie used to [unclear] the door, she drove the van up and I’d have to go up with her to lump the cans of milk away to where they go and that was where we got the milk to Aylesbury.
CB: These churns were about four feet high but how much milk did they carry each?
WEB: [unclear] I can’t [unclear] at the moment
CB: Probably about forty pints
WEB: I mean they [laughs] I stood about that, about that high so what was in there I wouldn’t know
CB: No
WEB: But there was but we used to send about five churns of milk per day to Aylesbury, to the Aylesbury Nestle’s, Nestle’s milk Aylesbury, [unclear] that
CB: What was the lorry? Was it a steam lorry or was it a
WEB: It was a petrol
CB: Petrol
WEB: Petrol driven lorry, lorry with a flat back where the bloke used to keep the pints of milk and get it go in to set on top of the
CB: The technique was to kick it and bounce it
WEB: Well, it was, yes, it got two little handles at the top
CB: Yeah
WEB: But he [unclear], his foot [unclear] side of the lorry, just slide it on
CB: So you
WEB: The lorry was not very high
CB: No. You brought it but he loaded it, did he?
WEB: He’d done all the, if he, if there was no, we used to leave it, if, you take it up to the road and you pick up the old churn and they used to drop the spare churns as I went down but if they were there when you were, you took the spare churn and left the milk, the milk there for him to pick up, you didn’t have to be there to see him take it
CB: But it was on a deck by the gate, was it?
WEB: That was on a
CB: Platform
WEB: Well, some [unclear] had platforms but we just set them straight onto the road
CB: Was it concrete?
WEB: To the farm you had road on, you know
CB: Ok. And how did you sterilise the empty ones when they returned them?
WEB: Well, when they returned them, they were already done
CB: Ready to fill
WEB: Straight in, straight into the caveyard and filled them up again
CB: Yeah. Right
WEB: But to, it was [unclear] in the farm there was a place where you put your milk, I forget what they called it now so, you put your milk into the top and it went through to cool it off, they cooled the milk off before it went into the can, into the churns
CB: Right
WEB: The churns that’s what
CB: Yeah
WEB: Thinking about
CB: Good
WEB: But that, that was heavy work that you had to do
CB: You were the only person who did that, were you?
WEB: You had to do it cause Carrie, the daughter couldn’t let them and so she just drove the little lost van it was at that time but they got, just [unclear] Carrie used to drive it
CB: I think we’ll take a break for a mo, thank you.
WEB: Lived on, lived where I am.
CB: Right, so, let’s just look at the farm. The Fenimores didn’t own this farm, did they?
WEB: No
CB: Who do you think owned it?
WEB: No, they rent it
CB: Right, from whom?
WEB: From the [unclear] estates
CB: Right
WEB: As far as I could think,
CB: Right. And the house you were in, who owned that?
WEB: That was, oh, some,
CB: It wasn’t owned by the farmer?
WEB: No
CB: It was owned by the Crown
WEB: Crown properties
CB: Yeah
WEB: Crown properties owned that
CB: Because it was the edge of the road
WEB: Like there sort of thing
CB: Right
WEB: That was [unclear]
CB: That, yeah. And you were one of a big family, so how big was the family?
WEB: There was eleven in our family
CB: Right. Mixture of boys and girls?
WEB: Yeah, I think it was six and five, I
CB: Yeah, ok
WEB: That was [unclear], that was five boys and six girls, yeah
CB: Yeah
WEB: And at the moment, there’s just three boys
CB: Yeah
WEB: Left
CB: Left
WEB: That’s the sad outcome
CB: So, going back to when the airfield was starting to be built, in about 1940, ’41, that was right next to your house, what could you see going on from the house? Because
WEB: Well
CB: It was land which it was a mixture of fields, wasn’t it? What did they do about that?
WEB: The field and different thing
CB: Woods?
WEB: [unclear] say that the first thing that you saw, thing was the great big caterpillar tractors around pulling down, pulling up hedges and things like that to make way for all this airfield now and as I say, I left and went over to, thought I get a few paid more than I was getting on the farm and that was Derby, this is the name of the firm if you want
CB: Yeah
WEB: It was the one I worked for was Derby Everdale and Greenwood who were subcontracting to, I can’t think now, the overall government was, what was it
CB: A big construction company
WEB: Big
CB: Like McAlpine
WEB: Well, was something like that, there, can’t think of it now but that was more or less done there and as I say, I thought I’d have some of the while I went, while they sent me back they said, Mr. Barnett, not Mr. Barnett, they called me, what was it? Get back to work, you, work, they said, you are more important where you are than where, [unclear] told me, he said, you’ll stay there until the end of the war, that’s your job, and that was all they told me, that, and during that time, the whole home guard and all that you were expected to join that but at night-time you’d have to do a stand on, from, on the road
CB: Yeah
WEB: On the A41
CB: Yeah
WEB: To ensure that there was no funny business by, you know, some people wanted to damage the, damage the things at Agnem Street station, that was all that keep you on that, because in the Agnum Street station they got that based to run petrol into that, to Wadston to store and you had to make sure that it was doing and then, as I say, you done that and the time it was, you finished that shift it was time to go and milk the cows
CB: What sort of people were they thinking were going to do these things?
WEB: Well, it was German parachuters more than anything, you know, that was what they, that was what they used to tell us, they dropped these people with parachutes and things and we believed them and you had to believe, innit? They say they would drop, I presume they could’ve done, but that we believed it and we used to do this patrolling. Two of us used to do the patrol and then get relieved, the ideal one was to start at four o’clock in the morning and do that and do that and [unclear] until six and then you went and done your farming
CB: Right
WEB: Done your milking, went and done your milking and then you went home and had your breakfast and all that sort of thing
CB: What weapons did you carry?
WEB: We had, I don’t know where, the ones we had were the imported 300
CB: Springfields
WEB: Must have been the Springfields, it was American made
CB: American, yeah
WEB: [unclear] that was the ones we had, we had Springfield and five rounds of ammunition
CB: Right
WEB: And we kept that, there was two of those and [unclear] cause me brother Sam [unclear] he had one as well
CB: Did you take it home or?
WEB: That was, that was kept at home.
CB: Yea
WEB: But you had to take it to your [unclear] on the Sunday and that one we were doing the drills and [unclear] and several on a Sunday and all that sort of thing
CB: Where did you practice your shooting skills?
WEB: Unfortunately, we didn’t get to any shooting practices, that was too, our ammunition was too, what they called? Too
CB: Too [unclear]
WEB: Too spare, too expensive, and too valuable then to expend on things like that, what we used to do was to have a target sort of thing with an air rifle
CB: Ah
WEB: [unclear] and you never practiced with the actual big machine, as I call it,
CB: Yeah
WEB: You had a little air rifle
CB: Yeah. And how good was your shooting?
WEB: Pardon?
CB: How good was your shooting?
WEB: My shooting weren’t too bad, actually. It was about fair, fair
CB: So when you briefly worked on the airfield construction, how much did they pay you?
WEB: Oh, I think it was round about that time, it was round about seven or eight pounds, something like that which normally
CB: A week?
WEB: For that time
CB: A week
WEB: A week
CB: Yeah
WEB: But the farming, that was only up to about seven or eight pounds
CB: Right
WEB: So that was what [unclear], Mr. Fenimore he spotted me on this, what was it and I was back down the next day
CB: Yeah. So, how many people were building the airfield, were there lots of people?
WEB: Oh, I don’t know, quite a lot, what was it? It was Irish, a lot of Irish people
CB: Right
WEB: At the time
CB: Where did they house those?
WEB: In a factory down sort of gypsie bombers as we called it, you know a gypsies barn is buried where the club is
CB: Yes, in the wood there
WEB: In that strip of land there to the bottom of the hill, that’s where they used to house those people, in Nissen huts sort of things
CB: Which they put specially, had they?
WEB: They put them up specially for them
CB: How long did it take to build the airfield?
WEB: Oh, I don’t know, [unclear] I don’t know, it didn’t take them long, to, I mean, it’s, I think it’s, I wouldn’t say
CB: So, you talked about these caterpillars that were ripping up the hedges, how many trees did they have to take out?
WEB: Oh, that is beyond me, I mean, as a matter of fact, I don’t know, before the war actually they were [unclear] from way [unclear] on the side of the road
CB: The A41
WEB: From there the back portal as we called it to the Westcott turn was a load of those, what we called? Birch, is it?
CB: Silver birch
WEB: Silver birch, they were lines of eight of those trees on the road, then they got four of them and then there was odd one or two down Westcott lane, these silver birch trees and that sort of thing
CB: So what happened to those?
WEB: All fell and burnt, but the most of it was burnt and the logs and that, cause people had them stacked and had them for firewood and that sort of thing
CB: They pulled the roots out?
WEB: The roots and all that were pulled all out and
CB: Where did the put those?
WEB: They put them in heaps and got rid of those with the fire
CB: And what about the runways, because they had a different type of equipment for that, did they?
WEB: What the
CB: Making the runways
WEB: That I couldn’t say, I mean, I just
CB: You could watch them
WEB: It was concrete and what was it? All the way, done, they’d done it in bays, bays
CB: In sections
WEB: In sections, that was all, don’t know what the, the machine was actually making the concrete and they’d lay there and then, when that was drawn, they moved it on and made the next one and doing, that was done in bays I think
CB: Right, yeah
WEB: Call it but it was big concrete
CB: And what about the material. How did that get there?
WEB: Came in from road, from the road, from [unclear], the Oxford area, somewhere down, I just big, some big [unclear]
CB: Were they petrol
WEB: Pits and where they loaded them up on the lorries and
CB: Yeah
WEB: They brought the stuff and loaded it and put it on, what was it, where that was to be used and that was levelled out by tractor, the things and pushed all over and levelled and rolled out and then they made concrete on the top of it
CB: Right. Now, there’s a railway that goes down beside the airfield so, how much came by railway?
WEB: Funnily enough I don’t think not a lot of it came by the rail but the only thing that sort of come by rail was petrol and storage that they sent to Wadston and stored up in the plantations of Wadston [unclear]
CB: Oh, was it? Right
WEB: Mostly [unclear] that I can tell
CB: That was fuel for the aircraft
WEB: That was fuel for, not for the aircraft, that was fuel for the general army actually but a load of these things were in tin, what they called it? Tin cans, they weren’t very thick but those weigh round about four gallons
CB: Yeah
WEB: And they were all stacked in the Wadston, Wadston plantations
CB: Right
WEB: Right where the doctor’s surgery is [unclear], all around that area
CB: On the far side of the village, yeah
WEB: Was where [unclear]
CB: So, how different was the supply, when the airfield was finished, how did they supply the fuel for that?
WEB: That used to come in by big tankers from somewhere, I don’t know where
CB: But not by train
WEB: Ehm
CB: Not by train
WEB: Not say this local station anyway
CB: Right
WEB: It came, it might, even then I might be wrong, but I think it was from somewhere else they used to come, the big tankers
CB: Yeah. Now your house and the others next to it are on the north side of the airfield, they actually with the hard standings for servicing, they also had a big petrol store underground
WEB: In where?
CB: Just across the fence from here
WEB: Ah, yes, yes
CB: So how did they build that?
WEB: That was all a big, they dug it all out, a big pit and they put a steel tank, yeah, that was, a big tank was lowered into the ground with pumps and all that and they [unclear] for petrol, well, fuel for aircraft anyway and then they [unclear] the back [unclear] where [unclear] is, are three, are standings for aircraft
CB: Yes
WEB: Cause I was saying, [unclear] or something like that, three Wellington bombers used to stay
CB: [unclear]
WEB: Were parked out there and that sort of got to know the load of the people
CB: Yeah
WEB: [unclear] Tipps Wooller, he used to run to dinner now and again he [unclear], we don’t want it, you can eat it [laughs], yeah Tipps Wooller, [unclear] to know I recall, you know, some of the names but no [unclear] to me, so I say, Tipps, he was an aircraft ambuler, he brought out to the aircraft and that at the back and then he, there was several couples I used to know in when we used to go and have a pint with them when we got in the pub to get a pint but I forget the names of those people that used to come, I know they come up into London somewhere
CB: Why was it difficult to get into the pub?
WEB: Pardon?
CB: Why was it difficult to get into the pub?
WEB: Into the what?
CB: Into the pub. You said it was difficult to get into it
WEB: The pub?
CB: Yeah
WEB: Oh well, I mean, [unclear], it was like everything else, it was shortage of beer [laughs], that was too odd difficult thing to get in there, I mean, they’d be all waiting outside there for Frank Washington to open the door, [unclear] that was, the biggest problem was to rush in and a beer, they weren’t officially rationed but they weren’t [unclear] for them to give it then, yeah
CB: Now, this big tank with petrol in, when they moved the contents to be able to fill the aircraft, to what extent was there a strong smell of fuel in the air?
WEB: I don’t know this much of it. I couldn’t notice much of the smell from it really. I mean [unclear] I presumed, which way the wind blowed
CB: Right
Web: But we, some of that we didn’t take much notice of but [unclear] the big, the tank, that when you get more of a smell than anything was when the tanker came round to fuel the aircraft
CB: Right
WEB: Which was right close to the [unclear] the aircraft and that was when you used to get more of a smell from the tankers but other than that, nothing [unclear]
CB: So, how did they get from the main road to this fuel tank? Was there a special gate near your house?
WEB: What was?
CB: The tankers
WEB: The tankers [unclear]
CB: They came in from a gate near your house, did they?
WEB: Not the actual tankers that fuelled, they used to come in and I had, they had an underground tank
CB: Yeah
WEB: Inside the aerodrome which was quite a long way from the [unclear] and they used to, at the end of where our garden and that, there was a road
CB: Right
WEB: Off there where all the tankers went in and to supply the tanks and that sort of thing
CB: Yes
WEB: Other than that, that was the only sort of thing that used to go over in there but it was a pretty busy thing I would think
CB: We’ll take a break there. So, just talking about
WEB: End of the gardens
CB: Yeah, there was a [unclear]
WEB: There was a [unclear] called Wadston terrace
CB: Yeah
WEB: There used to be a little building with a sentry, and he used to let in the lorries that’s one thing I think [unclear] lorries
CB: The fuel delivery lorries
WEB: They let the fuel delivery lorries in
CB: Yeah. So how was the airfield secured? They didn’t have a fence, did it?
WEB: Had, most of it round was concertina barbwire
CB: Right
WEB: One roll, two rolls on the floor, one on the top
CB: Right
WEB: That’s what they call it
CB: How high was that? When they were piled on top?
WEB: Well, they were, each roll was about that high
CB: Right, five, six feet
WEB: There was one, that was up from the floor
CB: Yeah, five feet
WEB: And then one, another one
CB: Yeah
WEB: Balanced on the two
CB: Yeah
WEB: That was the only thing that I can remember of [unclear] place
CB: Yeah
WEB: Being [unclear] as it stood and [unclear] we used to be a very good [unclear] for the people who come and see and have a pint without the bosses knowing [laughs]
CB: So where would they
WEB: They would walk through the garden at the end of the pub and then back
CB: Which pub are we talking about? Which pub are we talking about, in the village or elsewhere?
WEB: [unclear] go anywhere more or less where the pub, they got the beer
CB: Ah
WEB: This was the problem for me, see, with all these extra people, is, where do you go and get your pint of beer, when it don’t last long? You know, it was, they ain’t got beer all the time, these pubs, they just start to [unclear] if you [unclear] go and get a pint every day mostly, well I suppose, it was a type of rationing [unclear] but, yeah
CB: Could you buy beer to drink at home or was it not available?
WEB: Never, I never saw any of that sort of, bought anywhere, not a way, that was too, they wouldn’t sell it, I don’t think, in the pubs, avoidable for them to sell it, I don’t think, you probably would do but I can’t say that I know that you can buy beer to take home
CB: Right
WEB: But, I mean, it’s a long time ago, isn’t it?
CB: Yes
WEB: But there
CB: Now what about, when the aircraft, when the airfield became operational, that was quite a change to the quiet of the countryside so how did people take to that?
WEB: Oh, just a war time job that you had to take, it wasn’t that, the noisiest places for us, I presume, was when the aircraft was on the landing, on the site, next [unclear] and they were testing the engines
CB: Yes
WEB: They were revving up, that was the noisy part of it and to do that, we used to laugh, we got Lottie Cannon used to live one end of [unclear] and guess it’s going back and Stanley [unclear] was in the middle, I think it was the [unclear] in the middle way round there for end at the time and mum said, that lot, Lottie will be able to [unclear] she said today, she said, they grabbed the aircraft blowing straight across our garden [laughs], they used to make, that was the type of thing they’d done, you see, to test the aircraft, that was right on there, in the aircraft there and then the [unclear] is here, and they, I guess, they just revved up the engine to test them, and all that sort of thing and you had to put with it and that was it
CB: They didn’t swing the aircraft into a better position to save you
WEB: Pardon?
CB: They didn’t swing the aircraft
WEB: No
CB: Save the
WEB: No, they, that, where the aircraft come in to land, that’s where it [unclear] straight to the aerodrome and tail, facing your [unclear]
CB: Yeah
WEB: You got all the background then
CB: So you deserved the extra food as compensation
WEB: We deserved a lot but we didn’t get [laughs], oh dear
CB: So we are talking about a big family here, how many of the family had left to get elsewhere by this time, beginning of the war?
WEB: By the war all the girls had gone
CB: Right
WEB: I think most
CB: Cause they were older
WEB: No, it was because the way these people worked them days, when the girls left school they were billeted out to the place where they were gonna work
CB: Right
WEB: [unclear] they seemed to manage to all these families
CB: Yeah
WEB: I mean, I think certainly my oldest sister Winnie, she went over the back of the farmer back Quainton Hills [unclear] Quainton Hills and she was lodged in that place, that’s where she met her husband and
CB: What was her job then?
WEB: Well, she was [unclear], she kept and cleaned the farm and kept it all going
CB: Right
WEB: [unclear]
CB: What did the other girls do?
WEB: Oh,
CB: A variety
WEB: I don’t know, Alice, she was sent out to [unclear], Aston Clinton, that area, round there to do people’s ailsing and the other girls, they all, well, don’t think of the younger ones, were at home, you know
CB: So, in those days, the big houses had girls in service
WEB: Yes, they did that, that was what they had to do mostly what they’d done [unclear], business was the service for
CB: You were on the farm, were there any of the girls in the land army?
WEB: Not our girls, no
CB: And your brothers, what did they do?
WEB: The brothers were all more or less, Ernie, now, he was the star of the family actually, cause he was a cross country runner and he was transferred from Grendon, that was present man, Lord somebody who’s done Grendon Hall
CB: Grendon Hall, yeah
WEB: And he worked for them in the gardens
CB: Right
WEB: And he happened to go, happened to go to Grendon and the police were holding a sport’s day at Grendon, at Bicester and he [unclear] and went to and do his races and he eventually come home with a, what do you call it? Hang on the wall [unclear], tells the weather, a weather glass, a grandmother clock, and something else he, three things he brought home on that high school from
CB: That he’d won
WEB: He won
CB: Yeah
WEB: But the police bought it what was it, when from then on, that made him and they got in contact with Wickham Phoenix Harriers, which was at Wickham, what was it? And they got him a job in the chair factories and that’s where he spent the rest of his days in factories apart from when he was called up into the Air Force and that was it, he won the only international medal he got was when he, England and Belgium were against other sports and he was one of the runners and he got a gold medal in that, what was it, and that was his only medal he ever sort of won in international, what was it, and then on he went in the Air Force and the next thing I know he was in the Far East, Middle East, my mistake, doing his Air Force
CB: Right. When did he join the RAF? When did he join the RAF?
WEB: When did he? Oh, I don’t know, he was more or less conscripted I think into it, that was where
CB: At the beginning of the war
WEB: At the beginning of the war and that was where he done that training and all that sort
CB: How much older than you was he?
WEB: Oh Ernie, he was quite, he was the oldest and I was round about the middle, middle of the family
CB: Right
WEB: I don’t, those, I don’t know much really cause the difference in years and that, most of the girls then were sent out to work [unclear]
CB: Was that because of the war or because that’s how the things happened?
WEB: Well, that’s how things happened normally
CB: Right
WEB: Cause the war didn’t have a lot of effect on the difference what, the only difference they did sort of do then were to get jobs into factories and things so that were important to do, war efforts where before that they’d do everything else
CB: Right. And did one of your brothers do work in the mines? What was he?
WEB: Oh, well, Victor
CB: Yeah
WEB: Victor, he’s still living in Aylesbury at the moment, he was conscripted down the mines, yes
CB: A Bevin boy
WEB: A Bevin boy, yeah
CB: Yes
WEB: Yes, he was, that was it, he was a Bevin boy. I don’t know many people that done it from around here that went in there
CB: Yeah. And where was that? Up in the north?
WEB: He went up to
CB: Newcastle?
WEB: That was Newcastle and somewhere around that area
CB: Ok, we’ll take a break there. We’re stopping there. So, what we are going to do now is talk about the crashes and other recollections of the airfield. Actually, Westcott 11 Operational Training Unit lost 53 Wellingtons in crashes
WEB: [unclear]
CB: Yeah. And how many, what’s the first one you remember? You talked about one to do with a signal box.
WEB: Yes, well, that one has taken three runways out there and I think it was, I don’t know which one, which one to name, they named them, but it came from that way and he didn’t make the end of the runway properly and he was never got enough height and he hit the signal box and went into the, this side of the railway and that was where one of the fellows, I think it was one of the fellows down on the Restborough [unclear] but that was that one but I don’t think there was any
CB: Right, so then another one was one that
WEB: Another one was, I mean, [laughs] I don’t know whether anybody ever looked at, if they kept the [unclear] on the left hand side but you come down from [unclear], from [unclear] down to Woodham, I think I’m not sure but there’s three, three fences on that left hand side, where the aircraft had actually gone over the road, come over the, come to land on that airfield, failed, went over the field, down and over the road and landed with its, either its tail or its nose, over the Bicester road
CB: This explains
WEB: And I think if I’m not sure, there’s three fences have been put up in the [unclear], I don’t know [unclear]
CB: So, this is a strip between your house and where we are talking today of about half a mile and we are talking about the end of the runway that is runway 2 8, in other words goes to the North-West so there was shot out
WEB: They are the ones that come over the road then
CB: Yeah
WEB:
CB: To the A41
WEB: Yeah. Well, that’s as far as I can tell, I don’t know where they got fences in there or not, but they used to have gaps in the hedge then and they been filled in [unclear] sense or not, I don’t know,
CB: Now, there was one crash that took place on the 15th of March 1944 which was when there was a Wellington in the circuit and it was hit, this is in the night, by a Stirling that came from another direction, what do you remember about that?
WEB: That’s the first time I ever called a Stirling, we, everybody [laughs], I’ve always known it as a Lancaster,
CB: Right, that’s the other, that’s the different crash, this the one that where they were hit
WEB: This is
CB:
WEB: This is one at Westcott turn
CB: Yes
WEB: This, this
CB: Ok, that’s the other one, yes
WEB: This plane had been doing circuits and bumps as we called it
CB: Right
WEB: Been flying [unclear]
CB: Yeah
WEB: On its final, he didn’t make it, he went straight over the road
CB: Yes
WEB: But that crashed his undercarriage
CB: Yes
WEB: And he [unclear] that side of the road
CB: The other side, this is a Wellington
WEB: At night time, they’d done this big raid on Germany and these aircraft were flying back and these actually got diverted from some other airfield, this Lancaster bomber, we’ll call it a Lancaster
CB: It is a Lancaster, yes
WEB: A Lancaster bomber come flying in from the other way and he didn’t make it, he went over the road and landed on top of this Wellington that was already there
CB: Right
WEB: And that was where all the hullabaloo got started then, blokes running down the road, in their flying boots, mom looked out of the window and she said, [unclear] Charlie said, blokes running [unclear] we better get out, and we [unclear] then Kitt Rebell come along and he shouted and told us, get out and clear airfield, he said, in the roots cause all in [unclear] beyond our place were tree roots, [unclear] up when aircraft were being made, when the airfield was being made but there was a load of roots out there, so get out in [unclear] and we went out there. My father, he was out there and he was when it went off, he was pulling his trousers on outside in the field and he was pulling his trousers on and suddenly he said, I heard this thump, I know there was a lump of aircraft metal, not two yards from him but my father was near my father ever got to an aircraft, he said, that’s the nearest I ever wanna be and that was, he missed, that was when that aircraft blew up at Westcott turn
CB: So you were in the tree tumps
WEB: We were in the tree stumps
CB: And where was he, close to that?
WEB: Who, my father?
CB: Yeah
WEB: He was in the tree stumps with us
CB: Yeah
WEB: In those but he was [unclear] a little bit in the open when that aircraft blew
CB: Yeah
WEB: That of course took the roof off [unclear] the slades and things and we were covered with sheets [unclear] for ages
CB: Who came and fixed it?
WEB: I don’t know, it took, I think it was, I’m not sure where it was, [unclear] and fixed the
CB: [unclear]
WEB: Well, but the finish
CB: So this was the first of June 1944. How long did it take to get the house fixed?
WEB: I can’t say, took a long time I mean they more or less had cut [unclear] to make it waterproof then
CB: Yeah
WEB: To stop the water but to actual do the repairs, that took ages
CB: So, it blew the roofs off, what happened to the windows?
WEB: Windows were [unclear], never was blown out the windows so that they fixed those up as well. A lot of time I think some of them would bits of plaster or something instead of glass
CB: So this was actually only two hundred yards from your house that the explosion took place. What other houses were damaged?
WEB: A little bit more than
CB: Four hundred yards?
WEB: [unclear] from Westcott turn to [unclear]
CB: Yeah, four hundred yards
WEB: Something like that
CB: Yeah. What other houses were damaged?
WEB: Oh, I presume the [unclear] were damaged and all that sort of thing but
CB: There was a bungalow in the opposite direction that received an engine through the roof. And who was hurt in this?
WEB: I, I don’t know, obviously somebody I don’t know, I
CB: Ok. So, the person that hurt was the duty officer who’d been telling people to get out and he’s buried in the church yard but he was the only casualty from the blast.
WEB: Yeah
CB: The bomber landed with the full bomb load
WEB: That’s [unclear] full bomb load [unclear]
CB: Which he’d brought back
WEB: He landed on the Wellington that was lying there incumbent
CB: That’s what made it catch fire, wasn’t it? Cause it wasn’t on fire when it landed
WEB: Naturally in coming in, his engines were hot anyway
CB: Yes
WEB: And he had the bomb in
CB: That’s it
WEB: Petrol was very inflammable stuff and that, especially that aircraft fuel
CB: But unusually the aircraft came with a full bomb load, cause you would not normally land with a full bomb load
WEB: Yes, but he was diverted from another airfield
CB: Yes
WEB: I mean, you wouldn’t have got a Westcott plane coming in with a full bomb load because they didn’t have, they didn’t have a lot of bombing sites
CB: Yes
WEB: Only when they, they would make an exception
CB: Yeah
WEB: [unclear] but not many of the crashes that happened round Westcott were with people, with aircraft with fully explosive bombs on. That’s the only thing good about any crash that came round Westcott [unclear] that one
CB: Cause it was an operational training unit. Now, one of the crashes was registered as Waddesdon so where was that?
WEB: Well, as far as I know, that was the only one that went, that was in the side of the hill, was it?
CB: Right
WEB: I don’t remember
CB: But that wasn’t by the fuel dump
WEB: What?
CB: It wasn’t by the fuel dump
WEB: I don’t know much about, we didn’t know much about anything like that
CB: Right. Just stop it, just a mo.
WEB: I still, was still [unclear] went but doing tees and what I did when it went over
US: But you used to have a cafe
CB: Yeah, it is on, yeah. So, Gos ran a café, did he?
WEB: That was a café there
CB: Yeah, and he got the engine
WEB: What they called a path walk cafe
CB: Right
WEB: That was, they were a going concern
CB: Yeah
WEB: So, I think a load of RAF people used to go up there for a cup of tea or things like that
CB: Right. Yeah
WEB: But
CB: This is the bungalow that got the engine through the roof. Then there was another house I gather called Victoria House which was badly damaged
WEB: Victoria House, this
CB: That’s on the edge of the village, what happened there?
WEB: Well, I don’t know, must have been, I mean, that was as close as any other [unclear] could get really
CB: Yeah, the blast hit it
WEB: But I mean, obviously damaged
CB: Yeah
WEB: But we missed looking at our own what was it, we didn’t really know much about what happened down there and there or I suppose it was, yeah
CB: Now the
WEB: [unclear] you see
CB: The duty officer was flight lieutenant Bulmer of the cider family
WEB: Bulmer, sorry
CB: And he’s buried in the churchyard and they put in new windows in the church, did they? And they paid for it, restoring the church
WEB: Almost
CB: Restoring the church
WEB: Yeah, they come, yeah, Bulmer’s [unclear] people
CB: There is a plaque in the church to his memory
WEB: Yeah
CB: Yeah, right. Now, there is another crash which is recorded on the airfield with a monument and that was, took place on the 15th of March ‘44, when a Wellington was hit by a Short Stirling and that was near Quainton and you know somebody who was in the signal box at the time.
WEB: Well, that’s, that might be Sue’s uncle
CB: Right
WEB: Someone like that [unclear] but I don’t this Stirling, I didn’t know any Stirlings here but if they say it was a Stirling that was what it was, but I imagine that could have been a Lancaster
CB: But it was a Stirling and it landed at Wappenham, crashed at Wappenham
WEB: Yeah
CB: In the end but the Wellington landed nearby so the significance was this person in the signal box seeing it
WEB: Yeah
CB: The pilot’s wife was in a house up the road with her new child, he was an Australian
WEB: Yeah, I, well, I don’t know [unclear]
CB: That’s right. What other crashes do you remember there being
WEB: Well, I mean, as I just say, if you look what date where they overshot the runway away and landed in the fields, the only things that mark by fencing and all that sort of thing
CB: Yeah
WEB: That I can say about any others I mean, I should say, if you walked around the perimeter, you’d find a crash site anywhere around that aerodrome
CB: Yeah
WEB: Where the aircraft were taking off and landing, but you can’t, to pinpoint it’s a hell of a job
CB: On a more positive front then, how about the social life? How did you link in with that with the airmen and the air women for that matter?
WEB: Well, we used to drink together in The Swan at Westcott, that to we went out to drink, they weren’t allowed much beer about then, I mean, the pub, you’d be standing outside the pub waiting for it to open and it wouldn’t open something like that was, I mean the, when Frank [unclear] the bloke who used to keep the pub at Westcott, he used to say, said, when it’s gone, it’s gone, he said, so if you drink it now, he said, you won’t get it tomorrow, and that was his philosophy and you get rid on. I know we were young [unclear] but we had bicycles and things like that and when we hang up going up to Quainton and see any or not that was we used to take, you could always get a pint at Quainton
CB: There were three pubs in Waddesdon
WEB: Waddesdon
CB: So, how did you get on there?
WEB: Well that was, we used to get off a pint in the [unclear] now and again when we started doing the home guard, home guard training sessions at Waddesdon on Sunday morning, that was the only place you could get a pint if you wanted a pint then
CB: Would help your shooting, wouldn’t it? What about socials that they ran on the airfield, cause there were a good few WAAFs, there was a separate WAAF area
WEB: Well, didn’t take much part in the social side of the airfield, you know
CB: Right
WEB: But any time I used to [unclear] was when I got in the Swan and I did know a couple of WAAFs and their boyfriends and things like that, they used to come in the Swan and other than that I didn’t know, yeah, I get the names [laughs]
CB: Now, being in a reserved occupation meant that you were a young person amongst military people, most people were in the forces one way or the other, what sort of reaction did you get as you walked around and cycled around, not being in uniform?
WEB: No, [unclear] I think people more or less understood the situation you were in, you were in that, I never got any diverse comments about [unclear] or anything
CB: When you were in the Home Guard you’d be wearing the uniform, at other times you wouldn’t, wouldn’t you?
WEB: Well, in the Home Guard, you wore that when you went to and done the midnight walk, as we used to call it, go out at midnight and be home back by four o’clock, be in bed at four and then back up again at six and go milking [laughs], that’s how we used to, things, no, I, wasn’t anything spectacular
CB: Did they give you a badge to wear, to show that you were in a reserved occupation?
WEB: No. I never had one anyway
CB: Right
WEB: I didn’t know never [unclear] I mean there was my brother Lewis and myself, we were all working in the same, on the same farm, just one day here,
CB: Mate Farm
WEB: Mote Farm and we never did [unclear] seen any words or anything from anybody about it, you know
CB: So, what would you prefer to have done in the war?
WEB: Well, what I wanted to do and which I tried to do, several times, as a matter of fact I [unclear] from here to blooming Oxford to go to a recruiting centre and all I got in trouble was get on your bikes and go back to where you come from, you’re in a reserved occupation and you are better off where you are. And that was that, that was the only thing I [unclear]. And I went to Old Wickham, it was [unclear] come back on the, went to Wickham, come back on a train said it was a waste of time then, trying to go, you’re in a reserved occupation, you’ve got to do that reserved occupation to change jobs that blokes say if I want to move from where [unclear] the
CB: Mate Farm
WEB: Yeah, but I wanted to go to work at Waddesdon for somebody else, it was a hell of a job, you got to [unclear] to Aylesbury and see somebody in the labour exchange when I’ve been all through the, what was it? The [unclear] was, go back and behave yourself and don’t worry us again. You go back where you come from.
CB: Yeah
WEB: That was that, that was the attitude to take. You were in the, you were there and that’s where you’re gonna stay
CB: Right
WEB: [unclear] it was, you couldn’t, I mean, as I said, I tried to get away from [unclear] and only needed the farmer to spot me once and just ring [unclear] exchange and somebody was there to tell me to get back on the farm again
CB: So, which of the forces were you hoping to join?
WEB: Mh?
CB: Which of the forces were you hoping to join?
WEB: Well, I was always wanted to join the navy, that was my one and only thing, I wanted to join the navy and I went, and I tried my [unclear] to get into the navy but every time I went anywhere, was the same thing, you’re doing a better job than [unclear], but directly the war was over, this is what nickels me in a way, so as soon as the war was over, and things had settled down a bit, the first thing I got, was a notice to go and see somebody at High Wycombe and when I went to High Wycombe they said, you will be sent now to a training camp down in, what was it? To join the navy. And I said, why at this time? He said, because we want, he said the, well, what we call it? Operation, people that was, were forcibly sent into the forces, we want those people back home and we will get you training and put you in the navy and send those people back home and that’s exactly what happened. I went down too long for a round of instructions to get down to Plymouth, in that area, to a place down there, and I was conscripted into the navy then and I served seven years and five on a reserve and I was told, that was where I got to be after that and that’s what I had to do.
CB: But the conscripted
WEB: And I was seven years a complete, what shall I say? I thoroughly enjoyed my seven years I served in the navy and I got no complaints whatsoever by joining up.
CB: And what did you do while you were in the navy?
WEB: I ended up being a radar operator, you know, sort of, on any ship I could go and operate, what was it, and I’d been, the best thing really was to get into the plot room on board ship with the officer, the navigating officer and you were on the radar and told him where to put the dots and [unclear] on his [unclear], on his plot. You had two [unclear], you either served in the actual place where the PPI was, the Plot Position Indicator, which was like a little light line going round and round like that and if it hit a ship or anything like that, it would leave a spot and you reported up to the bloke in the, what was it, and from there he’d take it up and you’d keep telling him where that spot [unclear] he said you can plot the course and tell his where the ship was going. So, in a way, it was interesting in a way, but I thoroughly enjoyed it
CB: What was the balance between being on shore and being afloat?
WEB: What, in what way?
CB: How many years of the seven were you on shore and how many on afloat?
WEB: I was, oh, I don’t know, I don’t [unclear] about on any land station really. I went over to, we’d done the training down at Plymouth and that took about to eight weeks, something like that [unclear] course and that and from there, I’d done that and I was in the Mediterranean in next to no time and the first, I joined there and I started, and the coincidence here is that I joined this ship HMS Cheviot and I relieved a bloke on board of that ship by the name of Stanley Pankhurst, now, I lived at Westcott and Stanley Pankhurst lived at Bicester [laughs] and was, his, and when I went there, he said, good gracious, he said, where do you come from? And I said, Westcott. Wow! I could blow the, I could blow the bloody place up, he said, if, he said, you’re the finest bloke I’ve ever seen in this world, he said, come and relieve me. Stanley Pankhurst greeted me to [unclear], he said, here’s the keys, I said, what’s that for? He said, that’s for your locker, he said, he said, you can, I’ll take my kit out, you can put yours in there, he said, I’ll make sure it’s locked, he said, that was when I went since Stanley Pankhurst but his father apparently owned a paper shop or something in Bicester but no
CB: That’s eight miles away
WEB: Yeah, that’s right
CB: Right
WEB: I mean, wonderful, that is to think that you meet somebody who’s glad to see you [laughs]
CB: But the conscription was for less than two years so how did you come to do seven?
WEB: Ah, I, you see, that’s, that was, I volunteered for the seven, I volunteered to, wanted to join the navy and the only thing that stopped me joining the navy was my father and when you, if your father said you can’t do this, in them days, you’d done what your father said
CB: Yeah
WEB: Now, when I decided that I wanted to go, he said, well, he said, you can go now, he said, you’d done all what you need to do here and that was as far as it went and I joined up and I said, I’ll do seven, the seven years and then seven years, if, that seven years was done on a reason was that if we’d given seven years to do and then five years on a reserve that means to say that we still got a little hand on them for another twelve, for twelve years and that’s where they go and half way through that five year job they cancelled it
CB: Right
WEB: They wrote a letter who said you are no longer required and that was, from that [unclear] now I can go upstairs into my bedroom [unclear] and I can go into my, into a, what was it there? and I can pick up a little blue folder, and that’s all my papers
CB: Really?
WEB: Navy
CB: Fantastic. What did you do when you came out of the navy?
WEB: Well, I went into the brickyards
CB: Which is where?
WEB: [laughs] at [unclear], that’s where I started
CB: Just half a mile away
WEB: Yeah. I went and started into the, what was it? And it wasn’t long before Woodham disappeared and I went from there I went to [unclear]
CB: Right. London Brick
WEB: London Brick company. And that’s where I finished my work in days on the brick, I say, they made me redundant when I was, what was, I think I was fifty something,
US: Fifty-eight
WEB: Fifty-eight or something [unclear] and I had round about four, three years to do and they, I didn’t do a day, I’d done one day’s work since I was retired
CB: Right
WEB: And my [unclear] got me to go and do one day’s work for the people that he worked, worked for and [unclear] and sadly he’s gone anyway
CB: What, how far did you move up the organisation? You started doing what, little brickworks?
WEB: In the brickworks? Well, I had work all the time, [unclear] you didn’t get any advancement in any way, at all much, you’d go down into the pit or any, or down or drawing site, going with a barrel going into the [unclear] and run the brick site and load lorries off with your barrels and all that sort of thing, [unclear] anything you could do down there, paid work, I mean, that was the only thing, if you’d done, if you worked hard, you got paid more. But, I did not [unclear], there was no advantage in being in brickyard, brickworks
CB: Did you, to what extent did you find opportunities to take a more responsible job? There’s a chargehand or supervisor or something?
WEB: Chargehand and all that sort of thing, I mean, that came earlier there when somebody else had gone and
CB: Yeah
WEB: And they wanted somebody to fill the place and that was only done or any and when you got to filling out the forms and that sort of thing, but that weren’t, that was all to just fill the forms out, get it cause he took the lorry driver and he took the bricks and away
CB: Right
WEB: [unclear] keep you landing and doing the thing but all our work
CB: What would you say finally was the most memorable thing about your working life from when you left school?
WEB: Memorable? Can’t say there is anything memorable [unclear]. I know being out to more or less do what you like, do what you please and as long as it didn’t do any damage to anybody else. Yeah
CB: Well, Eddie, thank you very much for a very interesting and enlightening conversation
WEB: Well, just, piece of work then, as I say
CB: Now
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with William Edwin Barnett
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
2017-03-28
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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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ABarnettWE170328, PBarnettWE1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:49:02 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Description
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William Edwin Barnett talks about his experience of living on the edge of RAF Westcott, near Aylesbury. Remembers starting to work on a farm at the age of fourteen and describes his everyday life and duties. Tells of being conscripted into the Home Guard, where he did night patrolling and practiced target shooting with an air rifle. Tells of how he wanted to join the Navy but was rejected because he was in a reserved occupation. Talks about various plane crashes, including a Lancaster, of which he gives a detailed and vivid account. After the war, remembers being conscripted into the Navy, where he served for seven years.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
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1944-03-15
11 OTU
civil defence
crash
final resting place
Home Guard
Lancaster
memorial
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
sport
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/706/10104/ABellGW161221.1.mp3
9f6081f87bc9ed1ae80c509b7527e12c
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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Bell, Gerald Walter
G W Bell
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Corporal Gerald Bell (b. 1921, 185210 Royal Air Force). He served as ground personnel.
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
2016-12-21
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.
Identifier
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Bell, GW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 21st of December 2016 and I am with Gerald Bell in Weston near Towcester in Northamptonshire and Gerald worked on the ground throughout the war and we are going to talk about his life and times. So, what’s the first thing you remember about life, Gerald?
GB: Going to school I suppose.
CB: Ok.
GB: At five. Yes.
CB: And where is that?
GB: Hickling. School.
CB: Which was near where? Hickling?
GB: [unclear]
CB: In Norfolk.
GB: Yes.
CB: Yes, in Norfolk. Ok. And what did your father do?
GB: He was getting people.
CB: And how many children?
GB: [unclear]
CB: Did he really? Balance, mixed balance between boys and girls or?
GB: Six girls and four boys.
CB: And where you in the pecking order?
GB: Number seven.
CB: Right [laughs]. And mother had a fulltime job?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Looking after you.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, you went to Hickling school. The primary school. Where did you go for the secondary education?
GB: Never had a secondary education.
CB: Didn’t you?
GB: Left school at fourteen.
CB: Right, ok, and then what did you do?
GB: Me first job was, worked on a poultry farm. That was until I was sixteen.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Then me wages went up and they sacked me [laughs], oh yes, yes, that was quite normal those days. Rather than pay you cause [unclear] I suppose.
CB: Yeah, so then what did you do?
GB: Then I went on the farm. I was the yardman, I did the milking, feed the cattle and the pigs, did the milking.
CB: And how long did you do that for?
GB: Just trying to think.
CB: Well, the war came in 1939, by which time you were eighteen.
GB: I was working, oh, I left the farm
CB: Yeah
GB: Because the governor died
CB: Oh!
GB: And everything was sold off of course and I got a job on a food farm and I was there until I was called up, that was in 1940.
CB: What kind of fruit was it growing?
GB: Well, all sorts. Yeah.
CB: So, when you were called up, where did you go for your attestation?
GB: At Cardington.
CB: After that?
GB: I went back to work of course, I was called up to Stockton
CB: Yeah.
GB: And there I did me basic training, I can’t remember the name of the
CB: This is on the east coast near Whitby.
GB: No, further up
CB: Further up than that. Ok.
GB: Yes, that
CB: Scarborough.
GB: No, no, further up. It’s that place that had the iron things shut, [unclear]
CB: Shutten, no, that’s north west.
GB: Further up.
CB: Yes, up near Middlesbrough. OK, well, we’ll come back to that, yeah.
GB: It’s a seaside
CB: Seaside place.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
GB: Quite well known.
CB: Ok.
GB: It I [unclear] think of it.
CB: Need a map. [laughs] right. How long were you there doing that training?
GB: About six weeks, I think. Then I went to Finningley
CB: Did you?
GB: Yes.
CB: Right. So, you are now, what rank are you?
GB: Ordinary AC plonk.
CB: Yeah, AC plonk. Right. And what did you do at Finningley?
GB: Any general duties.
CB: So, you were a general duties ground staff
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: So, what would that entail?
GB: Any job that wanted doing, cleaning up, anything.
CB: All outside or was some of it office work or what was it?
GB: No, no, it was all outside.
CB: Ok.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, what sort of places would needed to be cleaned up?
GB: Anywhere, the [unclear] or anything like that, you know, anything, general duties,
CB: Ok. So, if there was a fuel spill outside, would you have to go and clean up the fuel spill [unclear] aircraft?
GB: No.
CB: No, you wouldn’t. Was there any gardening to do?
GB: No. [unclear] garden in those days.
CB: No. So, what other things could you remember that you did there?
GB: No, nothing special, really.
CB: And how long were you at Finningley?
GB: I transferred to Balderton, yes, and I suppose I was there about twelve months.
CB: Ok.
GB: And I got posting, overseas posting.
CB: Right.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, before we do that, what did you do at Balderton?
GB: Same thing, general duties. Yes. Nothing special.
CB: Who was, who were you reporting to in that case?
GB: [unclear] in charge, that’s all.
CB: Which section would that be?
GB: I was [unclear] to general duties
CB: The general duties section
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, did you enjoy being at Balderton or was it boring?
GB: Nothing was boring, no, because I lived in the village, I been far away so everything was new
CB: Yes.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, the bright lights you came to
GB: Yes.
CB: So, what did you do in your time off?
GB: Chasing the women
CB: Did you really?
GB: And drinking of course [laughs], yes.
CB: Was that confined to the station or were you
GB: No, [unclear]
CB: Yeah? How did you travel around from the station to
GB: They had lorries.
CB: Yeah. What was the nearest big town?
GB: Doncaster, yes.
CB: So, that had lots of service people in it?
GB: Oh, quite a few, yes.
CB: Yes.
GB: Lots of people from Finningley went to Doncaster.
CB: Yeah. What sort of time did you have there?
GB: Oh, enjoyed myself of course.
CB: What was the main activity when you went out, apart from drinking and, dancing did you do?
GB: Not a lot of dancing,
CB: No?
GB: I don’t think.
CB: Cinema?
GB: Yes.
CB: So, the lorry would take you and then collect you, bring you back at a certain time.
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: If you missed the lorry, then what?
GB: You had to get back on your own.
CB: How did you do that?
GB: Yeah, walk back [laughs].
CB: How long did that take?
GB: [unclear] Couple of hours, something like that, yes. You had to creep in the camp without anyone knowing [laughs].
CB: What was security like on an airfield?
GB: Pretty good, you used to have to lift up the barbwire and get underneath.
CB: Did you?
GB: Oh yeah [laughs], To get in.
CB: How many times did you get caught?
GB: I didn’t get caught [laughs].
CB: But some people did.
GB: Oh yes, yes.
CB: And then what happened?
GB: I don’t know, I supposed they went before the [unclear] and that was that. Well, you didn’t get away with anything if they caught you.
CB: Who was the person on the station you feared most?
GB: Oh, I suppose, the SWO.
CB: Yes, Station warrant officer.
GB: Yeah.
CB: He had a lot of power, did he?
GB: Yeah [laughs]. Keep out of his way.
CB: Why were people worried about him?
GB: I don’t know, I suppose everybody looked up at him, didn’t they? Yeah.
CB: Even the junior officers were worried
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: So, on the station, what sort of entertainment was there there?
GB: Oh, there was quite a few of the, what was it, not naafi, I forget the name of the people that used to do the
CB: The WVS, was it?
GB: No, it wasn’t, no, it was the [unclear], I suppose they were actors, not professionals.
CB: Oh, ENSA, yes.
GB: Yes. That’s right.
CB: ENSA, yes.
GB: ENSA, yes.
CB: They came and did performances.
GB: Yes.
CB: Where would they do that on the station?
GB: I was just trying to think, it must be one of the hangars.
CB: Ah, right.
GB: Yes. Yes, yes, we didn’t have anywhere else to go, in the winter we used to do roller-skating in the hangars.
CB: Right. How popular was that?
GB: Oh, that was very popular.
CB: So, how did people keep fit during their service in the RAF in the war?
GB: Cause they got us fit when we did the training sort of thing and we never bothered after that really.
CB: And when you were off duty, then you ate in the airmen’s mess, did you?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And what was the food like?
GB: Not bad, I suppose, yes, yeah. Yes, never heard any complaints.
CB: And to what extent did you link up with the aircrew?
GB: Not much, not really,
CB: What was
GB: Only if we were on guard duty and they come up [laughs]
CB: How often did you have to do guard duty?
GB: I don’t know. One fortnight, something like that.
CB: So, the guard be on a shift system, what were the shifts for that? Certain number of hours on and then and a certain number of hours off.
GB: Yes. Yeah, I think it be about two on and four off, something like that, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, did you manage to arrest any aircrew who were trying to get in late?
GB: We wouldn’t arrest anyone [laughs], we knew the most of them anyway.
CB: Yeah. But to be effective you had firearms, didn’t you?
GB: Yes, yeah.
CB: And did you have live ammunition?
GB: No.
CB: So, did that have any restriction on the deterrent?
GB: I suppose they knew as well as we knew.
CB: Yeah, yeah. And so Finningley and Balderton, were both Bomber Command organisations, what was going on at those airfields?
GB: What was it, they were just previous to the [unclear] on the bomb.
CB: Yeah.
GB: So,
CB: So they had the operational training unit
GB: Yes, right.
CB: At Balderton, yeah.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
GB: And Finningley.
CB: And Finningley, right, ok. So, what were the planes that they were flying to do that? Do you remember?
GB: I think they were mostly Wellingtons.
CB: Right, yeah. And what were their flying hours day and night,
GB: Yes,
CB: Did they, both day and night? Was it?
GB: Yes.
CB. And what about accidents from the training?
GB: Yes, a few.
CB: Were they? What sort of things went wrong?
GB: I don’t know, they never really let on what has happened to them.
CB: Right. Did any happen on the airfields?
GB: No, no, no,
CB: So when you got, you finished at Balderton, what time of year was that?
GB: I can’t remember all.
CB: So, that’s 1941 anyway.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, you then posted overseas. Where did you go?
GB: We had to go to, oh, blimey.
CB: Did they have an assembly point in Britain before you embarked? Because you had to
GB: I’m just trying to think where we went to, to meet up sort of thing
CB: Yeah.
GB: The whole lot of us, was always [unclear] about fifty of us, on, blimey, I can’t think of the name of the place.
CB: Where is it near?
GB: On the south coast.
CB: Ah, right.
GB: Where they used to control the aircraft.
CB: On the radar stations?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Right.
GB: The main one. But I can’t remember.
CB: But it was on the coast.
GB: Nearly on the coast, yes.
CB: Yeah. And then everybody assembled, who were all these people, were they mixtures of ground and air crew or what were they?
GB: They weren’t aircrew at all, these were all
CB: All ground crew.
GB: All ground.
CB: All ground personnel.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, when you were assembled, then where did you go?
GB: You had to go down to Sidforth for training with the army, the Dorset, was it Dorset?
CB: Yeah.
GB: We had training there.
CB: What type of training were you having?
GB: Army training sort of thing, yeah, we were getting fit and all that sort of thing, yeah, yes.
CB: Yeah. A lot of marching?
GB: Yeah, yeah, quite a good bit of marching.
CB: And then live firing of ammunition?
GB: No, no, we never had any firing at all.
CB: What were they training you up for to do?
GB: They were training us for the, we went to [unclear], it was the 893 AMES Air Ministry Experimental Station, that’s right.
CB: Oh, what did that do then?
GB: That was a mobile radar.
CB: Whereabout?
GB: We did that down in Dorset, there was one there.
CB: Ah, there was one there, was it?
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, were you effectively part of a defence, like airfield defence, is that, was that the job?
GB: No, we had separate people on our course that were for defence
CB: RAF regiment, yes. Right.
GB: RAF regiment sort of thing, yes. Anyway, we went from there to up to Scotland to get on the boat for North Africa.
CB: Right. Where was that? Glasgow?
GB: I think it was Glasgow.
CB: And where did you sail to?
GB: Algiers. On the way there the ship being [unclear] broke down, so we had to leave the convoy and they sailed on, they got it started again, woke up one morning and we were on our own. But we could see the destroyer over the far distance [unclear] far behind that, looked after us, that sort of thing. But we caught up eventually.
CB: Did you?
GB: Yeah.
CB: What went wrong with the ship then?
GB: I don’t know, they didn’t say much, you don’t know, you hear all sorts of things. They said the gaffer or the ship captain got recommendation for getting it going again.
CB: Was this an old holiday liner or was it a special troop ship?
GB: No, [unclear], it was a special troop ship.
CB: Right. How many people on the ship?
GB: Don’t know, I wouldn’t know, there’s no end of them.
CB: Did you get a bunk or a hammock?
GB: Hammock, yeah.
CB: What time of year was this? In the winter or the summer or?
GB: I couldn’t tell you. I can’t even remember the date of the invasion there.
CB: No. North Africa.
GB: Yeah.
CB: 1942.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok, so you got to Algeria,
GB: Yes.
CB: Then what?
GB: We had to, wait our turn to get into the port and all that sort of thing cause there was quite a lot there of course, all the Americans were there as well and we had to put up in the, built up a marquee in the zoological gardens in Algeria until we got our kit cause we had to wait about a week or two before we got it.
CB: Then?
GB: Eventually we got our kit, got on the road and we went as far as, into Tunisia I think, I’m just trying to think of the name of the place, Setif, but I don’t think it’s that name now, they’ve changed them, cause they were all French names, weren’t they? Now they’ve changed them all
CB: Right. This was in the back of a truck.
GB: Yes.
CB: How come, where was that?
GB: I got used to that sort of thing. They asked for volunteers to drive them
CB: But you could drive.
GB: I never, I could drive but I never volunteered, cause it was too dodgy,
CB: In what way?
GB: [unclear] you know,part road and all sorts of things. Anyway, we got as far as Setif and whether the Germans had made a push, we had to come back quick, I suppose because they were afraid that we’d get captured and they get all our stuff, cause I don’t think there was any other [unclear] like us about those days.
CB: You were all RAF people, weren’t you?
GB: Yes.
CB: How many, roughly?
GB: Roughly I suppose fifty or sixty.
CB: Yeah, the same fifty, yeah.
GB: Yeah, yeah. Cause we had to offer a day and night sort of thing. Anyway, we went back to Algiers and put up the stuff there, yes, we [unclear] from there.
CB: What were you doing in that time?
GB: You know the aerial, I suppose that
CB: For the radar.
GB: Yeah. Those days to move the aerial you had to turn the handle, that was my job, turn the handle at the aerial.
CB: Was this a constant movement as a sweep?
GB: Oh yes, yes, backwards and forwards, they had a barrel in there where all the kit was and they’d ring it, you carry on, when they ring it again, you turn it back sort of thing and you had to keep doing that until they got the two, I suppose the two planes together sort of thing, yeah. It was quite, you know.
CB: You got quite strong in your muscles, did you, arm muscles. What sort of, how did that work on the shifts for that?
GB: We had three shifts, three eight-hour shifts. And you, you know, you did all the [unclear] shift sort of thing.
CB: So, when you weren’t winding the thing round, what were you doing?
GB: It was a full-time job really.
CB: Oh, it was.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Day and night if there were three shifts.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, what happened next? Was this a portable radar?
GB: I suppose really that was the first mobile radar there was.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Yes.
CB: So
GB: I think the Yanks used to come and visit. You know, [unclear] men come and visit to see what it was all about. But I got [unclear] well, I’d say mood, I got a bad chill and we didn’t have a doctor, we only had a first aid man
CB: Medical orderly
GB: Medical, yeah, and the thought I got pleurisy, cause they [unclear] me into hospital and of course none of the hospital would take because none of them had got the separate
CB: They needed an isolation room to take you
GB: Yes, I think I went nearly [unclear] for a year. Come back to all years now they, I managed to find one
CB: And what had you got? What were you suffering from?
GB: I don’t know, I was there for about a month
CB: Clearly more than a cold.
GB: I don’t think that it was anything more than a cold.
CB: Where did you go next? Back towards Tunisia?
GB: No, no, while I was away, while I was in hospital, they moved, I think they went to Sicily and I don’t know whether it was right or not but I was told that the ship that they were on got bombed, what happened I don’t know after that. But I went back to the, oh, [unclear] forward maintenancy unit.
CB: Ok. What happened there?
GB: Well, we followed the army, you know, into Tunisia.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Until they packed up and I went back to Algiers and finished the tour there.
CB: Doing what?
GB: General duties again.
CB: In, same place in Algeria, was it?
GB: Yes, with the
CB: But you had no radar by then because it had been moved, had it?
GB: Oh yes, they took, the whole lot went.
CB: How busy were you kept during general duties when they took you back to, when they kept you in Algeria? Were you busy or not?
GB: I think I spent most of my time on the sergeant’s mess, being in charge of the sergeant’s mess.
CB: And you had
GB: And we had Italian prisoners there doing [unclear] so we didn’t have to work.
CB: Ah right. So, what rank were you by now?
GB: LAC.
CB: LAC in the sergeant’s mess. So, what were your job then with the Italian prisoners?
GB: To see that they did the work, that was all.
CB: Who spoke Italian?
GB: No one [laughs]
CB: Nobody. So how did you communicate?
GB: I don’t know, we made them understand sort of thing, yeah, [unclear] supposed of you [unclear], no, no, no
CB: And were they willing workers or?
GB: There were some who were a bit dodgy but most of them, you had to watch them though
CB: Why?
GB: They’d nick anything, yeah, I remember one chap I caught, he got the tablecloth wrapped round him, so I discharged [unclear] [laughs]
CB: So, apart from nicking tablecloths, what else did they pinch?
GB: [unclear] as well because you couldn’t, you never had a clue really
CB: Yeah. So, when are we here now, what’s the date we are talking about now, when you are looking after the Italians?
GB: It must have been, I must have been there three years then. I was there three and a half years altogether
CB: Were you?
GB: Yeah. So that’d be towards the end of when I was there. When I got me demobbed from there.
CB: Oh, did you? So, the war was finished, the war finished, did
GB: No, I didn’t. I didn’t get me demobbed from there, we came home, now I went to Leicester East,
CB: Yeah.
GB: They were getting prepared for the victory parade and they had all the cars and lorries and that to do all ready for the victory parade.
CB: So, this is May 1945.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, what did they get you to do?
GB: I was working in the SWO’s office
CB: Were you? And what would you do in there with him?
GB: Paperwork, I suppose, mostly, yeah.
CB: So, how long were you at Leicester East?
GB: Until I was demobbed there.
CB: Yeah. You were demobbed from there?
GB: Yeah.
CB: And when was that?
GB: I haven’t a clue, really. Anyway, I got my demob and I went home, I got another three months leave, you know, two or three months, I don’t know how long it was and there was nothing there for me to do. I could have me job back but I didn’t want it, so I re-joined again and when I re-joined, I got a job, I got a job that they asked me if I wanted, it was behind the bar at the officer’s mess, at the record’s office, Gloucester.
CB: Are ye?
GB: We were stationed at
CB: Innsworth
GB: That’s right, yeah. I was in there for, cause I signed up for four years
CB: Ah, right.
GB: But, the end of the four years, they delayed releases for twelve months, I counted the, what war was on?
CB: The Korean war.
GB: Was it Korea? Yes, that’s right, yeah, they delayed the release so I had to do five years
CB: What rank were you at this stage?
GB: Corporal.
CB: Did you come back in as a corporal?
GB: Yeah.
CB: You left as a corporal, did you, at demob?
GB: No, no, I didn’t,
CB: Ah.
GB: No, I come back as a corporal, yeah.
CB: Right.
GB: And that’s where I met my better half. She was in the officer’s mess service.
CB: At Innsworth?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So you were both behind the bar or what was she doing?
GB: No, she was in the officer’s.
CB: In the administration, was she?
GB: That’s right, yeah.
CB: So, when are we talking about now, 1951?
GB: A bit before that.
CB: ‘50.
GB: Yes, a bit before then, yes. Because I got married, she left the forces and I got married in 1948.
CB: Oh. When you were still in.
GB: I was still in, yes.
CB: Yeah. Ok, so then what?
GB: I was there for five years.
CB: Yeah. But, what about accommodation? Did they give you a quarter or what did they do, they didn’t have any quarters.
GB: They didn’t have any quarters.
CB: No.
GB: The wife stopped at her home.
CB: At. Which was where?
GB: At Eaton, in Wragby, it’s not far from here
CB: Wragby
GB: In Eaton
CB: Yeah. Right.
GB: It’s about five miles from here. Yeah.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So, you just go and see her at weekends.
GB: Yes, every other weekend I was off, come and see her.
CB: Right, so, how did you manage to travel around? What was the transport arrangement in those days?
GB: Trains, yeah.
CB: Did you get a travel warrant or did you?
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: Cause you were underage, were you? Under twenty-five. No, you weren’t, no. So, you payed for your own travel.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok, so you came, you did your full five years because of the extension of one year,
GB: Yeah.
CB: What did you do after that? You didn’t sign on again,
GB: No.
CB: So you went to civilian life.
GB: Well, we got the club, worked in a club at, blimey.
CB: What sort of club?
GB: Working men’s club.
CB: Working men’s, right. Cause your experience behind the bar
GB: Yeah
CB: They found that useful, did they?
GB: Yes.
CB: Right. Whereabouts in the country was that?
GB: I’m just trying and think now, blimey, Jonathan, where was
CB: Was it round here?
GB: No, no, no. You worked with the Oxford, what’s the name? [unclear]
US: [unclear] Green.
GB: No, I don’t think.
CB: Not the place, I tell you.
US: Place or [unclear] company.
CB: I tell you what, let’s do it a different way, you demobbed originally from Leicester East, when you did your four years and added one to make five years, you were demobbed, where were you demobbed from? Cause you were at Innsworth, so, where were you demobbed?
GB: I can’t remember, to be honest.
CB: So I’m thinking that perhaps the demobbed point guided you to certain jobs.
GB: No, no, no.
CB: How did you find this job?
GB: Well, I looked in the, I used to take the daily paper for the pubs.
CB: Oh, right.
GB: So, I found the job. Oh, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, how long did you work there?
GB: I was there about three years before I got a better job.
CB: Yeah, which was what?
GB: There was another club at Maidstone in Kent.
CB: Maidstone, right.
GB: Yes.
CB: What was that club?
GB: It was originally a liberal club but I think that [unclear] anyone could join
CB: Right. And how long did you work there?
GB: I suppose I was there about four years.
CB: Then what?
GB: Then the wife was expecting so we had to get out and I got a job at Morton in Surrey. Bar manager.
CB: What sort of accommodation did you have? Did they provide accommodation with these jobs or did you have to rent outside?
GB: Well, I first, the pub, the club at Maidstone had a, above the club was house
CB: A flat.
GB: Yeah. But, when I went to Morton, they offered me accommodation, you know, temporary sort of thing until I found somewhere myself, which I did.
CB: Did you buy a house, or did you rent one or what did you do?
GB: No, I bought it,
CB: Right.
GB: [unclear], you know.
CB: Was that your first house?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yes. So, what sort of job was it, as the manager?
GB: It’s a busy job, cause it’s a big pub. Had a ballroom, you know, they used to do midday lunches and all that sort of thing, parties at night.
CB: How long did you keep going on that job?
GB: Oh, until the boss retired, they had a new pub built down in, blimey, here we go again. On the Thames, what sort of [unclear] I can’t think of the name.
CB: Lots of places on the Thames.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, how many years do you think you were at Morton roughly? How many years were you there or when did you move [unclear]?
GB: Oh, not long, I wasn’t there very long.
CB: Oh, weren’t you?
GB: Yeah, no.
CB: So, you sold the house and moved somewhere else.
GB: I fell out with the boss, the wife got yellow jaundice and she had to go to hospital and the boss said, I got four children then, you’d have to put the kids in a home, and I said, sod that, I’m not going to put my kids in a home, so I packed the job in and we came over to her, place in Eaton, temporarily and I got a job at Plessey’s in Towcester.
CB: Ah, right. You sold the house at Morton and bought one up here, did you?
GB: Oh yes, yes,
CB: In Eaton.
GB: I sold that and I went to, I can’t think of the name of the [unclear] place, no good at [unclear]
CB: Yeah, ok. And Eadon spelled EYDON. Right? And then you joined Plessey. So, what did you do at Plessey?
GB: Making computers or parts of them
CB: Yeah?
GB: Yeah.
CB: What was your role?
GB: Pardon?
CB: What was your job?
GB: On the machines, machines [unclear], we were operating the machines
CB: So, what were the machines doing, making printed circuits or assembling them?
GB: No, making the
CB: Switch gear?
GB: Making the small, they were like small, very small [unclear] of different, I don’t know what sort, different minerals, they were ground and punched together sort of thing and we had to test them.
CB: Right.
GB: See if they were [unclear] or the machines tested them, we had to run the machines, all massive amount [unclear] into millions
CB: Ah really?
GB: Yeah. Some of them you had to have the telescope to see what was going on, on in the machines sort of thing.
CB: Yeah. So what
GB: I was there about, I was there until Plessey packed up and I had to, I got a job on making rolling tubes, steel tubes
CB: Oh yeah? In Northampton or
GB: No, in Towcester
CB: In Towcester.
GB: Yes. And I stopped there until I retired.
CB: What age did you retire?
GB: Sixty-five.
CB: Right. And when did you move to Weston?
GB: It was before I got my job at Plessey’s.
CB: Oh, was it?
GB: Yeah. It’ll be fifty years ago next month.
CB: That you moved here. This house here, next door?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Then in retirement what did you do?
GB: In the garden [laughs].
CB: Cause you’ve got quite a bit of land. Did you do it all by hand or did you have a rotavator or?
GB: I’ve got a rotavator
CB: Right. And what was your specialty in growing?
GB: [unclear] [laughs] no, all sorts.
CB: Did you have a favourite?
GB: Not really.
CB: Plant or fruit?
GB: No, no.
CB: And after a bit, that got a bit too much, so you got somebody else to do it, did you?
GB: No, no, I’m still doing it.
CB: Oh, you’re still doing it?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Fantastic and you’re ninety-five.
GB: I had to get someone this last summer to do it because I couldn’t do anything. I was so bad that they took me round to see different houses, they wanted to rehome me.
CB: Oh, did they?
GB: Yeah, [unclear] always that sort of thing that I pulled through.
CB: Your hands are not up to it any longer.
GB: No.
CB: No.
CB: Right. Sounds like you’ve done it brilliantly well
GB: [unclear] do it, yeah.
CB: Yeah, amazingly active. That’s what kept you going. So, the final question, what, to what do you attribute your long life at ninety-five?
GB: Just luck, that’s all. Cause my wife was a better woman than I was. And she went quicker. Yes.
CB: Yeah. After the children grew up, did she work herself?
GB: Yes, she did a bit of work, yes, she was at, here we go again, blimey
CB: What sort of job did she do?
GB: Office work.
CB: But she wasn’t also at Plessey with you?
GB: No.
CB: She was somewhere else.
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: Ok. And she died in 2000, sixteen years ago.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Well, Gerald, thank you very much indeed. That was most interesting and the different things. What would you say, actually there is another question, what would you say was the most memorable thing in your role in the RAF? Something that stands out.
GB: I suppose, really was the invasion of Algiers, really. See the working to get us cracking sort of thing.
CB: Good, thank you. [file missing] So, what we didn’t do, what we didn’t do, Gerald, was to find out your return journey from Africa, where you set off from and where you landed and what happened to you.
GB: I haven’t a clue, really.
US: You told me, I remember talking to [unclear]
GB: Coming home, oh yes.
CB: Yes, coming home, which route did you take and what happened?
GB: We travelled by boat from Algiers to Naples, then we’ve come from Naples all up Italy through Switzerland to France, France to [unclear] coast and we landed at, blimey, here we go again,
CB: Newhaven.
GB: Newhaven, yes.
CB: And what was that experience like?
GB: A bit rough [laughs]
CB: Was it? In what way, did it stop at the start or did it?
GB: No, yes, roughly didn’t stop at all sort of thing [laughs]
CB: How did they look after you, was a troop train with, it wasn’t just RAF, was it?
GB: Different stages
CB: Right
GB: They had stops at different stages but
CB: Was it the same train all the time or did you switch?
GB: As far as I know because they changed engines, I don’t know.
CB: So how many days did that take?
GB: It was a fortnight.
CB: So, where did you sleep?
GB: On the train, of course. We will be going night and day sort of thing.
CB: And what about eating?
GB: We used to stop to eating, there were different places, they got, you know, they’d organised places to stop
CB: So, what did they do, pull the train off the main line, into a siding, so that you could eat, where they had some kind of military kitchen?
GB: I suppose that’s what it was, I can’t remember really, I suppose [unclear] more than we rather than things that were going on really.
US: I wondered on that journey you were going through Europe that had been bombed and was war torn, I just wonder what you saw and whether you were surprised at what you saw because you’d been where you were all the time.
GB: Not really, no.
US. And the train kept going, it wasn’t the trains were bombed or destroyed.
GB: Well, it was a bit dodgy, going over the river Po, I think it was, in Italy, it was a bit shaky there, that was the only thing that I remember, really.
US: Were you looking out on ruins at the cities and things?
GB: Not really, no, no,
US: What about France, did that look intact?
GB: No, no, I can’t remember anything but
CB: A fortnight’s a long time to have on a train, what did you with yourselves all that time? Apart from sitting there. Did you play cards? Did you?
GB: No, I never have played cards
CB: Just talked or slept.
GB: Or, oh yeah.
US: Do you remember what your feeling about England was when you got back? Did it look different or did it feel different at all or?
GB: Oh, it felt lovely coming back, how green it was after been out in North Africa, yeah.
CB: And being a country boy, you particularly appreciated that
GB: Yeah, yeah
CB: So, when you got back, then did you go, you can’t have gone straight to Leicester East, where did you go before you went to Leicester East?
GB: [unclear]
CB: What I’m saying is did they have a reception centre for the whole train?
GB: I’m sorry I really can’t remember.
CB: We’ll stop again there, thank you. [file missing] so, when you got back to Britain, and you had the opportunity to see family, how did you feel having been away for so long?
GB: I don’t know, I suppose I expected, I saw what I expected, nothing different really.
US: Were you, when you got home, were you excited or were you very tired or?
GB: No, I don’t think so, no.
US: And were your family asking you a lot about what you’d seen? No?
GB: No, they weren’t that interested, really, I suppose they’d had all the others come back and they heard it all sort of thing, cause all me three brothers, all were in the forces, they’d all come back alright,
CB: That was good.
GB: Yeah.
CB: And did you compare notes with them?
GB: One didn’t want to know anything about it, that was the one that joined the navy, he [unclear] he was with, he was on the HMS Howe I think it was [unclear] in the Far East, he didn’t think much of that. The other brother that was in the [unclear], he went missing and mom had a letter saying he was missing, he turned up alright and he’d never, I’d never heard him say a word about the army or anything, he never mentioned it, the other, the oldest brother was [unclear] on the army service corps, he was full of it, anywhere he went, you know, he enjoyed it sort of thing, he was [unclear] on of those
US: Was there a celebration that you got home safely?
GB: No, no, I didn’t stop at home that long, really
US: Were you already thinking about what you wanted to do with the rest of your life?
GB: I know I wasn’t go to stop at home, [unclear], no. Trouble is, I’d heard so many things from different chaps, how they’d got on, what sort of jobs they’d had, I thought, I must have some of that [laughs]
CB: And then after the war, how often did you speak about the war to other people?
GB: Not a lot, I don’t have much to say about it anyway.
US: Do you, when you look back at the whole of your life, is that, that chapter, the war years, is that very memorable, is that quite a big part of your experience? No?
GB: I forget that, yeah.
CB: So what was the
GB: I really think it was a waste really
CB: A waste of your [unclear] life?
US: Was it not an important part of your life?
GB: No.
US: [unclear]
CB: What would you say was the worst experience you had, during your military service?
GB: I don’t think I had any, of worst experiences, I was just, [unclear] to muddle through sort of thing.
CB: I was thinking, when you got to, you moved from Algeria along the coast to Tunisia, then found the Germans were actually coming back,
GB: Yeah.
CB: How did you feel about that, did that seem dangerous or did they not get close enough to you to?
GB: I don’t think, they didn’t get, they wouldn’t let [unclear] to us
CB: Because of what you’d got
GB: Because what we’d got
CB: You’ve got this radar, yeah.
GB: Yeah.
US: I’ve got one last question, is did you make friends in the RAF that you kept afterwards? Did you keep up with people?
GB: Not for long really, just for a little while, we got, you know, [unclear] the other sort of thing but it soon fell through, yeah.
CB: A number of people in their initial training found friends for life. You didn’t do that, but did you get a good friend who started with your initial training and then moved on with you during their [unclear] service?
GB: No, no, I met several that had done, I’d done the training with, you know, various times sort of thing
CB: Yeah
GB: Trouble is you never knew when you were moving so you couldn’t make too many friends.
US: Ok. I just wondered whether there was ever a moment for you, perhaps at the start, where you knew you were going off fighting for king and country and that meant something to you and was important to you?
GB: No, I’m afraid not, no. No, as I say, I never was ambitious.
US: Did you agree that the war needed to be fought to stop Hitler?
GB: Oh, well, yes, yes, yes.
US: And you agreed that you needed to be part of that, you needed to join up to be part of that fight?
GB: I was trained up, [unclear] called up, yeah, no, I wouldn’t have volunteered, I don’t think.
US: And were you with a lot of people who felt the same way that you were there because you had to be, not because you believed in it?
GB: Yeah, I think a lot of people, yeah, I think a lot of people missed doing what they liked to do sort of thing didn’t understand of doing what they had to do
US: When it came in your life at the start of what would otherwise have been the beginning of your working life
GB: Yeah
US: It got in the way
GB: Yeah. Well, there wasn’t really, even before the war, there wasn’t much to look forward to in that, you know, in that of the country, so, I suppose, really, I was glad it brought me out of it, yes.
CB: What it did was take you out of Norfolk, put you into another part of the country
GB: Yes.
CB: And you’ve always been happy in this area presumably
GB: Yes, yeah, yes. Yes, I’ve been lucky really, I’ve had four good boys, I had a good wife, can’t ask for much more really
CB: Well, no, I think [unclear], extremely good. Did your wife and you speak about the war at all?
GB: No, not really, no, no, I don’t suppose we ever sat and had a talk about it, no.
US: Do you have any idea what her war was like?
GB: Well, I don’t think she moved around much, no.
US: Did she make good friends with the people she worked with?
GB: Oh yes, yes, she is much more friendly than what I am, [unclear]
US: And did she keep those friends after the war?
GB: Yes, I suppose she did, yeah, much more than what I did, mostly because they were all round here sort of thing and she was round here.
CB: Right.
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 Gerald Walter Bell
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
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
2016-12-21
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
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Sound
Identifier
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ABellGW161221
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:09:10 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Gerald Bell worked on a poultry farm before being called up in the RAF, where he served as ground personnel. He remembers his training at RAF Finningley and RAF Balderton. Tells of his posting to North Africa in 1942, where he initially was working on a mobile radar station. After falling sick and spending a month in hospital, he went back to Algeria, where he was in charge of the sergeant’s mess and had to look after a group of Italian prisoners.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Algeria
Great Britain
North Africa
Tunisia
Algeria--Algiers
England--Dorset
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1945
ground personnel
prisoner of war
radar
RAF Balderton
RAF Finningley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/899/11139/AJacksonDM171130.2.mp3
1afde4d3c12a3c8d0bc1a7b452422441
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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Jackson, Norman
N Jackson
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with David Jackson about his father Norman Jackson VC (1919 - 1994), his service record and two photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Jackson 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
2017-11-30
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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Jackson, N
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: [unclear] [laughs] My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 30th of November 19, 2017 and we are in Kingswood in Surrey talking to David Jackson whose father was Norman Jackson VC and we are going to start off with earliest recollections of father’s life. So, what were the first [unclear] there?
DJ: Oh, good afternoon Chris. My father was born in Ealing in London on the 8th of April 1919. He was born to a single mother who put my father up for adoption. My father was adopted by a Mr and Mrs Gunter who lived in Twickenham. They were a professional family as far as I know. They certainly had a lovely house in Camac Road, Twickenham, they also adopted, just after dad another lad by the name of Geoffrey, Geoffrey Hartley. My father and Geoffrey grew up together, very close as half-brothers, my father was educated in Twickenham at Archdeacon Cambridge School, he stayed there until the age of sixteen where after gaining his school certificate joined an engineering company, he always had an interest in engineering. At the start of the Second World War in September 1939 my father decided that he wanted to volunteer, join the military services so he first he tried to join the Royal Navy but was told they weren’t actually recruiting at that time and so thought he would try the Royal Air Force where he was accepted. He was sent to RAF Halton where he took a further apprenticeship in engineering on airframes etcetera, from there once qualified, he joined 95 Squadron which was Sunderland flying boats, as a fitter he was sent to Africa, North East Africa which was Freetown where he served his time on Sunderland flying boats, he returned in 1942, in summer of ’42 where his intention was to join Bomber Command as a flight engineer, prior to that in 1939 he’d actually met my mother, Alma Lilian, they became engaged in 1940 when my father was then sent to North Africa and my, they didn’t see each other for two years, on my father’s return they organised their wedding which was on Boxing Day in 1942. ’43 my father started his training as an engineer on Bomber Command, joined his first squadron later that summer in ’43 which is 106 Squadron at that time based at Syerston in Lincolnshire soon to be sent to RAF Metheringham where the squadron was then based, flew several missions including ten to Berlin, several incidents during his tour of operations with Bomber Command, got shot up, engines out of action, very heavy landings with Fred Mifflin the pilot who they considered taking off flying actually and retraining because he couldn’t land the Lancaster without bouncing it, one day that led in a crosswind situation where they switched runways on a heavy crosswind and my father, the aircraft crashed with a heavy landing losing his undercarriage, my father suffered a broken leg at that time but even with a broken leg managed to get Fred Mifflin, he was in a bit of a, had a few problems inside the cockpit and managed to drag him out but was patched up and continued flying with a broken leg for further six weeks. Thirty missions were completed because my father actually had volunteered with another crew, his flight engineer wasn’t able to go one night, father stood in, so he reached his thirty missions’ quota before the rest of the crew. On the night of the 27th of April 1944, target designated was Schweinfurt in Germany, father volunteered to go along with the rest of the crew to see them through, this would be his thirty first mission, they took off on time, prior to the take-off my father had received a telegram to say that his first child, my oldest brother Brian had been born, he went along on the mission, they hit a head wind which slowed them up and when they arrived over the target they seemed to be alone but they went ahead, bombed, and by turning out and all of a sudden Sandy Sandelands the wireless operator spoke to Fred Mifflin the pilot over the intercom telling him he had a blip on his fishpond screen, his radar screen, he felt that blip could be a night fighter, they all braced themselves and waited, he then came back, Sandy Sanderson said it’s closer, it’s fast, it’s definitely a night fighter and then before they knew it the aircraft was being racked with cannon fire, my father was thrown to the ground, he was injured at that time with shell splinters, on recovering his position in the cockpit he noticed that the starboard wing had a fire just inside the engine area, he tried to feather the engine which he did, he feathered it, but the fire was still raging out there because it was basically in the wing where the fuel tank was. He decided at that time that he could deal with it, he got the, asked the permission of Fred the pilot, he felt he could deal, so he said, he could actually climb out on the wing with a fire extinguisher with the aid of the crew if he jettison his parachute, Fred Mifflin looked at him incredulously but said, ok, go ahead, so Dad took the cockpit axe which had an ice pick end on it, he took a fire extinguisher from inside the cockpit which he placed inside his tunic, his flying tunic, the bomb aimer and the navigator stood by as Dad climbed onto the navigator’s table and jettisoned the hatch above there which is just behind the pilot’s seat, he then deployed his parachute so that navigator and bomb aimer could hold onto the rigging lines, whilst had sorted the lines out Dad then climbed through the hatch and into the two hundred mile and hour slipstream, it was icy cold, he said he always remembered how cold it was, he inched his way out keeping close to the fuselage, trying not to have the slipstream affect him any more than it would, he used the ice pick on the axe to fire into the side of the fuselage to give him some purchase and then pulled himself down towards the wing root which was below him and toward the aerial intake at the front of the wing where he managed to get his left hand in to hold on, he then removed the fire extinguisher from his flying jacket and started dealing with, knocked the end of the fire extinguisher off on the front of the wing, the extinguisher started and he started to deal with the fire, he felt he was doing ok and the fire started to die down, at that point the wing lifted below him and the aircraft started to bank to the left. He was then, he then realised that the fighter must have found them again, the fighter came in, racked the aircraft again with machine gun and cannon fire, my father was hit several times with shell splinter and bullets, the wing blew up around him, engulfing him in flames, the slipstream from the aircraft as it slipped to the port side and down, lifted my father off the wing and he was thrown backwards, he came to an abrupt halt just behind the rear of the aircraft because he was still attached to the cockpit via his rigging lines and parachute, as he was being dragged down through the air, those inside the cockpit thought Dad had been killed but thought they’d get the parachute out anyway, they scrambled as best they could to get the shoot out as it been ripped, as it went through the hatch above the navigators table, it also suffered damage through the fire, my father then left the aircraft as the parachute went out through the hatch, he descended to ground quite rapidly, hit the ground very, very heavily, smashed both ankles, he laid there in a pitiful state, ankles smashed, his hands and face were severely burned, his right eye was completely closed, he also had several shell and shrapnel wounds in his body, he lay there until first light, he then crawled on elbows and knees through the forest and came across a small cottage, he approached the cottage and with his elbow knocked on the door, a window opened above him and a male voice shouted, was ist da? My father said, RAF. The voice from the window upstairs once again said, was ist da? My father cleared his voice as best he could and said in a louder voice, RAF. The voice from above shouted, Terror Flieger! Churchill gangster! And the window closed. Dad then heard the window opening and expected to be kicked and punched but there were a couple of girls inside, who took father in and laid him on a settee and started attending to him, their father, who was the person in the window upstairs, disappeared through the door, he returned a little while later with a policeman and a chap who Dad thought must have been Gestapo was in plain clothes, they then took Dad off of the settee and my father, supported by the policeman was made to march to the local police station. A the police station he was placed into a [unclear], he was in wheels through the streets to the local hospital, en route he suffered verbal abuse and even some stones but he always said he understood this, at the hospital he was treated very well, he stayed in the hospital for several months, he was then transferred to a prisoner of war camp where he served out his time, he escaped once, he tried to, was recaptured, at the end of the war he was repatriated along with the other, the rest, the surviving members of the crew. The surviving members of the crew told my father’s story, my father got a call from a WAAF officer he said who asked if that was warrant officer Norman Cyril Jackson, he said, yes, it was, and she said, I’m just calling you to let you know you’ve been awarded the Victoria Cross. My father’s words were, what the bloody hell for?
CB: We’ll pause there for a moment. That’s. Now in terms of picking up a bit more of detail on this, they got hit and hit badly twice by the fighter or fighters but in general in the dark you can’t see anything that’s going on but you can be seen so what did he feel about flying in these sorties?
DJ: My father, I can remember my father saying that on every single mission they flew which was obviously at night, very dark unless you had a full moon which sometimes light you up, you were, they used to have the four Merlin engines on the Lancaster, and what was a concern to them all the time was the exhaust of the Merlin engine which had basically bright flames coming out of it and that always made the Lancaster visible, they felt from inside the cockpit to anything that was out there but they also had pleasure in seeing that coming out because they knew the engines were still running, so it was basically almost a double edged sword, one you needed to see the exhaust as Dad said to make sure they are all running properly but the other you knew you were a possible target to anyone that was out there that you couldn’t see but they could see you.
CB: And in his training going back a bit he was originally trained as a ground engineer
DJ: Correct, yes.
CB: At what stage and how did he do it, did he get into flying? [unclear]
DJ: This would have happened in Africa, in Freetown when he was with 95 Squadron the Sunderland flying boats, he decided out there that he actually wanted to be part of the aircrew and as a qualified engineer he would be useful to Bomber Command and he knew the new four engine bombers were coming onto stream with the Lancaster and felt that was a position for him and so suitably applied and was accepted
CB: So what do you know about the training he had to do in preparation for getting into the, into Bomber Command?
DJ: Well, I’m reading now, this is the Air VCs Chaz Bowyer, book called For Valour, now, this actually says that my father enlisted in the 20th of October 1939 after various training courses at Halton and Hednesford he became classified as a fitter 11E engines, a group one tradesman posted overseas, his first unit was 95 Squadron to which he reported on the 2nd of January 1941, a Short Sunderland flying boat squadron based on the West African coast near Freetown following, for the following eighteen months Jackson continued to serve as a engine fitter on flying boats Marine Craft but the opportunity to remuster to flying duties as a flight engineer attracted him and he accordingly applied for training, as a result he returned to England in September 1942 and after six months at 27 OTU, Operational Training Unit moved to RAF St Athan at the end of March 1943 to complete instruction. Finally, with promotion to sergeant he was mustered, or remustered, I apologize, as a flight engineer on the 14th of June and posted to number 1645 Heavy Conversion Unit on the 28th of July he joined his first squadron 106 based at Syerston and flying Avro Lancasters.
CB: Right, that sets the scene very well. Did he talk about what the training was like?
DJ: No,
CB: And
DJ: Only, the only thing Dad ever used to mention about training was that the RAF lost more aircrew training than they did on missions themselves, on sorties, he said the loss rate on training was quite high, that’s what I can remember him saying about training
CB: Certainly, there was quite a loss. So, with his training he didn’t start flying until he got to the operational training unit is what you’re saying, yeah, because he’s been on the ground before.
DJ: Well, again I’m reading from Chaz Bowyer’s book here, which has quite a lot of detail, so from September 1942, I think that’s when he started, he applied and after six months at 27 Operational Training Unit moved to RAF St Athan and that was the end of March when he, he may have started his flying training then, whether there was any prior to that at the 27 Operational Training Unit I don’t know.
CB: Ok.
DJ: I don’t know, I think Dad did actually, I can remember Dad talking about RAF Elstos which was a small twine engined aeroplane he used to fly, so at that point being
CB: Ansons,
DJ: Ansons, sorry, the Anson, my apology,
CB: Yes, yeah
DJ: The Anson aircraft, so he did some time on that
CB: Right
DJ: Now I presume that was not at the operational, that may have been at the Operational Training Unit rather than the Heavy Conversion Unit, so I suspected he started before that
CB: The Heavy Conversion Unit would have been the four engine
DJ: The four engine, absolutely, yeah
CB: One way or another. Ok, good, and because he talked to you about a number of things, what did he say about when he got to flying, how he felt about flying?
DJ: He didn’t actually like it that much, I mean, bear in mind, Dad never used to speak, talk about it really at all, it used to be people asking him questions and we as children would be there and I asked, you know, in my father’s later life used to talk Dad about it but he was not very happy with talking about the war, he felt everybody should move on. What was the question, sorry?
CB: The question was how he felt about flying.
DJ: Flying itself he never really enjoyed it, it was just something that had to be done and even though my father wasn’t a particularly religious man, he always said that nobody prayed harder than him before a mission, cause he knew what to expect.
CB: That’s an interesting point because people did different actions before going on a mission, on operation, what did he do? Did he have a mascot, or did he do something before getting in the [unclear]?
DJ: Father never had a mascot as far as I know, he just looked at it as a job that needed to be done and
CB: Did he go through a ritual before getting in the aircraft, do you know?
DJ: No, not that I know of, no.
CB: No.
DJ: He certainly would have spoken of it.
CB: And we are talking about here when he got to the Heavy Conversion Unit it’s now a bomber crew of seven, how did that crew get gelled together?
DJ: As far as I know, once they’d actually formed up as a crew they gelled very well, they, my father always said that they were like a band of brothers, they were very close and that probably, well, I’m sure that would have been the reason why my father decided to fly on the final mission to see them through, their thirtieth, my father’s thirty first, they were very close, socialised together
CB: You talked about him being badly injured when he landed, cause he landed in a different position after he left the aircraft
DJ: Yes
CB: Yeah
DJ: To the rest of the crew
CB: They got out later presumably
DJ: Yes
CB: Were they all in the same prison camp or different ones?
DJ: No, I think that I’m not absolutely sure of, I don’t know, they may have been in the same prison camp [unclear] record and I did not at some stage which Stalag Luft my father was in but I can’t recall it at the moment
CB: Yeah. But did they get together after the war?
DJ: I don’t know much about that actually, I do know that I met two, as a young lad, schoolboy, I met the wireless operator Sandy Sandelands who came to our house in Hampton Hill, Middlesex. I also met the navigator, Frank Higgins, I met him as well, he used to tell about, I can remember them saying that my father citation was always wrong but, you know, they said they just didn’t listen to us because you know, because my father certaition states that on leaving the aircraft my father slipped and then ended up on the wing involved in the fire, well, if you climb out on top of the fuselage on an aircraft travelling at two hundred miles an hour and you’d slip, you don’t go down, you go backwards and this is what they used to say to me and they said, we were looking at your father on the wing and thinking we didn’t actually want him to go out there, we’d all rather just bailed out and that was it, but certainly when the fighter attacked the second time they thought that was it, he shouldn’t have gone out there cause he had now gone, that’s what they thought but those are the two that I’ve met and the only other person I can really remember, which I’d met later many times was Leonard Cheshire at various functions at Buckingham Palace or [unclear] for the Victoria Cross holders
CB: Yes
DJ: But they are the two members of the crew that I have met
CB: And on that topic Leonard Cheshire and your father received the Victoria Cross on the same day, so what happened there?
DJ: The, it was October 1945, as I say, following my father getting that phone call from a female officer in the Royal Air Force informing him he was to be awarded the Victoria Cross, the investiture took place on October 1945, on that day which my mother and father attended was Leonard Cheshire as well, officer commanding 617 Squadron at that time, he was to be awarded the Victoria Cross as well at the investiture in front of the king they were informed about the protocol of the event, the Victoria Cross would always be called first, amongst, cause there were other people there receiving other awards, the Victoria Cross, the people to be invested with the Victoria Cross would be called first, Leonard Cheshire as a group captain, as I believe his rank was at that time, would be called up first, Leonard Cheshire stopped speaking to me at that time, he said, absolutely not, I cannot go first, Norman Jackson in Leonard’s words stuck out his neck much more than I ever did, he should get the Victoria Cross first, I feel humble by being in the presence of this man which is what Lenny told me many times every time I saw him but he, Leonard Cheshire was told that because of the protocol of the day that couldn’t happen and the king would receive him first followed by my father so that’s what happened on that day, Leonard Cheshire went first followed by my father who received the Victoria Cross
CB: And how did they continue their association after the war, was it to do with the?
DJ: I think that after the war of course, the war in Europe had finished, it hadn’t finished in the Far East, my father was being crewed up to continue flying in the Far East but then obviously with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war in the Far East ended and that was that but on the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki the RAF observer was Leonard Cheshire and it had such an effect on him psychologically that he then went into an infirmary to for, I’m not sure how long it was for but he disappeared really from public life at that time, so my father never saw him until probably in the 1950s at various Royal Air Force functions where the Victoria Cross holders would be invited and I think that’s when Leonard started to see my father again but there was no real friendship between them, it was just really the only association was that they’d both been awarded the Victoria Cross, my father did know of Leonard Cheshire prior to the investiture of Buckingham Palace because of his work with 617 Squadron as most people in the Royal Air Force would had done. He was a great man but never really continued to associate afterwards other than at functions, Royal Air Force functions or Victoria Cross and George Cross holders functions, that was it. Which is where I met Leonard quite a number of times.
CB: You talked about your father crewing up for the Far East, that was called Tiger Force after what squadron was he supposed to be going to
DJ: Ok, I don’t know Chris, it was just that me Dad said he was, cause I asked that question did he see Leonard afterwards,
CB: Yes, indeed.
DJ: But that was October 1945 and it was really at the end
CB: Sure
DJ: So prior to that Dad was, you know, he came back, he was still in the Royal Air Force, he was still in the Royal Air Force until ‘46
CB: We’ll get that from his service record, but what did he or how long did he stay in the RAF your father?
DJ: From ’39, I mean, I’ve already showed you the photographs
CB: Of his demob.
DJ: Which is 1946 with Roy Chadwick at the presentation of the silver Lancaster bomber to my father and my father’s in uniform there so I’m presuming he was still in the Royal Air Force at that time, awaiting demobilisation I presume, yeah, so, the exact date I don’t know.
CB: They tended to, as I understand it, they tended to demobilise the people who’d been in longest earliest.
DJ: Well, my father joined in ’39 so he would have been long so but what date he got his demob I don’t know.
CB: Right.
DJ: Other than certainly in that photograph dated in, which, March wasn’t it? 1946 with Roy Chadwick my father still in uniform there, so.
CB: Can we just go fast backwards now, your father is on the aircraft, he is hit by cannon fire on the second attack by a fighter and he falls with his parachute in fire is what you were saying. He was badly burned
DJ: I don’t know if it was on fire or just smouldering, yeah, the rigging lines would have been dragging back
CB: But, he was dropping with that
DJ: At an alarming rate
CB: At an alarming rate and but he is burnt
DJ: Yes, very badly
CB: So, what do you know about how the German doctors dealt with his injuries?
DJ: Well, my father always said that they treated him very, very well, there is a report that I found out about twelve years ago, fourteen years ago by Spink’s in London doing some fact finding on my father, the hospital records are still there in Germany and when dealing with my father’s wounds, they actually ran out of saline and had to send out for more, that’s what they told me from the records they saw cause his wounds were so severe, so, that’s what I know, I mean, he said they treated him very well, very, very well
CB: So how long, remind me, how long was he in hospital?
DJ: The exact time I don’t know I believe, according to again if I may refer to Chaz Bowyer’s book For Valour The Air VCs, it states in here and I presume that some research was done for this, that my father was actually, if I can find the paragraph, at daybreak, my father is in a pitiful condition [unclear] he’s in German for the next ten months, Jackson [unclear] recuperated in a German hospital, though his burned hands never fully recovered so according to Chaz Bowyer ten months which would have put him from April through to early ‘45 where he was then sent to the prisoner of war camp
CB: And his wounds of course never fully recovered
DJ: The [unclear]
CB: [unclear] but what was the state of his hands later?
DJ: My father’s hands were noticeable that there was something different about them, my father had a really, if you looked at my father’s arms, they stopped obviously at the wrist, in he had a ring around each wrist and then the colour changed, my father’s hands were almost translucent where all the skin and flesh had been burnt through and then healed over the years. It never really bothered him as far as enabling him to do whatever he wanted to do, so there was no lasting effect from it other than the look of them really. He never suffered any lasting effects from those burns they healed and that was it but my father’s hands reached a stage where they wouldn’t heal any more so they looked like they looked on my father’s body which when we used to if we went to the beach or whatever my father had a pair of shorts on it was quite obvious with the number of scars on my father’s back and on the back of his legs that some sort of injuries had been sustained during his war years, certainly is quite a few scars there and as far as I believe there were seventeen different [unclear] hospital records from shell and shrapnel in my father’s body, some of those would have been incurred first attack and the rest on the second attack when he was on the way
CB: From your recollection what did they look like? Were some of them [unclear], were some them long and [unclear]?
DJ: Yeah, they were white and diamond shaped, I remember there were a couple that were sort of maybe half an inch long, straight, there were some that were diamond shaped and some that were round with almost an indentation to them so the skin had almost, was concave in my father’s back
CB: Was it a subject to conversation between
DJ: Never had, Dad never, all Dad used to say was, well, I’ve still got some shrapnel in my head, he used to feel round the back, [unclear] you could feel it there and used to feel the back of Dad’s head you could feel something sharp inside the skin so that’s the only thing he used to say when you tried to say, Dad, all those scars on your back but he wasn’t, he never used to speak about it much at all, it was, we learned about it from people coming to the house all the time, people would want interviews with Dad, the newspapers etcetera etcetera radio stations and so we learned about it from there it wasn’t something that Dad actually really spoke about but as we got older we spoke to Dad about it and
CB: And how did he feel about being questioned
DJ: Didn’t like it,
CB: By his family?
DJ: Oh, by his family? Well, he never really used to, Dad loved his family, he would never really be angry with us, he would talk but he never really opened up completely, he was just saying that that was then it was a very bad time, didn’t enjoy it very much, glad to move on and my father, we used to, I used to go to school with my father’s medals, they never meant much to Dad at all, he would let us take them to school in our pocket and of course teachers would want to see them and other people want to see them, he would go to Royal Air Force functions at various places, he would never ever put his medals on until he was inside the building and he would take them off before he left the building, he wouldn’t put them on because he felt that it wasn’t fair on all the other aircrew who were walking around who had their medals on, he felt it was almost ill deserved. I can remember one incident where my father had a function to go to and normally his medals would be in his desk drawer where he’d throw them he put them in there and just leave the drawer and that was it and he couldn’t find his medals anywhere and we were hunting, the whole family were hunting and we couldn’t find the medals anywhere and then obviously you start to backtrack the last time you had them, you know, he was at this function a few months before and what suit were you wearing and to that suit but the suit had been to the drycleaners in which was the [unclear] dry cleaners I can remember that in Twickenham and suddenly we thought maybe they were in Dad’s pocket when they went to the drycleaners so we phoned up the drycleaners and he said, yeah, we got a set of medals here, they were in some suit somewhere and we put them in the drawer and it was my father’s medals including the Victoria Cross that had just thrown in the drawer at the dry cleaners [laughs] so Dad managed to recover them ready for the next function. But he never really gave them any thought, he just put them in the pocket and that was it, that’s what Dad was like.
CB: Right, we’ll just stop for a minute. Going back to the medical issues and the hospital experience, in Britain McIndoe was the man who was best known for his plastic surgery but there other people doing it, what did Dad think about the work done by the doctor’s there? Were the plastic surgeons identified in any way or?
DJ: No, no one in particular, he said that he was very, very well looked after, he did speak about a Canadian doctor who would work in the hospital there which always seemed a bit odd to me that you would have a Canadian doctor working in a German hospital but whether that was, he was brought in for a particular reason or not, I don’t know, Dad never really spoke about it more than that other than say he was very, very well looked after, he was in a pretty pitiful state, he must have been but obviously a very strong will and managed to recover
CB: Any idea of the number of operations they had to perform on him?
DJ: No, no, none whatsoever, I don’t know [unclear]
CB: The hospital itself where do you think that was?
DJ: I would say, well the target that night was Schweinfurt which it I believe quite deep in Germany so I presume that as they were shot down over the target or just after the target, bombing the target it must have been within that vicinity, as much as, that would be a guess obviously.
CB: When you said that Spink’s did an awful lot of research on it
DJ: At the auction of my father’s medals which was done by Spink’s in London in 2004 following the loss of my mother and the subsequent dealing with the estate which included my father’s decorations, they did quite a lot of research and supplied me with quite a lot of information including all of my father’s mission records which I have and gave me the information about the hospital that they must have got, whether they got that from the hospital themselves or from somewhere else I don’t know, they gave me the information about the hospital running out of saline and so but the Canadian doctor bit my father, I can remember my father talking about that and [unclear]
CB: [unclear]
DJ: I presume so, yes, yeah, however they used to treat them in those days.
CB: A bit largely experimental I imagine.
DJ: I [unclear], I mean, I do sometimes think my father must have been in so much pain because if you have very deep burns and they are exposed to the air is very painful. And at the time my father hit the ground, his gloves must have been completely burnt off, completely burnt through so he must have been exposed to the air, but maybe with his smashed ankles, only being able to walk on elbows and knees, badly burnt face as well, one eye closed, there was so much pain elsewhere that it sort of numbed the effect of the hands, I don’t know. And it was pretty cold as well if I understand it was April or so I think it must have been pretty cold out there so that may have helped as well, the cold temperature.
CB: So, he was clearly damaged shall we say in various ways, what happened to his eye? Did that recover or what was wrong with it?
DJ: Yeah, I think he just got a bad bash on it or something, I don’t think there was any shrapnel damage to it at all, he, it was just happened in the incident probably when he left the aircraft he hit something and bashed his eye, I presume, I don’t know, Dad never spoke about it but his right eye was completely closed, I mean, Chaz Bowyer mentions that in the book here when he hit the ground so I think that would have just healed and opened up as normal
CB: These sorts of injuries can stay with people for the rest of their lives and you talked about the fact that his head had some shrapnel in it
DJ: Yes
CB: What about his health of in later years? Was his experience in the war in any way a disadvantage to him from a health point of view later?
DJ: No, I don’t believe, if it was I don’t think my father would have said so and he was a man that, he didn’t really speak about the war, he never actually said the war had any effect on him at all, physically or mentally, it was a time when they just did their duty, he spoke a lot about the other aircrew, how wonderful they were, and with the fact that there was no memorial to these guys, that bothered my father a lot over the years, a lot and but as far as the war affecting him, no, he never ever said that it damaged him in any way, in fact I think he felt himself quite lucky that he survived and went on to have seven children, extremely lucky, he often said that he should have died at the age of twenty five [unclear] man
CB: Where do you come in the ranking of children?
DJ: I am number five, born in 1953, so, four were born between ’44, which is my brother, my eldest brother Brian was born on the night my father was shot down and then we have Pauline, Brenda, Peter and then myself and I was followed by Ian and Shirley Anne a bit later.
CB: When were they born?
DJ: Ian was born 1955 and Shirley was, came along a little bit later in 1961 so there is a bit of a gap there.
CB: So, what sort of house did you have to accommodate all these members?
DJ: Yeah, a big one [laughs], My father had a, he built it himself actually with another chap, he bought some land in Hampton Hill, Burtons Road, Hampton Hill in Middlesex off of a chap had a big house in Uxbridge Road he came down to Burtons Road, so he bought this large, large piece of land and on there he built a bungalow, a four bedroom bungalow which had quite a large front, [unclear] it was a very large bungalow and that’s where we all were brought up
CB: Had bunk beds, did you?
DJ: Yes, yeah, I mean, when we were younger certainly and we were all seven at home, yeah
CB: Was there quite a well regimented system operating for use of the bathroom?
DJ: Probably, I don’t remember it being any problem, I know that we used to have a separate shower in the bathroom so we used to have showers all the time, bath night was generally on a Sunday or something where three or four of us boys used to get in together, I can remember that, certainly three of us, the younger ones used to get in together, the girls used to get in together, it was no issue at all, I mean, I was amazed that my mother who cooked three meals a day for us all, breakfast, lunch and dinner, would come up with so much variety for us all, I can always remember thinking where, my mother must be wonderful to come up with all these different choices all the time but it’s obviously I mean the house was full all the time, there was always things going on so we shared you had three of us in one bedroom when we were growing up, three of the boys, my oldest brother Brian had his own room, you had two girls with another bedroom and then when Shirley came along, a bit later, Pauline was getting married and so leaving the house and so Shirley could take her place [unclear] in the bedroom, Brian at that time had already gone, he’d been married and moved on so, it sort of, it worked out well at the end
CB: What was your father’s occupation after the war?
DJ: My father joined JBR Brandy as a salesman, that’s what he wanted to do, travel, he wanted to travel, he couldn’t settle down any more and his hands were such that he couldn’t go back really to engineering as such, he joined JBR Brandy, he was then with them for a while and then he was headhunted I suppose you could say by the distillers company [unclear] John Hague who wanted him to join them as their troubleshooting travelling salesman so to speak whereas they had accounts that needed building up they would send in, were sending in Norman Jackson VC and that carried some weight in those days. And suddenly people would sit up and listen and that’s what they used, you know, they, he was quite well thought of in the company for doing that, so, that’s what he did, he worked for John Hague was he, for many years. Up until retirement and he retired at the age of fifty-three.
CB: Oh, did he? What made him retire so soon?
DJ: My mother has suffered some mental health, she had suffered a stroke at that time but recovered from it but subsequently had a stroke later in life that put her into a wheelchair unfortunately but that was in, my mother was then sixty and lived to the age of eighty two with that
CB: [unclear]
DJ: Yeah, never complained about it, just got on with it
CB: This was the quality of scotch, was it?
DJ: Probably was, my mother never drunk [laughs], she would have a gin at Christmas with a tonic and that was it
CB: It was just the fumes from the open bottle
DJ: Yeah, maybe, my father used to, he’d drink, I think in those days it must have been different because every meeting my father used to have they’d drink whisky, they would go to a meeting and they’d have whisky, and then they’d drive home afterwards you know and my father used to come home, he’s been stopped by the police before in the old days driving home or he’d drive home with one eye closed looking at the centre line in the road because you know he’d been working and have a few whiskeys and the police would stop him and it would be local police and they’d realised who it was and they’d just take him home, knock on the door with Dad, one of them driving Dad’s car and the other one in the police car with Dad in the police car and say, oh, we have Norman Jackson here and delivering him to our house [laughs]. Happened on a few occasions.
CB: And what age was he when he died?
DJ: My father would have been, it was one month to the day before his seventy-fifth birthday, I’m sorry, one month to the day before they day he got shot down, my apologies, he died on March the 27th which was four weeks prior to the day when he took off, which was April 27 1944 so it was a couple of weeks before his 75th birthday.
CB: Now we touched earlier on the delicate question really of what happened to his medals, so
DJ: Yeah, not that delicate at all
CB: Ok, so, mother died,
DJ: Yeah
CB: Your mother died
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Was that someway the prompt on of dealing with the medical, medals,
DJ: Yes
CB: What happened exactly?
DJ: What happened was we contacted the RAF Museum in Hendon which we felt would’ve been where my father would’ve wanted them to go to, so we contacted the museum, not Douglas actually, we weren’t dealing with Douglas at that time, Douglas Radcliffe at Bomber Command, we were dealing with the curator of the museum and we said that we’d like my father’s medals to go there and he was very happy to receive them and letters were flying backwards and forwards between him and then suddenly my mother’s lawyer, I was an executive of my mother’s will as was my sister Shirley, the lawyer contacted us and said according to your mother’s will there is no stipulation about your father’s medals other than, as this is written in, to be kept within the family or if not part of the estate, he said, this is where we have an issue, you cannot keep a single item within a family, it has to be considered as part of the estate, this is what he said, so he said, well, if we all agree to donate it, he said, well, the problem with that in law there is no precedent for that, you, I can only tell you what the law is, he said, now, if you all agree we can possibly do something. My oldest brother Brian who at that time, at that time felt that they shouldn’t be donated to the museum, that was where the issue was, the lawyer acting for my mother then said, well, they have to be considered as part of the estate, so we said, well, what does that mean? He said, well, they have to be sold, he said, and if they have to be sold you can sell them on a private auction where nobody knows about it but the problem with that is legally if the maximum amount of money isn’t realised for any asset of the estate, the executives of that will can be held responsible, this is he’s just saying what the law is, he says, my advice to you would be to go to a public auction, I said, we don’t really want to do that but that was the road we went down so we contacted, well he did, Spink’s, the only reason we knew about Spink’s because that’s where my mother, my father’s medals used to go for maintenance and that sort of thing and they used to do the you know dressing of them and [unclear], so he contacted Spink’s who then contacted us and we had to go and see them and have this, you know, this meeting and everything else and then we had the auction, the media found out about it as we knew they would but a lot more, there was a lot more interest than we really anticipated and including us on the BBC news asked me to do a bit for them and they interviewed me at the RAF museum there talking about it, my wishes which just they would go to the museum for ten pounds or something you know and we donate that to charity or whatever, to which the lawyer said [unclear] you can’t do that, anyway there we are, day of the auction, all of the family really buried their head in the sand, they didn’t want to know, I was driving along the motorway somewhere listening to the radio and the news came on and it came on that the Victoria Cross awarded to airman Norman Cyril Jackson had sold, had made a world record of two hundred and thirty six thousand pounds at Spink’s in London, I felt, it was an awful feeling, it really was and then I got a call from various newspapers asking which I there felt, thought was quite personal actually, what are you gonna do with the money? And I just said, I don’t want the money, don’t want anything to do with it, don’t want to touch it, and then the guy from the Telegraph phoned and I spoke to him and he said, you sound quite angry, I said, well, only the fact that this didn’t need to happen in my view and he said, well, what do you feel about it? And then the next day he printed what I was saying that it bothered me that this, it had been sold amongst much acrimony and this sort of things and [coughs] it was not an easy time, the money itself was, sat at Spink’s for a while [coughs], they then forded it on to any lawyers dealing with the estate and it sat there until we were told that it had to be divided up amongst the people who were named within the will, which were the family, I personally refused to have any of it, with prior to that, Penny and I had lost our daughter unfortunately at a young age and we decided that what we’d like to do was have a bronze plaque made because the Victoria Cross is bronze from a cannon that was captured during the Crimean War, a Russian cannon, even though, you know, I think since they decided maybe it was a Chinese cannon that was captured by the Russians which was then captured by the British but we thought it’s bronze so we’d like to have a plaque made in bronze for Lilly our daughter so we got a quota back then of a thousand pounds and we took a thousand pounds of that money to make the plaque and the rest left with the rest of the family who wanted to take it and so that’s what happened to the proceeds of the sale of my father’s medals. At the time I was a bit angry because I felt they should be in a museum in the public domain, following the sale it became known that Lord Ashcroft had purchased my father’s Victoria Cross and he actually wrote it was one of his favourites which I thought was quite nice but I was still angry because I felt it should be in a public domain, I was told at that time by Didy Grahame who was at the or ran really the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association at the Home Office that don’t be too bothered because eventually they will end up in the public domain, Lord Ashcroft has stated that to me, that’s what Didy said and now of course Lord Ashcroft has been involved in the creation of the Victoria Cross room at the Imperial War Museum in London which is where my father’s medals were on show with the story so that is wonderful and I give my full thanks to Lord Ashcroft for that, it’s wonderful, it’s all ended up, you know, ok in the end and they are where they should be in the public domain and with my father’s story which is good
CB: And how did the rest of your siblings feel about
DJ: Awful, even to this day, really Brian was held responsible in some ways for what happened and that was tough for the family to take really because of dealing with the media and in some way trying to keep from the media without lying about what was happening and the reasons for it, what would’ve been nice if the lawyers just said, ok, a majority decision here, that’s what’s gonna happen but Brian felt that they shouldn’t be going to the museum, he’s entitled to his opinion but it did affect family, the family bond for many years to come, it did
CB: It sounds as though you found yourself in the front line of this but what about Shirley who was the other executive, why did she
DJ: Shirley to this day doesn’t forgive at all, not at all, Shirley, I do, I live and let live, I move on, Shirley is a different [unclear] [laughs], she hasn’t really forgiven so you’re welcome to go and interview her if you like [laughs], Shirley no, nor my sister Pauline neither my sister or Brenda really, they [unclear] forgiven, tough one
CB: Yeah
DJ: But that, you know, there we are. Brian had his reasons and he was entitled to them, you know, not everybody thinks the same and I think if you have seven children you are bound to have some disagreements, somewhere down the line
CB: You don’t need seven to get disagreements
DJ: No, two [laughs] or one.
CB: We’ll just stop there.
DJ: To be sold, part, consider part of the estate or sold, that was it,
CB: Those were the options
DJ: That was the options, they were part of the estate which meant they were to be sold as the rest of the estate would be
CB: Right
DJ: Or kept within the family and you cannot as my sister was saying at the time, you cannot keep one item between seven, you can’t cut it up and have a seventh each, you could all agree to give it to one person or to donate it or something, but you need full agreement and if there is one person that disagrees it’s part of the estate, that’s it, now you can have one person disagree for whatever reason, whether you want to see it sold, whether you just don’t want the museum to have it, if there is a disagreement and not, it’s not completely agreed by all seven children, it’s part of the estate, that’s how my mother’s will had been put together by her solicitor which was wrong really cause Mom would have been a lot better off, cause Mom always used to say I would rather Dad’s, my father’s medals, Dad’s medals went to David, that’s what she always wanted because she knew I would do the right thing and but that was never in my mother’s will, other members of the family knew that and kept quoting her but the solicitor said, [unclear] black on white
CB: Legally.
DJ: No.
CB: No.
DJ: This, my mother’s will was done many years ago, been forgotten about really so there it was in black on white and that was it, it just [unclear] one person to disagree for whatever reason and it was part of the estate
CB: Now Brian was the eldest?
DJ: Yes, he was, yeah
CB: And he is not with us any longer
DJ: No, oh you? that’s right, yeah, we lost him this year.
CB: Oh, this year
DJ: Yeah
CB: Right. So, how did the family, the survivors as it were, all six of you feel about it then being on display in the Imperial War Museum?
DJ: Happy.
CB: In that room?
DJ: Very happy. Very, very happy in doing it.
CB: So, does that in a way create a closure?
DJ: Yes
CB: In the family?
DJ: Absolutely, it does. They really should be in the public domain, doesn’t matter where but they’re in the public domain
CB: Yeah
DJ: That’s it. They’re still the property of Lord Ashcroft
CB: Yeah
DJ: As they should, I mean, but, you know, there we are, that’s it but they’re in the public domain which is a good thing
CB: It created, as you said earlier, a good deal of media attention and the sale price was two hundred and thirty-six thousand
DJ: Yeah
CB: What was the expected price at auction?
DJ: One forty, I think
CB: Right
DJ: From memory, I think they were saying it should reach about one hundred and forty thousand, which when you divide it by seven is nothing, twenty thousand or something like [unclear] saying at the time is just ridiculous, going through all this for twenty thousand pounds,
CB: Yes.
DJ: Which I, was a lot of money then I suppose but to me in my head it didn’t matter if it was two hundred thousand it still would’ve been a no
CB: Going back to that extraordinary experience in the Lancaster, what process do you understand went on between the crew members with your father deciding or convincing them that he should get out?
DJ: It wasn’t a, I don’t think, as I understand it he didn’t need to convince them, he was the most experienced member of the crew anyway, it was his job as far as he saw to see that Lancaster return and the crew as well, he asked the permission of the pilot Fred Mifflin who was obviously the skipper of the aircraft, he told him he could deal with it and I think the bond between them all, Fred never questioned it, it was an incredulous thing to try and do but he never questioned it and so he just let him get on with it, that was it, deal with it
CB: When he went into the prison camp, then there were lots of people there obviously, do you, what understanding do you have of how he got on when he was in the prison camp, prisoner of war camp?
DJ: The only thing I really about, Didy Grahame at the Victoria Cross and George’s Cross Association always says my father went through hell as she said in the prisoner of war camp, how she knows that I don’t know, I know very little about my father’s time in the prisoner of war camp other than he used to talk about they were very hungry all the time. He also spoke about in the prisoner of war camp was a chap who they called Little Bader who had lost both legs, he was an airman, lost both legs and they were forced to march, I don’t think this was what’s known as the long march or whatever, they were forced to leave that prisoner of war camp and march to somewhere else towards the end of the war and my father carried that chap, the legless Little Bader as they called him, the distance from that out the prisoner of war camp they [unclear] to the next one which I thought was a pretty incredible thing when, you know, you had hands that had been burnt through, broken ankles and God knows what else, [unclear] he’d healed but you couldn’t have been that good, because you hadn’t been, nutrition was probably non-existent almost and you’d carried him and the chap that Dad had carried actually wrote an article about this because he then found out about Dad’s award after the war and wrote an article saying this was the chap that carried me from the prisoner of war camp to the next prisoner of war camp, which I think was basically to get away from the advancing Allies to move further deeper into Germany and that’s what, that’s my only recollection of anything to do with my father’s time in the prisoner of war camp
CB: Do you know what his name was?
DJ: I did
CB: Ok [unclear]
DJ: I think, you can look it up, I did know it, it’s recorded, this chap, Little Bader, he’s quite well known I think
CB: Ok.
DJ: I think he was a rear gunner, I think he’d lost both legs
CB: We are talking still about the prison camp, he would have been in hospital as you said earlier all that time
DJ: Ten months according to Chaz Bowyer, yeah
CB: Ten months. And the effect of the surgery and the convalescence will still be in the system as it were when he gets to the prisoner of war camp, what do you know about the medical facilities, of the medical [unclear]?
DJ: I know nothing about, if it was [unclear] I don’t know
CB: No
DJ: I know very little if anything about the conditions within the prisoner of war camp, I know my father said they were always hungry, I know he said he never ever, he had to wait until he got back to England before he had a pillow, so he used to sleep with his arm underneath the back of his head, that’s how they had to sleep, they had no pillow or anything, very hungry all the time, as far as medical conditions, facilities were concerned I don’t know, I would have thought they were pretty basic if at all, whether they had a camp doctor I don’t know, I don’t know, I’d have to check on that
CB: Ok. We’ll stop on that.
DJ: Did prisoner of war camps have doctors?
CB: Probably. German.
DJ: They would of course
CB: If they captured people, they would [unclear].
DJ: Right.
CB: Spoke earlier about the Canadian doctor in the hospital, what do you know other than that?
DJ: I’m not sure if it was a hospital, my father spoke about a Canadian doctor, now, whether that was someone who worked in the hospital in Germany with the Germans or subsequently was a captured doctor in the prisoner of war camp I don’t know, probably the latter would have been the case, I can’t imagine the Germans sort of bringing in a Canadian doctor to help them in their hospitals, pretty bad on the payroll I wouldn’t have thought so, so it’s more than likely he was actually in the prisoner of war camp and helped at the, after being discharged from the hospital and that is probably nearer the truth
CB: In view of what your father said, did he ever make contact with that man or try to make contact with him?
DJ: Not that I know of, no, no. Not at all, not that I know of. But bear in mind, I was born in 1953, so whether he did turn up at the house prior to my being born or a few years after I’ve been born, I don’t know, I don’t remember. Dad certainly never spoke about it, other than this Canadian doctor and that was [unclear] helped him
CB: Apart from his experience with the aircraft, what else did he talk about his being dramatic because some of the earlier operations he went on as in raids were fairly dramatic, what
DJ: Yes, he used to talk about Berlin, they had, his crew at 106 Squadron they did ten tours to Berlin, which was quite a lot
CB: Ten ops
DJ: Ten ops, sorry, ten ops, not ten tours, ten ops, my apologies, three hundred missions to Berlins, ten ops to Berlin
CB: Yeah
DJ: One of them I know because it is on the records upstairs, they were hit by flak and also attacked by a fighter that night and lost one engine so they returned with three engines from Berlin all the way back to Metheringham, their base in Lincolnshire, I know that, that’s the only one Dad really used to speak other than the rest of them which were just missions, he just, it was a job to be done, one mission paled into insignificance with another mission, you know, it was just one mission after another really, had he had the choice he probably wouldn’t have wanted to go on any of them, but they just did their job
CB: Just picking up on what you said earlier about the cohesion of the crew, they tended to speak from experience of interviews as the family, what about when they were off operations? Any idea of what they did in their spare time?
DJ: [clears throat] No. I know they used to drink together around, they would go to a local pub around Metheringham or go into Lincoln together. Other than that I don’t know, bear in mind that Fred Mifflin was from Newfoundland so his family would’ve been in Newfoundland so I suspect he’d been quite close to the crew, keeping them together and then the rest of the crew would have known that so they looked after their skipper and the rest from various parts of the country, so they would have spent a lot of time together as a family, a family unit.
CB: I’ll stop there again. Thank you.
DJ: Maybe my father always spoke about the rear gunner who was killed that night
CB: The time when he got out of the plane
DJ: Yeah
CB: Well he
DJ: Well, he, the rear gunner, Dad said, was injured in the first attack
CB; Oh, right.
DJ: He was hit. Now Dad said, he probably would’ve never survived a parachute jump, now whether that was the reason why my father decided to do what he did or not, I don’t know, now that may be the reason, he was very good friends with Fred Mifflin the pilot who was also killed that night, my father said or Sandy Sandeland the wireless operator actually said they did both manage to get out of the aircraft, he saw them, Fred Mifflin was, Johnny Johnson was near the escape hatch at the back of the aircraft, Fred Mifflin was released, he was standing up, ready to move away from the controls, the Germans say they were both found within the aircraft, Sandy Sandeland always said that they got out of the aircraft and they were killed on the ground, so there was a little bit of disagreement there about what happened and my father says, knowing how aircrew were treated when they were off for a bombing mission on a village or town or city, he believed they were killed on the ground but we don’t know, there’s another story that Fred Mifflin and Johnny Johnson were very good friends, Johnny Johnson was injured, couldn’t survive the parachute jump so stayed with the aircraft and tried to bring it down, that’s another story, whether it’s true or not I don’t know, my father didn’t know, he was not in the aircraft but my father always believed they were killed on the ground and not in the aircraft.
CB: Ok.
DJ: Was one of those things you could never prove either way, really
CB: Yes, it’s difficult to deal with
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Now, we’ve covered dramatic things here but there was some good sides so how did your parents come to meet in the first place?
DJ: My father, actually my mother told this story that the way they met was my father used to cycle to the engineering works which was in Richmond from Twickenham, my mother lived in Twickenham at the time and Dad used to cycle past her daily and whistle and then wink. My mother used to obviously totally ignore him and then there was a dance one night at a club in Twickenham and that was where my father saw my Mum and approached her and asked her to dance, I think my mother refused, my father wouldn’t go away, kept on asking and eventually my mother gave in and that’s where it started. That was it.
CB: Persistent man.
DJ: A man who knew what he wanted, I think
CB: So how long did it take him to
DJ: Well, that would’ve been in 1938 to ’39, just prior to him joining up. Bear in mind my mother was born in 1922 so at that time she would’ve been sixteen years of age, coming on seventeen, so a young girl. They married in ’42 when she was twenty. And it was just prior to the war
CB: And then the decision on getting married, how did that work? Cause he’s been away for a bit.
DJ: Yeah, he was sent away, I think they actually were quite close and got engaged I believe in 1940 if I remember correctly and then my father was sent to North Africa, Freetown, North West Africa
CB: Sierra Leone
DJ: Indeed and was there until ’42 and my mother didn’t know where he was, received the odd letter but that was it, gone, and came back in ’42, September, they got back together and the, arranged their wedding for Boxing Day of that year and that was it. Happy ever since.
CB: But most of the war, [unclear] after that ‘42
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Then they were, father was still around
DJ: He, he was in the UK
CB: In the UK, so, how did they live together or did [unclear]?
DJ: No, they
CB: They lived apart all the time
DJ: They, Mum lived in Twickenham, in Church Street, Twickenham.
CB: Right.
DJ: She had a flat there, which my father used to visit when he was off duty, all the time my father was on duty, he would’ve been stationed at the airfield at Metheringham or Syerston first and then Metheringham
CB: Yeah, she didn’t move up to Lincolnshire
DJ: No, she didn’t, she stayed in Twickenham, that’s where she was
CB: And then after the war,
DJ: Yeah
CB: He was still in the RAF
DJ: He was
CB: So, the same arrangement continued
DJ: No, well, bear in mind that my father came back at the end of the war in Europe, he then was still stationed in the RAF, my mother was still living in Twickenham. Come ’46, he left the Royal Air Force, they then took a house in Whitton, which is near Twickenham, a rented accommodation while my father was looking for some land to build a house and that he found in Burtons Road Hampton Hill not far from there and then built the bungalow
CB: What do you know about how he came back from the prison camp? Because he wasn’t in the long march, you said
DJ: I don’t believe the march that was spoken about was the long march, it may well have been
CB: No, that’s right. Yeah.
DJ: But I don’t know, I don’t believe it was [coughs], I’m sure my father would have mentioned that, I think a lot of people died on that march, I don’t think it was that one, sorry [unclear]. [coughs] What did he say about that? I can’t remember much about it at all
CB: How did he actually get back to Britain? Was he flown back or [unclear]?
DJ: Again, I don’t know whether he was on a boat or actually flown back, I don’t know, a lot of the prisoners of war were flown back
CB: They were in Operation Exodus, yes
DJ: So, it may well be that he was flown back but he never spoke about it and I never asked him the question
CB: Ok. Right. Well, David Jackson thank you very much for a most interesting.
DJ: An absolute pleasure, Chris.
CB: Just. Parents give advice to families and children all the time. So, what was your father’s what shall I say recommendation that you should do in life?
DJ: Well, one thing I can remember my father saying to all of us was that, just remember, you don’t have to prove anything to anybody and personally I never quite knew what he meant by that until we were at school when everybody it seemed wanted to challenge you or expected you to step up to the mark where a challenge was involved, this was even with the school teachers who, if there was a rugby game, football game, whatever, they would expect you to excel in what you were doing because
CB: Because of your father was a VC
DJ: Because of my father, yeah. And it really was difficult to live up to thatt a lot of the time, very difficult
CB: Right
PJ: You’re down?
CB: Well, we keep going. No, let’s just. Penny is here now, so let’s just get a bit of reflection on other things. What do you remember about your father-in-law, although you didn’t meet him very often?
PJ: I met him over about a two- or three-year period but the first time I met him, I knocked at the front door and he opened the door and he went, hello, who are you? And I said, my name is Penny and I’m here to see David. Just a minute, [unclear] over his shoulder and shouted, David! One of your girlfriends is here! That’s my first meeting with Norman Jackson. We had a few more like that afterwards, didn’t we?
DJ: Wonderful man!
PJ: [laughs] Oh, you want me to add that bit. Wonderful man! [laughs]
CB: And you did meet him again. And what did he say the second time?
PJ: Oh, I don’t remember the second time, I can remember
CB: Other times
PJ: I can remember a few wedding receptions, family wedding receptions where we went to where he’d rather stayed in the pub than gone to the wedding reception
CB: Right
PJ: And we had to help him out, didn’t we?
DJ: Yeah
PJ: We assisted him out of various pubs
DJ: He’d rather stay at the bar with his whisky rather than go to the actual function itself, yeah
PJ: Yes
CB: Well, he was a man who distributed lemonade as a whisky
PJ: True
CB: As a job
PJ: Oh, that’s a good excuse
CB: You’ve gotta have confidence in your product
DJ: Absolutely
CB: You must try it out
PJ: Of course
DJ: I used to [unclear] He was a John Hague man through and through, absolutely
CB: A man of great belief
PJ: He was
DJ: And conviction
CB: Conviction
PJ: He was a lovely man, very lovely man, nice family man, good heart
CB: How did, the two of you, what was your perspective of the lack of a Bomber memorial or a lack of a memorial to the bomber crews?
DJ: Well, I know what my father’s opinion on that was. Really, upset him quite a lot and personally I couldn’t understand why, I know a lot more about why now and even though a lot of people who come up with reasons why it shouldn’t have been put up need to really go back and relearn their history because their facts are wrong, totally wrong and it was shame that Winston Churchill really dismissed [unclear] knowledge with Bomber Command at the end of the war, I think that was a start a bit really but I know my father was very upset by the lack of the memorial to these guys and would’ve been very, very happy to have been at the unveiling of the memorial in Green Park had us talking when that happened but to wait so long after the end of the Second World War for a memorial to the service that had the highest loss rate of any of the services is unthinkable really, I can’t answer [unclear] just unthinkable
CB: Thinking of the history of this, bearing in mind the Germans were practicing in the Spanish civil war, what were the main things that stick in your mind about what the Germans did originally?
DJ: Originally by starting the Second World War
CB: Then the bombing context
DJ: I think that the bombing context of the German Luftwaffe, maybe the bombing of cities you could almost say happened by accident, Coventry was meant to be a reprisal for what happened with the bombing of Munich by RAF following Hitler’s speech in Munich at that time. The bombing of London was meant to be a mistake by one bomber that basically had navigation had gone wrong and ended up in the East End of London and dropped his bombs during the Battle of Britain but if that’s true then what happened in the Spanish civil war, places like Guernica
CB: Guernica
DJ: Guernica which was basically used as a proving ground for the bombing tactics of the Luftwaffe, in my view they always had the intention of destroying whatever they could destroy. I think that the Germans, the Second World War was the First World War almost as it evolved into was not like a normal war that beknown before it was total war and it involved everybody within the country, absolutely everybody. I do think that the Allies fought the Second World War as indeed the First World War with a degree of humanity. I don’t believe that the Nazis, I think for them humanity didn’t exist.
CB: You talked earlier about when father landed and by parachute and the reaction of with the comment Terror Flieger. Could you just for the record here explain what Terror Flieger, what they meant by that?
DJ: A flier that delivers terror. Probably in today’s terminology a terrorist. And I believe, and my father always understood it, these German cities were suffering night after night and so that’s how he understood it, as a person delivering terror, to people who as far as I’m sure, that man who lived in that cottage was concerned, they didn’t deserve it. Maybe he wasn’t aware of Germany’s position within the Second World War or the reasons for the Second World War. He knew what he was being told, whether that was the truth, who knows. But if the, where the Nazis were concerned, I doubt it. But I’m sure he looked at my father as someone that was pretty awful [laughs] and should, you know, should have been treated pretty bad, abominably really and not with any humanity at all. That’s what I think.
CB: And he’s unlikely to have known what was happening in London, Coventry, Liverpool, Belfast, Portsmouth, Plymouth, all these places
DJ: No, I don’t believe that at all, and I think we’re talking about a different time where people weren’t, where news wasn’t as readily available as it is today, I’m sure he would’ve been aware of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the aims of Adolf Hitler, whether he considered the rest of Europe was to blame, the Allies [unclear] the rest of Europe, for what was happening in Germany towards the end of the war and it was ill deserved as far as Germany was concerned I don’t know, but I’m sure, when he said Terror Flieger, he meant that these people, these Royal Air Force during the night, at night and the American Air Force during the day were delivering terror that was ill deserved on the German cities. [unclear] sure was what he meant.
CB: Thank you.
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Interview with David Jackson
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-11-30
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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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AJacksonDM171130
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:25:11 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
David Jackson tells of his father, Norman Jackson VC, born in Ealing, London in 1919 and who worked in an engineering company when the war broke out. After initially trying to join the navy, he then joined the RAF and classified as a fitter on engines. He was then posted to 95 Squadron and trained on Sunderland flying boats before remustering as a flight engineer. David gives a detailed and vivid account of his father’s operation to Schweinfurt on the 27th of April 1944, which earned him the Victoria Cross: although he had reached his 30 operations with 106 Squadron, he volunteered to join the aircrew to see them through, making this his thirty first operation; the aircraft was attacked by an enemy fighter and racked by cannon fire; with the aircraft on fire, Norman decided to exit the plane in order to extinguish the flames. At the second attack, Norman was blown off the aircraft and landed in enemy territory, breaking both ankles and suffering serious injuries on his hands. He reached a German village, where he was indignantly called “Terror Flieger”, taken into custody, paraded through the streets and taken for treatment to hospital, where he spent ten months. Afterwards he was interned in a prisoner of war camp. David remembers when his father was invested with the Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace and met Leonard Cheshire. David remembers his father flying ten operations to Berlin and tells of one on which they were attacked by enemy fire and lost one engine. David tells of the legal issues regarding his father’s medals and how they ended up in the Imperial War Museum after being sold at an auction. He discusses his father’s views on the lack of recognition to the aircrews after the war and debates the bombing context of the German Luftwaffe.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--London
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Schweinfurt
Temporal Coverage
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1944-04-27
106 Squadron
95 Squadron
aircrew
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
memorial
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Halton
RAF St Athan
RAF Syerston
Sunderland
training
Victoria Cross
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/939/11298/AMackieGA171222.1.mp3
e9ca13049823098df01cd69c65a59715
Dublin Core
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Title
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Mackie, George
George Alexander Mackie
G A Mackie
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with George Mackie (1920 - 2020, 855966 Royal Air Force) with his log books, diary extract, list of operations, battle order and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 15 and 214 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-12-22
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.
Identifier
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Mackie, GA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GM: In that silence, revulsion of what Bomber Command did and a claim for what Bomber Command did, were in that silence, that trivial monument in Green Park is for the benefit of the multi-millionaires that erected it, in [unclear] in Flanders, every name of the dead is inscribed in stone, the only names inscribed in stone at Green Park are the millionaires names, the rest are painted, this cheap, cheap gesture on the part of about half a dozen millionaires, so, if you want to carry on with that knowledge of my opposition to monuments, I’d be
CB: That’s fine. Did you go to the opening of that? Were you invited to it?
GM: Of course not [laughs]. I wouldn’t be seen dead near that monument.
CB: Did they invite you though?
GM: No.
CB: Right.
GM: Very glad they didn’t. I wrote against it. It’s also a hideous piece of architecture. So, let’s talk about the war
CB: OK, we’ll do that, I need to be able to. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 22nd of December 2017. We are in Stamford in Lincolnshire, talking to George Mackie about his experiences of life and the RAF. So, what are your first recollections of life, George?
GM: I can’t remember. I think
CB: You were born in Cupar, in Scotland
GM: Yes, and I was in my teens, was waiting for the war to begin.
CB: Right.
GM: It began and I wanted to fly so I presented myself in Dundee at the recruiting office. On Monday because the war had started on a Sunday but nothing happened for weeks until I went back to Dundee school of art and then I was called down to a place in the Midlands for medical which lasted two days, Warrington and I wasn’t actually called up until June of 1940 and sent to Babbacombe near Torquay for a month or six weeks square bashing which I thoroughly enjoyed, squad of fifty people being drilled,
CB: Yeah
GM: And from there [unclear] Cambridge, St John’s college, lectures on navigation, meteorology and so on, contrast to Babbacombe and from Cambridge again a contrast to Stoke-on-Trent to begin flying on Magisters, very difficult conditions for flying because there was no horizon. A horizon is very necessary for learning to fly and there was none, was just smoke and no one said the absence of horizon is going to be difficult, so we thought we were [unclear] and but I got through. From Stoke-on-Trent to Cranfield which is a very inconspicuous place compared to today and we flew Oxfords and I started liking flying for the first time. I remember engine failure at a thousand feet [unclear] the fuel and diving down to [unclear] the fuel that was good, good stuff, that was exciting. And from Cranfield onto Wellingtons, a place twenty five miles south of Cambridge whose name escaped me, flying Wellingtons, one day a Stirling through across at a thousand feet, they were very silent, Stirlings, compared to other aircraft, they were huge, very impressive and I went straight to the adjutant and said, I want to go to the Stirling squadron, now, further or not, that had any bearing on the final decision I don’t know but the point was I was posted from the Wellingtons to 15 Squadron at Wyton, one of two squadrons with Stirlings and I have almost one thousand five hundred hours flying in Stirlings which I think is higher than anyone else. You have to switch thing off [unclear]
CB: That’s ok.
GM: So, there I was in 15 Squadron during 1941 and what I didn’t know was how appalling the mess was that Bomber Command was in, we was sent off solo, there was no such thing as a bomber stream, we went off fifteen minute intervals trying to find a target in Germany, we were hopeless at navigation, we were, my navigator had a sextant to try and navigate with, can you imagine?
CB: I’ve used it [laughs]
GM: We weren’t hitting targets
CB: Right
GM: And by the beginning of 1942 the retrenchment of Bomber Command and I was posted to a newly formed Heavy Conversion Unit to train pilots on the new four-engined aircraft, the Stirlings were just coming in and mostfully I was at Waterbeach for eighteen months in which time I only did three ops, they were the thousand bomber raids and I didn’t go back on ops until the Autumn of 1943 in 214 Squadron, so my eighteen months in Waterbeach was a wonderful period of learning to fly the Stirling cause until you instruct on an aircraft you don’t know it and I got to know the Stirling intimately, the most peculiar airplane, take-off, particularly take-off, the talk from the four engines plus the fact that the rudder was out of action until the tail was up in the slipstream meant that the take-off had a colossal urge to veer right off the runway, so the first thing you did was to put the stick fully forwards and open the throttles diagonally, now in Mark I Stirlings, the throttles were parallel, topped by large bulbs, large knobs, which my hand could not encompass
CB: Right
GM: So it was quite tricky trying to open the throttled diagonally nor could my legs reach the rudder bar because they were too short so I had to stuff a parachute behind me to reach the rudder bar so that couple with the Stirlings own eccentricities made flying the aircraft rather tricky. That I got to tell [unclear] sort of course, switch off.
CB: The Stirling was a Marmite type airplane, was it? People either loved it or hated it?
GM: What is Marmite?
CB: You either love it or hate it.
GM: Oh, I loved it because I survived in it and it was [unclear] in design, it was made to be, it was supposed to be the [unclear] version of the Sunderland flying boats with a wing span of a hundred and ten feet, in the event the wingspan was cut down to ninety-nine feet to enter peacetime hangars which were a hundred feet wide, of course, most of the maintenance was done outside anyway, day and night, and that made the aircraft most peculiar, a huge undercarriage and the angle of take-off was absurd
CB: Well, you were sitting twenty-eight feet above the ground, weren’t you?
GM: Well, yes.
CB: So that meant the tail was very low in comparison with the
GM: And until the tail was up, the rudder didn’t work
CB: Yeah, that’s interesting
GM: The [unclear] was switched
CB: Yeah. What sort of speed would you have to get to, in order for the tail plane to get up?
GM: Oh, maybe fifty
CB: Right. And then, when you got to V2, what would you be taking off at?
GM: Oh, ninety?
CB: Right
GM: [unclear]
CB: Right, yeah, oh, one [unclear]
GM: Well, a hundred with bombs
CB: Yeah
GM: A hundred and ten, it depends, it depends on the aircraft, they varied quite a bit
CB: Right
GM: And from Stirling to Stirling
CB: Right. As we were talking about the HCU, what condition were the planes in at HCU, Stirlings?
GM: They were all second hand, they were all ex operational, the groundcrews worked twenty four hours a day, we didn’t give them sufficient credit for what they did, we took them for granted, I’m sure you’ll find this a refrain from aircrew, we took them for granted.
CB: And did, what was the reliability like, as they were clapped out?
GM: Oh, various having an engine failure, no, the Hercules engine was extremely good
CB: You mentioned thousand bomber raids, three of those or three ops to [unclear]?
GM: Well the thousand one which has gone down in history
CB: Yeah
GM: That was a [unclear]. I remember standing by the Stirling while the Wellingtons were going out, dozens and dozens and dozens at about a thousand feet climbing. When we took off, I mean, across the North Sea, you could see a long distance away Cologne bombing, a clear night and we got to the target, we were towards the end of the raid, it was an excellent opposition, next to no searchlights, next to no flak and I had a telescope, I remember trying to identify Cologne through this telescope, we finally got the [unclear] bombed, it was an absolutely easy job, operation but militarily of no significance, psychologically yes
CB: We’ll stop for a mo. So, the reason that the Lancaster and the Halifax didn’t have the yawring problem same was because their [unclear] were
GM: Because they had two rudders
CB: Two rudders
GM: Directly in the slipstream
CB: In the slipstream, yeah, whereas yours was part of the fuselage so it was blanked off
GM: Yeah
CB: Yeah. You mentioned that early on in your ops you flew as second pilot, what was the
GM: Everyone did
CB: Right
GM: Was standard until in 1942 as part of the re-organisation of the Bomber Command was a man called Peirse, was before Harris,
CB: Right
GM: a disaster, a disaster of a man, I can’t tell you how badly organised Bomber Command was in 1941
CB: So how it operate there then?
GM: Where?
CB: In 1941, how was it operating on operations?
GM: Well,
CB: They didn’t use bomber streams, so what did they do?
GM: Well, we went off at endurance, I should write this down
CB: You should, yeah. You’re going to get this back as a written testament anyway
GM: Mercifully Harris took over and he at least organised things, although he finished up there being a quite psychopathic about bombing German cities, that was, you know, in terms of military advantage it was a crazy, compared to what the Americans were doing
CB: So, with Peirse, can I go just back to Peirse? With, you took off at intervals and
GM: Very few of us, I mean, a maximum effort by Stirlings squadron in 1941 would be say half a dozen aircraft?
CB: Out of
GM: Half a dozen
CB: Out of how many in the squadron?
GM: Well, maybe ten and four only on serviceable
CB: Right
GM: I mean, compared to late, the late war, two Lancaster squadron were maybe forty, fifty aircraft
CB: Yeah
GM: That was a form of the fulfilment of Bomber Command
CB: Yeah, a Lancaster squadron would typically have at least twenty, wouldn’t it?
GM: Yeah
CB: Yeah. But in your day, with the Stirlings, much less
GM: The Stirlings was electrical and it was a nightmare to keep serviceable
CB: Eh?
GM: Everything was electrical and nothing but short, short brothers
CB: Short brothers and short circuits. What was the most common reason for them going U.S.?
GM: I don’t know. We took, I took no interest, I just put the thing U.S. and that was [unclear]
CB: So, early in the war, you were still, you were using flight engineers on the aircraft.
GM: Oh yes
CB: And they were busy dealing with
GM: Oh chiefly petrol, tanks, we had fourteen tanks so they kept on manoeuvring the petrol, two tanks for take-off and then after [unclear] minutes changed the tanks and also I believe the flight engineer held the throttles and things like that, never in my time
CB: Right
GM: I did it all, get airborne, get the throttles fully open, undercarriage up, up,
CB: Electrical undercarriage as well, not hydraulic
GM: Seems as they were [unclear] retract
CB: Yeah
GM: If it retracted. If it didn’t retract, it had to be done by hand, it took about fifteen minutes, yeah
CB: Who would do the winding?
GM: Oh, anybody, not the pilot
CB: Right. So, initially, your first fifteen ops, you said were as second pilot, then you became the captain after that
GM: I did two as a captain and then I was posted off ops, as were quite a few of us
CB: Yeah
GM: To become instructors
CB: Right
GM: At the newly formed Heavy Conversion Unit and as I said, I was there for eighteen months
CB: Yes
GM: Before going back on ops and when I did go back on ops, I knew the Stirling aircraft, down to flying it, I mean, intimately, and it increased my chances of surviving my second tour of ops
CB: Yeah
GM: And in 214 Squadron I had the great good fortune to start flying fortresses in a hundred group
CB: Yeah
GM: Radar, anti-radar [unclear], we accompanied the bombers, carrying no bombs and if I were a German night fighter pilot and he’s a Stirling, a fortress full of electronics, and here the Lancaster full of bombs, and go for the Lancaster, so we had very few fatalities on 214 Squadron with Fortresses
CB: Because they knew they didn’t carry a bomb load
GM: There’s a piece of paper with the rotors
CB: Yeah. Here we are. So, we’ve got a piece of paper with your ops on and then
GM: There’s the Fortress losses
CB: Yeah
GM: There’s the Stirling losses
CB: Right, yeah. So how different was the Fortress to fly?
GM: The Fortress was child’s play, the perfect aircraft, from mass production for mass produced pilots, the Stirling was the worst possible aircraft for mass produced pilots, it was like something unique, the Fortress, you pushed the throttles open, the throttles were perfectly attuned to your hand and it just took off like a dream and landed like a dream, child’s play, perfect for formation flying, stable, very stable, the Stirling wasn’t, the Stirling was agile, frisky,
CB: Well, the Fortress was designed in the concept of formation box flying
GM: It was designed for formation flying
CB: Yeah
GM: And it was perfect for formation flying
CB: Yeah
GM: It didn’t want to do anything but [unclear] flying
CB: And on the Fortress, the B-17, did you fly with a co-pilot there as well?
GM: Occasionally
CB: But not normally
GM: [unclear] second pilot just for one or two trips, for experience, the idea of doing fifteen as a second pilot was out by 1942
CB: Yeah. Because of the HCU
GM: Was useless
CB: Yeah. The HCU system dealt with that, HCU
GM: Yeah
CB: So when people joined the Stirlings, they, you said they were difficult to take-off, was there a high accident rate associated with that?
GM: Hundreds.
CB: Which did it, it bent the aeroplane but did it, were there fatalities linked to that or just?
GM: No, just crashed, swing and take-off
CB: What was the best thing about the Stirling?
GM: Agility, agile, remarkable, remarkable manoeuvrability, unbelievable for an aircraft that size. I, mastered a stall turn, which is going up like this, can you imagine a large four-engine aircraft at this angle? And kicking the rudder bar stalled, I got quite a reputation for it at Waterbeach.
CB: Was this proving a point or because it was exciting?
GM: Just showing what the Stirling could do, stall turn, quite remarkable
CB: So, a steep climb and then kick the rudder
GM: Yeah. It had a very bad reputation, didn’t carry more than two thousand pounds weight of bombs, I mean, because of the bomb containers
CB: The size of the them
GM: What the Lancaster does was quite stupefying, the weight [unclear]
CB: Yes
GM: Stupefying, nothing in the world like it
CB: Yeah
GM: At the time
CB: Yeah
GM: I mean, Britain did lead the war [unclear], not like today leaving Europe
CB: What was the crew’s reaction to the, your crew in 15 Squadron, how well did they work together?
GM: They were [unclear], various of camaraderie
CB: What were they frightened of mainly?
GM: Death
CB: But the aircraft or
GM: Death,
CB: Or just
GM: Death,
CB: The raid?
GM: I mean, the whole squadron was infected by fear
CB: Was it?
GM: Oh, I think so. Cause when you are not doing anything positive
CB: Yeah
GM: Just being exposed
CB: Cause this is part of, is it, what you were talking about earlier, the disorganisation of Bomber Command meant that it worked in a very inefficient way
GM: [unclear] If you look at the dates of ops
CB: Yeah
GM: Quite absurd, the Stirlings just in service. July in 1941 the 6th and the 7th, then the 12th and the 23rd, 25th and then a month before August 25, then between August 25 and September 19th, October the 12th, the 24th, why weren’t Stirlings used more often? Yes, it’s frightful indictment
CB: What was your conclusion about why they were not used more often?
GM: Oh, we didn’t conclude anything, we didn’t even know the morale was bad, how do you know that morale was bad at the time? You don’t know
CB: Right
GM: You think, this was my first operational squadron
CB: Yes
GM: For all I knew this was normal
CB: Right
GM: In that respect, I know that morale was bad
CB: So, can you talk me through a raid, starting with the briefing? How would this evolve over the course of the night?
GM: Well, briefing didn’t change, it got more complicated
CB: So the briefing was everybody together in the ops room to hear the target and the route, is that right?
GM: Yeah. Well, that didn’t change, only towards the end of the war there were half a dozen streams instead of one, well, in fact, there were no streams to begin with, just [unclear] the target and the navigator worked it out how to get there
CB: So in the ops room, in the briefing room you would be told what the target was and the route.
GM: Oh yes.
CB: Was the route, the navigator had to work it out but was the route straight or was it?
GM: I think it was, I think it was [unclear] the navigator to work out how to get there
CB: Oh, right.
GM: Which is part of the amateurness of the role
CB: Yeah. So, as the war developed then, none of the raids would have a direct route to the target. So in your day initially, what was the state then?
GM: Well, I suppose, I suppose so. I suppose we knew where the concentration of searchlights were, but I don’t know. Later on in the war, you not only had different streams of bombers but you had dummy streams which 214 Squadron did, we set off on spoofs, half a dozen Fortresses charring out Window
CB: Right. Yeah
GM: To simulate five hundred bombers, that was quite important, quite a safe job too
CB: It was safe because the Window secured the view of your aircraft, did it?
GM: Well, the night fighters were after these real streams
CB: Right
GM: And we didn’t go far into Germany, we just went across Holland and then turned back home. 214 Squadron was so lucky, so fortunate with its Fortresses, that was a stroke of gigantic luck being posted to 214 Squadron
CB: So, the crew is the same, was it? As the one [unclear] flown in
GM: The one [unclear] to 214 Squadron
CB: Pardon?
GM: We were a mixed lot, New Zealand, Peruvian. My flight engineer was called Pedro Honeyman. Obviously of Scottish descent. Didn’t keep up with any of them. We had extremely good adjutant to 214 Squadron called George Wright, what George had done before the war I do not know, but he loved being adjutant to a bomber squadron, the aircrew, he loved the aircrew and they really good for us, so before my ops came to an end, I said to George, when I finish, I want to go on Transport Command. [unclear] Before I got a posting to Transport Command where I finished the war. And that was before I was sent to India and North Africa. It’s interesting. George Wright was seen after the war in 1951. My wife-to-be and I were on our way to Paris and we went into the 1951 exhibition on the South Bank and who was selling tickets? George Wright. [unclear] come down for you. I went back to art school
CB: When were you demobbed? When you were demobbed?
GM: Yeah
CB: In 1946.
GM: Yeah
CB: Yeah. How long were you at art school?
GM: I did my fourth year at Edinburgh College of Arts, post diploma fifth year, then a year of travelling scholarship was six years
CB: How did you finance yourself in those days?
GM: Oh, paid for, paid for. People don’t remember but we were privileged, we got no fees at university, a grant, I had a pension, three pounds, ten schillings a week, [unclear] for ten schillings a week, so I had three quid to spend, were privileged
CB: You received an RAF pension because
GM: No
CB: Was it?
GM: I suppose it was
CB: Yes, because you started the war when it started, when, at the beginning of the war
GM: Yeah, I suppose it was RAF
CB: So, in that context, you weren’t VR, were you? You were RAF
GM: I was RAF VR
CB: Oh, you were VR
GM: Yeah
CB: Right
GM: I’ve got the four-volume history of Bomber Command
CB: Yeah
GM: Which you really ought to know
CB: I’ll just stop there for a mo. Yes. The History of Bomber Command
GM: Harris, he is in this book
CB: Did he?
GM: Oh yes
CB: Noble Frankland, and who is the other chap?
GM: Sir Charles Webster
CB: Yes
GM: They’re both historians. Yes, you promised me your book, your [unclear] for it
CB: I shall put, I shall get hold of it, cause these are really important and this links together with your testimony
GM: You [unclear] and your job, you must have it
CB: I do, yes, need it. They’ve got it at Lincoln.
GM: Have they?
CB: Yeah
GM: It’ll be in the university library
CB: Yes
GM: Or it should be
CB: Yeah. Well, we’ll check actually as you come to ask. Can I just go back
GM: I was once in publishing so I can get things at cost
CB: Ah, right. Can I go back to your comments about 15 Squadron? You said that the crew effectively lived in fear all the time, the fear of being shot down or the fear of the aircraft not performing?
GM: No, the fear of not coming back.
CB: Right.
GM: I think that was general, the morale was low
CB: Yes
GM: When morale is low, you lose confidence
CB: Yes. And what was the RAF doing about it in your perspective?
GM: Nothing
CB: Right
GM: Nothing
CB: And what was the squadron commander doing to get together?
GM: Nothing
CB: Right
GM: Nor the Wing Commander. Everyone was tainted
CB: Yeah
GM: In my recollection. The crew I trained with, what’s the name of that place?
CB: At Wyton, oh, at Bassingbourn
GM: Bassingbourn
CB: Yes. On the Wellingtons
GM: Two pilots, flight engineer, navigator and bomb, gunners, I trained the guy called Metaxi, M-E, M-A
CB: Yeah
GM: So, when we got to Wyton a line was drawn under MA and I went as second pilot to an established crew,
CB: On Stirlings
GM: Metaxi crew went to a newly promoted captain, he had no training with the new captain, they disappeared on their first op, the first op, no training, Pierce, group captain wing commander, why? Of course they went down on their first op, they didn’t know each other. That was my introduction to operational flying. Nobody mentioned it.
CB: No. And in the ops in those days, you went off as individual crews, you said, rather than in any kind of orderly fashion. What was the process of finding the target?
GM: Looking at the ground [laughs].
CB: In the dark?
GM: What you could see.
CB: At what height were you flying in the Stirling?
GM: As high as you could go. Which was sixteen, seventeen
CB: On a god day
GM: Right down to twenty. Oh, what a business.
CB: And how did you, when you returned, you were debriefed by the intelligence officer, were you?
GM: Yes, yes.
CB: And what would you have to tell him?
GM: [unclear] we always thought we bombed the target of course [unclear] the first target I properly identified was Cologne, the thousand bomber raid,
CB: And at that stage you were at the HCU. At that stage you were at the HCU, weren’t you? For the thousand bomber raid
GM: Yes, yes, yes
CB: Yeah
GM: Little diversion from training
CB: Yes
GM: The following day you, circuits and landings, circuits and landings again, I don’t know how many landings I did in the Stirling, it must be ten to hundreds
CB: How did you feel about the student pilot flying it?
GM: Oh, they all arrived in a state of great anxiety, the Stirling had a very bad reputation and so the first thing you did was to show them what it was in the air and then the New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans, all nationalities, the most democratic outfit Bomber Command became, I wouldn’t have missed it
CB: What was the most exciting experience you had on operations or in the HCU?
GM: Well, the most dangerous experience I had was five hours in icing cloud trying to get to Hamburg in which 1651 Unit lost four out of nine aircraft in one night through weather and that was touch and go in cumulus cloud.
CB: So the icing cloud should never have been entered but how was it
GM: We should never have set off
CB: Exactly
GM: Again it was a cock-up and no one of course was never held responsible but to lose four out of nine is quite a shock. But the following day, take off and landings, take off and landings
CB: So that goes back to the point about debriefing, there was a met man who did part of the briefing, was there?
GM: That, the North Sea was [unclear] of clouds and of course we dropped the odd bomb to try and get more height, couldn’t and that was just flying skill to survive that night and one of the survivors was Frazer Barron, to finish that was nineteen ops, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar, he lost his life later on of course, he was smaller than me, so how he could get the rudder bar I don’t know. Frazer Barron, one of the so-called Barron
CB: Barn Brothers
GM: Barnel Barnes [unclear]
CB: So, when the crew went back to 15 Squadron, you talked about the low morale, in the off-duty times what happened, what did people do? Cause you are all NCOs in the aircraft, are you? At that stage
GM: We did nothing. After time boring, there was no overall intelligence trying to further our training as bomber aircrew, it’s just, it was, the whole thing was inept. You know, we were losing the war like mad
CB: And what were the senior officers doing?
GM: I never saw them, I was in the sergeant’s mess. I mean, we arrived at Wyton by train, a bus from the station to the airfield, no welcome, put into such and such a fight, didn’t meet the flight commander, no one would tell you hello, this is 15 Squadron, this is what we do, we just arrived, oh, dear, oh dear, that was bad, it was shocking [unclear]
CB: Wyton was an expansion period airfield, so what was the accommodation like?
GM: Nissen hut. We took off from Alconbury, Wyton had no runways, so we flew the aircraft at Alconbury where it was bombed up, and then we went back to [unclear] and got briefly briefed at Wyton and then bus to the station light. I remember the bus going through Huntingdon, people going about their business, going into pubs and so on, where am I going?
CB: Yeah
GM: 21 squadron was quite different cause the war had been going on for years by that time, September 1943, Stirlings would have been taken off German targets, again the luck I had, being posted to a Stirling squadron cause they were being withdrawn and then we heard this extraordinary rumour going on [unclear] and the rumour proved to be true till, we got an American pilot with half a dozen landings and off we went solo, captain of a Fortress, throat microphone, all up to date
CB: Yes
GM: Electric flying suit, all up to date, American
CB: The whole crew had the electric flying suit, did they?
GM: I don’t know about the crew, I took the crew for granted. I hadn’t a warrant officer, my navigator was a flying officer and that was my two fingers up to the system, you see and it didn’t last long, I was a commissioned officer within weeks
CB: We’ll stop now. How often did you get hit?
GM: Once, oh, well, the aircraft got hit more than once of course
CB: Did it?
GM: I got hit personally once, over Leverkusen
CB: Oh.
GM: To an [unclear] squadron to Leverkusen to [unclear] as a souvenir, one of the aircraft came home with shrapnel quite often
CB: So what was the wound that you experienced?
GM: It was?
CB: What wound did you get?
GM: I didn’t get wounded, didn’t even draw blood. Spent shrapnel upper left arm. Colossal braw. If I hadn’t been strapped in, I’d be off my seat.
CB: Was the explosion in the aircraft or just outside?
GM: No, the shrapnel, piece of shrapnel. Flak
CB: Did that hit you hard?
GM: Flak I suppose.
CB: Yeah
GM: Didn’t even draw blood. The arm was swollen of course
CB: Yeah
GM: And that was nothing
CB: What about other members of the crew, did they get?
GM: Nothing
CB: Nobody
GM: No. A nasty surprise flying along in the black, suddenly shrapnel [unclear], flak and this enormous bash which as I say, would have got me out of my seat but for being strapped in
CB: Amazing. This was in the Fortress, was it? Or in the Stirling?
GM: Probably Fortress.
CB: There was a bigger crew in the Fortress, so?
GM: Yes.
CB: That was more gunners.
GM: The Fortress crew
CB: Right
GM: [unclear]
CB: Have a look at that. So, with the Fortress, you, the Americans flew with two pilots but you flew with one pilot in the Fortress in the RAF fashion
GM: Yes, yes. They flew by day, of course
CB: Yes
GM: What the Americans did was remarkable I mean, seeing them go down, we saw them going down in darkness
CB: Yeah. Did you get any planes exploding next to you?
GM: There were things, in Bomber Command we believed in a thing called Scarecrows
CB: Ah, yes
GM: Have you heard this word?
CB: Yes
GM: But there were no such things, they were actual aircraft and we kidded ourselves, another Scarecrow and some could be very close
CB: So, the Scarecrow notionally was an enormous shell when actually it was a German fighter firing upwards with Schrage Musik
GM: [unclear] bomber going down in flames
CB: Yeah
GM: But mercifully we didn’t know. I was never attacked by a night fighter and that may be part of the fact that wherever over dangerous territory I was endlessly weaving the aircraft, endless, to give the rear gunner [unclear] a vision of the area, a vision
CB: You did that on both aircraft
GM: Oh yes
CB: Yeah
GM: Oh yes
CB: Same technique
GM: Endless, gentle weave
CB: And how many reports of air sickness did you get from the crew?
GM: Oh, never. Weaving, that’s nothing, you don’t even know you’re doing it, didn’t know I was doing it, but it’s so far more.
CB: Yeah
GM: I’ve heard a Lancaster sitting a straight and level being shot at, not least by a member of who, by ex-member of my crew, he was shot down later on and we were attacked and the pilot froze, froze, that’s why we were shot down
CB: Froze over the target or [unclear]?
GM: Night fighter attacked, there was no evasive action team
CB: I see, right. But you were trained in the corkscrew?
GM: Oh yes
CB: And could you do the corkscrew with the Fortress or not?
GM: Yes, nothing like [unclear] nothing like this
CB: A big aeroplane
GM: Nothing like this, cleverly, let me have that logbook, thanks,
US: That’s the last, this is the first one. Is this the one you want?
CB: No, he’s just checking
US: Do you want to have a look at it now?
GM: Hey?
US: Do you want to have a look inside it?
CB: I’ll just stop there a minute.
US: [unclear] Air Force for you.
GM: We flew an aircraft from East Anglia to Belfast
US: Right.
GM: You get a cask of Guinness for a party. When you think of the cost of that pint of Guinness
US: [unclear]
CB: Amazing. But you did need that training experience, didn’t you? Was this from the HCU or the squadron?
GM: From the squadron
CB: Yeah
GM: The things were so relaxed. I had the memory of the friend of my father’s came down from Scotland, Ed [unclear], wanted to go up in a Stirling so I just said, an aircraft needing a flight test such and such took off in fifteen minutes
CB: What was the reaction of your family to your flying as a pilot in Bomber Command?
GM: My father and I didn’t communicate, ever.
CB: And you mother’s reaction wouldn’t be cause she
GM: Stepmother
CB: Stepmother, I meant
GM: Stepmother, no communication
CB: Right, ok. Any other members of the family you spoke to? Just stopping there again. Because your father had been in the trenches.
GM: Yeah, I mean Bomber Command is admired beyond reason, the worst that could happen was five minutes in [unclear] alive going down, think of the trenches, think of my father survived after three years in the trenches compared to what I had, Bomber Command was lucky. We lived well
CB: Yeah
GM: You know, it’s over exalted but easy, easier, the troops after the invasion going up through Holland far, far worse than Bomber Command was. I didn’t see a dead body. My father not only saw dead bodies, he saw the remains all around for years, no wonder he didn’t speak about it. Bomber Command too much talk saving your presence. No, it wasn’t all that difficult, it wasn’t.
CB: Now, when you went to 214, you had a completely different crew there,
GM: Yeah
CB: Because you’d come from the HCU
GM: I inherited a crew
CB: Oh, did you? Right, so how well did they gel together?
GM: After
US: You know, I can’t remember
CB: Anyway, professionally as a crew
GM: There was a romantic tosh spoken about Bomber Command crews how they gelled, how they drank together, how they did this together, how they did that, I suspect in many cases that just wasn’t true, wasn’t true in my case
CB: But it also varied, it would appear depending on whether it was an entirely NCO crew or a mixed commissioned NCO crew, in terms of them socialising.
GM: No, in my experience, socialising went on between commissioned and non-commissioned, there was no sense of division. No, no, Bomber Command was very democratic, a great mixture of people, no, no, there was no bullshit. No, no, none. I remember one parade, I can’t remember where, there was no discipline, in my experience, there was self
CB: Self-regulation
GM: Self-engendered discipline, there was no bullshit, no, none. You did your job in the air, you were left alone. Me, when I put that Tiger Moth on the [unclear], I didn’t even get a rap on [unclear]
CB: So, when was that? When were you
GM: Waterbeach
CB: Right. So, what happened there, you borrowed it, did you?
GM: I was in the mess, I had this aircraft flying over and landing and [unclear] and I went down to the flight centre, it was the wing commander giving ATC cadets a touch of flying experience and he saw me and he said, hey, Mackie, you take over. Well, I’d never flown a Tiger Moth and I took over. I took off with the first cadet, flew around and landed after a, a second cadet started getting too cocky, anyway, that’s how I got to [unclear]. It was a lovely summer’s evening and I was quite excited to land, there was earth, [unclear], trees and this great big wide river, flat, not a ripple on its surface, inviting, irresistible, I did a perfect landing, tail down
CB: Yeah. Who was in the back?
GM: I was on the front. I think, we passed over the back, we got to the surface and he was saying, do you mind, look at my dress to dance tomorrow! And I said, you shut up! So and so, I got worries of my own now, the wing commander’s aeroplane
CB: So, were you actually practising an emergency landing or did you feel that you
GM: No, I got in a high-speed stall
CB: So, what were you doing in your manoeuvre at the time?
GM: [unclear] trees
CB: So you were really low, you were going round the trees
GM: Breaking the law and all sorts of things
CB: That’s right
GM: But I didn’t know you had to increase the throttles, [unclear] control, high fifteen tons, you’re supposed to increase the engine revs
CB: Right. In the Tiger Moth
GM: Cocky
CB: But you would have had to do it in the Magister anyway
GM: I don’t remember doing high speeds, [unclear] the Magister
CB: No? So what was the attraction in the river?
GM: The flatness
US: Yeah
CB: But the people, what about the people in the river?
GM: They [unclear] spectacle
CB: So you were busy just
GM: You’re alright? You’re alright? I said, yes, I’m alright, [unclear] job trying to get the parachute on board the, onto dry land, the weight of it [unclear] water
CB: And they helped you pull the plane into the side as well?
GM: No, the plane was just right in the middle of the river, I was completely submerged
CB: And what was the result of this then?
GM: Not, no, nothing happened. I was a confident Stirling pilot, that was the important thing
CB: Right
GM: This, the Tiger Moth just an aberration
CB: So the wing commander said
GM: Nothing. He wasn’t even crossed
CB: And your logbook said
GM: [unclear] somewhere, he was a very good man, he was the best wing commander I ever had, I had some poor wing commanders, he was particularly good, he was called Menaul and he finished up in charge of atomic bombing tests in the South Pacific just after the war and he lived quite near to where my elder daughter lives and she kept on saying, why don’t you look him up? And I kept on saying, no, no, and I wish I had. M-E-N-A-U-L, he’s a good man. I had the worst commander in 214 Squadron called McGlinn M-C-G-L-I-N-N, he didn’t take to me, part because I was a warrant officer I think and froze the normal distances of promotion and once the aircrew were altogether for a talk by him and he suddenly, said, Mackie, what does that mean? And he pronounced a long German word, you know, a multi syllable, multi [unclear] and I said, I don’t know, Sir, and I hope I never do, the squadron erupted. This is still a German prisoner of war camp name, I said what? Anyway, that was my come up and stand up to the wing commander. No, he wasn’t a good type.
CB: So, you reached warrant officer and then when you went to the HCU, you were still a warrant officer, were you?
GM: I became warrant officer at Waterbeach, yes
CB: At the HCU
GM: Not automatic [unclear], sergeant, flight sergeant, warrant officer,
CB: Yeah
GM: A good rank, taken miles
CB: Absolutely
GM: Have you heard that expression?
CB: Yeah
GM: Doesn’t exist [unclear] expression
CB: No. And your commissioning took place when you joined two, joined at 214?
GM: Having more than doubled the hours than any other pilot on the squadron then and the [unclear] ranking, it was this to the system, it was meant to be, I’d finished the war as [unclear] there was anything left [unclear] but they made me take commission
CB: Was McGlinn, this, this CO, was he part of
GM: The station commander intervened
CB: Ah!
GM: He saw, he told me, you’re taking commission, Mackie, which I knew was inevitable and [unclear] didn’t have to ask for it
CB: So what was the process that you went through for that?
GM: Nothing. A new uniform and that was it
CB: But they took you off somewhere for a briefing, did they? Or selection?
GM: I got five minutes
CB: Ah, right
GNM: At Mildenhall
CB: What did they have, a board of assessors?
GM: No, no, just one man, [unclear] after all be all the way as Mildenhall and all the way back for this formality, out of the comedy, tragicomedy
CB: So there you had the opportunity to move into the officer’s mess
GM: I had to and the airfield we shared with an American squadron and the first formal dinner evening took place, when I say formal, peacetime thing, towards the end of the war [unclear], towards the end of the German ascendancy and being the most junior officer, I had to give the royal toast and the toast to his, the president of the United States of America, not a single ring of having lost my [unclear] morale. No, there is one thing I want to emphasize, it was easy
CB: An easy war for you
GM: Easy war, an easy war for most of the crew, if you got shot down, five minutes. I mean, think about it, that’s quite a good way to go, five minutes.
CB: Did you come across Guinea pigs, who’d been burned?
GM: Yeah
CB: And how did they take to flying after being Guinea pigs?
GM: Well, I don’t know, I mean, well actually, I knew them, I met them, I saw them, never knew them personally
CB: Right
GM: But that was extreme. If you got killed, you got killed, in a burning aircraft, you know, you are going down. You see, in 15 Squadron, going out seven, half a dozen aircraft, one missing, that’s quite a lot of proportion, week after week, one again, one again, one again, one again.
US: It is here, Tiger Moth [laughs]
GM: Of course, nobody knew at the beginning of the war. Bomber Command did no night flying in peacetime
CB: No. Were your original ops with 15 Squadron in daylight or were they always at night?
GM: There were two daylight ops on Northern France with Spitfires and Hurricanes, protection. That was so-called circuses, supposed to engender combat between our fighters and their fighters, they never materialised, it’s a waste of time
CB: And how did you feel like flying in daylight bombing on a, in a Stirling?
GM: Well, glad that I missed it. By that time the RAF had learned the sense of not flying by day over Germany
CB: No
GM: To begin with, we thought we could do it with impunity, flying in formations of Wellingtons or, what’s the other aircraft?
CB: Or in Blenheims
GM: Blenheims. 50 percent loss, time after time, sheer incompetence, wasted for nothing, peacetime air force, but by [unclear] what a transformation in 1944, target could be identified and destroyed, terrifying, pinpointed by Mosquitoes, TIs, target indicators, and the [unclear] watching, watching, doing nothing
CB: So in your two and four, flying your B-17 Fortresses, what was the activity going on in your aircraft?
GM: I don’t know, I didn’t know, yeah, I took no interest
CB: What was it supposed to be doing?
GM: Jamming control, jamming communication between ground control and German night fighters, that was one thing, we carried a German speaking wireless op and in a minute he got on to this German night fighter frequency, he jammed it, I believe but there were other, we carried a [unclear] radar which is one reason why operational flying was so infrequent, it was the [unclear] in the world and constantly tinkering new this, new that, but it was so complex, I wasn’t interested. I was interested in one thing, survival.
CB: And these German speaking operators, did they tend to be of foreign origin or were they?
GM: They were German.
CB: On the aircraft?
GM: Yes. But I, when I looked back I missed, actually I should have been more interested in what they were and how they came to be aircrew in the RAF, they were perfect German speakers, I believe. Pedro Honeyman, how did he come to England from Peru? And no one charged him. Cause Honeyman is a Scottish name
CB: He was a signaller, was he? He was a signaller.
GM: He was my flight engineer
CB: Oh, flight engineer.
GM: We all smoked of course, like chimneys
CB: In the aircraft?
GM: Coming back, yes, once you’re over water, down to a thousand feet, open the window, switch off the oxygen, first cigarette, oh, the bliss, the bliss of that first cigarette
CB: So, for non-smokers, explain please what, why it was such an important thing
GM: Well, salvation,
US: You’re a non-smoker.
GM: You were over the North Sea, you’re at two thousand feet, in half an hour you can see the flashing beacons, you’re safe, you survived, you’re off the scaffold, that was why, and the nicotine in the blood stream. Oh, I was a confirmed smoker. I regret having, had to give it up, but I wish I hadn’t. My father smoked forty a day until his late eighties when he died. He had the right answer. Were you an ex-smoker?
CB: No.
GM: You’re both non-smokers?
US: I smoke
GM: What’s that? Pack?
US: Rolling.
GM: You’re rolling [unclear]. Oh yes, so did I. I used to have brown paper, cigarette papers, I’ve [unclear]
CB: What made you start smoking? Did you start because of the flying?
GM: No, before the war I started.
CB: Right. And what made you give up?
GM: Oh, slow asphyxiation. [unclear] for five before the war, the day’s ration. [sighs] Well, Chris
CB: So you, that’s really good. We’ll stop for a bit.
GM: Yeah. Fifty percent of Bomber Command aircrew died for nothing. There’s no way of proving it but that’s my feeling.
CB: Do you mean particularly in the early days, do you mean? Because it was so disorganised
GM: Yes, but it extended into the, towards the end of the war, how many aircrew did damage to Germany? One [unclear]. I’d have had been killed, the damage I had affected on Germany was minimal, minimal, at what expense?
CB: Well, in your two and four days with the Fortresses, you weren’t carrying any munitions, so any bombs.
GM: Were not very successful,
CB: Oh
GM: It was a colossal enterprise involving fighter squadrons, Halifaxes, Fortresses, but it never did enough damage, I suppose was expected. I mean the hundred fighter squadron used to go out at night and circle German airfields
CB: The Mosquitoes, the Mosquitoes did
GM: Yes
CB: Yes
US: Interesting
CB: Interdictors
GM: And they weren’t successful, I believe. And then Transport Command, when I think about the expense, six thousand feet all the way to Germany, straight to India, four days, bed and breakfast, North Africa, bed and breakfast, Palestine, bed and breakfast, Iraq, Karachi.
CB: And what were you flying in Transport Command?
GM: Stirlings, the Mark V, an extra ten miles an hour
CB: And you wouldn’t want to get there too quickly, with all that nice hospitality on the way, did you?
GM: Oh, just a routine bed and breakfast, you know.
CB: What could the Mark V Stirling carry? What could the Mark V Stirling carry?
GM: Sixteen passengers or so much freight, a lot of postal freight, you know, letters [unclear] was abroad
CB: So, did you enjoy that, overall?
GM: Oh yes
CB: How did you come to be posted to Transport Command after 214?
GM: I’ve told you, George Wright
CB: Yes, but in the mechanism of the system, it just automatically
GM: Well, George Wright got me posted to Transport Command
CB: Yeah, as the adjutant
GM: That was it
CB: Yeah. There’d be a less smaller crew there cause you didn’t need gunners, so what did you have?
GM: Oh, navigator and flight engineer
CB: And that was it. No signaller?
GM: Wireless op, possible, you see they were going a-begging, they weren’t needed
CB: No
GM: [unclear]
CB: How did you meet your wife and when?
GM: When did I meet her?
CB: Yes
GM: I don’t know the exact date although I can recount it in detail but I shan’t
CB: [laughs]
GM: My wedding was in [unclear], 1952 in the registry office in Scarborough, cost five quid, got back to Edinburgh that same day, that was the beginning of our marriage
CB: Where did you meet her in the first place?
GM: Edinburgh College of Arts
CB: Edinburgh College of Arts, right. After the war, in other words.
GM: Oh yes, oh yes,
CB: Yeah
GM: ’48 or ’49, the best thing I ever did.
CB: And how many children have you got? How many children do you have?
GM: Two daughters.
CB: Right. Local?
GM: Two daughters, two granddaughters, two great granddaughters. I don’t want any competition [laughs]. Let the name Mackie die
CB: And no brothers or sisters of yours? You have no brother or sister yourself?
GM: Well, no, my mother died after my birth
CB: Cause you were the first child, right
GM: And my stepmother had no children
CB: We’ll stop there. Post-war, what career did you follow?
GM: Well, I taught in a college of art for some years, I free-lanced, I became royal designer for industry, designing books for Edinburgh University Press, I am a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters and Water Colour, and now, I don’t know, that’s about it.
CB: So, how did you get down here, in Stamford?
GM: Retirement. Driving from London to Aberdeen, I took the wrong turn at Millhill roundabout, six bloody [unclear], following the A25, and then the A1, and Aberdeen seemed a long way away, roundabout, roundabout, roundabout. I came to a sign saying, Stamford, one mile and so help me. I turned off. [unclear] this is a wartime thing, I don’t know, a monumental thing to do, because it changed my life. The entry into Stamford from the south is the finest entrance to any town that I know.
CB: Yeah, past Burghley.
GM: It’s Extraordinary
CB: Yeah
GM: The George Hotel. So I kept on coming back and found a slum, I’ll let you see what it was like
CB: When is this, 1980?
GM: Yes
CB: Ah, right. It had just been neglected
GM: Completely
CB: Yeah
US: Of course, it’s a lovely building
CB: And you said it was affected by a fire behind it
GM: Oh, that was later on
CB: Ah
GM: When I saw it, I saw [unclear]. The fact is I made it. In Aberdeen I had a wonderful house with twenty, how many years? Twenty-four years there. Wonderful, wonderful. When it came to selling, it was valued forty eight. I said, nonsense, it’s worth seventy. I got in a week [laughs]. Forty-eight to seventy in 1980. And a bloody Scotch lawyer charges a thousand pounds for the convenience for half an hour’s work.
CB: That was a bit much, wasn’t it?
US: Yeah
GM: I had an interviewer here and told him what I thought, he said, I’ve never been spoken like this before, I said, well, it’s high time.
CB: Quite right.
GM: Bugger
CB: Yes
GM: A thousand pounds, in 1980
CB: That was a hell of a lot of money
GM: I mean, I sold it, I did the ad, I did the interviewing, I said, excessive, five hundred, even that, [unclear] enough, that’s a long time ago but still rankles
CB: Yeah
GM: Scotch avarice
CB: Quite right. But you never got the
GM: Anyway, then I could buy this and do tens of thousands of pounds on the house, new electricity, new walling, new this, new that, new [unclear], and it’s been a wonderful house for the family and [unclear] buggered up all went downhill
CB: When your wife became ill
GM: The worst possible conclusion. God, if he exists, is a master sadist. Oh, gentlemen, can I offer you anything now?
CB: I haven’t had anybody else criticize Bomber Command
GM: You haven’t?
CB: No. But that partly for the reason perhaps that you mentioned earlier which is that you were there right at the beginning, when Bomber Command was in a powerless state, and the leadership clearly, from what you said, was lacking severely. The bit I forgot to ask you about because it links quite well with the early comments you made about lack of morale, because this comes out of it in a way, what about LMF?
GM: Oh dear, LMF, how these initials frightened us. We didn’t quite know what it was all about, very effective
CB: Was it?
GM: Oh very, frightening words, frightening initials, and partially frightening because we didn’t quite know what it was. I only came across one [unclear], a commissioned officer, commissioned RAR cause he trained with me this man, the majority of us became sergeants, he became a pilot officer, [unclear] in a flying boat [unclear] blew a tool off and he had a history of early retirements
CB: A pilot?
GM: Pilot
CB: Yeah
GM: I never saw him again.
CB: Do you know where they sent him?
GM: He just vanished. But that was LMF. Poor man, is he still alive? The memory will be constant, he should have died.
CB: Yeah
GM: And of course, LMF was designed to make sure you died rather than anything else
US: That was on the doorbell
GM: Ah, thank you.
CB: What would you say it did to the, what effect did it have on the crew?
GM: Made them bloody sad, they wouldn’t be LMF. Tell me what lack of moral fiber, cowardice
US: Right
GM: Frightening initials. Till today
CB: Sure
GM: That was crude but that was effective and so unfair, it could [unclear] that someone that had done almost a tour and impact in, you know, he proved himself time and time and time again and you’d have reached the end of his [unclear] but LMF had no respect for that kind of achievement, oh, is cruel. We never talked about it. Never talked about it, never mentioned it. You must have found this is the constant in your interviews.
CB: Yes, I have, had a number of people talk about it
GM: Not mention saying what was mentioned
CB: Right, so, it’s been mentioned, yes, by several people
GM: Yeah
CB: And the effect on the crew
GM: Yeah
CB: Because it’s very unsettling
GM: Yeah
CB: And also the deterrent effect, the objective of deterrence
GM: It worked
CB: Yeah
GM: Yeah. Oh God, I’d have died rather than being labelled LMF, oh quite clearly
CB: So, he was commissioned and vanished but what was your perception of what would happen to the sergeants, if they were?
GM: What?
CB: What would happen to the sergeants if they were labelled LMF?
GM: They were stripped of rank of course and just vanished; I suppose. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to the commissioned officer, whether he was uncommissioned or I don’t know. The whole thing’s a mystery.
CB: Yeah
GM: Well, is it Chris?
CB: Yeah
GM: Sorry
CB: It’s alright.
GM: Well, you promised me that you will get access to these four volumes
CB: Yes, absolutely
GM: It’s not the easiest of reading but it’s right up your street
CB: Oh yes, it is
GM: There’s a whole appendix, giving the details about how many bombs fell [unclear] explode for instance [unclear]
CB: Yeah
GM: The bombs were inefficient
CB: Yeah
GM: So many things were incompetent
CB: Yeah. It’s not as though it was new because they had a very high failure rate in the First World War
GM: Yes
CB: Of bombs and shells
GM: My father never once asked me about Bomber Command, very most peculiar, I envy sons who had a good relationship with their fathers,
CB: What was the main stumbling block would you say?
GM: Well, losing his wife when he did, that buggered him, buggered him. Small town [unclear], like his father before him, like his grandfather before him and I would have been the starter, if the tractor hadn’t come, the tractor saved me.
CB: What did the tractor do?
GM: Made [unclear] redundant, no horses, mean this [unclear] two or three [unclear] all gone
US: All gone
GM: My hometown is like, Stamford, you know, agricultural market town. Have you always lived in Stamford, nearby the airfields? [laughs]
CB: In the dark
GM: Yeah, training
CB: Right
GM: Waterbeach, we were sent to other airfields, you see, and I [unclear] all apologetic but five miles apart the circuits overlapping
CB: But it must have been quite difficult, how did you, coming back from an operation or any sortie, how did you identify your airfield in the dark?
GM: Well, the flashing beacons, the Germans knew them all, out, you know, two initials, they never changed, the Germans must have known them all. And the three searchlights intersecting at two thousand feet all over the place, oh God it was a, what a performance! What [unclear]!
CB: So every, when you returned, there was always the searchlight on,
GM: Oh yes
CB: Unless the Germans had followed the bomber stream in
GM: Oh yes, and that should help from the German point of view, why they didn’t do that more often? What an advantage to have their fighters come across
CB: It could’ve been a turkey shoot
GM: It would’ve been a massive one. And they did it, well, they did it, when I was training the Wellingtons it happened once and it scared the daylights out of me, trying to learn to fly and at the same time, knowing there is an enemy aircraft around. Bassinbourn?
CB: Yeah. So if
GM: They missed a great opportunity
CB: If there was a known interdictor, intruder, what did the airfields do, they turned off their lights, did they?
GM: Oh yes.
CB: Then, what did that leave you with?
GM: That never happened to me. No, there was no trouble getting home, I mean, finding one’s way, I mean
CB: Because of all these lights
GM: Oh, the, and you had the radio beams and things, you know
CB: Yes
GM: I took no interest in, QDEM or something
CB: Yeah, did you have DREM lighting as well? The DREM lighting round the airfield?
GM: Yes, of course, I suppose so
CB: They do
GM: Round again that was nothing, I mean, you know, running at night, night flying was easy, it wasn’t difficult, above the weather
CB: And fog?
GM: As [unclear] it is, pilots, well, they know pilots, I when I was in an aircraft going to Boston one day, [unclear] stupid, so I wrote a wee note to the captain, I said, my last flight was from Gibraltar to Lyneham, sixteen passengers, height six thousand feet, and [unclear] speed a hundred and seventy five, can I come up to see you in your office? So the attendant sent up study staring into his cockpit
CB: Ah, this is on a 747
GM: Was it? I don’t know what the hell that was. Anyway, there was a vibration, you couldn’t see a bloody thing and they are all rushing but half a dozen of them, I thought, this isn’t flying, nor is it, we flew through the weather
CB: Yeah
GM: Christ, we, I was flying, you were actually controlling the bloody thing. It was good, you were doing something.
CB: God!
GM: You were in control.
CB: Yes
GM: It was responsive.
CB: How much did you use the auto-pilot on your aircraft?
GM: What you had to do, it was a chore. Invaluable. That night, when I survived the icing cloud, that was thanks to the link trainer, there’s a record at the back of the books somewhere
CB: Of the amount you did on link trainer?
GM: Yeah
CB: But on the aircraft itself, on the Stirling, did they have an automatic pilot?
GM: Oh yes
CB: They did?
GM: I never used it, at least I did in Transport Command, but not over Germany, ever
CB: Because you were always weaving
GM: For a fraction of a second, you know, [unclear]. But the thing is, Bomber Command was never on air, [unclear] my father’s trench war
CB: Yeah
GM: It was boring, can you imagine spending eight hours most of which when nothing was happening, eight bloody hours, Stettin and back, nothing happened, what a bore, all the bombers over over valued because it was dramatic. What the trips, after the raids above Holland, 1944, is undramatic compared to what happened in the air, so Bomber Command was overvalued. Which is why you’re here.
CB: Flying a B-17, how was that different from flying the Stirling?
GM: You couldn’t Make the bloody thing maneuver, it didn’t want to, it just wanted to stay straight and level, which was its job
CB: Yes, absolutely
GM: I mean, the Americans, the Air Force, they didn’t fuck around
CB: No
GM: They [unclear] straight and level
CB: In daylight
GM: Flew it all in daylight, my word, that’s bravery
CB: Absolutely
GM: That’s bravery. Oh yes, we had it easy
CB: And
GM: We had it easy, too much a cream,
CB: And simple comforts on the
GM: All sheets of a kind [unclear] breakfast, drink, cigarettes,
CB: In the Fortress
GM: No, in the Air Force
CB: OH, I see, yes, right, in the,
GM: [unclear]
CB: On the ground, yeah
GM: And too much prestige, too much
CB: In the war
GM: Too much
CB: Yeah
GM: No [unclear], too much. I mean, think what a submarine is like compared to what we did, bloody weeks in the air compared to a submarine, we did a few hours then we were all back to civilisation, so we are overvalued, overestimated. It took me a long time to work this out, I’m convinced of it now
CB: It’s unusual for people to have done more than two, one tour, you did two and then a third one.
GM: No, I did less than two. I did forty-four ops
CB: In total
GM: Supposed to be fifty. I came back from a spoof, nothing, and the wing commander said, Mackie, not [unclear], he’d been a [unclear], Mackie, you’re finished. That’s it, [unclear], I’ll never forget, completely, Mackie, you’re finished
CB: George Mackie, thank you very much indeed for a most interesting conversation
GM: Thank you for coming
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 George Mackie
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
2017-12-22
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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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMackieGA171222
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:39:10 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
George Mackie served in the RAF as a pilot. He flew forty-four operations, fifteen as a second pilot. Was posted to 15 Squadron in 1941 and critically examines the state of Bomber Command at the time. He was posted for eighteen months to RAF Waterbeach where he flew three operations and took part at the thousand bomber operation to Cologne. Describes the Stirling, its characteristics and performance and compares it to the Flying Fortress. Remembers being hit once by anti-aircraft fire over Leverkusen but without being seriously injured. Was then posted to 214 Squadron, where he flew on Flying Fortresses. At the end of the war, was transferred to Transport Command as an adjutant. Talks about low morale among the aircrew and mentions Scarecrow shells. Remembers his most frightening experience when he flew for five hours in an icing cloud on the way to Hamburg.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
15 Squadron
1651 HCU
214 Squadron
aircrew
B-17
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fear
ground crew
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
memorial
Oxford
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Cranfield
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Wyton
Scarecrow
searchlight
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1069/11525/APeelPAG170831.2.mp3
5b6150f7cc72cd0cfb86b61f26afc8e6
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
Peel, M G
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Philip Andrew Gervase about his father, Michael Gervase Peel. He flew operations as a pilot with 44 and 227 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
2017-04-05
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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Peel, MG
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 31st of August 2017 and I’m in Southampton with Philip Peel. We are doing a proxy interview about his father Jarvis, although during the war he was called Mike. What are the earliest memories do you think your father had of life?
PP: He grew up in West Kirby, I remember him talking about going on holiday to Anglesey, they were quite, his father was a, had been a cotton broker and had been pretty wealthy but lost his money in the Depression, in the crash. He tells the story of getting the very first phone line, private phone line between Manchester and Liverpool, something like that, but I think they’d been quite, the Peels were associated with cotton there, but they lost money in the Depression. From looking at photographs of him he had, seems to have had quite a nice time, a family of, three of them he was the youngest.
CB: And where did he go to school?
PP: He went to prep school [unclear] which is local to the, funnily enough my brother ended up probably through that teaching there, many, many years later [laughs] but he went there I don’t know that much about what he did there.
CB: And how did he come to go to St Edward’s Oxford?
PP: Because it was a tradition, I think he was the eleventh or twelfth Peel that went there and his mother knew, or grandmother knew the original warden or something like that so there’d been quite few generations that had been there so it’s totally automatic, both his brother went there and he went there.
CB: And how did he get on academically and from a sport point of view?
PP: He’s always liked sport, so there’s pictures of him doing steeplechases, photographs rather, I, he was a sportsman right the way through into his nineties, I mean, he was playing squash in his eighties and still continues to play, no, I mean, he might have stopped squash in his late seventies I think, but he continued with tennis, and presumably it was his eyesight wasn’t good enough, so my guess is that he actually enjoyed sports there and recently he went on eventually to do PPE at Oxford so he must have done reasonably well.
CB: Now, before the war, when he was at school, he would’ve been preparing for civilian life, what sort of career did he think he was gonna go into before the war started?
PP: I’ve never asked him that, I know what he did afterwards, which was to become a health and safety inspector, I don’t think, I think his father was quite old when he had him and I think that stopped the stock broking, the cotton broking rather had disappeared cause even the family had gone bust so he, whilst he was at St Edwards everybody had to do the cadets and so there was the army and the navy and the, what was the officer training corps then I think, now called the ATC I think and he told me that he chose the RAF because they appeared to do less squad bashing and he thought the uniform was slightly nicer. And so obviously high ideals there [laughs] and he does tell, told me some wonderful stories about there, being there on air raid duty, they had pupils that, you know, to stay up all night looking for air raids. But the other thing was he remembers that the, after Dunkirk, the BEF or a large number came back and camped on Port Meadow in Oxford and there were many, many thousands of them and he remembers St Edward boys were chosen, the cadets were chosen to guard the BEF but they had, I think each squad had one rifle and one bullet and he thought [laughs] these battle hardened thousands of soldiers were being, were being guarded by seventeen year olds there, youngsters, apparently if you were sixteen you couldn’t have a rifle I think when you were seventeen you could and they also had to guard the armoury and he remembers there that seeing a rat and one of the other cadets got it with a, with a bayonet which he thought was a very good shot.
CB: So, he’s going into extermination.
PP: Well, he wasn’t [unclear] that did it was, somebody else who got it with a bayonet cause so.
CB: So, he’s born in 1923. The war started when he was seventeen effectively, near enough, sixteen.
PP: Yeah, September, he was, his birthday was September.
CB: And what did he do then?
PP: Uhm, he told me that he, this squadron leader or somebody came round and uhm, and talked about that the, they were offering a subsidised, not subsidised, free pre-university course at Aberdeen University, where you studied navigation and I think a couple of other subjects, I don’t think it was solely navigation and this was a sort of offer. And he thought that was a pretty good idea that they would pay for him to go to university so that’s what he chose to do. He went straight from there into to do this so it wasn’t a conscious decision, it’s a series of little things that happened so this wasn’t a great conscious decision to, you know, to go off and be a hero or something like that, it’s a gradual sort of, things like this and initially the uniform and lack of squad bashing and then this, they offered this and so then ended up, you know, getting into the RAF. So, he did his course in navigation, cause I think there were a couple of other subjects and he finished that and he was then interviewed for what he was going to do next because obviously the war on you need to join so interviewed by the RAF and they said, what are you gonna do? And he said, well, navigation, I enjoy navigation and you know, you just spend this money training me. So they decided to make him a pilot which he thought was [laughs], it amused him that they should waste all that but he did however because he had a friend I think who was a navigator, who’d had been on the course, who became a navigator and I think within a few months, within six months or was on ops whereas he went, it took a couple of years I think from then on for him before he was on ops, which is probably a good thing because I’m not sure I would be around if, if he spent longer flying [laughs] with the casualty rate. So, then
CB: So, he would’ve done his initial training
PP: Yes
CB: [unclear]
PP: So, Tiger Moths, certainly the early stuff was Tiger Moths.
CB: But he was in Britain to begin with.
PP: Yes, he was in Britain.
CB: Then what did he do?
PP: He was in Britain, we got the logbook actually but, so he did the, in Britain he started off
CB: Yes. Well, it looks as though what he did was ACRC in other words his initial Aircrew Reception Centre and that was in Brighton.
PP: Alright.
CB: Although the ACRC was actually in London but the logbook says that. And then he went to Desford, so that’s what it says in here.
PP: Yep.
CB: So, then he did some initial stuff there, then what did he do?
PP: Well, I know he ended up going to Canada, the various bits and pieces, I think he went from one centre to another, going through the bureaucracy but he ended up going over to the Canada, to the Rockies. He, I’m not that sure about the order but I think it was that he went to Prince Edward Island initially that might have been later on but certainly at one point and he made his way up to this particular base in King, St Edward Island, no, not St Edward Island, King Edward Island, wasn’t it, and it was the wrong, it was, it was an American base and he then had to try and find, work his way. Let’s have a look at the logbook here, just read it, Macloed, I think that’s High River, Queen Mary, ok, he went over on the Queen Mary, it, which he said was amazing, he [laughs], he was very lucky, because you had to work your way, you couldn’t, you didn’t just sit there as a loaded troop ship and it went very, very fast, they could outrun the U-boats, the speed was, it just went on its own, faster than anything else and they were sorting out what he should do and they decided that as he was RAF, they would put him onto anti-aircraft batteries, not that he’d knew anything about firing guns at all, but and therefore he didn’t need to swab the decks or do the food or everything else like that, so they gave him a bit of training but then they were joined by seven specialist gunners, anti-aircraft people who then said, no, we don’t want you there [laughs], so basically him ended up just doing absolutely nothing, he just had this very nice cruise going over and he does describe, there was a continuous rainbow over the front cause of the speed they were going and he says, and he remembers one night where he went up on deck and it mirrorlike, it totally, totally calm and he said, this looked amazing with this completely totally still and they were just going at the high speed through the water and so he was quite lucky with his trip over. Yes so, Charlottesville, yes, Charlottetown, that’s right, I do know this Prince Edward Island, isn’t it, is it Prince Edward Island?
CB: Yeah.
PP: Yeah, Prince Edward Island, that’s right that he arrived and it was quite tricky, you know, nowadays and all that, in that time and he eventually arrived after a long, long journey and they were rather mystified because he’d arrived completely, he’d arrived at America, oh, that’s right because he’s Royal Canadian, he’s in the Royal Canadian Airforce at that point and they said, no, this is American one, he had to go to the other end of the island and anyway, so he did listen to a lot of shuttling around I think where first of all he wanted to be pilot, then navigator and that so he was got pushed around from one place to another but anyway he eventually ended up over in the Rockies and he trained over there and he says, they basically flew seven days a week. And I think one of the days, Sunday was just only half day but they basically just flew continuously [unclear] they right away through I don’t think [unclear] days or anything, I think he said on Christmas day they actually maybe possibly had a day off but it sounds absolutely continuous, and he seemed to have quite a good time there. I have a photograph of him training on that. He, I can’t remember the details but he then having got through that I think then he got his, he would have got his wings, yes, uhm, and they were gonna send him down for flying on Liberators and I’m not quite sure, I do know he ended down in the States but they’d been having serious crashes there with Liberators and they decided he was an inch too short because they thought it might be due to the fact that they needed to put strong rudder on and if people were a bit short they weren’t able to push it sufficiently so having gone down there and he started doing all this he then, they changed their minds. I do know he went on, he, we had a relation Ruth Van Anders, who he sent a postcard to from a prisoner of war camp in New York, and she, and he had some leave I think after finishing and she said well come down, he said I don’t have any money, and she said, oh, I’ll wire you some money wide fifty dollars which is a huge amount of money at that time, cause they were quite wealthy [unclear]. And he went to New York and one of the things he did there was to go and see this new musical, the first week of this new musical called Oklahoma on Broadway, which he very much enjoyed and we had the full seventy eight set later on when I was young, of Oklahoma. And then he went on down to Trinidad because again there was another relation there so he does, but he seemed to be quite wined and dined and faited because he was in uniform and the American girls seemed to like him I think. Anyway, he then came back and he came back on the Queen Mary again and it’s just been the Quebec Conference because the Peel family my, the, his uncle or great uncle Reg, Reginald Peel, was Commodore of the Cunard fleet, he had been captain of the Titanic sistership, actually, and so was known, the Peel were known as a family. He got introduced to the something like the deck captain or something, it’s not the captain of the ship but the person who organised the passengers and said, oh, you must come along, there’s some, you know, there’s someone of the managery people, RAF people, you know, you must come along and be my guest and he went to this and he was a very, would be just, would it be pilot officer, that he just
CB: Probably.
PP: Yes.
CB: If he was commissioned immediately.
PP: What
CB: Otherwise he would have been a sergeant
PP: No, he, I think he was commissioned immediately, but I, anyway and he went in and it was this cocktail party and he said the most junior other officer cause it, oh, what it was, it was after the Quebec Conference which was the Churchill-Roosevelt, was it, Roosevelt conference where they decided I think D-Day wasn’t it? And so was the really, really senior people and they were all track and [unclear] so this is the most senior people and the most junior person there was an Air Commodore and then him [laughs], uhm, so he, he felt slightly, slightly out of his depth there. Anyway, so he appeared to have quite a nice trip back. He then may well have gone onto various places here but I do remember that he, he was about to go to, I think operational training, and he came out in a rash and they probably took him off to an isolation hospital there’s an isolation hospital there so this would have been what, ’43-’44, anyway they got all these facilities for people coming back to the, you know, from desert warfare and he was the sole person in there and the medical officers [unclear] you know two, I think it was a sergeant or something, medical orderly, you know, what do you think he’s got? Smallpox. No, it’s chicken pox, or measles or whatever it was and so he, he, and it was quite some time you know so he was all ready to go and he just had to sit on his own in this completely empty hospital but I think again he probably quite enjoyed the fact that all the nurses to look after him and he was in isolation. So, then he went to operational OTU on Stirlings I would guess
CB: We’ll stop there. Right, we’re restarting now.
PP: Ok, so
CB: The point he got his wings was when?
PP: Ah, June 1943. So then he, he moved around America a bit, he went to the, in August ’43 he, I think they considered him for flying on Liberators but his, he was too short, but anyway he, eventually he came back and then was, at advanced flying unit at South Cerney, in brackets it’s got Bibury here, funnily enough very close to where he ended up living and where actually I did glider training, then he moved to Market Harborough in March ’44 to Operational Training Unit and he was there for a couple of months, flying Stirlings I understand,
CB: He would have been on Wellingtons there
PP: Wellingtons, was it?
CB: Yes
PP: Ok, there we are, yes, Wellingtons
CB: So, they were crewed up, did he ever describe
PP: Yes
CB: The experience of crewing up?
PP: Yes
CB: What did he say about that?
PP: Well, basically they put them all in a hangar [laughs] and let them sort themselves out which he thought was a, again a rather wonderful RAF way of doing it, and you just sort of wander round and, and they said, again going back to the public school thing, it was like, choosing, you know, people for a game, and just left to sort each other out basically. I can’t remember any actual stories he told us about that, but he says, let them all in and you wonder round so if you liked somebody and put, you know, put it together like that.
CB: Yes. As the pilot, he was the captain. Did he feel that the polarity was on him, in other words people needed to come to him?
PP: He didn’t say, he basically just said people talked to each other and sort of, it was quite almost like a social thing, it, yes, he just thought that that whole process put him in but he didn’t talk about him, himself organising if he had done he probably wasn’t that sort of person that would but he always said that he was the bus driver, the navigator was the one who did the interesting work and he just, he just drove them there [laughs] and drove them back so he was very dismissive of what he, well, maybe not dismissive but he, he played it down.
CB: So, was an informal arrangement but very effective.
PP: Yes, yes, I mean, they mainly just basically left people to sort each other out which is interesting, it’s very interesting way of doing it if you think about it, so they were doing it on gut feeling, I think, to see how well they got on, another thing he did say about flying was that that because he was the only officer, I wonder whether I should say this later on,
CB: Well, say it now and we can [unclear]
PP: Ok, and you can [unclear] later. Was the fact that actually he always felt in war films that, you know, the crew went back and you know, share drinks and stuff like that, and he said the rest, there were no other officers in this crew, and so they had a different mess, they didn’t share stuff, right, and so because the NCOs were in a different mess to the officers, I don’t think that totally held true to, they must have done certain stuff he talks about having parties and things like that, but it is interesting that it wasn’t the, the way I’ve always seen it in films where they had this gang of people who were all equal, it was very much the officers and the NCOs even though they were, you know, they were very much, you know, fighting together.
CB: So effectively there was a social and rank divide but when they were in the air,
PP: Yes, yes.
CB: How did that?
PP: There it was very much and there’s a story about coming back this, well this is when they were on ops, I’ll tell it now then. They were, it was September the 27th, we can see from his logbook where they were coming back from but anyway they were coming back across the North Sea and it got to midnight and the rear gunners to skipper, go ahead rear gunner, happy birthday skip! Cause it’s his 21st birthday. Radio operator to skipper, go ahead radio operator, happy birthday skip! And they went right the way round the crew and they all wished him a happy birthday on his 21st birthday. Now they had it from when they got back, they had either a hang up or some reason, something, you know, they didn’t get back when they thought they were going to get back, so they, there had been a party planned because there was a, one of the squadrons I think was moving out and so they were having a final leaving party and so they’d gonna combine it with his birthday party so they got back in, because they were late he said, they got into the where the party was the mess and the crew must have come along cause all there was, was completely empty and there was just a sign saying free drinks for you and that was it so he went to bed and flew the next day. That was his birthday, 21st birthday.
CB: Yeah. A hard time.
PP: Yes, yes. Uhm,
CB: So you point,
PP: We, yeah,
CB: The point about the rest of the crew being NCOs, and him being an officer would be for the formal meeting process but what about when they went out socially?
PP: Well, he told me they didn’t particularly go out socially and again this is, I was surprised because they did, he said because NCOs and officers didn’t particularly mix, I don’t think he was a great drinker, well later on he did drink quite a lot of vodka when he was in his nineties but that’s different, he sort of moderation in most things, what he [unclear], twenty year old I don’t know, but he doesn’t talk about going out socially with the crew I say because I asked him about that and he said, well, we were, you know, it was NCOs and it was officers, so he said, we didn’t particularly.
CB: Let’s come back to that in a minute. So, at the Operational Training unit, it was Market Harborough,
PP: Yes.
CB: Then where does he go from there?
PP: He goes to Winthorpe, this is Heavy Conversion Unit where this is where he would go from the two engine Wellington then on to the four engine Stirlings, and he was there from July ’44, he was there, right the way through till September so this was you know, two more months so again there’s a long, long process of going from one place to another cause if he’d been navigator, he would have bene straight on, this process continues and then he moved in September ’44 and this time it’s only a couple of weeks and this was then conversion to Lancaster, Lancaster Finishing School and that was at
CB: At Syerston
PP: Syerston, ah, Syerston, can’t quite read it, no. Ok. So and then finally and then at some point during here he would was about to go onto one of these ones where he ended up with his chickenpox or measles, I’m not quite sure which one but eventually then on the 14th of November 1944, he then joined 44 Rhodesia Squadron, Dunholme Lodge and he always said he, within the short time because he was actually flying for three months and he actually he moved around, he moved four different places he moved round in the, he was in two different squadrons and so he actually had, he didn’t really have a sort of permanent base, he got attacked to all permanent squadron really.
CB: Difficult to settle.
PP: Yes, so, he was with 44 Rhodesia Squadron for two weeks and then, and then they, at Dunholme Lodge they moved to Spilsby and that was for 39, 10, that looks like only a week they were there and then he is moved to 227 Squadron where they spent a couple of months before he finally got shot down. So, would you be interested in me telling you some of the stories he’s told me?
CB: Well, I think so. The, it’s intriguing that he was such a short time with 44 Squadron and so he went from the OTU with six in the crew to the HCU on Stirlings with seven in the crew because the flight engineer would have joined.
PP: Yeah, yeah. Flipping through his logbook here, so Syerston there we got [unclear] course and there we got, 44 Rhodesia Squadron, right, so, so his first, so, he was a passenger, he flew down and he got to Dunholme, so his very first operation on September the 18th, Bremerhaven and he was second pilot on that so basically the first operational mission and then there’s four more things HLB, not sure where that stands for, basic training things as in and x cross country and then the first time he flew was on the 26th of September operation Karlsruhe. That’s right. Then the 27th was then operation Kaiserslautern and that would’ve been the one which I, he came back and it was his 21st birthday, so, that was his third mission and then on the 30th he moved to the, the squadron moved to Spilsby. Uhm, right.
CB: Ok, we’ll pause there for a mo. So, we’re back on ops now, a significant raid was on Norway but again, what was that?
PP: Yes, no, that was, Bergen. He said because it was occupied territory, therefore you had to be a lot more precise, with the bombing, and you, and unless you could identify the target, you didn’t drop bombs, so he talks about this and the, you can see the, he says no bombs dropped, cloud over target, his description was though as a very large number of bombers coming in he thought probably and the Pathfinders had dropped flairs [unclear] or something like that, had dropped it, but had problem with cloud and they had all the bomber paths were coming in with different heights, more or less simultaneously, and they went round and they could sort of partly see it and as they got it, got to it, the bomb aimer said, you know, can’t see it, sorry, abort, so they went round again, again came in and the bomb aimer said, we can’t, sorry, sorry, we can’t do this, so my dad decided to go round for the third time, I think the crew getting a little bit worried because all these other, they were quite low down, all these other bombers, hundreds of bombers, all coming in at different levels and bombs, they could actually see slim pass, but they went round a third time and he said, after the third time [laughs], he said, they really and they couldn’t do it the third time, still cloud so they came back with the bombs but he said that the crew, he didn’t feel he could ask them to get around a third time, he’s not sure they will [laughs], he would’ve lynched him because it was a very, very frightening experience. But on the way back, it says back over the North Sea, and he said that it was, it was, you know, the most stressful time and going back, coming back and he fell asleep and it’s on autopilot, what they call it, Archie, was it or? Anyway
CB: That’s the Anti-aircraft
PP: No, no, yeah, but there’s
CB: Yeah
PP: Anyway, the nickname
CB: George
PP: George, yes, that’s right, the and they were coming back and he, you know, they were on autopilot, and he woke up suddenly, ok, and so he thought he better just check out with the rest of the crew, you know, pilot to rear gunner, no answer, pilot to radar, no answer, he went round the whole of the crew, the entire crew were asleep, including himself [laughs]. So and he thinks it was probably due to the stress of this because, you know, this flying at night. Now, whether it was that mission or another mission, I’m not quite sure, but they, I think it must have been another mission, that’s right, when they did drop the bombs, they came in and they were coming round in a, on, near the airfield and suddenly there was a [mimics the sound of an explosion], and the whole aircraft shook, what’s that? What was that? And member of the crew looked in the bomb bay and one of the bombs had a hang up and has dropped into and is rolling around in the bomb doors, so they called up and said, we’ve got, it’s not a hang up, you know, we’ve got a bomb in, running around the bomb bay, and he said, where are you? And he said, well, you know, we are on our final approach to board, and he said, and then he said, there’s another call, plane two call, saying, we’ve got two in our bomb bay from another aircraft, where are you? We’re on the perimeter track [laughs]. Anyway they went off and they had to go off to the North Sea to drop the bomb, they just basically go off and open the bomb door so there was a designated area to do this [clears throat] and they went off and but when they got back, said obviously the control tower hadn’t told anybody so they’d assumed because they was hours over, they were lost. So, their names had been scrubbed off, there they, you know, they no longer existed, he think, thought some of the crew had their rooms cleared, you know, they started doing this basically, everybody just assumed they’d gone. One of the things that I asked him about how he felt about, well, people not coming back, you know, and he said, well, I mean, it wasn’t that bad, it was only one or two a mission, who didn’t come back and then I started doing the maths, and I think there’s twenty in a squadron, it’s twenty in a squadron
CB: Twenty to thirty, it depends
PP: Yes, ok.
CB: Yeah
PP: Something like that, so one or two a mission and you have to do thirty missions, and if you’re losing one or two out of twenty, who are not coming back, the statistics of and so he said to me, wasn’t that bad, it’s only one or two who didn’t come back.
CB: So, what were they told to do with the bomb?
PP: What, with the bomb that was rolling
CB: They got the bomb in the
PP: Oh yeah, well, basically, they were told to go off and drop it over the North Sea, over there. That’s what delayed them, you see, so they just, they went off and just opened it and dropped it over the North Sea and that then was why they were delayed and couldn’t come and had been written off effectively by the time they got back. So those
CB: So the first, the normal tour would be thirty operations.
PP: And he got
CB: And he didn’t get that far,
PP: No, he
CB: So, what’s the next bit?
PP: Yes, well, he would, as I said, he was pretty much average [laughs] and pretty much on average if you got half way through, and this was oh, they did three missions on the Doms, Dortmund- Ems Canal which they did that three times and that was quite [unclear], and one of the Lancasters that they flew which I identified, I’m not sure which mission it was, was one of the Lancasters that went on to do over a hundred missions, very few of them identified one of those, was one of the ones that they flew cause they did, the planes seemed, changed from, you know, they went on mostly the same one but often changing, now he said they’d had a virtually brand new plane, D Dog, he told me was actually the first mission but it’s actually the second mission and they were going to Giessen, so uhm, they’re on the, they, on their bomb run in when they were attacked and the rear gunner thought that he’d destroyed, had destroyed the [unclear], I’ve got it, I’ve got it, and then they were also attacked again and then the mid upper also thought, you know, said, you know, I got him, I got him, you know and it’s down a claim here one destroyed and one damaged and, so they were feeling, he said, they were feeling pretty good actually because they got two enemy aircraft and they saw this aircraft ahead of them, they thought and the front gunner said, there’s one ahead of us, shall we go for it? And so they decided to go and attack the fighter which probably wasn’t a terribly sensible thing to do because they had a backward firing gun and actually the fighters apparently did that, they flew beneath so that they could fire up into the Lancaster, so they went down, and backward firing gun went [mimics the sound of a machine gun] and got right well on the bomb bay, now the odd thing was because they’d been attacked on their bomb run in, he’d forgotten to close the bomb bay so it was still open, so they were on fire, they closed the bomb bay doors, they started to evacuate some of them, some of them jumped out but I can’t remember quite which order, I mean, the rear gunner did, the rear gunner actually never opened his, he died, he was killed, he never opened his parachute and my father always thought it was cause it was a different sort of parachute and it was a seat type rather than a clip on one and he thought that he was, always thought that he, and this is a memory he had right the way through to his nineties, he always thought that he was eyes shut reaching for this rip cord because it was completely unopened. Anyway, so some of them bailed out but then the smoke appeared to clear and they thought, maybe we are alright, so the crew’s been a bit depleted and so they then decided oh, they’re ok, we’ll hold off and they kept going. Second mistake of the night, was there was still a lot of smoke around so he decided, well lets clear the smoke by opening the bomb bay doors, just to clear the smoke cause they thought the fire was out at which the fire started up again, now, so, yeah, ok, then the, it was, what was his name, Andre, anyway, one of the crew was Spanish, and he didn’t want to bail out because he’d fought in the Second World War,
CB: That was the bomb aimer.
PP. It was the bomb aimer, yes
CB: Yes
PP: Yes, he’d fought in the Second World War, ah sorry
CB: Spanish civil war
PP: The Spanish civil war and he’d always said he could never bail out because the Germans would, you know, would take, you know, he was different to the RAF because he’d been in the civil war so he was very, very frightened, he didn’t want to, didn’t want to bail out. And the bomb aimer, I don’t know the radio operator, was sitting on the and he heard this later when they, cause they met up at the interrogation centre they and two of them, I think eventually he got pushed out basically, the bomb aimer just got [unclear] somebody pushed him out, right, gotta go, [laughs] and there were two others and they were sitting on the main hatch about to bail out, and beneath them was the German fighter, who was just flying along, he said so close that if they’d jumped out they would hit it and this fighter wasn’t doing anything, he was just flying along beneath alongside them and they’d been going some time and my father always thought that the, he wondered whether he, you know, the fighter had seen they were stricken, they were on fire, you know, they were bailing out and he was just watching them and counting to see whether everybody they got out but he wasn’t, he was just really, really close, so close that he could see the face, he, I mean, my father know this, I mean this was later on he, but anyway they jumped out and he said he was so close they would outright hit him, anyway my dad jumped and he said, basically and I said, how did you fell, and he said well, relieved because it was hot back there and I was jumping out in for cold you know, it’s nice and cool and it’s really pretty, he said, it felt [unclear] whether he could feel it but it was feeling was, you know, far behind so he jumped out headfirst and one, two, three and he was looking down and there seemed to be lakes, these clear patches and woodland and he thought they were lakes and so and he was heading, he was trying to steer and he kept on going right towards these lakes and he didn’t want to end up in the lakes so he’s frantically steered away from these, these pale patches of water towards the dark patches and he ended up landing, slap banging in a pale patch which he thought was a lake and discovered it was a field so was actually very lucky that he didn’t end up in a tree because that was not, I think one of other crew broke an arm or something like that. Anyway, he ended up, he was on a run for about a week, and he hid in a farmhouse, at one point he was in a barn, and a German guard came in and he just had to keep very, very quiet and he made his way, he was trying to make his way to Switzerland I think it was, and it was December, it was very cold, and he said some people were actually seemed quite nice or just sort of ignored him you know, he didn’t, somebody he
CB: Is it German people?
PP: It must have been German, it must have been German but he, I mean, it wasn’t specific, I mean, they didn’t make a fuss, just sort of let him stay or they didn’t make a fuss. This was of course during the Ardennes offensive I think it was because this was December. Right, anyway he got to what was presumably the Rhine and to get across he decided he wasn’t going to swim across in December so he, there was a bridge across and there was [unclear] farm wagons and things going across and so he snug in behind and he had this torch, there’s a battery in the torch and it had a wire across and he walked across and he just tried to hide and he got across and the German guard saw him and saw this wire and was very worried about the wire, anyway so that was it, he was caught. He learned later when he met up in interrogation centre with two rest of the crew that the Martines, that’s the name of the Spanish chap, had been, was executed by the Germans and it became, it was a war crime that was investigated after the war and I’ve discovered quite a lot of information about that, exactly what happened and where he was executed, whether it was actually cause he was Spanish I don’t think because I was very surprised at the number of RAF that were being randomly killed around that time
CB: Just to interrupt [unclear] killing particularly do you think?
PP: The Germans
CB: Yes, [unclear]
PP: Germans, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t like an organised thing if you see, it appeared to be, I’ve done some research into this, and I, I was surprised that it was, I mean, it was the height of the bombing, they would just, sometimes just killing aircrew quite a few of them, I’m really quite surprised at the numbers that, those that happened, my feeling was that actually it wasn’t particularly that he was Spanish but he was always because it was, it wasn’t like it was an organised thing, it was just, he was unlucky. Two other members of the crew however or rather one of the members of the crew had told him how after they’d landed and he was pinched up and was crawling along this hedgerow and he heard something on the other side of the hedgerow and he stopped and the noise stopped on the other side and he crawled along and this noise started and he eventually came to a gap in the hedgerow and he peered through and you can guess what was happening [laughs] and find another member of the crew [laughs] looking at him, which is fairly amazing they’d ended up that close when consider how long this plane must have been flying for after, fairly recent, a couple of years ago, a German chap who was trying to locate where the Lancaster had actually ended up, was asking me because they didn’t, hadn’t found that wreck and it sounds like it was flying for quite some time.
CB: It’s interesting that sometimes the crews bailed out of the aircraft which carried on
PP: Yeah
CB: And landed a long way away
PP: Yes, it’s, well it was, I mean, it was on fire and they decided that this was flying straight and level from what I can go because they spent some time arguing about, you know, how rather try and push Martines out and watching this other fighter that was just flying along beside them you know
CB: Yes
PP: The interesting couple of stories from the interrogation centre. Ok, he’s been interrogated and the technique was that they told you, my father said, the Germans basically knew quite a lot from [unclear] information are you with 277 Squadron? You know how is so and so, you’ve got the new Lancasters, haven’t you? And would tell you all this information with the idea that they know everything to try and get you into this thing, you know, so you give away another morsel of information and so this was happening and, and the German had really very good English, my father’s being interrogated and he said, my father said to him, he said, look, why are you bothering? Said, you’ve lost the war, it’s obvious you’ve lost the war, why are you asking me all this, why are you bothering? The German classically said, I’m asking the questions not you [laughs] and got quite cheerful [unclear]. Later on when they were taken up to, right the way up to Germany because they went up to Stalag Luft I, Barth which is right up cause he went right from the Swiss border, right the way up through and he said he was with two Americans in a train and they had a single elderly guy with them and it was an all passenger train and they had this long, long journey and they decided they were going to try and escape and so they discussed amongst themselves that one was going to overcome they guard who was not, you know, was not first line troops and then what they were going to do and they worked it all out and every time they were just about to do it, it went over a bridge or a viaduct and so they said, oh no, [unclear] and so in the end they didn’t actually do anything and my father said it was probably quite good I did, they didn’t because this was of course, this was getting round just before Christmas I think and fairly six, no, it would’ve been, yeah, it was, it was probably 10th, mid-December anyway. Ok
CB: Ok, we’ll stop there for a mo.
PP: Yeah, ok. So, whilst he landed, he dug a hole for the parachute and he took off his epaulettes and military stuff and they had flying boots which could convert to shoes so they looked like civilian but the other thing they had was their escape maps which were these maps on silk and so he had this torch and so he figured out where he was approximately and there to try and make his way across to Switzerland.
CB: So, the German experience interrogation, what did he say about how that was carried out?
PP: Do you want me to repeat that story?
CB: Just the attitude of the interrogators.
PP: Well, the attitude of the interrogators was always the thing about telling them, we know everything about you, we know everything about your squadron, what you were doing, the names of people, the type of aircraft they’ve got, all this information.
CB: But they, were they passive, aggressive? Did you?
PP: It’s sounds like.
CB: Friendly?
PP: No, I don’t think friendly, I think they were bureaucratic I think from the response when my father said, why bothering [unclear], we ask the questions not you. So I think it was this and this sort of relaxed, sort of well-spoken English, oh, we know what we are doing, you know, we know what you are doing, but giving lots of information or rather the Germans giving information to try and pick up or you might agree that the, my father might agree with something but that would confirm what they thought so
CB: Difficult trap part of the trade
PP: Yes
CB: So, they go by train to Stalag Luft I
PP: Yes
CB: Then what?
PP: And well basically, well I asked him about, you know, when did you try to escape? And he said, well, at this point of the war, December, the allied armies were just about to cross the Rhine I think at this point, I mean, it was very clear the war was coming to an end and so they weren’t doing any escapes at this point because the war was, they were going to be free fairly soon in some circumstances rather. The camps that were very, they were [unclear] jammed in their rooms, they had formed, he seemed to sort of a have a notebook that he had there and he seemed to spend quite a lot of his time, attending lectures, there was all sorts of skilled people there and they gave different lectures on different subjects, I think my father learned German and car maintenance and so there’s lots and lots of people, they formed sort of mini universities because there was a lot of highly educated people there. He shared a, in his hut there was some and I can’t remember the name, there was a chap who after the war I think was quite famous and became a woman, sex change, but anyway they, I said most of this thing was organised their time and his book, his notebook which I have here, which I thought would, from the very faded, round, cause paper was very scarce which I thought would have a wonderful diary is actually mostly [laughs] car maintenance and things, remove the cylinder head and this, that, the, it was very cold, they had, he told about they would saving up for Christmas day and they’d been making this alcohol so they could have it on Christmas day and it was a great big [unclear] of alcohol [unclear] something else like that and when they drank it on Christmas day they discovered at the bottom was a dead rat [laughs], the it was cold, it was depravation it, but basically they were safe at this point, it was a huge camp, there was American side and the British side and the but with the, with the thing of certain you know RAF officers, they, a lot of them would’ve come to public school would have been going to university so they were actually a very intelligent group with a lot of knowledge and then the main thing was that they took their time to be running lectures for each other because at that point there was no point in trying to escape, that would be foolish, the Germans were getting tougher about escape, they had been at Stalag Luft III so this, they had this sort of quite organised
CB: What about food parcels?
PP: Yes, they got a few parcels through and particularly they were saved up particularly for Christmas because he was arriving, he had arrived about two weeks before Christmas, so they were godsend, I think in the postcode I have here he actually talks, he talks about food parcels
CB: Is it a postcard sent to a friend in New York?
PP: Yes, the friend that he, that he had stayed, shall I read this out?
CB: Please do.
PP: Dear Ruth, as you see I really have done a silly thing now, just before Christmas to, this is the eighth of January 1945, I apologise for not writing for so long, but circumstances have prevented it. I forgot whether I wrote to thank you for the razor blades, the cake and the writing pad. The letter was just what I needed and the cake, and the cake just what I wanted, there is still some cake left, and I dream about it so, this cake has obviously back at the [unclear] base and I dream about it now. It was so rich and filling. Then there’s two lines that have been crossed out by the censor, we have enough coal to keep the fire going during the day, at the moment I’m quite enjoying myself as long as it does not go on that long. Love, Jarvis.
CB: [laughs] fascinating. And that was recovered from Ruth, an American
PP: Yes, that’s got through, it may well have arrived after he was liberated so flying officer MG Peel this number Stalag Luft I, via Stalag Luft III, that’s interesting so at that point in the war it still got through from Stalag Luft I to Stalag, via Stalag Luft III and across to Scarsdale, New York, despite the fact we are only three months from the end of the war. Ok, one of the things they did have was they had a sweepstake for when the war was going to end and everybody put in, signed a check I don’t know what it was for, it might have been five pound, no probably it wasn’t that much, maybe it was a pound, I don’t know what it was but everybody signed a check or gave the promissory note and this was quite so that the amount was going to be really quite a large sum amongst the people that were doing this and it was certainly going to be adding up to a year’s wages and, and he was I think only a day out, I know what happened, they were going to end the war officially and then for some reason there was a delay before it was officially ended so and so he, cause otherwise [laughs] whoever won that actually ended up with, would be set for at least a year’s pay if not several years pay. So, shall I talk about when they were liberated?
CB: Yes, yeah.
PP: Ok. Basically they, I know they were quite lucky actually in a way because some of the other camps the Germans court-martialled them away and when the Russians were getting fairly close, the Germans talked to the senior officers cause the both American and British and they had different compounds, they had many thousands, the, and said, right, you’re all going to move, you know, we are going to move you out and they basically said, no, you will [unclear] what you gonna do, there’s thousands of us, there’s only, you know, I don’t know, a hundred of you so the Germans gave up for that point, which and I know some of the other camps that didn’t have a lot of the POWs, you know, that died as a result as they went on this.
CB: This camp was at the bottom of the Danish peninsula
PP: Yeah
CB: While some of these other ones were in the east
PP: Yeah
CB: Germany or Poland
PP: Yes, yeah
CB: So, they were moving them away from
PP: From, yes, yes
CB: The Russian advance
PP: So, anyway so the Germans disappeared and some of this I know about because I have a copy, they of, they produced a newspaper, so the, basically there was this period where the Germans disappeared and so they had to run the camp and so they took over the German printing press and they printed their own paper which was number one, first one, last one, it says on it. I should get you a copy of that. And basically they went out, the, they knew the Russians coming closer basically the Americans I think did most of this cause went out and to try and find the Russians bit, you know, a bit tensions at this point but they eventually met up with the Russians and, and took them back to the camp and so they were liberated. My father recalls the Russian [unclear] the man in charge saying to the British-American commanders, would you like some women? You know, your men must, we can arrange to get some German women and so, you know, you can have sex with them, which the Americans and the British politely declined but that was the, very much the attitude then and my father was horrified when he discovered what the Russians had been doing and he writes about it very poignantly in a letter that I only saw a copy of the first time recently, how he felt that the Russians were far worse than the Germans so I’m trying to remember anything else about
CB: On what basis was that observation?
PP: From what it would have been based on, I would imagine cause he doesn’t say and I, he never told, he did tell me that story about offering the women and he told in the way I just said which was quite humorous but actually it’s not humorous and but he told it in that way and it was very recently, very, very recently that my sister discovered this, in this pile of letters that he sent from Paris in 1947, to his girlfriend who later became his wife and my mother, about how he felt about it and this was a complete revelation to me how he felt about that, is that worth me reading that out?
CB: I suppose
PP: Yeah, cause I mean, in which case we’ll stop there cause I’ll then have to read it from
CB: Yeah. Ok, we’re talking about letters.
PP: No, yes, this was how he felt [unclear] the Russians and how he felt about them and it was very, very recent that my sister discovered in a pile of old letters, a letter that he wrote in June 1947 because after the war and this describes how he felt, after the war he was working in Paris and this letter to my mother, it’s written at four o’clock in the morning, on 16th of June 1947, and I’m just gonna read it out, ok, it’s a little difficult to read, so bear with me, ok, my disillusionment has an entirely different source I think from yours. After being for five months in POW camp and living for the day when we would be released, I was expecting something far removed from reality. What happened was that an army just as if not more brutal and definitely more barbaric than the Germans were, was our saviour. The thought that we were their allies, this is the Russians of course,
CB: Yeah
PP: The thought that we were their allies and therefore should approve of their actions are utterly repellent, was utterly repellent. All my ideals for which I personally was fighting meant less than nothing to them. Another cause was the fact that our own mode of fighting was just as bad and that I had allowed myself to drift into it without making any objection. At the beginning, [unclear] at the beginning of the war, I did not think that and I just have to go through the next page here, bear with me, at the beginning of the war, I did not think that any of the RAF would bomb towns indiscriminately, yet that is just what I myself did. I found I could enjoy dropping bombs without bothering to think of the results, I’m therefore not merely disillusioned by the state of mankind but in myself, all of which is going to take some time to mend. Good night my darling, I must get some sleep. With all my love, Jarvis. Now that’s really, I think and inevitably I think that to me and so that was his views immediately after the war which is interesting because he said his, I must, it will take some time to mend. And I think basically it, you know, it mended but he didn’t talk about it, he put that away
CB: Parked in the subconscious
PP: Yes, I mean, how do you cope with that so my feeling is that he would, he was not terribly emotional, I mean, he was brought up to be unemotional, he was brought up by a nanny basically, I mean, his father was really quite old, so and then very early to prep school so he definitely was somebody that did not believe, you know, in showing emotions but it’s interesting because in that letter he was revealing them, and I think that came from, where would he have got that from, my feeling is that would’ve been from what he gathered from other POWs who, the Americans and you know, from what they discovered cause they, they spent some, there was some time, I don’t know how quickly they repatriated but they would’ve been very aware of what was, how the Russians were treating the locals and I think that would’ve been him being told you know, what was going on and he was horrified at that. I think that’s where he would’ve come from because I don’t think this was public knowledge at that point because the Russians were of course our allies so this would been him hearing from others the stories of, you know, what they’d heard and seen around the camp, I think that’s where it’s come from, and of course his feelings about the bombings were, I asked him about that, how, you know, and he said well, that’s what I trained to do, that’s what I, that’s what we were trained to do, so he did what he had to do, you followed your orders. He was always unhappy about the fact that Bomber Command weren’t thanked after the war, he felt, he never made a great fuss about it cause he, he didn’t [unclear] about anything but I think that that was hurtful.
CB: Was he a member of any of the associations like the RAF association? Royal British Legion?
PP: He, I don’t think so, no, he, I mean, he had his Caterpillar badge, which and he would always go to the remembrance day, right the way through to his very, you know, final year, he would go to remembrance day, in the local village so he always did that but he never joined any of the associations or anything like that.
CB: And when the Bomber Command memorial was unveiled, did he go to that?
PP: No, he didn’t go to any of those things
CB: He wasn’t invited.
PP: No, no, which was a shame actually because he was actually very, very fit right through to the end, I mean he was losing his memory and we did arrange personally to take him over to the Lancaster that can still taxi, and we took him on a taxi run, I managed to sneak his uniform on without him realising but he took it along and I said oh, you are a bit cold, and put his jacket on and he didn’t particularly notice that it was this RAF jacket and then flunked it on his head, oh my new uniform, so and he was very self-deprecating about it and he did when they described at the beginning, you know, they did the audience thing about saying all about how, what the Lancaster, what the bomber crews did and they made it a bit melodramatic, a bit exciting and he sat there apart from falling sleep half way through [laughs] as we walked away, [unclear] load of old rubbish [laughs] cause he, they, he didn’t see it as, you know, that exciting but he, when people came up to him and did say, oh, I want to thank you, you know, shake him by the hand, he did actually quite enjoy that, it’s the last time he ever went out actually really.
CB: Was it? Yeah
PP: Into any sort of [unclear], yeah
CB: But to what extent after the war, are you aware of his keeping in touch with crew members?
PP: Don’t think he did at all. Don’t think he, immediately after the war, he stayed in the RAF and he worked in Paris and then he went to Cairo and he was involved with the setting up of air traffic control that and he did that for some and what he did do, he was in the reserve, auxiliary RAF, that’s right, so he stayed in the RAF for quite a few years and he did, you know, summer
CB: [unclear], did he?
PP: No he didn’t fly, he was in air traffic control
CB: Right, air traffic
PP. Because any flying would be in his notebook and there’s nothing in there, so he used to go on these camps and I remember him going to the camps, but you know, and he would do so this each year, so he stayed in the, associated with the RAF for a long time so I mean, certainly I would say [unclear], maybe early sixties I don’t know.
CB: So he was working for the RAF on air traffic.
PP: Yes, as I say, yes so his fighter, he
CB: Fighter control
PP: Fighter control, so he did, he would go up to the east of Scotland and he would be doing fighter control off the intercepting Russians coming over so uhm and he did that as member of the Auxiliary RAF but I’m not aware, I mean, the only, it wasn’t a crew member that he stayed in touch with but the only RAF person that he stayed in touch with, I think he did have some friends, I think my godfather is possibly an ex-RAF man, was my mother’s, he was friend with his, this chap, Trevor Richard, who said, oh, I’ll, you know, they were meeting up and he said, oh, can I bring my sister? His friend said and his sister was a very glamorous, young woman who then became his wife and became my mom and they met actually in Piccadilly Circus, outside the restaurant there, I don’t know what it was, famous restaurant, anyway, and my father’s usual state [unclear] joking about him being late, he was late the very first time we met, and they went on honeymoon to Normandy which [laughs] was a totally disastrous honeymoon, they went in an old MG which totally broke down and they didn’t get any further than Normandy and of course Normandy had been completely demolished in the war so, and my mom on her, the day that she, they went off on the honeymoon, she was under the car [laughs] trying to hold the exhaust on cause the exhaust fell off but anyway.
CB: It was a memorable event.
PP: Yes, memorable.
CB: So, the war’s over, but he’s in the RAF. How long did he stay in the RAF for?
PP: I think
CB: The late forties.
PP: I’ll tell you what, he stayed for a bit, I think a couple of years, then went to Oxford.
CB: Yeah
PP: He went back to his, he went to Oxford to Worchester College and where his tutor was Asa Briggs who became very renowned
CB: Historian, yeah
PP: Yes, and what was interesting I cause Asa is, I think still alive and I said, well, he said, well your tutors were the same age as you, so they were both the same age, cause everybody had been in the war.
CB: Yeah
PP: And he did that and completed his degree PPE and he came out and he was looking out, oh and I was born whilst he was a student, and he came out and he [unclear] got a job at a few hundred a year as a factory inspector as they were called then and they were very, very poor and they actually sold the car to buy a pram [laughs]. And he, that’s what he did, until he retired early due to stress and then took up sort of farming really, sheep and cows and horses and things like that.
CB: Where did he do that?
PP: Well, we moved into, as a factory inspector he was moved every seven years so my childhood, I was born in Oxford and we moved to Lyndhurst up to Leicester and back to Lyndhurst and then up to Glasgow and then down south and then we moved to near [unclear] farm house which they stayed in then for, I don’t know, forty odd years, a long, long time.
CB: So, you have a younger brother.
PP: Tony, who also went into St Edwards, yes.
CB: And a sister.
PP: My sister, she, yes, who’s, yes, Nicki, Tony, my brother and Nicki.
CB: What did they do?
PP. Nicki is a paramedic, she’s on fast cars, and so she actually is right on the frontline of emergency staff, and funnily enough meets a lot of ex, cause a lot of people who deal with the quite elderly and so she meets actually a lot of people, quite a lot of RAF people and she’s always interested in that and chats about it, and my brother was a teacher and is now retired.
CB: Well, Phillip Peel, thank you very much indeed for a most interesting talk about a most interesting man.
PP: Aren’t you going to ask me which record I like best?
CB: Yes
PP: Which, which [laughs]
CB: What about?
PP: [unclear]
CB: Yes, what about dancing on the ceiling?
PP: [laughs]
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 Philip Peel
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
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
2017-08-31
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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APeelPAG170831
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:23:27 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Mike Peel was a Lancaster pilot and served on two squadrons before becoming a prisoner of war late in 1944. He was an active sportsman and played tennis in his eighties but unfortunately is no longer with us. Using his logbook, letters, and recollecting his father’s anecdotes, Mike’s son Phillip gives a detailed account of his RAF career. He describes Mike’s amusement at being awarded a scholarship from the RAF to study navigation, but when he enlisted, he somehow ended up as a pilot. Phillip describes the path taken from gaining his “wings”, to operational training, before finally joining 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron in September 1944, and then onto 227 Squadron. Various operations are described, including one in which his crew was mistakenly declared lost. As they were returning to the station a thump was felt throughout the aircraft, as a bomb had failed to drop and was rolling around the bomb bay. Air Traffic Control instructed them to return to the North Sea to drop the bomb, however, no one told the squadron, and upon landing they discovered they had been removed from the squadron boards. Eventually, Mike’s aircraft was shot down. He evaded capture for several days and headed for Switzerland. Unable to swim across the Rhine river because of the cold temperature, he was captured when he tried to cross via a bridge. Interrogation was followed by transportation to Stalag Luft 1, where he remained until the arrival of the Russian army. Letters describe first hand the brutal and barbaric behaviour of the Russians, which was far worse than anything the Germans had undertaken.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Bremerhaven
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Poland--Żagań
Prince Edward Island
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-11-14
1945
44 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
evading
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
navigator
Operational Training Unit
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Spilsby
RAF Syerston
RAF Winthorpe
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1115/11605/PSchneiderT1702.2.jpg
253b1bb03df06456d9be85a27476c3c2
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1115/11605/ASchneiderT170428.1.mp3
c9ea20470217553e23e0abf4cca50d9e
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
Schneider, Tim
Tony Schneider
T Schneider
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Tony Schneider (1931) his identity card and three photographs. He lived on the flightpath to RAF Westcott and witnessed a Lancaster crash.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tim Schneider 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
2017-04-26
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
Schneider, T
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 Wednesday the 28th of April 2017 and I’m in the village of Westcott with Tim Schneider, whose real name is Tony and he’s going to talk about his recollection of early days. So, Tim, what do you remember as your earliest days of life?
TS: My earliest days of life.
CB: What age were you?
TS: I can remember as a three, four year old, living in the house I was born in, in the Lodge Lane in Westcott, which was owned by Rothschild Estate, because that farm was with Waddesdon Estate, my father worked for Waddesdon Estates and he lived there as a rent-free employee. I remember my father being poorly paid with regards working, but he had a house rent-free so he had to dig an allotment outside the house to help [unclear] and he, to make ends meet, we had to live off the land so to speak and as soon as we was old enough we, as four, five years old, we was feeding the rabbits, to feed us sometimes the rabbit, we had rabbits as pets, my father also kept pigs which was a supplement to the household, I think once a year we killed one, and I can remember him going up there with his buckets to feed the pigs every day in the morning and as we got older, we had help come out but as my first four year old I can remember him taking his buckets up there. At five years old I went to school and walked almost a mile to the school up in the village and you started at five, you didn’t start at four years old, you started at five in those days, and you stayed at school until you were elven years old. You took your eleven plus, which [unclear] failed, and after you either failed your eleven plus or passed it, you moved on to Waddesdon School, as eleven-year-old. By that time you managed to scrame a bike or get a bike somewhere so you was out to peddle around the villages, as far as mum and dad would let you go in them days and I failed this eleven plus so I obviously went to Waddesdon School then, which was a secondary school, and you bored your mind a bit because you had some garden to do up there, they’d give you a garden plot and that brought you into your fathers regain that you’d gotta help with your family budget and help in the allotment, which you did, at fourteen years old, getting to go at the allotment to help feed the family, which not only that my family did but all the families in the village, was kept by allotments really. There was a greengrocer coming round, but he did very little trade whatsoever, it was a crime if any, the people in the village bought potatoes off them because they self-supporting the potatoes off their allotment. I was the youngest of a family of five so it had to be that we all had to muck in and do this gardening, which was probably forced up you when you might been kicking a football round but that had to come first, the garden come first and then you could go and have a game of football. At the age of fourteen I left school and the only, the only real reason for it was because mum and dad wanted you to contribute, you left school so you had to get a job, where you earned a few shillings, and the only employment round here apart from going to Aylesbury which mum and dad couldn’t afford to send me or I couldn’t afford to go, you took to the farming. And I worked on the farm, the field farm, I did that, I sat there working out. When I was fourteen, I left school, working for an uncle, who was a farmer and I did farm work right until I was about this, I was twenty-seven. I worked on a farm until I was twenty seven, and that time I had managed to go on a holiday and meet my wife and [unclear] this holiday when I was about twenty, eighteen, nineteen, we married when I was twenty-two. And [unclear] we went to a pub in holiday camp at Clacton I met my wife and only way of [unclear] married life to be able to support her, was down on the farm so if she came to Westcott with me and we set up home with my parents, we then moved to a little cottage down the road here and we just, I just worked on the farm, [unclear] just say I got security, which wasn’t a very profitable security at all, but it was a job that you could get, you could get your wife and then we had two children come along and I was happy to maintain our children and in 1969 the farmer who my uncle retired from the farm, so I had to change my occupation then, and I went down to the road then to just past the Westcott turn on the way to Kingswood there was a fertilizer depot down there, supplies for a loads of, to farms and I was [unclear] to go down there for eighteen years then, there again maintaining my children and brought them up and obviously as the years went on, they fled the nest so to speak. We moved from our little cottage, when we had the first children [unclear] which was a, went up one day with the [unclear] in the garden, after the first child was born, we was able to get the council estate across the road here, which was the only one [unclear] built in my lifetime in Westcott, because I worked on the farm, I was able to claim it, because I was a farm worker and I had it, and we lived there till our children fled the nest and we came across, the wife and I came across this old people’s bungalow some years ago, after the childrens fled, and but after, oh, after I’ve been down the fertilizer store for eighteen years, and I was just an ordinary stacker driver, I had got no trade so just a stacker driver truck and it brought a lot of heavy lifting and work and to make ends meet, I’ve always been a person that would do anything other than the job I was doing, I had many job during my life time, spare time. One was serving beer in the local pub and from that experience I was picked up the pub life which I enjoyed cause I was earning money and I was in a place where there was a bit enjoyment and I could increase my income of wage cause I was never a big earner at wages at all and I loved the pub trade and the one chance I took in my life was when the Westcott social club come up for a new club steward and I stood the one chance in my life and I took the Westcott social club on as a full time steward, going against my father’s advice a little bit which he’d always told me, never do anything that’s a risk, and I really didn’t do it till that time and I did take the Westcott club on and I worked there for, uhm, till five years ago. But I did resign when I was sixty-five from it after I had eight and a half years there and I must say that was the best job I ever had, thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it and I did do myself a little bit of by going heavy cause I worked long hours, very long hours, seventy hours a week, and thoroughly enjoyed it. When I was sixty-five, I had saved enough money to say, well, I think I can’t do seventy hours more, I’m gonna retire. And I did retire and then I went back normally cause things went a little bit downhill, and I went backwards and forwards a little bit, helping out but I finally retired five years ago. I lost my wife elven years ago with cancer and I lived here now so there was, the past eleven years on my own, here in this bungalow, in this flat on my own and survived and here I am as a retired man and still living in Westcott. I’ve got no, I’m not an enterprising man at all, you’re talking to a man who is eighty-six in about three weeks’ time who’s never owned a motor car, never had one. I think that sums me up [laughs]. Is that enough [laughs]?
CB: That’s really interesting, thank you. Now, the reason for talking to you is because we’re in Westcott at the side of what was RAF Westcott number 11 Operational Training Unit.
TS: Yes
CB: When the war started, you were eight, because you were born in 1931
TS: Yes,
CB: The airfield was built shortly afterwards, what do you remember about the beginning of the war? What was the first thing you remember about the war?
TS: I remember them forming a home guard, I think in Westcott. I remember the big diggers and navvies and who were I think [unclear] devises, were the main contractors, [unclear]
US:
TS: Sorry?
US: I got it down as Humfries
TS: Humfries, yes
US: [unclear]
TS: Yes, I think I’m wrong and you are right, yes, humfries. I remember all that coming in, the concrete being laid in the fields, much one or two of the farmers [unclear] being roughed up and concreted and I can remember the first aeroplanes coming in and going. I can remember the RAF, the fields, the billets where the aircraft, the airmen lived had to be away from the aeroplanes so they was dotted around in various locations away from the airfield in field, in billets, I got my rationing I was [unclear] in hindsight, I think there was tenth they called them, in numbers and the village was right past [unclear], we would [unclear], there was billets away from where the aircraft was on the site, remember that. I can also remember them building a WAAF site which was near the cricket field, I can remember that going on and I can remember it all taking place and lots of people, air, personnel of the air people around here, they just [unclear] by the village, hell of a lot and the aircraft started to fly and we assumed then that’s what it was, they was training aircrew, we was told that and obviously the blackout was here, everything was black tilled, and the house, the airfield I think had three runways if not four, three and one of them was coming in from, oh, east Sefton, Sefton North, East or something, it come by the house by the cricket pitch, which is where I lived, it come across that way, and went in and so [unclear]. And they’d come so close, that line was so close to our house that we could come our bedroom, plane come in, draw the curtains back and we could see the pilot by our bedroom window going in to land. It was that close when they come that line, that way because it depended on the way they landed, I believe, where the wind was. Sometimes they’d come in over the A41 and they’d come by [unclear], I can remember plainly seeing that pilot sitting in his cockpit [unclear] by my bedroom window [unclear]. And also the taking off, the same thing, when the wind ran the other way, take off you could see his pilot then, you could see the aeroplane landing cause it was only hedge high [unclear] or tree high, put it that way, coming in. The other things I can remember, which I don’t know whether you’re interested in that one or not, the air people around here obviously increased everything around here, and rationing was on, and even the pub in the village was rationed with beer but these airmen drunk the pub out in about three days and after they’d drunk the Westcott pub out, they rode their bicycles to God knows what, to Quainton, they’ve got five pubs and they drunk them out as well. So, a lot of the airmen in them days, went across to Quainton and obviously Quainton was a bigger village than Westcott, there was quite a lot of ladies around and then the airmen at Westcott called Quainton Hollywood, that was nicknamed Hollywood because of that. Is that making, is this interesting to you?
CB: Very good, very good. Keep going
TS: And that, that I can remember. I can also remember another thing, probably you’ve been told about the Lancaster going across the A41.
CB: What do you remember about that?
TS: Well, I remember they used to have various [unclear] going across there, and there was a Wellington bomber had gone across there and I’d been in the field and they hadn’t removed it but they were guarding it, this Wellington bomber, and then, soon after that, seven months after that, I don’t know how long it was, I can’t tell that, after that, I remained in the field on the A41 and across the A41 and they were guarding this plane over night before they removed it and seven nights went by, I think it was, and then, for some reason other there was a Lancaster bomber, due to arrive in Westcott with bombs on, why I don’t know, you probably do, I don’t and this, this was warned about, there was gonna be danger with this and this Lancaster bomber surely did land, went across the field near where this Wellington bomber was and the guard posting on duty at the time went along to the houses, along the A41 just away from the Westcott turn to tell the people they knew what was gonna happen to take their air raid shelters which we all had our Anderson air raid shelters because this was gonna be dangerous and he went to warn those people in those houses and coming back, that poor man caught the blast and he was killed. I’m sure you’ve heard of this. And you have to be [unclear] to [unclear] man and he was killed and there was a lot of damage done to the surrounding properties that night with these bombs going off. The aircrew was all killed, were New Zealanders and I think they will find someone up in the church yard now, there’s a New Zealand crew, they’re up in the church yard now I believe, you’ll find but this [unclear] gentleman was killed. There was an old lady in Westcott who every village had them and they still got them or of course gossip for the village know if you like to call it whoever it was, this old lady called Mrs Evans, wrote a letter to [unclear] to say she sorry, she wasn’t very of being killed one thing and another, at night the stained glass window in the church got blown out on that explosion and because of her writing out letter [unclear] it probably transpired from that perhaps, that stained glass window got replace by [unclear]. Her husband, Mrs [unclear] Evans husband, also they got one son called David, who is my age, every week before Christmas, almost sent a crate of cider to that man’s house every week, every, just before Christmas they received a crate of cider every week and died the son had it until he died as well from [unclear]. The house where the farmer lived, named Peter Cripps, there was a [unclear] called Victoria Cottage, that was a Victoria house I think called because it was his, Peter Cripps’s grandfather he lives there now, is his grandfather, Ernest Cripps, a lovely old gentleman, who we all respected, was smartly dressed like yourself is now, we always taught to respect people like that, and he was a respected man, Mr Crips, and he lived in a house with his wife and as I said, he got home guard round here, we also got ARP and I think it was their job to, if anything like this happened, to go and see if people were ok. This gentleman, Burt Saunders, tells a lovely story and that was a true story that he goes along to Victoria House halfway up where the farmers house is now to see if they were alright. The door would been blown off, open and he could hear murmur upstairs and he shouted up to, are you alright Ernest? To this gentleman, he couldn’t make nothing of it and he was worried, so he went up the stairs and this is a true story I’m telling you, he said, there was Ernest, crawling around the bottom of the bed, his poor old wife was laid in bed, with [unclear] past the ceiling, all round around the [unclear] bed, and he said, oh, he said, you’re alright but I can’t find my colour stand [laughs], he was looking for his colour stand [laughs]. He wasn’t got the ceiling round and he was worried about his colour stand [laughs] and that is true. Also, the house that took a fair bashing that night also was where on your bike is now, that was a wooden home built bungalow by Mr John Goss, he built his own bungalow up there and that was a wooden one and that was all damaged that [unclear]. The other, my other, going forward then is when the war finished, we had all the Germans prisoners, all the prisoners of war going back here and they came in Dakota aircraft and they’d done whatever all the various people, in fact my sister went across there in the hangars to manoeuvre repatriated back to, if you want a better word, delouse them and give them tea and coffee and everything else before they repatriate, and we used stand at the end of the road, waving to those boys in open back army lorries as they went to wherever they was going back home. The thing I suppose, [unclear] tell you some.
CB: You talked about the reception and local people helping out
TS: Yes
CB: So, what exactly did they do?
TS: First of all, they were there to, the WVS, so they were all voluntaries people, they, I think all their contact was, was to give them refreshments before they went but I think these boys was medically examined. The various things, I mean, people say the common word was their delousing, whether that was, I mean, that’s not a good description not I don’t know, yes, and I think and then, they made sure they was fit to go back to where home or wherever they took them, they distributed them from here to different places and then they went home, I think. Yes. That’s about
CB: So, after the war, the airfield was closed and then it changed to something else, what was that?
TS: Market research, yes, do you want me to carry on? Yes
CB: So, that brought in a different type of person.
TS: Certainly did, it certainly did, I mean, to add to that, if you like my sister married an aircraft man, he was stationed at the Westcott and she married one of the aircraft boys from Westcott, he came from High Wycombe, he was just, he fuelled the aircraft, that’s all he’d done, but after the war, yes, all this opened up and along came this massive industrial thing, rocket, making rockets as is so, am I right in saying that? I think I’m right in
CB: Rocket research
TS: Rocket research
CM: Yeah
TS: So, it brought lots and lots of people and it, it just went, well, went from the airfield [unclear] crazy almost, you know, you had troll fourteen busses coming in from Aylesbury, all various, all year round, to employ people, it employed a lot of people, and it opened up this rocket research [unclear] all these, concrete and things, they had big noises, we still get noises now but it was Chester rocket fuels and not lots of noises, there was a big important thing that was that made the village because it brought houses here, it doubled the size of the village, it’s not troubled, with houses and I’m right in saying that one in every, one in every three [unclear] was building houses in the time immediately after the war was commandeered by Westcott workers, you know? [unclear], I think he does. And so there was a lot of people coming from Aylesbury to work at Westcott. And they were Westcott workers and it developed the village immensely and we had the social club and everything not we were allowed into it but that would all come along at the time and it developed the village into something massive, yes, it did, it all caused, caused a bit of a storm, a stir because they brought American German scientists back here to work and that wasn’t very acceptable in them days to people in the village and there was one particular man who was called Doctor Basky, who was a German scientist, rocket scientist what they called him, and he helps at the neighbourhood by applying for a bungalows we built, the top end of the village [unclear] in Westcott, am I right on this? Have you heard this? You haven’t. There’s a bungalow built up there, he applied for a bungalow, but he hadn’t got access, and he got a go across Westcott Village Green, reckless he applied, to the Westcott village council if you like to call it in them days, to go across the Village Green where we’d played all our lives, and my dad had played his life a suppose, access, to this bungalow, there was uproar, a German in a bungalow in village green, yeah, have we not, not enough for this, [unclear] with the people, my father was one of them and there was a gentleman in the village called Mr Bricks, he was supposed to be a bit of a solicitor, come what, a lawyer or whatever you like, and he formed a [unclear] to stop this, they all paid thirty pounds and they went to London court and Mr Doctor Basky, because he was working for the government, he won the day on that, and he got his room, the bungalow was built. It went across Westcott Village Green and that bungalow is still there today and where Mr Clap lives, you know, that just sold me neighbours six hundred thousand pounds that bungalow and they still got the access through Westcott Village Green. The reason they won the day there was because they had, they came back with was, that it was common land, the Village Green [unclear] common land and the boss of the common land was the lord of the manor. Nobody could find the lord of the manor, whoever he was, but it turned out to be the priest. And he still is. Hence the bungalow went up. Against a lot of wishes. This caused a stir but [unclear] the rocket research, everything else, yes, it made this village, yeah, yeah, it’s still there, it’s still there, isn’t it?
CB: Just on that topic, are we talking about the church priest or the local chapel priest?
TS: The church priest.
CB: Right.
TS: Yeah.
CB: The Church of England man.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So, what was the public reaction to his support for the German?
TS: Well, he didn’t have to say yes or no, they’d already decided, there is all the aftermath I’m talking about
CB: Right
TS: That was sold, there was no question that man wasn’t going to get our permission
CB: Right.
TS: No question
CB: He wasn’t involved
TS: No, no, no
CB: Going back to the war,
TS: Yes
CB: What was the, the two parts, one is the construction of the airfield
TS: Yes
CB: The next is its occupation by the RAF. In construction, where did the workers come from? Were some locals and others imported?
TS: [unclear] but they was, they was transported in from Aylesbury, they lived in hostels in Aylesbury, they wasn’t all local by any means and there’s too many to be local. They was in hostels in Aylesbury and they brought them in minibuses [unclear] I could see the coaches bringing them in, they just transported wherever they could lodge them and obviously there was [unclear] Aylesbury, a lot of them there
US: Did they build a camp to [unclear] them?
TS: Sorry?
US: Did they build any sheds for them at all?
TS: No, I didn’t think they did, did they? Can’t remember that.
CB: Were they, were they all British or were they other nationalities?
TS: There wasn’t [unclear] nationalities, a lot of them was Irish, yes, yes. Yes, lot of them was Irish. Yes.
CB: So, the airfield opened in 1941
TS: Yes
CB: And then the RAF people came, what effect did they have on the locality?
TS: They was welcomed, I mean, was happy to see them, I think everybody was pleased, yes, they was accepted without doubt, yeah, there was not, they was accepted as something, well, just Westcott, they’d never seen Westcott like it before, I mean, me father was, yes, they was all happy about that, all happy about that, yes, and they thought it was helping, it was helping, was it?
CB: And on the airfield, they would have had various social events, how much did they incorporate?
TS: [unclear] social events on that, no, no, they wouldn’t, they didn’t incorporate the village on that, no
CB: Right
TS: In fact this social club where I worked and had known so much about was the officer’s mess [unclear],
CB: Right
TS: That was the officer’s mess, yeah. [unclear]
CB: So, when they drank all the beer in the pubs, what was the local reaction to that?
TS: Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing nasty, no, nothing nasty at all, no, we, I would say, when they drank the beer it didn’t take long to drink it because it was only a small community and [unclear] joke but they did [unclear] what I got for a pint of [unclear], they’d drink it dry and we [unclear] next week and that was it, and when they finished, the pub didn’t open the next couple of three nights, so they, they got off to Quainton, yeah
CB: And in, locally in the pubs did, in the evenings, did you, you were still at school age, so you didn’t get out.
TS: No, my father, my father did, yeah.
CB: What about your brothers and sisters, what were they doing?
TS: My brother went to war, my sisters worked in, I don’t, the brother only a year older than me but I had two sisters older, they worked in, they lived in, with my mother, they worked in the factories in Aylesbury, they got a bus on the A41 to Aylesbury, yes, yes, they worked in various factories in Aylesbury.
CB: And your brother, older brother, what did he do, when he joined the forces?
TS: He was in the RAF. Yeah, yeah.
CB: What did he do?
TS: [unclear] say, say that, wasn’t [unclear] but he wasn’t
CB: Wasn’t round here
TS: No, no, he wasn’t round here, no. Where was he now? I think he went to Surrey, someway that somewhere, yeah. I honestly can’t tell, [unclear] that one
CB: So, your father was working on the farm, during the war
TS: Waddesdon estates
CB: Waddesdon estates
TS: The other bit about my father, now you’ve brought him up, the name being Schneider,
CB: Yeah
TS: I’m sure you wondered,
CB: I was just going to ask you, so thank you, go on
TS: My father was an American. He came to Waddesdon when he was three years old with his family from [unclear], German Jews they were, they came, Rothschild imported labour to build Waddesdon manor and he came with his father then as three years old worked at Waddesdon manor his father did and he was only three years old then when he came. It cost a lot of money to be naturalised and he never did it and when war broke out, my father was passed as an alien, he couldn’t vote, he was American, he was American till he died. He couldn’t vote and every month the policeman come for him to sign a paper to make sure he was still there, and he wasn’t spying or anything like that, he had to sign a paper every month. The policeman came to [unclear] him every month. My father signed that paper cause he was not naturalised, he [unclear].
CB: How did he feel about that?
TS: Beg your pardon?
CB: How did he feel about this approach?
TS: he didn’t worry, he didn’t worry, yeah, he didn’t mind, yeah. He couldn’t join the home guard, he couldn’t do anything.
CB: No. So, what was the reaction of the local population to him, with his name like that? Oh, Schneider?
TS: He, no, no, no reaction, whatsoever. No, no, he lived the village all his life. They knew him, was hard working people all those people in them days. No, he was accepted, he was not an outcast for any reason, [unclear], no, no, he just, he did things for the village [unclear] like I did.
CB: So, his father had come over
TS: He was [unclear], yes,
CB: Yeah. And with the Rothschilds, they of course looked after him anyway.
TS: Well, they’d give a house, that was [unclear] Rothschilds that was the little thing, you work for me and you can have a house for nothing. It’s all [unclear] in them days, what they call them nowadays
CB: Yeah, ok, and your mother was obviously busy looking after her children
TS: Yes
CB: But did she do an extra job as well?
TS: She, no [unclear]
CB: Right
TS: She didn’t do anything
CB: There was plenty to do anyway
TS: There wasn’t [unclear] and going back to, these, war, I mean, that school up there, they were inside overnight with evacuees from London, you know, when he was there and we just had to bring all chairs and tables in sitting where they wanted, we couldn’t have any of them because we were five in family, we haven’t got room. There was quite a lot of evacuees brought from London down to Westcott and that doubled the size of that school, you know, I’m talking about from twenty to forty overnight and those [unclear] very few children around here.
CB: So you, in your school you had these evacuees, how did you liaise with them?
TS: Very well, very well, very well. Yes.
CB: And they were used to being in a city and they were now in the country? What was their reaction to that?
TS: Well, for my recollection of that, the children was happy, their parents came to see them as often as they could, and the people who was looking after them was happy to accommodate them in somewhere other and I think it all worked out pretty well, it did, yeah.
CB: Did they stay throughout the war or did they return to London, some of them, after the Blitz?
TS: After the Blitz, they returned, yes
CB: All of them or just some of them?
TS: Some of them. Some of them still remained here and they made a life here, yes. Oh yeah, not many of them but they did, yeah. There was no mossy about that whatsoever, no, no whatsoever. No, as wartime it was accepted, wasn’t it? You know. Oh yes.
CB: Where would they be accommodated mainly? Would they be in the villages?
TS: In the village.
CB: In the village here.
TS: Yeah, if you got a spare bedroom
CB: Yeah
TS: You could have two.
CB: Right
TS: We hadn’t got any spare bedrooms there cause were’ five in the family so we couldn’t have any but
CB: And did the people who were putting them up get an allowance for looking after them?
TS: I can’t tell you that, sorry
CB: They would have had extra food ration of course but
TS: They got food ration, yes, I’m sure they would but I can’t tell you that. I don’t know what situation that was.
CB: Ok.
TS: Right.
CB: Now, at the school, which is on the edge of the airfield,
TS: Yes
CB: Everybody is conscious of the flying and the people there
TS: Yes
CB: How did the school handle explaining what was going on in the war?
TS: They just, I think they accepted it as something that’s got to happen and they just accepted that way. They welcomed it basically, say they welcomed it, they appreciated what was going on, but there was no objection whatsoever, none whatsoever.
CB: Did the RAF occasionally send somebody to talk to the schoolchildren, both the primary and secondary?
TS: No
CB: About what was going on?
TS: I can’t remember that, no, can’t remember that.
CB: And of course, secrecy was very important,
TS: Yeah
CB: But to what extent did people talk about what was going on at the airfield?
TS: Well, they said well, there’s night flying tonight and then daytime flying, training these aircrew, it was about all there was to talk about really. That was what it was for and that’s what people talked about. They said, oh, you know, I don’t know what number they had here a dozen of Wellington bombers, more?
CB: Oh, they had about twenty-six.
TS: Did they?
CB: Yeah, or more. Yeah, and the number of RAF personnel was two thousand two hundred.
TS: No, nobody, nobody ever complained about the thing at all in my [unclear], no
CB: You said, you said that your house was right beside one of the runways
TS [unclear], yeah
CB: So, uhm, the flight path, the planes going past were close. Did you get any sleep on those nights?
TS: Yes, because they, you know, I’m talking about when it getting dark at eight o’clock, probably finished at twelve o’clock. They didn’t go one night, no, they didn’t go one night, no.
CB: Except in the summer where they had to
TS: Well, yes, right, yes, yeah
CB: Fly later
TS: Yeah, you, we [unclear] of it, in fact we were happy [unclear] locally, quite honest
CB: Exciting for kids
TS: Well, it was, yeah, but my dad never complained, no. Everybody accepted it. No, everybody accepted it because this thing was got to be done and helping to win the war so to speak, I suppose in a way if you’re thinking about it.
US: There’s a question from me.
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo.
TS: One thing, sorry
CB: Go on, go on.
TS: Well, another thing that I can remember too, looking at that window, was the night Coventry was built, bombed, they, some [unclear] rather thought that field there was Coventry
CB: This is November 1940
TS: Was it?
CB: Yeah, [unclear]
TS: They must have thought they got to Coventry one of those bombers, you could hear them going over, you could hear them [unclear] they called them, going across, within the flight path of Coventry put it that way. And all at once, that field was alight with incendiary bombs
CB: The airfield?
TS: No, the field
CB: Just the field, where you were
TS: Yes, yeah and we felt [unclear] cause that field [unclear] and we were looking out to the fireworks, lighting the [unclear] field up it did, it really did, no bombs to drop, we thought, we ran down and got [unclear] and everything but nothing, no bombs had dropped but there was a bit of a false alarm but they thought that won’t protect the bomber or whoever it was, thought it was at Coventry but it wasn’t. So, nothing was dropped
US: This is before the airfield was built.
TS: No, during the war. 1940.
CB: 1940
TS: Yeah
CB: They were building it then, weren’t they?
TS: Yeah, building it, yes, right.
CB: Yeah
TS: That, that was that, that was a lovely sight, I can assure you, me and my brother were looking at it incendiary bombs. When we went next morning there was like a big wood, metal stick, like a firework had gone off, you find a firework, bit of wood but that was metal, these things were metal, those bombs they seemed to us, and we picked them up, two or three of them.
CB: And these were, were these landmines that they’d sent?
TS: They were incendiary bombs
CB: Oh, they were incendiaries, right.
TS: [unclear] told they were incendiary bombs
CB: Yeah, the spike
TS: The, [laughs] the blame that for that went on a guy who made a living during the war, who worked on the farm [unclear] catching rabbits and he had a rabbit round on a Friday night, he came with carrying a bicycle [unclear] rabbits on a Friday night cause for rationing and we’d eat rabbits and he was making the money rabbits and he got the blame for that for flashing a [unclear] catching these [unclear] rabbits, he got the blame for that, whether it was true or not, I don’t know [laughs]. He used to do it, he used to flash his light [unclear]
US: Speaking of lights, referring back to your senior aircraft landing out your bedroom window?
TS: Yes
US: Were there any runway nights
TS: There was
US: Yeah? By your place?
TS: Yes, [unclear] across the field
US: Interesting [unclear]
TS: Sorry?
US: The [unclear] lighting system
TS: Yeah, there was poles
CB: Poles
TS: A lot of poles
US: Yeah?
TS: Every so many yards, back across those fields, towards Quainton, yes, there was, yeah
US: Was it in all the runways or just [unclear]
TS: That one, yes, yeah, cause that was on our field, one thing or two, there might be some, [unclear] I’m not sure about that
US: [unclear]
TS: Yeah. There were lights, yes, there was lights and lights, yeah.
US: And the other question I have on related, there was a dummy airfield down the road at
CB: Grendon Underwood,
US: Grendon Underwood
CB: By the A41
TS: Yes, I know what you mean [unclear]
US: Do you anything about that?
TS: No, I don’t. No. Wasn’t Oakley, brother and sisters at Westcott.
CB: Oakley was
TS: Oakley, Yes, yes
US: [unclear] Westcott
CB: This other airfield is a dummy airfield just beyond Kingswood, down on the A41.
TS: No, I’ve got no recollection of that. I’ve got visions of here and about it but no, I can’t [unclear]
CB: Did you, as youngsters you would walk a bit but you could a bike you could cycle around. Did you cycle around much as a youngster during the war?
TS: Yes, yes
CB: And where would you go?
TS: Kingswood, Kingswood. Yeah. Kingswood or Waddesdon. Yes, yeah.
CB: Just for something to do.
TS: Just something to do, yes. And then you got this thing on your portable lamp if you were out at night that shone down on the ground so [unclear] wouldn’t go up in the air. But not much, I mean, yeah, there was a bit security form my parents on that they wouldn’t, well, we did have air raids so [unclear] just said, we all had Anderson air raid shelter and if you, if the air raid siren went, you didn’t always go in it, I was there [unclear] if you wanted it, it was in our back house.
CB: Describe the Anderson shelter that you had in your garden.
US: [unclear]
CB: Four feet high.
TS: Four feet, it was [unclear] like that, very solid [unclear] and the net [unclear] it and a solid piece of metal on the top
CB: Right
TS: Yeah
CB: Then, what was on top of the metal?
TS: Nothing.
CB: Oh.
TS: So, the [unclear] was that, square, get six in it, laid on it, and the object, the story of that was we got a direct hit of a bomb [unclear] top of that table, you’d be safe under it
CB: So, where was this cited?
TS: In here
CB: In the house
TS: Oh yeah.
CB: Right. So, this was the inside Anderson shelter.
TS: That’s right.
CB: What about outside the house, what sort of arrangements were there?
TS: There was people dug, dug things in their garden, we didn’t but it was
CB: And what sort of shelters did they make?
TS: They made them with wood or concrete.
CB: On a dome shape.
TS: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
CB: And covered with what?
TS: Earth.
CB: And what, what did they have inside them?
TS: Oh, nothing, [unclear]
CB: Just a bench
TS: Yeah, yeah.
CB: Ok. How many people could get into those?
TS: They dug as many as [unclear] family, if it was five or if it was four, six, [unclear] family, a big family [unclear]
CB: And who paid for those?
TS: The people dug themselves, oh yeah.
CB: Was it with material that was supplied, or did they have to buy?
TS: They had to buy it, oh yeah
CB: Right.
TS: That’s what everybody [unclear], they gave you these air raid, these Anderson things
CB: In the house?
TS: Yes
CB: Yes
TS: Yeah. I think situation if there was children which we was
CB: Right. You talked about rationing but you, your diet was supplemented by what you grew
TS: Yeah
CB: And what you could catch
TS: Yeah
CB: Did you also get deer?
TS: No. No. No rabbit sort of thing, no
CB: Hares?
TS: No. Not very often anyway.
CB: What about pigeons and things like that?
TS: No, what, no, we didn’t.
CB: But you kept chicken I presume.
TS: Oh yeah, chicken, [unclear] pig, [unclear].
CB: So, how would you describe the family’s diet?
TS: Old-fashioned but good, eggs and bacon and meat, when Dad killed the pig hung up on the wall [unclear] load of bacon and you had two of them off the pig, you got two hams as well and every now and again Dad would get the cow and get it off the wall [unclear] cut a piece off and that would [unclear] bacon, we had that.
CB: And when a slaughter, when an animal was slaughtered, there was a lot of meat and you’d wanted to spin out, so how did you preserve or how did he preserve the carcass?
TS: You salted it, so pork became bacon.
CB: So, how was it salted? Was there a big trough or how did?
TS: Yes, you had a lead, lead thing like that, [unclear] they were done in leads, pure leads, you could done it yourself, you [unclear] the salt on it, yeah and that was for about six weeks. Then it came out of the salt and you hung it up and [unclear] three quarters of a year sometimes, yeah
CB: Because of the salt in it
TS: Yeah, I kept
CB: So, where did you keep?
TS: Bacon
CB: Yeah, where did you keep it in the house?
TS: Hung up on the wall. Yeah. There would be one hung up there on a hook and that was it.
CB: So it,
TS: It was salted
CB: It lasted a long time
TS: It did, yes, it did.
CB: Was there a larder in the house?
TS: Yeah, sometimes it was outside, yeah, there was a larder in our house. We was lucky with the house down there [unclear] the damage to the when my Dad, if you go down and look at the house now, that was made [unclear] brickwork, [unclear] loads of work if you look [unclear] anywhere
CB: Yeah
TS: Solidly built, my father said no [unclear], I won’t this bloody [unclear], me swearing but that was his words, and this bloody Einstein [unclear], you [unclear] going out [unclear] I’m not [unclear] and he was right against others that just as [unclear] brickwork, yeah, yeah.
CB: Just pause again. So, if we move now Tim, to post-war,
TS: Yes
CB: The rocket research establishment was set up here in 1946
TS: Yes
CB: And these people you talked about who came in were scientists. Who were they and what was the local reaction to them?
TS: Well, as I said, the local reaction to them was not very good. We fought the war, they come here and they give them [unclear] jobs, it wasn’t a very good reaction at all, so no, it wasn’t. Hence the man getting in trouble building his bungalow.
CB: Yeah
TS: It wasn’t a very good reaction and at the same time they said it was needed and, I mean, he was an exception, that man having his bungalow cause the rest of them made do with the old ex-Picket huts, buildings what the RAF had lived in, they lived in, they were squatters in not very good conditions, four or five of them, they was, probably eight, if I say eight I might be overdoing I think.
CB: These were men on their own, they didn’t have families with them?
TS: Oh, they’d got wives.
CB: Oh, they did?
TS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they squatted where, they [unclear], they [unclear], they wanted to be here but they wanted a job, I suppose, but, I mean, they lived in not very good conditions at all, this man made his money and he built this bungalow. Oh yeah, one of the family called Jessons, I mean, they had family here and they went to school with my children.
CB: Oh, did they?
TS: Oh yeah. Oh yes, oh yeah, yes. They were accepted in the long run.
CB: So, gradually they were accepted, were they?
TS: Oh yes, yes, yes,
CB: But immediately after the war, what was the public reaction? How did they express themselves?
TS: Well, they didn’t mind, the first reaction to getting these German scientists was, oh, they bloody German scientists here, they we fought against the war [unclear] and all that but they did get used to them but the bigger majority of the people in Westcott welcomed that place because [unclear] all at once everybody got a damn good job, everybody worked at Westcott. In fact they called it Holiday Camp, that was known as Holiday Camp that was, when Westcott, I mean, everybody went there to work, they wanted workers and everybody went there to work and it was easy work, and you know, I mean, if I think of these scientists wanted a piece of metal carried or some carried, there was an old [unclear] in the village, he got a damn good job carrying it to them and he’d never had a job in his life like that, before he worked round the farm or round about to Aylesbury, people used to [unclear] to Aylesbury, they used to work and now at once we got Westcott here, oh my God that was, you know, there was, you know, money was no object it seems and they got a better job with a pay and they, a lot of people accepted that and that wasn’t only at Westcott [unclear] I mean. My brother in law, who I said was an RAF man, he immediately got a job there, he was an MT driver on the site and he was going to Buckingham, when he was at Buckingham with a bus in the morning and picking up all the villagers on the way back from Buckingham, coming back with a busload of workers. Westcott was, well, wonderful to people that was, Westcott. It was well thought of. I didn’t work there because I wouldn’t take chances, I was [unclear] workwise but there’s a lot of people and not only that, they had the benefits of, I had an uncle, my mother’s uncle worked out there, he [unclear] course [unclear] say he was living in benefits, he was sort of man he was in them days put it that way and when Westcott came along, he got a job as a laborer [unclear] just in his element, not only that, when they had a sick pay scheme, they had a sick pay scheme and for thirteen weeks he’d go to the doctor and get a [unclear] in them days which he’s still doing now [unclear] if you go to the doctor and get a certificate, you sign out cause he’s not allowed to be [unclear] that was and he go and get a certificate and for thirteen weeks he should have a full pay, he was working for the government, he’d never had that [unclear] life and a lot of people round here, by God they made [unclear] out of that, and after thirteen weeks he went down on half pay so he turned his [unclear] you know, he did have some, [unclear] I tell you he did and there’s a lot more who did as well, not only him, and it was so easy for him, it was [unclear] paradise to Westcott when that opened up that place in Westcott. Oh God yes, there’s people round here now, went there half time, living on lovely, healthy pensions, believe me [laughs]
CB: Meanwhile,
TS: [unclear], you’re not saying anything [laughs]. No, no, it’s true what I was saying, I mean, it was paradise for Westcott when that rocket place started, yes. And the surrounding villages, I mean, people. So, as I say, it was queued, I’m not joking, from the A41 to where the pub was in Westcott, there was a queue of traffic, with busses to get out of Westcott to go home. I’m sure you’ve got photographs of that perhaps, yeah. You know, there’s a lot of people working in Westcott, I don’t know many, probably [unclear], but a lot of people,
US: [unclear] very few people worked at Westcott
TS: Sorry?
US: According to you, very few people worked at Westcott, there’s a Holiday Camp?
TS: That’s what they called it [laughs], that was known as [unclear] camp, down at Westcott, Holiday Camp.
US: [unclear]
TS: [unclear] Holiday Camp, yeah.
CB: Meanwhile you are working for the fertilizer depot. How did you enjoy that job?
TS: I enjoyed it cause I was, I enjoyed all my work because I provided for my family. I had a boy and a girl, I had a family to lead, I was a family man, and I wouldn’t take big chances [unclear], I never had a car, [unclear] luxury if I wanted one, and I couldn’t afford it and I wouldn’t have it and that’s been my life [unclear] and so against other people having the Holiday Camp or whatever you like to call it, I’d never interfered me, it was just, I was always a very cautious man as regards my family. And that’s how I live my life. And I was able to save a bit of money although I worked [unclear] hard and whatever say that, anybody [unclear] talk to you will tell you that. But I was able to save a bit of money and I, I don’t got no secrets, I [unclear] this house and I have four hundred and twenty five pound a week and [unclear] for my investments and my pension which I paid in for and I think I care [unclear] and that’s how I ended up and I’m happy, I’m not boasting when I say that, I’m pleased I’ve done it. But I was never ambitious, no. Westcott working, it didn’t appeal to me, no, because I was trying to [unclear] but I mean, yeah, I’m saying, these people, got good jobs there, they didn’t, they weren’t all scientists, they were only laborers but they’d got a damn good job if you needed one, you know. I mean, I can tell you the story of a man who used to live in Ashingham, you remember what we were talking about, it was there again, you get back to the benefits people today, he was one of them in them days, you see, pack out [unclear], doing the job [unclear], packing up, packing up, he got a job at Westcott, best thing he’d ever done, and he was just an ordinary laborer digging the waterworks, pipes and if there was any digging, trenchwise digging, [unclear] his name was, he would be the man to dig the hole, ok, he was the digger, well, he was nothing but [unclear] and they knew it and they would try to get rid of this man and this is a true story again and the foreman knew he [unclear] and the only way you’d get a sack at Westcott if you refused to do anything, they could dismiss you for that, but they set a trap for this guy, and he said, ok, [unclear] was the foreman, he said, ok, we’ve got no digging today, [unclear] he said, we want, can you paint? We’ve got to do some painting, they wanted him to say, no, I’m bloody ain’t gonna do it, but he didn’t, he went the opposite way, he said, [unclear], he said, he said, of course I can paint, anybody can, [unclear] can paint, [laughs] he [unclear] was [laughs], he’s [unclear] gonna sack me, he don’t know [unclear] him, [laughs] he wasn’t gonna say no, to get [unclear] that was [unclear] trying to explain really and nobody, they put a lot of people, they put a lot of people. Yeah, my sister worked there at the laboratories, although she was inspecting this, inspecting that, scientist, he wanted this, he wanted that, she ran that, [unclear]. Not done wrong with that rocket research, there was never wrong, [unclear], can’t see nothing wrong with it, but it did put in a lot of people, I suppose, I suppose it done its job as well [unclear] he ain’t [unclear]
CB: There is still research going on there.
TS: Yeah
CB: I’ll stop the tape now. Thank you very much indeed Tim. Fascinating.
TS: My pleasure. [unclear] three laborers. So, they were doing his work, so to speak and if he wanted another one, they employed somebody. So, he did get a job at Westcott as a laborer, if you hadn’t got anything up here, you could get a job.
US: But it was, it’s true because alter the war, you couldn’t get anything so the only way they could do any work was to make it themselves.
TS: Yeah.
US: So, they had to have a full range of people there,
TS: Yeah
US: To do everything,
TS: Yeah
US: [unclear]
TS: Yeah
US: So, that’s why you got any [unclear] skills there.
TS: Yeah
US: And
TS: Yeah
CB: The companies were the same
US: Yeah
CB: In, they, what they’re now called vertically integrated.
TS: We, after you know, I mean, I first took [unclear], that was still very much subsidized by Westcott and there was open [unclear] just store [unclear] and night, I used to cringe cause he come in, what have you done this morning? I ain’t done nothing, you know, [unclear], you remember him? [unclear] he was, typical one he was, I’ve done nothing this morning, you know, used to cringe,
US: [unclear] comes down to our meetings
TS: I know
US: [unclear]
TS: I liked him, I liked him, [unclear] yeah [unclear], I liked him, but it was easy job [unclear], you know, I’m not saying there’s no, was it wrong? I don’t know, they seemed to, get [unclear], you know, yes. Yeah, well, I mean, [unclear], say where you’ve been, you lied, you know, you got to, you had to find some, and I said dinnertime, this isn’t or I got tied up with the Morgan, he was the union man, Mr Morgan, he was the union man and everybody, he got tied up with him, you could get away from him, this [unclear], where you’ve been? I got, Morgan stopped me, Morgan, [unclear] for? He said, I did and he said, in a minute [laughs]. Yeah, that was the sort of thing that we’re on.
CB: It was the system.
TS: It was, yeah [laughs].
US: [unclear]
CB: This interview, this interview with Tim Schneider was part of the “We were there too” series of people who were in the war but not in the forces and in this case next to the airfield.
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Interview with Tim Schneider
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-04-28
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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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Sound
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ASchneiderT170428, PSchneiderT1702
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Pending review
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01:08:15 audio recording
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eng
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Civilian
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Description
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Tim Schneider lived at Westcott before, during and after the construction and occupation of RAF Westcott as 11 Operational Training Unit. He tells of feeding the rabbits when he was four years old; leaving school at fourteen to help working on the farm because, in a family of five, everyone had to help out; at the age of twenty seven, left the farm and went to work in a pub. Remembers when the airfield was built in 1941. The airplanes were landing so close to his house that when he drew back the curtains, he could see the pilot in the cockpit. Tells of food rationing and how they supplemented by raising and eating their own farm animals; incendiary bombs being dropped in a field the same day Coventry was bombed; beer rationing in the pubs and the aircrews drinking all of it; children being evacuated from London to Westcott and accommodated in a local school; Anderson air raid shelters in people’s gardens; a Lancaster crash. After the war Westcott became the sight of the Rocket Propulsion Establishment where both German and British scientists were employed. Remembers how the local people initially didn’t at all like the German scientists working there and tells of one of these scientists wanting to build a bungalow at Westcott and the legal dispute around it. Emphasises how the Rocket Propulsion Establishment boosted Westcott’s economy, creating lots of jobs for people from the local area.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
11 OTU
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
evacuation
home front
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
shelter
training
-
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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-01
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.
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Sindall, JH
Transcribed audio recording
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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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-01
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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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
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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
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1150/11707/PSwaffieldJ1703.1.jpg
601c2eed3763b0488e3dbe38e827c35b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1150/11707/ASwaffieldJ171004.2.mp3
f301149005322902267bbef4c79a6795
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
Swaffield, James
J Swaffield
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Squadron Leader James Swaffield (b. 1925) his log book and photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 44 and 106 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by James Swaffield and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
2017-10-04
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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Swaffield, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Tuesday, Wednesday, the 4th of October 2017 and we are in Maidenhead, talking to James Jim Swaffield, a navigator, about his experiences in the war and afterwards. But what are your earliest recollections of life, Jim? When you were young, what do you remember first?
JS: I don’t know
US: Do you remember where you lived?
JS: Yeah, I’m just trying to think
US: Where was it you lived, when were very young?
JS: What, in Chiswick?
US: Yeah, do you remember the road you lived in before you went to Bedford Park?
JS: Yes
US: Where was that?
JS: Just trying
US: It’s next to your school later, school you went to. I remember, it was Rivercourt Road
CB: Oh, was it, in Chiswick?
US: You know Chiswick?
CB: Yes, my grandparents live there
US: That’s where you lived, you were born, I think in a nursing home in Kensal Rise or somewhere like that but that’s where you lived in Rivercourt Road before you went, Jim lived in Bedford Park. Do you know Bedford Park?
CB: I don’t know. Then he went to Bedford Park, right.
US: They went, when he was quite young, to Bedford Park
JS: My father had an MC
CB: Did he?
JS: Yeah. In the First World War, which I suppose would’ve made certain things different from an ordinary person, you know, he was a Military Cross
US: He never told us why he got it, did he?
JS: Mh?
US: He never told us why he got it, we only found out by chance a couple of years ago
JS: No, he wasn’t
US: No. What did your dad do?
JS: What did he do?
US: What was his work?
JS: Well, he went to, oh, what’s it now?
US: Smithfield
JS: Mh?
US: Smithfield
JS: Yes?
US: He was a manager at Smithfield Meat Market, wasn’t he?
JS: Yeah, I
US: He used to get up and go to work at about half past two in the morning, didn’t he?
JS: Something like that, yeah. He definitely had an MC,
US: Yeah.
JS: I suppose years and years back, no he wouldn’t [unclear], I think he got married at the end of the First World War, no, and he went
US: He was later getting married, where did he go at the end of the First World War, when he was still in the army, do you remember?
JS: I think so, yes
US: Where was it, he was
JS: Yeah
US: [unclear] there lot,
JS: Yeah
US: Do you remember where?
JS: Oh
US: Was it Mesopotamia, wasn’t it?
JS: Mh?
US: [clears throat] It was in Mesopotamia he went on after the war? He was still in the army and he went out to the Middle East, didn’t he? He was very rude about it, do you remember?
JS: I think, yeah, I think, these things are there I think
US2: Iraq, which one?
CB: Say more about him.
JS: Oh goodness, very early getting up in the morning, I know, to go to
US: Smithfield
JS: Yeah. What was it now?
CB: [unclear]
JS: No, not really, no, go to Piccadilly, I went to a few of those, you know, saw him at Christmas for a time perhaps, something like that but, you knew him, didn’t you?
US: Yes, I knew him, quite a while
JS: And, I’d have to look and see and find anything
CB: Sure, sure, we’ll stop just a minute.
JS: Yeah, went to school at Latymer, yeah
US: Latymer Upper
JS: Yeah, Upper Latymer
US: Or Upper Latymer. Where was that school, do you remember?
JS: Mh?
US: Where was the school?
JS: In Hammersmith
US: That’s right
JS: Used to walk from Chiswick to Hammersmith. You remember all that [unclear]?
US: Well, yeah
JS: Yeah, yeah
CB: It was a good school, was it?
JS: At Latymer?
CB: Yeah
JS: Latymer Upper School, good school
CB: What about your friends? Goods friends at school, were there?
JS: Not necessarily
US: Oh! What about Ron and Alan and [unclear] the man Ron, Alan?
JS: Well, you had things like, I think, military things [unclear] you know, all [unclear] were introduced to that, yeah
CB: Because it was an upper school,
JS: Mh?
CB: Because it was an upper school it will have had the equivalent of the Combined Cadet Force, so there was training, wasn’t there?
JS: Oh, I think that
CB: Military training at school
JS: Yes, in Hammersmith, yes, I think so
CB: And what age did you leave school?
JS: Oh, quite early, I think, about sixteen, I don’t, I’m not really certain, sixteen or seventeen, I’m not absolutely certain,
US: Fifteen
JS: I found out why
CB: Yes
JS: Will be in the book there
CB: Ok
JS: It might have been in, written in
CB: But what did you do when you left school?
JS: What did I leave school? I can’t remember that
US: [unclear] his memory because
JS: Yes
CB: Yes
US: [unclear] find interesting then, you used to work up in, I think it was up in the Haymarket or something like that and you said you used to cycle up every day after the Blitz through all the damage, they were still clearing up, from the air raids
JS: I don’t know, could be
US: Do you remember?
JS: Could be, yeah
US: I know you told me that
JS: Yes
US: Think he worked in an office of some kind
JS: Yeah
US: It’s fascinating cause he said he used to ride to work
JS: Yes
US: Immediately after the bombing you
CB: Right
US: And there’d be, you know, all the rubbish over the roads and [unclear] still clearing up
CB: When the war started, you were aged fourteen
JS: Yes, about that
CB: And school leaving age in those days was fourteen but at some schools, grammar schools and so on, people stayed on longer, age fifteen or sixteen
JB: I have to look
CB: And you couldn’t go into the forces at that age, so people took a job and from what Diana just said, it sounds as though you had this job in Haymarket
JS: Could be, yes, could be that, could be that
CB: Now, did you join the Air Training Corps in those days? What made you interested in aeroplanes?
JS: Yes. Well I think, I really think of as army, I think I would put that in and I don’t think that, well, he was perhaps a bit too old at that time to actually join the Air Force but I, can’t think of him being all that interested in, I mean, he was in the army I think for the whole time of the war going but that was before my time
CB: Yeah
JS: Nearly
CB: The First War, yeah, so we are now going fast forward to the beginning of World War Two, September ’39,
JS: Yeah
CB: You are at that time, you were born in 1924, you are fourteen
JS: Yes
CB: You can’t leave school till you’re
JS: Yes
CB: Well, you can leave it about that age, but did you stay on a bit?
JS: Yeah
CB: But, clearly you had a job for a while
JS: Yeah. But he got the MC
CB: Yes
JS: The Military Cross
CB: Yes, so he didn’t go back in again for the second war, into the army, did he? But you did go into the Air Force
JS: I don’t know how, do you know?
US: I think he was probably a bit old and he probably wasn’t that good, he had a bad chest [unclear] taken him anyway, I can’t think how old he would have been, died when he was seventeen, at about sixty three
JS: Yeah
US: [unclear] how old he would have been
CB: Well, he would have been close on fifty, so they wouldn’t have taken him in but in your case, you had this job, what made you join the RAF?
JS: The RAF, yeah
CB: Who did you know in your family who had already joined the forces?
JS: Well, my father of course
CB: Yeah
JS: And his brother. Do you remember him?
US: No, we are talking about you going into the Air Force, what made you decide
JS: To
US: To go in the Air Force? Who did you know who was already in the Air Force?
JS: Well, I was in the Air Force
US: Yeah, but you had a cousin, didn’t you, who was in, who gave you some advice, who was it? Do you
JS: I could, I think I could, given a bit of time
CB: Look it up, Yes, but doesn’t matter, it’s just a recall.
JS: Yeah
CB: So, Diana, who was the cousin?
US: Don, do you remember Don, your cousin Don?
JS: Yes
US: He was a Pathfinder
JS: Yes
US: Do you remember him? Cause he would’ve had some influence I think, cause he was in two or three years before you
JS: Yeah
US: And he did ninety tours and DFC and Bar, didn’t he? Do you remember Don?
JS: Yes
US: Did he talk to you?
JS: I’d have to think about it.
CB: Ok
JS: So let’s go back a bit
CB: So, was he a pilot or a navigator?
US: He was a navigator
CB: Right, on Mosquitoes
US: No, in Lancasters
CB: In Lancasters
US: He was in Lancasters, too. That’s why Harry was in the Pathfinders, in Lancasters
CB: Yeah, ok, right. So, why did you join the RAF at a junior age? You joined when you were seventeen, didn’t you?
JS: Yes
CB: How did you get away with that?
JS: With?
CB: How did you get away with joining the RAF at seventeen underage?
JS: I can’t at the, I can’t
CB: According, interestingly
JS: Could be in the book
CB: According to your logbook
JS: Yes
CB: You were a navigator
JS: Yes
CB: According to your logbook, you started your navigator training on the 14th of September 1942
JS: Yes
CB: That’s when you were age seventeen
JS: Yes
CB: And three months, that was one year too young [laughs],
JS: Yes
CB: So you must have joined the RAF a bit before then because you would’ve had to do your initial training
JS: Yes
CB: Before you did navigator training, using your logbook as the date in there
JS: Right, yeah
CB: So, where did you do your navigator training?
JS: Where did I do that?
CB: Yes
JS: That’s a good point, so that’s a good point, yeah. Oh, I got a vague remembrance of it, but I can’t tell you that much about it
CB: Ok, your logbook says, number 7 AOS but it doesn’t say where that is,
JS: Yes
CB: But we will look that up and
US: [unclear] go abroad sometimes to do it
CB: Yes, so it could be Canada
US: No, it’s in Northern Ireland,
CB: Oh, was it? [laughs]
US: He wasn’t lucky enough to go anywhere nice [laughs]
JS: Where did I go?
US: You were in Northern Ireland
CB: So that was actually at Bishops Court
JS: Yeah
CB: Excuse Northern Ireland,
JS: Yeah
CB: I just looked at the front of the book
JS: We went to America, didn’t we?
US: No, I haven’t been to America, you went briefly on business. Now that’s something quite different
CB: Right
JS: Oh, right
US: We’re talking about, do you remember going to Northern Ireland? Cause I think Don went to Canada, but you got lumbered with Northern Ireland
JS: Ah yes, yes, I have some remembrance of that, ah, yeah, sorry, can’t,
CB: You were there for fifteen months, doing your navigation training, according to your logbook
JS: Yeah, I think that’s probably so, yeah, I think, yes, goodness. Where do we got to after that?
US: Got nothing to do with me,
JS: Mh?
US: Nothing to do with me, I wasn’t there
CB: Then, according to your logbook, you then went to Operational Training Unit number 14 which was Husband’s Bosworth
US: Yes
CB: And Market Harborough
JS: Yes
CB: So there, you would be flying on the Wellington
JS: Yes, I can tell you some of these things, given time and, you know
CB: When you’re sitting in your bath tonight, you’ll remember all of it
JS: Yes, that’s, yeah [laughs]
CB: So, you’re at the Operational Training Unit for seven months
JS: Yes
CB: So we’re now July ’44
JS: Yes
CB: And it now says that you went to 106 and 44 Squadrons, that was unusual for people to hop straight from the OTU to a squadron
JS: Yes
CB: Because it needed to go through the Heavy Conversion Unit
JS: Oh yes
CB: But that might be what 106 was
JS: Yes
CB: And so you were there
JS: Yeah, we went together
US: Not this time, no, this is before, I was a child when you were doing your [unclear]
JS: When we were out in, oh, where was it first of all?
US: Khartoum
JS: Yeah. Where were we now?
US: [unclear] us, the first one was Khartoum
JS: Yeah
US: And you were in the Canal Zone
CB: And that’s when you re-joined, wasn’t it?
JS: Yeah
US: Yeah
CB: So if we go fast backwards,
JS: Yeah
CB: Your Operational Training Unit, then you joined 44 Squadron for your ops
JS: Yes
CB: And you joined 44 Squadron, where was that? Do you remember?
JS: 44
CB: At Dunholme Lodge?
US: Just looking at [unclear], we found it once
JS: Yes, we, let me think now
CB: Well, after the, I’ll tell you what it is, that in your logbook it gives the answer here, that you did got to 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit
JS: Yeah
CB: Before going to the squadron and so you did that in May 1944 and from there and you flew the Stirling there,
JS: Yeah
CB: The Heavy Conversion Unit and you left there a month later at the end of June and then you went to, according to this, number 4 LFS, which is the Lancaster Finishing School, so what people did was to go to an HCU on Stirlings and then convert to Lancasters on the Lancaster Finishing School, which then took you, which was Swinderby, took you to 106 Squadron
JS: Oh yeah
CB: Flying Lancasters
JS: Oh yeah
CB: Which was July ’44, just after D-Day
JS: Yea
CB: So you were on ops
JS: Yeah
CB: Just after D-Day, weren’t you?
JS: Yeah
CB: And
JS: Yeah
CB: Actually, your first op here was to Kiel
JS: Yes
CB: On, with 106 Squadron
JS: I can’t remember Lancaster moving from the chair
CB: Yes
JS: I’ll have to have a look and see the gip, the pilot was getting on, you know, in the front and I can remember that very well. There’s something else that, he felt it was awful laying in the front of the, we are talking about Lancaster, I think?
CB: Yes
JS: In the front, he, just weird things do come back sometimes, well, I can’t [unclear] what went with that, oh goodness me!
CB: Why did you get up and why did he go to the front?
JS: I think she remembers a lot of these things
US: Well, you told me he used to say to you when you were over the target
JS: Yeah
US: Would you like to come up and see? And you went up to see, you know, fires and everything
JS: Yeah
US: And but Jim said, I didn’t want to go up and see, I just wanted to get the hell out of there [laughs], those were his words, so he, you know, he wasn’t interested in that, he just wanted to go home
JS: Yeah
US: Do you remember the story you told me about the tail of the Lancaster just under you, do you remember that story? By the Lancaster that was above you in formation and there was one just below? [doorbell rings] Do you remember what happened?
JS: Sounds like
US: Oh, don’t get me really, do you remember what happened? What you told me happened?
JS: No, can’t remember
US: Like the bomb from the other Lancaster?
CB: What did it do?
US: It came down and took the tail right off of one flying below, that [unclear] going up [unclear]
CB: What other things do you remember?
JS: I was thinking, getting closer to,
CB: When you were waiting to go on an operation, before you took off, what were you doing?
JS: Doing?
CB: Before you got on to an operation
JS: Yeah
CB: What did you do?
JS: Yeah. Well, if I was the navigator, it would be taking your, [laughs] your newspaper with you or something of that sort, you know, but you’d find something that would be quite good, you know, and what else was there? [unclear] the thing, you know, in some book or something for hand over to the bosses but
US: Oh dear, sorry, I
JS: But we have to go back, I could say to you now that, given some a bit of time, I could give you a lot of
CB: Ok.
JS: Times
CB: Alright, we can do that later.
JS: Right
CB: So, we can just pick up some bits now
JS: Yeah
CB: And then go over some detail later
JS: Yes
US: I’m fascinated that you know the experiment of the crew on that plane cause I always wondered whether they survived that
CB: Well, the gunner of course didn’t
US: Below it went
CB: Cause it took the whole of the turret out
US: Out
CB: Yeah
US: Now, I often wondered, did they crash-land or just parachute?
CB: I’ll tell you later. Well, the plane flew on
US: It did? Gosh! I’m surprised
CB: What other things do you remember about preparing for a flight?
JS: Preparing for a flight
CB: For an operation
JS: For an operation
CB: What do you remember about that? I mean, you went to a briefing, didn’t you? All the crews went together in the briefing. So, the map was on the wall
JS: Yes
CB: And this is the briefing for tonight
JS: Yeah
CB: What do you remember about that? So, there is this huge map of the continent with Britain
JS: Yeah
CB: And it shows the route of the raid with the diversions
JS: Yes
CB: But you had to prepare as the navigator
JS: Yes
CB: With the pilot
JS: Yeah
CB: You had to prepare for the operation. What of you remember about that?
JS: I can’t think of that, really
CB: Because you were given a bombing time, you were given a bombing time and you had to work out your route to get there
JS: Yes, could be, yeah
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo. At the OTU?
JS: Yeah, Piccadilly,
CB: But this would’ve been, this was number 29 OTU and you were clearly a navigator instructor
JS: Yes
CB: There
JS: Yeah
CB: What were you doing, do you remember?
JS: [laughs] You got the final
CB: You were newly commissioned at that stage as a pilot officer
JS: Yes
CB: And you’d done four hundred and fifty hours of flying in total? Of which two hundred and thirty-seven were at night. I’m stopping again. You, does any particular raid?
JS: [unclear] of the, [unclear]
CB: So, when you got on ops
JS: In Piccadilly?
CB: No, when you were on operations in your Lancaster
JS: Yes
CB: What was the most memorable operational flight that you did, would you say?
JS: No, I can’t really
CB: If I show you this, you can see there your early operations there
JS: See what they say, yeah
CB: What does that remind you?
JS: Yeah. Let me see, navigation, navigator, navigator
CB: Cause you’re always the navigator
JS: Navigator, yeah
CB: But the target
JS: Right, the target
CB: Is in red. The whole, the night operations there are all in red
JS: Ah! Operations
CB: So, your first op was on Kiel
JS: Operations, operation again, two three
CB: So what does that remind you?
JS: Underlined by Kiev
CB: Kiel
JS: Kiel, St [unclear]
CB: In France
JS: And Givaux
CB: Also in France
JS: Up to then
CB: So, you did your thirty ops and then you were rested at an Operational Conversion Unit. What do you remember about working there?
JS: Going to
CB: To the Operational Conversion Unit after you left the squadron, 44 Squadron, what do you remember about that?
JS: Can’t remember at the moment
CB: Ok. Now the war finished in Europe on the 8th of May 1945
JS: Yes
CB: What do you remember about the celebrations and the feeling at the end of the war?
JS: I can’t remember it
CB: For some people, they got caught up in the celebrations, others were just on the station
JS: Yes
CB: And work continued as usual
JS: Yes
CB: So
JS: This is, this is, what time?
CB: So, we are talking about May 1945,
JS: Yeah
CB: Was the end of the war in Europe
JS: Yeah
CB: When you were in the Lancaster, 106 squadron and 44, it was the same crew, was it? What do you remember about your crew?
JS: I can’t remember it.
CB: Did you keep in touch?
JS: Mh?
CB: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew after you ended operations and after the war?
JS: Something comes into [unclear], Kensington, Hammersmith, these are places thinking, you know, areas
CB: In your mind, yes
JS: Yeah. Areas of where I might have been
CB: Your family was living there, wasn’t it? Do you remember what the effect on your family was of the V weapons, V-1 and V-2?
JS: The
CB: V-1s and V-2s? What effect did that have on your family? Because they were in the Chiswick, Hammersmith, Kensington area, weren’t they?
JS: Yeah. No, it’s, I can’t remember it,
CB: So, according to the detail that we’ve got, you left the RAF
JS: Yes
CB: In 1947
JS: Ah!
CB: And then you went to work for who?
JS: That could be so of course
CB: You went to work for Joe Lyons
JS: Go to
CB: Joe Lyons
JS: Joe, oh yeah, yeah
CB: What did you do at Lyons?
JS: Lyons, I was with them earlier on, Lyons, yeah, that could be, I had a job with Lyons
CB: Did you do catering before you left the RAF, is that how you came to them?
JS: Before
CB: Did you volunteer to be a catering officer?
JS: Yeah
CB: Before you left the RAF?
JS: It could be, it could be
CB: So, then you went to Joe Lyons in ’47 and you worked with them till ’51
JS: Yeah
CB: When you re-joined the RAF. What was the initiative to do that?
JS: I, yeah, I couldn’t remember this somehow, Piccadilly, Hyde Park, the area, you know, I could be in
CB: Well, there was a J. Lyons in the Strand, wasn’t there?
JS: Yeah, Strand, yes, that’s, yeah.
CB: And something prompted you to re-join the RAF
JS: It could be so, [laughs] I can’t, can’t remember
CB: Ok.
JS: No.
CB: We will pause there
JS: Yeah.
CB: Cause you, you ran the RAF Club from ’76 to ‘91
JS: There could be, that could be something, yeah, could be something
CB: I remember you there
JS: Good to have you here, you know [laughs]? where, was I married by then?
CB: You were, you were, yes
JS: Yeah
CB: What were you doing when you were working at the RAF club?
JS: Ah, that’s a good point, yeah, there’s a lot of [unclear], lot of [unclear] for [unclear], again, I’m not sure on
CB: What was the condition of the RAF club when you became the general manager?
JS: Yeah
CB: What was it like to walk into?
JS: I’ll try and find your book
CB: Was it dingy? It was dingy, rundown
JS: Yeah
CB: And what did you do to change that?
JS: Yeah. I can’t think
CB: You completely transformed the RAF club
JS: I, likely, yes, likely, yeah. Yes, I remember now, I think of the wife, I think I became settled at that time. My goodness, yes. No, I can’t think of much more, it was a base that I could see some very highly, highly rated people, you know, or some youngster, you know, but it was quite a good job, quite a good job, that I enjoyed. I’ll find you some of this, you know
CB: Do
JS: Give me some time after
CB: Yes. Ok.
JS: It’s. I think, I moved out to here, you know, on this organisation, cause I can’t remember much else between that. I, yes, if I look back army and navy don’t to mind to, to look at all, look at the form, I think I was, for now I take a lot of, looking upstairs and saying who is there? I couldn’t, can really pull you off, you know, ideas and what have you. I love to watch the aeroplane going across there
CB: From your house
JS: [unclear] but I, on the other hand, there is not much I can go into, you know, do something but, I was, I was carefully [unclear] with that
CB: Of course, when you were working for Trusthouse Forte, after you left the RAF on the second occasion,
JS. Yeah
CB: You were the director of airport division, weren’t you?
JS: Yes, [unclear]
CB: And then you moved to the RAF Club
JS: Maybe the one, yeah
CB: So you’ve always maintained your fascination with aeroplanes
JS: Yes, oh yeah, yes, yeah
CB: What’s the thing in your mind that stands out most about your career? What do you remember?
JS: We could do that in this area, you know, on occasions, not so much now as was but we, even now, we are doing something in this area, yeah
CB: Well, Jim, thank you very much for talking
JS: Well, I tried
CB: We’ll catch up with more later I think. Thank you
JS: It’s, you could come back and say that I didn’t say [laughs], or it didn’t sound very, you know, and to some extent, it doesn’t. I sit in this area
CB: Yes
JS: Area, small
CB: Your little extension here
JS: Have a look through there often
CB: Through the French windows, yes
JS: Yeah
CB: Well, it’s a lovely garden, isn’t it?
JS: Yes, we, no, I mean, we like this place, but it’s, we run it pretty carefully,
CB: I think it’s very nice
JS: Yeah. We are looking at the moment, course of coming back, in the jobs [unclear] or something, odd things, you know, before but we’re quite happy in this place
CB: I can imagine, it’s very nice
JS: Yeah
CB: And at ninety-two, you deserve a quiet time
JS: Yes [laughs], yes. But the wife knows a lot of things
CB: Yes, well, you’ve told her over the years
JS: Yeah
CB: So, we’ll pick up on those later
JS: Yeah, that’s right
CB: Yes
JS: Yeah
CB: Good
JS: Her views could be different to my views in some areas but yes, she thinks things of certain things I think but there’s a changing over at this moment in time. We have very definitely, I think, we would be more adjusted to this place of we have behind us, you know, with the, the water clubs, here, with clubs in, have you seen the back of the area here?
CB: The back there, yes, yes
JS: Yeah, I said, that’s the area we got here
GB: Now we are looking here at a picture here
JS: Yes
CB: Of you with Diana
JS: Yes
CB: I can’t see your rank at the time but what’s that bring back to you?
JS: That’s right, I’m a navigator
CB: Yes
JS: Yeah, there
CB: In your number 1 uniform, in your number 1
JS: That’s right, yes, that’s her. Does she say that is?
CB: Yes
JS: She does, that’s right. Yeah, that’s it.
CB: Right,
JS: Yeah
CB: Thank you Jim.
JS: Navigator
US2: Busy
JS: Yeah
US2: Yeah
JS: Well, oh yes, sometime, you know, using that or calling somebody else into help
US2: Yeah
JS: And the other but, no, I think I enjoyed that, or, didn’t disenjoy it, Lancaster I think it is, the Lancaster I think but, yeah. I’ve been up occasionally since and it has been, you know, good to get up and go in and see what was you did and what happened to you like and there we are
CB: How did you feel about the bombing? How did you feel about doing the bombing raids?
JS: Sorry?
CB: What did you think about doing the bombing raids?
JS: The bombing ring?
CB: When you were on operations, what did you think about it?
JS: I don’t feel, I don’t feel cheerless about it or you know what have you, but I think I did a couple of main courses and no, I think, I quite used it, quite, quite enjoyed it a long time ago
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 James Swaffield
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
2017-10-04
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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ASwaffieldJ171004, PSwaffieldJ1703
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:52:00 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
Description
An account of the resource
James Swaffield was born and grew up in West London and flew as a navigator in the RAF. He discusses with the interviewer his life before, during and after the war. Highlights include: remembering his father, who served during the First World War and was awarded a Military Cross; his cousin Don flew ninety ops as a navigator and was awarded a DFC and bar; he joined the RAF at seventeen; started his training on the 14th of September 1942 at 7 AOS at RAF Bishops Court, in Northern Ireland, where he spent fifteen months; in July 1944 was posted to 106 Squadron, where his first operation was to Kiel; was posted to 44 Squadron; discusses the briefing before operations; left the RAF in 1947 and went to work in the catering industry, before running the RAF Club from 1976 to 1991.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Great Britain
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
106 Squadron
14 OTU
1661 HCU
44 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
bombing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Military Cross
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Swinderby
training