1
25
285
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/934/36536/MLovattP1821369-190903-75.2.pdf
51c3fbced3b1e3bd9c7237f2cb79c94a
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
Lovatt, Peter
Dr Peter Lovatt
P Lovatt
Description
An account of the resource
117 items. An oral history interview with Peter Lovatt (b.1924, 1821369 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents, and photographs. The collection also contains two photograph albums. He flew 42 operations as an air gunner on 223 Squadron flying B-24s. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1338">Album One</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2135">Album Two</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nina and Peter Lovatt 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
2017-09-27
2019-09-03
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
Lovatt, P
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
A Reminiscence of the Flying Characteristics of Many Old Type Aircraft
Description
An account of the resource
A detailed analysis of very early aircraft and their flying characteristics.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Air Marshall Sir Ralph Sorley
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Felixstowe
England--Eastbourne (East Sussex)
England--Calshot
England--Bembridge
Atlantic Ocean--Spithead Channel
England--Cowes
England--Stroud
Scotland--Montrose
England--Sunbury
England--London
Monaco
Egypt--Cairo
Iraq--Baghdad
England--Felixstowe
England--Aldeburgh
Iraq
Middle East--Kurdistan
Middle East--Palestine
Jordan
Iran
Middle East--Euphrates River
Syria
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
Singapore
Australia
Borneo
China--Hong Kong
England--Kent
United States
New York (State)--New York
France--Paris
Nigeria
South Africa--Cape Town
Yugoslavia
Norway
Portugal
Spain
Denmark
Japan
Belgium
Argentina
Austria
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Greece
China
Lithuania
Estonia
England--Weybridge
Scotland--Island of Arran
England--Kingston upon Thames
France--Dunkerque
England--Hatfield (Hertfordshire)
Newfoundland and Labrador
New Brunswick
Maine
Maine--Presque Isle
Washington (D.C.)
Massachusetts--Boston
Pennsylvania--Philadelphia
Maryland--Baltimore
Washington (D.C.)--Anacostia
Tennessee--Nashville
Arkansas--Little Rock
Texas--Dallas
Texas--Fort Worth
Texas--Midland
Arizona--Tucson
California--Burbank (Los Angeles County)
California--Palm Springs
California--Los Angeles
California--Beverly Hills
California--San Diego
Arizona--Winslow
New Mexico--Albuquerque
Kansas--Wichita
Missouri--Saint Louis
Ohio--Dayton
New York (State)--Buffalo
Ontario--Toronto
Québec--Montréal
Newfoundland and Labrador--Gander
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Germany--Rheine
Germany--Osnabrück
India
Switzerland--Zurich
Lebanon--Beirut
Pakistan--Karachi
India--Kolkata
Singapore
Indonesia--Jakarta
Australia
Northern Territory--Darwin
New South Wales--Sydney
South Australia--Woomera
South Australia--Adelaide
Victoria--Melbourne
Sri Lanka--Colombo
Spain--Madrid
South Africa--Johannesburg
Kenya--Nairobi
Sudan--Khartoum
Greece--Athens
Italy--Rome
Zambia--Lusaka
Zambia--Ndola
Zambia--Mbala
Heathrow Airport (London, England)
Turkey--Istanbul
France--Nice
Utah--Salt Lake City
Italy--Genoa
Atlantic Ocean--Firth of Clyde
Italy
France
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Kansas
Maryland
Massachusetts
Missouri
New Mexico
New York (State)
Ohio
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
New South Wales
South Australia
Victoria
Northern Territory
Egypt
Sudan
North Africa
Ontario
Québec
Germany
Indonesia
Iraq
Kenya
Lebanon
Netherlands
South Africa
Switzerland
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Turkey
Yemen (Republic)
Czech Republic
Slovakia
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Herefordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
England--Surrey
England--Sussex
England--Great Yarmouth
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 Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
82 typewritten sheets
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971-08-16
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MLovattP1821369-190903-75
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
aircrew
Anson
B-17
B-24
Battle
Blenheim
C-47
Chadwick, Roy (1893-1947)
Defiant
Dominie
Fw 190
ground crew
Halifax
Harvard
Hudson
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lincoln
Lysander
Magister
Manchester
Me 109
Mosquito
Oxford
Photographic Reconnaissance Unit
pilot
Proctor
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Eastchurch
RAF Hendon
RAF Henlow
RAF Martlesham Heath
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Pembrey
RAF Prestwick
RAF West Freugh
Spitfire
Stirling
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
training
Wallis, Barnes Neville (1887-1979)
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/27/95/PFilliputtiA16010005.1.jpg
b05409fef24ed512c2e9e145837bc1f0
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
Filiputti, Angiolino
Angiolino Filiputti
Alfonsino Filiputti
A Filiputti
Description
An account of the resource
127 items. The collection consists of a selection of works created by Alfonsino ‘Angiolino’ Filiputti (1924-1999). A promising painter from childhood, Angiolino was initially fascinated by marine subjects but his parents’ financial hardships forced an end to his formal education after completing primary school. Thereafter, he took up painting as an absorbing pastime. Angiolino depicted some of the most dramatic and controversial aspects of the Second World War as seen from the perspective of San Giorgio di Nogaro, a small town in the Friuli region of Italy. Bombings, events reported by newspapers, broadcast by the radio or spread by eyewitnesses, became the subject of colourful paintings, in which news details were embellished by his own rich imaginings. Each work was accompanied by long pasted-on captions, so as to create fascinating works in which text and image were inseparable. After the war, however, interest in his work declined and Angiolino grew increasingly disenchanted as he lamented the lack of recognition accorded his art, of which he was proud.
The work of Angiolino Filiputti was rediscovered thanks to the efforts of Pierluigi Visintin (San Giorgio di Nogaro 1946 – Udine 2008), a figurehead of the Friulan cultural movement, author, journalist, screenwriter and translator of Greek and Latin classical works into the Friulan language. 183 temperas were eventually displayed in 2005 under the title "La guerra di Angiolino" (“Angiolino’s war”.) The exhibition toured many cities and towns, jointly curated by the late Pierluigi Visintin, the art critic Giancarlo Pauletto and Flavio Fabbroni, member of the Istituto Friulano per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione (Institute for the history of the resistance movement in the Friuli region).
The IBCC Digital Archive would like to express its gratitude to Anna and Stefano Filiputti, the sons of Angiolino Filipputi, for granting permission to reproduce his works. The BCC Digital Archive is also grateful to Alessandra Bertolissi, wife of Pierluigi Visintin, Alessandra Kerservan, head of the publishing house Kappa Vu and Pietro Del Frate, mayor of San Giorgio di Nogaro.
Originals are on display at
Biblioteca comunale di San Giorgio di Nogaro
Piazza Plebiscito, 2
33058 San Giorgio di Nogaro (UD)
ITALY
++39 0431 620281
info.biblioteca@comune.sangiorgiodinogaro.ud.it
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Filiputti, A-S
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
Battle of the Espero convoy. Part 3
Description
An account of the resource
A Royal Navy vessel exchanges salvos with an enemy ship in the distance. Both are engulfed in flames and plumes of smoke. Shells are exploding in the water near both vessels.
Label reads “9”; signed by the author; caption reads “(3) … Ed ecco un colpo partito a dritta andare a segno: l’incrociatore inglese navigava in testa alla formazione, ricevette una scossa formidbile, è una fiamma balenò sul suo fianco sinistro, la grossa nave sbandò mandando fumo nerissimo…”
Caption translates as: “(3)… there, a salvo launched from starboard hit the vessel: the British cruiser, in the forefront of the line-up, suffered tremendous damage and a fire flashed port side. The large vessel tilted, belching out black smoke.”
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFilliputtiA16010005
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Angiolino Filiputti
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Francesca Campani
Alessandro Pesaro
Helen Durham
Giulia Banti
Maureen Clarke
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One tempera on paper, pasted on mount board
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Mediterranean Sea
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-06-28
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Artwork
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 Navy
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Filiputti, Angiolino. Battle of the Espero convoy
arts and crafts
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/27/99/PFilliputtiA16010009.1.jpg
5fcf09c1cd11ace7bfa30026227e56f6
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
Filiputti, Angiolino
Angiolino Filiputti
Alfonsino Filiputti
A Filiputti
Description
An account of the resource
127 items. The collection consists of a selection of works created by Alfonsino ‘Angiolino’ Filiputti (1924-1999). A promising painter from childhood, Angiolino was initially fascinated by marine subjects but his parents’ financial hardships forced an end to his formal education after completing primary school. Thereafter, he took up painting as an absorbing pastime. Angiolino depicted some of the most dramatic and controversial aspects of the Second World War as seen from the perspective of San Giorgio di Nogaro, a small town in the Friuli region of Italy. Bombings, events reported by newspapers, broadcast by the radio or spread by eyewitnesses, became the subject of colourful paintings, in which news details were embellished by his own rich imaginings. Each work was accompanied by long pasted-on captions, so as to create fascinating works in which text and image were inseparable. After the war, however, interest in his work declined and Angiolino grew increasingly disenchanted as he lamented the lack of recognition accorded his art, of which he was proud.
The work of Angiolino Filiputti was rediscovered thanks to the efforts of Pierluigi Visintin (San Giorgio di Nogaro 1946 – Udine 2008), a figurehead of the Friulan cultural movement, author, journalist, screenwriter and translator of Greek and Latin classical works into the Friulan language. 183 temperas were eventually displayed in 2005 under the title "La guerra di Angiolino" (“Angiolino’s war”.) The exhibition toured many cities and towns, jointly curated by the late Pierluigi Visintin, the art critic Giancarlo Pauletto and Flavio Fabbroni, member of the Istituto Friulano per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione (Institute for the history of the resistance movement in the Friuli region).
The IBCC Digital Archive would like to express its gratitude to Anna and Stefano Filiputti, the sons of Angiolino Filipputi, for granting permission to reproduce his works. The BCC Digital Archive is also grateful to Alessandra Bertolissi, wife of Pierluigi Visintin, Alessandra Kerservan, head of the publishing house Kappa Vu and Pietro Del Frate, mayor of San Giorgio di Nogaro.
Originals are on display at
Biblioteca comunale di San Giorgio di Nogaro
Piazza Plebiscito, 2
33058 San Giorgio di Nogaro (UD)
ITALY
++39 0431 620281
info.biblioteca@comune.sangiorgiodinogaro.ud.it
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Filiputti, A-S
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
Battle of the Espero convoy. Part 7
Description
An account of the resource
The searchlight of a Royal Navy vessel casts a yellow beam onto a group of survivors. Some of them are swimming, others are on a raft. In the foreground, a life craft can be seen on the turret on the deck of another ship. A second Royal Navy vessel in the distance is shining two searchlights into the sky.
Label reads “13”; signed by the author; caption reads “(7)… scese il crepuscolo, gli incrociatori inglesi, giunsero sul luogo dell‘affondamento, accesero un riflettore, illuminarono una zattera, osservarono, poi spensero, e se ne andarono…”
Caption translates as: “(7)… It went dark, the British cruisers arrived at the site of the sinking, switched a searchlight on which illuminated a raft. They watched, then switched it off and sailed away…”
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFilliputtiA16010009
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Angiolino Filiputti
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Francesca Campani
Alessandro Pesaro
Helen Durham
Giulia Banti
Maureen Clarke
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One tempera on paper, pasted on mount board
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Mediterranean Sea
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-06-28
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Artwork
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 Navy
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Filiputti, Angiolino. Battle of the Espero convoy
arts and crafts
searchlight
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/27/115/PFilliputtiA16010025.2.jpg
06e127f32a2207de7323fbde1e5c7039
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
Filiputti, Angiolino
Angiolino Filiputti
Alfonsino Filiputti
A Filiputti
Description
An account of the resource
127 items. The collection consists of a selection of works created by Alfonsino ‘Angiolino’ Filiputti (1924-1999). A promising painter from childhood, Angiolino was initially fascinated by marine subjects but his parents’ financial hardships forced an end to his formal education after completing primary school. Thereafter, he took up painting as an absorbing pastime. Angiolino depicted some of the most dramatic and controversial aspects of the Second World War as seen from the perspective of San Giorgio di Nogaro, a small town in the Friuli region of Italy. Bombings, events reported by newspapers, broadcast by the radio or spread by eyewitnesses, became the subject of colourful paintings, in which news details were embellished by his own rich imaginings. Each work was accompanied by long pasted-on captions, so as to create fascinating works in which text and image were inseparable. After the war, however, interest in his work declined and Angiolino grew increasingly disenchanted as he lamented the lack of recognition accorded his art, of which he was proud.
The work of Angiolino Filiputti was rediscovered thanks to the efforts of Pierluigi Visintin (San Giorgio di Nogaro 1946 – Udine 2008), a figurehead of the Friulan cultural movement, author, journalist, screenwriter and translator of Greek and Latin classical works into the Friulan language. 183 temperas were eventually displayed in 2005 under the title "La guerra di Angiolino" (“Angiolino’s war”.) The exhibition toured many cities and towns, jointly curated by the late Pierluigi Visintin, the art critic Giancarlo Pauletto and Flavio Fabbroni, member of the Istituto Friulano per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione (Institute for the history of the resistance movement in the Friuli region).
The IBCC Digital Archive would like to express its gratitude to Anna and Stefano Filiputti, the sons of Angiolino Filipputi, for granting permission to reproduce his works. The BCC Digital Archive is also grateful to Alessandra Bertolissi, wife of Pierluigi Visintin, Alessandra Kerservan, head of the publishing house Kappa Vu and Pietro Del Frate, mayor of San Giorgio di Nogaro.
Originals are on display at
Biblioteca comunale di San Giorgio di Nogaro
Piazza Plebiscito, 2
33058 San Giorgio di Nogaro (UD)
ITALY
++39 0431 620281
info.biblioteca@comune.sangiorgiodinogaro.ud.it
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Filiputti, A-S
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
On a clear day, a convoy of seven Regia Marina destroyers is under attack by five Royal Navy vessels on the horizon. Four of the Royal Navy units have been hit and are engulfed in flames while a fifth ship is sailing on the horizon. Explosions are causing turbulence in the water and a large area of water has turned brown. In the foreground, the Vivaldi is firing shells from the artillery on deck, creating flames and smoke. Crew members can be seen on deck and plumes of black smoke are rising from the main funnel.
Label reads “54”; caption reads “1 IL DRAMMA DEL C.C.T.T. “VIVALDI” 15 GIUGNO 1942 CANALE DI SICILIA. Gli incrociatori “Eugenio di Savoia” e “Montecuccoli” con i caccia Vivaldi – Malocello – Oriani – Ascari – Premuda, erano usciti alla ricerca del convoglio inglese che tentava di forzare il Canale di Sicilia. Era una lunga catena di caccia e un buon numero di piroscafi 3 incrociatori e 15 C.C.T.T. l’ammiraglio Da Zara comandante la VIIo divisione ordinò al Vivaldi e al Malocello di gettarsi sulla coda della formazione inglese. Erano le 5.54 i 2 CCTT SI gettarono all’attacco a tutta forza, aprendo il fuoco dai complessi da 120 la distanza diminuisce vertiginosamente 18.000 metri 16.000 metri.. 14.000 metri un CCTT inglese il 3o della formazione e colpito. Il mare ribolliva sotto quell‘uragano di ferro e di fuoco, 12.000 metri 10.000 metri 8000 metri 7000 metri si sparava quasi bruciapelo, 6500 più 6300…6000…”
Caption translates as: “1 – The Tragedy of the destroyer “Vivaldi”. 15 June 1942, Strait of Sicily. The cruisers “Eugenio of Savoia” and “Montecuccoli”, together with the destroyers Vivaldi, Malocello, Oriani, Ascari, and Premuda, went in pursuit of the British convoy that was trying to force the Strait of Sicily. It was a long line of destroyers and steamers; three cruisers, and fifteen destroyers. Da Zara, admiral of the Seventh Division , ordered the Vivaldi and Malocello to attack the rear end of the British flotilla. At 5.54 am, the two destroyers attacked all out, opening fire from the 120mm batteries. The distance decreased steeply: 18,000 metres, 16,000 metres… 14,000 metres. One of the British destroyers, the third in the line, was hit. The sea foamed below the devastation above, 12,000 metres, 10,000 metres, 8,000 metres, 7,000 metres; salvoes were shot at point-blank, 6,500, then 6,300… 6,000…”
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFilliputtiA16010025
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Angiolino Filiputti
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Francesca Campani
Alessandro Pesaro
Helen Durham
Giulia Banti
Maureen Clarke
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One tempera on paper, pasted on mount board
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Mediterranean Sea
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-06-15
Title
A name given to the resource
Actions of the destroyer Vivaldi. Part 1
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
Artwork
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 Navy
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Filiputti, Angiolino. Actions of the destroyer Vivaldi
arts and crafts
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/27/129/PFilliputtiA16010040.1.jpg
6dc9b05022315e7edc77b84f5fff5cf8
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
Filiputti, Angiolino
Angiolino Filiputti
Alfonsino Filiputti
A Filiputti
Description
An account of the resource
127 items. The collection consists of a selection of works created by Alfonsino ‘Angiolino’ Filiputti (1924-1999). A promising painter from childhood, Angiolino was initially fascinated by marine subjects but his parents’ financial hardships forced an end to his formal education after completing primary school. Thereafter, he took up painting as an absorbing pastime. Angiolino depicted some of the most dramatic and controversial aspects of the Second World War as seen from the perspective of San Giorgio di Nogaro, a small town in the Friuli region of Italy. Bombings, events reported by newspapers, broadcast by the radio or spread by eyewitnesses, became the subject of colourful paintings, in which news details were embellished by his own rich imaginings. Each work was accompanied by long pasted-on captions, so as to create fascinating works in which text and image were inseparable. After the war, however, interest in his work declined and Angiolino grew increasingly disenchanted as he lamented the lack of recognition accorded his art, of which he was proud.
The work of Angiolino Filiputti was rediscovered thanks to the efforts of Pierluigi Visintin (San Giorgio di Nogaro 1946 – Udine 2008), a figurehead of the Friulan cultural movement, author, journalist, screenwriter and translator of Greek and Latin classical works into the Friulan language. 183 temperas were eventually displayed in 2005 under the title "La guerra di Angiolino" (“Angiolino’s war”.) The exhibition toured many cities and towns, jointly curated by the late Pierluigi Visintin, the art critic Giancarlo Pauletto and Flavio Fabbroni, member of the Istituto Friulano per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione (Institute for the history of the resistance movement in the Friuli region).
The IBCC Digital Archive would like to express its gratitude to Anna and Stefano Filiputti, the sons of Angiolino Filipputi, for granting permission to reproduce his works. The BCC Digital Archive is also grateful to Alessandra Bertolissi, wife of Pierluigi Visintin, Alessandra Kerservan, head of the publishing house Kappa Vu and Pietro Del Frate, mayor of San Giorgio di Nogaro.
Originals are on display at
Biblioteca comunale di San Giorgio di Nogaro
Piazza Plebiscito, 2
33058 San Giorgio di Nogaro (UD)
ITALY
++39 0431 620281
info.biblioteca@comune.sangiorgiodinogaro.ud.it
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Filiputti, A-S
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Submariners trapped at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Part 1
Description
An account of the resource
A depth charge is exploding near a submarine while the bow of a Royal Navy warship is visible above the water. Three black and white photographs have been pasted onto the painting, depicting submariners in various poses. Some are looking up; one is counting on his fingers.
Label reads “77”; signed by the author; caption reads “GLI ULTIMI TRE SECONDI. Il marinaio che ha scattato queste fotografie sapeva che a lui ed hai suoi compagni restavano solo 3 secondi per vivere. Siamo nel Mar Baltico nel 1943, il sommergibile Tedesco è stato intrappolato, da un incrociatore inglese, sul sommergibile stanno ora scendendo inesorabili le bombe di profondita. Il sommergibile danneggiato non può muoversi, ed attende l’esplosione finale. Ma “.
Caption translates as: “The Last Three Seconds. The sailor who took these photographs knew that he and his comrades only had three more seconds to live. Baltic Sea, 1943. The German submarine was under the fire of a British cruiser. Depth charges were relentlessly descending on the submarine. The damaged boat could not move and waited for the final explosion. But”
Identifier
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PFilliputtiA16010040
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Angiolino Filiputti
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Francesca Campani
Alessandro Pesaro
Helen Durham
Giulia Banti
Maureen Clarke
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One tempera on paper, pasted on mount board
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
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
Artwork
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 Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Filiputti, Angiolino. Submariners trapped at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
arts and crafts
submarine
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2154/37726/MRidingRH1525125-210923-22.1.jpg
76510ade6a75527c76f276edfd76a9e9
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Riding, Ronald Holford
Riding, RH
Description
An account of the resource
45 items and five photograph albums. The collection concerns Ronald Holford Riding (b. 1921, 1525125 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, correspondence, documents, photographs, and service material. He flew operations as a navigator with 69 Squadron before he was shot down in France. He evaded and worked with the resistance before crossing the Allied lines in August 1944.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Lyn Elizabeth Jolliffe and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-09-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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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Riding, RH
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[inserted] B.L. Montgomery General [/inserted]
[underlined] 21 ARMY GROUP [/underlined]
PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM THE C-in-C
To be read out to all Troops
1. The time has come to deal the enemy a terrific blow in Western Europe.
The blow will be struck by the combined sea, land, and air forces of the Allies – together constituting one great Allied team, under the supreme command of General Eisenhower.
2. On the eve of this great adventure I send my best wishes to every soldier in the Allied team.
To us is given the honour of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history; and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doing. We have a great and a righteous cause.
Let us pray that "The Lord Mighty in Battle", will go forth with our armies, and that His special providence will aid us in the struggle.
3. I want every soldier to know that I have complete confidence in the successful outcome of the operations that we are now about to begin.
With stout hearts, and with enthusiasm for the contest, let us go forward to victory.
4. And, as we enter the battle, let us recall the words of a famous soldier spoken many years ago:-
[italics] "He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dare not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all." [/italics]
5. Good luck to each one of you. And good hunting on the main land of Europe.
B.L. Montgomery General
C-in-C 21 Army Group.
[inserted] – 6 – [/inserted] 1944.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Personal Message from the C-in-C 21 Army Group
Description
An account of the resource
A message read out to the troops on the eve of D-Day.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bernard Montgomery
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-06-05
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 Navy
British Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed sheet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MRidingRH1525125-210923-22
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-06
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Montgomery, Bernard (1887 - 1976)
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/636/40439/NRoyallGL220420-01.2.pdf
f25738040db8a7ff4c27e5ba93f4a7ba
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Royall, George
G Royall
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Royall, G
Description
An account of the resource
46 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer George Royall (1801494 Royal Air Force) his flying log book, photographs, correspondence, course notes, examinations, newspapers and parts of magazines. He served as a bomb aimer on 166 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by George Royall and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-20
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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Union Jack newspaper 25 July 1945
Description
An account of the resource
Four page Western Italy edition of the newspaper containing articles from various operational theatres around the world and from Britain.
Page 1 headline is: 'I SAW GENERAL SHOOT AT PRISONERS'.
Page 2 is given over to the forthcoming General Election in Britain.
Page 3 main articles is titled: 'Secret Nazi documents reveal how Hitler did a gigantic bluff'.
Page 4 main article is titled ' NAZI SHRINE MAY HOUSE WAR TRIAL'. The page also lists the day's entertainment in several Italian locations and on British Forces radio as well as some sports news.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-07-25
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Belgium
Burma
Egypt
France
Germany
Great Britain
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Russia (Federation)
Russia (Federation)--Moscow
United States
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
United States Army Air Force
British Army
Royal Navy
Wehrmacht
Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Printed newspaper
Identifier
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NRoyallGL220420-01
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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
British Army Newspaper Unit
bombing
entertainment
Holocaust
prisoner of war
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1970/33750/MWakefieldHE174040-171016-470001.2.jpg
581c62cbff4a8234af73e461e09eb149
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1970/33750/MWakefieldHE174040-171016-470002.2.jpg
70785e6b5280943cea3e8b6c96d96a61
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1970/33750/MWakefieldHE174040-171016-470003.2.jpg
296b6ebd7e85c292efff85cd67ea7026
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
Wakefield, Harold Ernest
H E Wakefield
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
2017-10-16
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
Wakefield, HE
Description
An account of the resource
93 items. The collection concerns Harold Ernest Wakefield DFC (1923 - 1986, 1582185 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents, training publications, decorations and badges, training notebooks, correspondence, newspaper cuttings, photographs and parachute D ring.
He flew operations as a flight engineer with 51 and 617 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jeremy Wakefield and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
Officers association and officers' benevolent department of the British Legion description of work
Description
An account of the resource
Explains how work of association is carried out and describes facilities for families and disabled, clothing, employment bureau, housing, representatives, Scottish branches and subscriptions.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
British Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four page printed document
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MWakefieldHE174040-171016-47
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
British Legion
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/653/8924/AWallaceDS161015.1.mp3
3f71414cf74d8196e6a052c10dad7a69
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/653/8924/PWallaceDS1610.1.2.jpg
9c601e37e80a78b86f07d42a8d3e0849
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Wallace, Donald
Reverand Donald Stewart Wallace Ld'H
D S Wallace
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Group Captian, Reverand Donald Stewart Wallace Ld'H (b. 1925, 409278 Royal Navy, 501635 Royal Air Force) and four photographs. He served in the Royal Navy 1942 - 1945 before joining the RAF post war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Donald S Wallace and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wallace, DS
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 Saturday the 15th of October 2017 and we’re in Watford with Group Captain Donald Wallace and he’s going to —
DW: [unclear]
CB: I’m starting the introduction again because I got the date wrong. So it’s the 15th of October 2016 and we’re with the Reverend Group Captain Donald Wallace to talk about his times. Life and times. So what was the earliest thing you remember?
DW: The earliest thing I remember — I should say I was born on the 5th of September 1925 in Edinburgh. Elsie Inglis Hospital. And I took my children there to see where their dad emerged and they’d taken the hospital away. Just in case [laughs] But I said to them when it was here there were little trees with railings around to protect them from the sheep that roamed the lakeside. And they’ve all gone I’m afraid. And I was a laughing stock because they gently pointed out to me that we were standing underneath these trees. My father was a supervisor of transport for Edinburgh tramways and I went to school. And the top of the hill outside our house, I can’t remember its name but — but the war, we were involved in the war when it came right from the very beginning because we boys, I was fourteen I think when I was born, er war started. We began to help with our tin helmets on as messengers during air raids. And remember, Edinburgh I think was one of the first places to be raided during the war. And we were ambulance runners taking messages. We wore these tin helmets so it was an early beginning to my association with the clothing of a wartime Britain. I found out and of course we boys wanted nothing else as we grew up but to get face to face with Hitler and his gang. And there was nothing courageous or brave about this I don’t think because boys of our age were — you couldn’t maim or kill any boy of my age. We were indestructible. And I think probably boys are still at that age. We wanted to get our hands on Hitler and unfortunately I found that both the air force and the army coddled you until you were eighteen. You weren’t allowed to get in to any danger. But I did find that if you could pass officer selection you could get away at seventeen and you went off to sea virtually straight away and you learned your trade as a — in the Nelsonian tradition. And I managed to elude my parents by going along and passed as a potential officer cadet and was accepted. I had to wait a few months before which annoyed me as I recall but eventually I got the papers to, transport form to take me down to [pause] I think it was Harwich to start my life in the navy. I spent an extra two weeks. I had a call that was two weeks training before you went off and I had been promoted, as it were, to a class leader while I was there. And I was kept on to be the class leader of the next sixty recruits. They came in batches of sixty. And so I practiced walking with a seaman like roll as I had been in the navy two weeks before these youngsters arrived. Eventually however I got my calling for my first ship which was a Hotspur. A destroyer. HO1. And I can remember with my hammock, well which is a fairly bulky item you’ve got to carry ‘cause it’s your mattress and I still have that mattress. It’s long thin stuff. Carrying that or trying to do so with my kitbag and this hammock roll on a London underground escalator. And I was hovering at the top wondering if I’ll hit one thing going down. It might not be there when I got to the bottom. And somebody saw my plight and said, ‘I’ll carry that.’ So off we went down the escalator and I collected my bag and hammock and carried on to the station. So this, the hammock of course in those days was very important to the navy because it acted as your first defence if your ship was holed. All the hammocks were always stored together and along with bolts of timber and that was ready to patch the hole in the ship. Roughly. So you didn’t have your hammock until you collected it to go to sleep after you got up. It wasn’t just to have a nice quiet feet up. It was in the Fo’c’sle along with the rest. Ready to fill a hole up in the ships side if it suffered an attack. So, however, when I got to the point of sleeping there were no hammock billets, that slinging hooks — so I had to sleep on the deck. And I had to sleep under this long table which served as the mess table. Because you had, I think it was four messes. It was Fo’c’sle split into four quarters and I found I had to lie underneath this. Wearing goon skins mind you. Those are, those are waterproof garments with quilted interior that you wore all the time at sea. Nobody was allowed to take their clothes off. You had to keep [pause] and you had sea boots were leather and very heavy. So if you went overboard I should think the sea boots acted as a lead and you’d probably go down feet first. But I never tried that. This was an uncomfortable position I found because trying to sleep under this table when you’re on a destroyer at sea you find that there’s nothing stable and with the movement of the ship even the break in the Fo’c’sle which is the little bit you walk over to get into the next bit of the ship — the sea used to come over and some water was always where you were living. Sleeping. And that water I found was washing over me underneath the lockers on which people sat and kept their clothes from coming back over. So I look back. I did sleep in these conditions and until I got to the end of this first convoy to America. And it’s only some years ago I realised that all this discomfort was part of the testing time that I was being put to. And everybody on board was aware of my reason for being on the ship. From the captain down. I was the only one that didn’t seem to know. Because as I said I looked back a few years back and suddenly a light dawned. Why was it when we got to America with this convoy and on the way back I found that I had a slinging billet? That my hammock was up there and I could have a place to go to. Doss down and sleep and so on and so it dawned on me that all that first start up was a set up. For instance I was told, I was in the wheelhouse because our job was to get involved in every bit of the ship’s activities so that we had a complete picture, hands on, of all the jobs that there were to keep a ship at sea. And I got, if you just hang on a minute. So it had all been a set up and I was the one chap on board who didn’t realise why. And everybody from, as I said the captain to the youngest, well I was the youngest on the ship, knew what it was about. We got to America as I said and they mysteriously, I realise now that a slinging billet was found for me and I didn’t have to sleep on the deck on the way back. I was told that I had been successful. Ticked all the boxes. When I appeared as part of the officer course training there was four captains interviewing me and they said, ‘You’ve passed successfully. But we found your mathematics were not good enough.’ And I could have told them that because I was never any good at mathematics. And they said they were going to send me to a shore establishment for six months where I would get special coaching in mathematics. And I demurred. I said, ‘Look. I joined the navy to fight in a war. I did not join the navy to learn mathematics. And if the price of a commission is having to learn mathematics I don’t want any more of it.’ There was a bit of a [pause] eventually they agreed with me. My refusal to go off for six months. And I went, I was asked what branch of the navy. And one of the captains said, you should, ‘ASDICs is what you should go for. It’s the most secret but most vital system that we have and the Germans know nothing about.’ And you were never allowed to wear any badges which showed what you were in case you were caught by the Germans or be sunk or any. You would be tortured to get the information about the system and so of course you were incognito in that respect. I was trained at Rothesay where, I can’t remember for how long but it was a surprisingly short course because we were expected to absorb the basics and then learn what was required later on. At sea. So I can’t remember. It was just a few weeks there and I got my call to join HMS Essington which was a captain class frigate. And as you probably know that lies between — a frigate is smaller than a destroyer as it were. It’s the next one down. And as I say it was called the HMS Essington. And strangely I found only recently it was one of the few ships that served in every theatre of British naval warfare. And actually that was when I was on her. Those two years. They call it battle honours. That she’d, the ship earned battle honours in every theatre of British naval warfare. Well I think had I, had that been in the army we would have had a medal for each bit. But the navy are very sparse in dishing out medals. We got the Atlantic Star. Well I had it already actually. And all I got from all those activities was a bar running across the top of the Atlantic Star. I think it says D-day or something like that on it. Indeed I’ve only recently been down to the French embassy where I received somewhat belatedly as it were the Legion d’honneur. Which was rather fun. In fact only a few months before that I’d experienced the same thing because the Russian Embassy invited me to go down there where I received the Ushakov medal which was the eqivalent, as I understood of the French Legion d’honneur. The Ushakov. That was in, apparently appreciation of our protecting the ships that took much needed supplies during the Russian convoys and on arctic patrol up there. It’s on file. But it’s this convoy we’re talking about.
CB: Yes.
DW: I hadn’t, I’m still under the [pause] no. Have I joined ASDIC’s?
CB: Yes.
DW: So I was.
CB: We’re on ASDIC.
DW: I was operating ASDIC’s on the first ship. Essington.
CB: Yes.
DW: Yes [pause] on the way back from that first convoy laden with a huge bunch of bananas which were priceless items in Britain then and worth their weight in gold. I had thought what should I take home for my mother and father. And a bunch of bananas which were rather cumbersome but were going to be very welcome. So on the way back we had collected a film to be shown on board on the way back. Sixteen millimetre. And I think I’m going to forget the name of it at the moment but [pause] No. It’s not coming back. Can you?
CB: So we’re on the way back.
DW: We’re on the way back and we went patches. We watched the film that we’d been given. A sixteen millimetre edition of Casablanca which hadn’t — a pre-release copy of the film and the crew enjoyed it. And some of them got together and wrote a long letter to the film people complaining at the wrong ending. And that Paul Henreid should have been put on that aeroplane and left Humphrey Bogart on the ground. We never heard any reply from that I understand. But quite interestingly, only relatively recently I found there were five different endings ready for that film and they had decided on this particular one. So the crew of HMS Essington weren’t the only ones pondering how to finish up that iconic film. Casablanca. So where am I?
CB: You’re on the way back on the convoy.
DW: Yeah. Yeah. Well I think we had better just get back [laughs]
CB: Yes. So you’re on ASDIC.
DW: This is, is this my last fight.
CB: This is, this is coming back with ASDIC. So you’re trained on ASDIC.
Other: Essington.
DW: Oh yes.
CB: Essington.
Other: Essington.
DW: And we, after that convoy I found that we were spending a lot of time in The Channel, on patrol. E boat alley it was called at that stage. And we were in line abreast at one stage. Sweeping as they called it. Checking out for submarines when I heard the unmistakable whine of a torpedo. There’s no —nothing like it. You know exactly what it is. And because I was on the set there up on the bridge, on a little cabin that’s patched on to the Bridge with access from the Bridge little cabin that’s patched on to the Bridge with access from the Bridge through portholes for the officer on watch to look down and see what’s going on. I heard it. And I realised from its course and speed and bearing that we had only a few seconds left in this world. Because when a torpedo hits the Fo’c’sle of a frigate it doesn’t just pass right through it. It blows up A and B gun magazines. So, all the ammunition. And it’s one hell of a bang. And it takes the Fo’c’sle off and puts it slap against the funnel casing so anybody in that area is a goner. Waiting for seconds. And miraculously it went on. And we heard it gradually continuing. And as I said there were six ships in line abreast and Blackwood was slightly ahead. And the next minute there was this dreadful explosion they spoke about and poor old Blackwood had lost its forward part. I looked up and I could see dangling crew. Feet had caught on the rope obviously below the Crow’s Nest. The mast head look out on the deck because it wasn’t moving at all. And I thought to myself, that was my action station on my previous ship and there but for the grace of God. It could have been me. And I look out a little anecdote from my previous ship while I was learning the trade as it were. We had one of the merchantmen had been sunk and it was dark. And as dark as you can get the Atlantic to be. And we peeled off full steam ahead as it were. And when you’re going as fast as you can your funnel casing, I found, glows red. And there were sparks coming out from the top and I was in the masthead look out position in this little [pause] almost like a dustbin. You’re there and the communication is a tube with a lid and I thought just the time for a quick fag. I did smoke and one of the many things I learned quickly in the navy. And I had just let out this tiny glow of a cigarette with the funnel casing glowing red hot. Sparks coming out everywhere. And there was a fearful roar from the deck. This was the gunnery officer, ‘Get that fag out Wallace and see me afterwards.’ And I thought why? This tiny glow. But I knew this was, ultimately I realised that this was all a part of [ pause] however, that I remember that with humour now. The, the — am I still on? Where am I?
CB: So we’re on Essington. We’re on Essington.
DW: Oh Essington. And we’re on The Channel. In The Channel.
CB: In The Channel.
DW: Yes. And the Blackwood had been sunk.
CB: Yeah.
DW: And I went up to the [pause] this new Arboretum which is going to be used as a war.
CB: Alrewas.
DW: I was up there recently and I found that there was a special little memorial and that my six ships were called the forgotten frigates. And there I stood and went down. I got to Blackwood. And I experienced quite a wave of emotion. When I realised that it should have been Blackwood standing there looking at my [pause] — that was war. The chances were always there. You didn’t live like that. You didn’t worry about that. I never —
CB: Would you say that it’s a feeling of guilt that it didn’t get you?
DW: I, no. I don’t. There was no guilt involved. It was [pause]I felt that it was perhaps unfair that we should have been chosen to continue. And Blackwood —
CB: You survived. Yes.
DW: Going back to Blackwood though if I can for a minute. We thought a lot of lives lost. Because there she was. Three quarters, two thirds of a ship. Still floating. And we we wanted to get on a tow. But the sea was relatively calm but the submarine that had sunk us was still lurking about. Nobody wanted to stop for that reason. The other four were circling around the two of us. As we were the nearest ship we were picking up the survivors but they kept jumping. They were all jumping in to the water from the stern. And we were calling and shouting, ‘Stay on board.’ She was floating you see and we could have — but they’d all been playing housey in the tiller flat, which is a large blank area at the back. And you can imagine. Well, housey I should explain is a tombola sort of thing. Game. And they were all running out and jumping straight in to the water which was a ruddy nuisance to us because instead of all collecting from the ship. Well we rescued, got them on board us and got the Blackwood in tow and headed for the first port. Because in those days you could stitch. And there were other instances of the two ends of the ships, ‘cause they were the first of the ships that were not rivets. Riveted. And they just welded the bits together. However, sadly she began to flounder and eventually we had to cut her adrift and she went down. That was the end of Blackwood. The next [pause] it’s difficult remembering these things at this age. Oh yes. Mentioned Lancasters. We were in The Channel and a Sunderland, I believe it was a Sunderland but it could have been a Catalina. Anyway —
CB: A flying boat.
DW: Flew over us and flashed us that we’d dropped a sea marker on where a submarine had crash dived. A sea marker I should explain is — it’s a dye that once it’s on the sea it spreads out and it’s a mad vivid green over the area and it was heading for Guernsey. And we were peeled off by our group leader and the two of us went charging back to where the sub had crash dived. I should explain that at sea you could do short in between ship communication safely on this. I don’t understand the technology but you could speak to each other without it spreading beyond, as it were, the immediate area of your ships. And we had codenames. And our leader was Floor Cloth. That’s fine. Our leader was Beezum and we were Floor Cloth. And we got to, we got to this sea marker and absolutely right on time the eleven inch guns on Guernsey opened up. And they must have got the exact position from the sub before it crash dived because I was on the starboard lookout position just off the bridge when bang, we were straddled both sides. And it was so close that I got soaked from the shell that fell on my right hand side. Well, our skipper, he, he’d never waited for anybody’s instruction when danger waited. ‘Hard to capt, hard to port, full speed ahead.’ And we zigzagged and we were belting away as fast as we could out of this range of these guns when we heard, ‘Floor cloth. Floor Cloth. This is Beezum. I think it’s time we got out of here.’ He hadn’t noticed he was entirely alone down there. We were miles away. That was both amusing and as I said quite serious. But that that was one of the occasions when [pause] but as far as ships — we had a policy stay your distance from us. Any aeroplane that comes gets shot at. And quite amusingly I was at a dinner. As I think I was a speaker. When the chairman, he said, and he referred to me, ‘And I was one of these bloody pilots you shot at.’ [laughs] This was at the dinner. Thank goodness we can laugh now at things that went on. For instance, on a Russian convoy we were all listening avidly as we all did, to the “Man in Black.” These were stories told. Usually mystery and horror. And this is your story of terror. “The Man in Black.” So there we are listening to this and as I recall the mysterious severed hand was crawling up the side of the bedclothes and had just reached the top of the bed and was going towards the sleeping man’s head when action stations sounded. Well nobody on the ship were thinking about dying of fear. We were all just absolutely furious that this intrusion. We never did find out what happened after that. So I’m still on where?
CB: Well, if we go back to The Channel.
DW: Back to The Channel.
CB: You’ve just got shelled from Guernsey.
DW: Oh yes.
CB: What about the submarine?
DW: Yes.
CB: Where was that?
DW: Well we high tailed off and as far as that is concerned that was the end of that episode. We learned. You can’t, with three inch guns as our main armoury you might as well spat over the side as try to retaliate.
CB: Yeah.
DW: When it’s got its eleven inch guns that’s aiming for you. Right.
CB: So thinking of ASDIC.
DW: Pardon?
CB: So with ASDIC — what were you doing with ASDIC yourself.
DW: ASDIC.
CB: No. What were you doing with the ASDIC?
DW: We — ASDIC’s I should explain are both — the Germans had the listening devices that could get sound but we sent an echo out and got it back and you could work out from the time taken by the echo.
CB: Yeah.
DW: The course and speed of whatever was ahead. Hearing you could [pause] fish a shoal of fish will give you a faint positive echo.
CB: Yeah.
DW: And you learned to read what it is. As opposed to the one thing you’re concerned about is a submarine. And also the bottom. If there’s like if you’re in an area where there might be rocks sticking up from the bottom you have, by your experience, you could understand, deduce what, what because it can be and that was the point. Submarines crash dived and lay still and nobody would, no noise because that would give their position away. So you only had your ASDIC’s to probe and try and find the submarine that had just sunk one of your —
CB: Just to clarify that ASDIC is Anti Submarine Direction Indicator.
DW: That’s right.
CB: And what rank were you at that time?
DW: Oh I was still what I had chosen to be. An able seaman. Yeah. And I remained that to the end of the war. And I look back and realise that was probably the best preparation I ever had for life afterwards. Because eventually the war, the war finished and I yes, yes, eventually the war finished but before it did I began to get, I’ve no idea why. I think I, if I try to find out why but I think it might go back to seeing a chaplain and I, very few of them I saw. And I don’t want to denigrate those that serve but it just happened with me. This chaplain came on board and headed straight to the ward room and I recall we never saw him. And that, that I think was the spur. I’ve no, I only search my own memory to find out why because my father was, A) my father had a whole line of Black Watch. Now all the family were Black Watch. My young brothers were commissioned in the Black Watch. And I was the black sheep. I joined the navy. I said. You know why? But here I was. My father was so surprised that I was talking about taking holy orders as it were. However, I determined on this. Offered myself to the Church of Scotland. And in the light of my break in education and the fact it might be service that were, another chap who was in the same position called Farquhar Lyall who had been a colonel in the army. He and I both were ex-St Andrews. Started off for four years course at St Andrews University and at the end of which we were graduated, as it were, MAPD. But the penalty and I think it never would have been, and perhaps I should have it now — the agreement was they would graduate but not get the labels of the degree. So this would not happen today and we were, when I look back it was a very, what’s the word [pause] unfair, as it were, imposition. But we didn’t mind and Farquhar Lyall and I rose to be a senior — he was a senior army chaplain and I was a senior Scottish chaplain. So where am I?
CB: Well we’re just talking about the fact that the the origin of your — I’m going to stop. I’ve got to stop because I’m clearing my throat.
DW: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: Right.
Other: Would you like some water?
CB: Yes. Thank you. What we’re talking about is I just want to go back a bit more, thank you, into the war because I think this is a really really significant point. Your perception of the chaplain only going to the wardroom.
DW: Well, yeah, I weren’t — yes.
CB: It’s how it worked.
DW: Yeah.
CB: But how did the crew feel about that?
DW: I I I’d been a normal Scottish boy. We went to church and Sunday School each day er each Sunday and were involved in the activities of our church. It was part of life. And we never thought that we were different from anybody else. It was. And our parents. So the church and living and activities like the Sunday School and the outings and so on. And then I was in the Cubs and the Rovers. All part of growing up in the church. So it was church centred. And our minister was a figure that was revered and was our leader as it were, in the community. And indeed it was the minister of my church to whom I discussed my idea of offering my — that I went to so I think it was, looking back that this chap I thought he would go to the crews quarters because they’re the people that would appreciate his visit and so on. That’s [pause] I’m trying to find a reason. A raison d’être as it were for my being a clergyman. And I’ve, I’ve tried and I think it was at that point. Now, he may have had some specific reason for going up to the wardroom. I’ve no idea.
CB: No.
DW: But that, as I search my memory was the critical point which made me think about offering myself to the church and going back to the navy as a chaplain.
CB: Yes.
DW: That was the bit.
CB: Right. Would you say you were shocked by his apparent behaviour?
DW: I would not say that was that. Shock is nothing. But my expectation was, and my, what I felt was that he should be heading for the crew’s quarters because they would need him and appreciate his presence. Rather than going to have a gin and tonic in the wardroom.
CB: Which is the officer’s mess.
DW: Yes. So and after this, so now that that is on looking back that was the bit that made think of going back in a ship which meant training and so on. I surprised my parents and many of my friends that I [pause] So —
CB: But would you say that during your times in these ships first the destroyer and then the frigate. That as you got to know what everybody was doing that your faith became important to you again.
DW: I don’t think so. Looking back. Alistair Campbell, a great friend of mine happened to come from Edinburgh and so on and we, we were together on Essington. And his, I think his father was in charge of the lighthouses and so on in Britain — in Scotland at the time. But Alistair and I were good friends and we did things together when we got ashore. We’d go to church. Now I, our reason for going to church was first of all it seemed a natural thing and I think right down it was something we needed. To retain contact with those who appreciated with what Christ had done for us and the risks he’d run and so on. But secondly and not too surely. It wouldn’t be firstly was when you went to church in your sailor’s uniform there were girls there with their parents. And there was possible invitations back for a meal and so on. So as I say they talk about rice Christians and I think probably Alistair and I were, were rice Christians and in America for instance we had wonderful hospitality and in subsequent times I had the same thing because there had been notices posted up when you got to Newfoundland I remember. Saying so and so and so and so invites so and so for a weekend and we met this wonderful hospitality which was so welcome to us in those days. So as I said, I’m back. I embarked on my time at St Andrews.
CB: Was this under the auspices, was this under the auspices of the navy?
DW: No. It was under the auspices of the Church of Scotland. Forces chaplain.
CB: Chaplaincy.
DW: Yes. The thing I’ve got — I was heading for the navy you see. When I was approaching the end of my time at St Andrew’s and I’d thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d been the convener of publicity for the all important charity’s weeks and so on. And I was the Cape Kennedy Club was a kind of, ran a seniority system at our time in St Andrews. I think I’m the oldest life member of the Cape Kennedy Club of St Andrews. Still. Those days — I boxed for [pause] my father encouraged us all to box and I boxed with one or two amateur, in between ships contests and then I, I got involved and boxed again ashore while I was at, while I was training. And I began to get a bit ancient for the boxing. You know, when you’re boxing, the longer it takes, it takes you longer and longer to get over a bruise. And tempers [unclear], there’s no escaping. I realised that my time actually participating was drawing to a close so I became a qualified time keeper. And then a qualified judge and then ultimately I qualified as a referee. And so on. And eventually I became the [pause] what’s the word for the three services?
CB: Joint service.
CB: Yes. The —
Other: Combined.
CB: Combined services.
DW: For the combined services, but as a referee. And that was just a sort of a natural progression from not being able to participate. You did the fine tuning. These were all activities which were taking place parallel with my other great activity was, while I was in Aden in 1950 with the Royal Air Force. I met one of Cousteau’s team and Cousteau had just produced the iconic valve allowing you to breathe underwater. And I tried this. We only had one in Aden. It was the chap who owned a ship that took passengers and freight and things back and forwards between Somalia and Aden. He thought this was a good idea because in those days ships had no — there was nowhere to dock alongside and the only way to get a ship repaired was to pull her up on to the beach. The huge gangs of neighbours would pull and you would beach it. Of course, with a very small tide you know. You’re talking inches rather than feet and he thought a good idea. I’ll get one of these and have a look at the hull without having to leave the ship. And I borrowed this and we got it filled with air from a static I think there was about seven or eight inches long. Compressed air cylinders that were used by the aeroplane people. I managed to acquire, shall I call it, one of these four or five large bottles and subsequently I was able to have it recharged and we could fill this air bottle from the tubes. And I remember the system where you had to go from the lowest to the highest I think it was. It was so as to ensure you got the maximum value of compressed air from each cylinder. Anyway that was me started and I went out with this thing on my back. Surprisingly heavy. I swam out and down I went and I was breathing. And I thought this is just marvellous. And I was probing around the shallow waters off the little bay I was at in Aden. And ultimately I began to find that it was harder to breathe and I was finding it desperately, you know, so I realised I must be running out of air. So I began to swim somewhat frantically towards the shore and only to realise I was swimming away from it ‘cause you’ve no [laughs] And I, there was only one resource. And I pushed myself. I never thought of breaking surface because this weight on me. Strangely enough, I got to the surface and found that the cylinder by this time, I was so exhausted it offered slight buoyancy. So, on my back, I back paddled away back to the shore. I did not even have a snorkel. Now you see this is really, really early.
CB: Yes.
DW: As sub aqua. So I learned my trade right at the beginning there. And subsequently I said in parallel with the boxing, I introduced and encouraged the sub aqua in the air force and ultimately was the head of sub aqua activity. Which included the adventure training and so on to encourage people to join the services.
CB: Right.
DW: You see.
CB: So we’ve come to the end of the war. You’ve been to St Andrew’s. You’ve qualified
DW: Oh yes. Right.
CB: So how did you not go on with the navy?
DW: Well I was nearing the end and I had, it was two, I can’t remember if it was two or three officers or chaplains or officer chaplains came to visit me at the university and said they understood that I was going to — that I was training as a chaplain and was [pause] and but they said we wanted you to, we wondered if you would consider coming into the air force. And I said, ‘No. No. No. No. I’m going back to the navy.’ They said, But your young brother is training at this minute as a pilot in Rhodesia,’ where they did the training in those days for the good weather. They said, ‘Would it not be a good thing if you were in the same service as your brother?’ And I remember saying, ‘Oh. Well. Yeah. Well I’ll give it a whirl.’ And I found myself joining the air force. And I had absolutely no connection with the air force. When I [pause] what changed my uniform I remember it was in the gents toilet in London station. Into this RAF colour. I emerged and headed for RAF Halton. Which I was told was my, I had to go there for my first and my RAF career as it were started there. There was nobody to meet. Oh yes eventually the chaplain of Halton who — there was supposed to be a senior and a junior chaplain. I was going to be the junior chaplain to this chap. He arrived and in I got through the guardroom because I had no identification or anything like this you see. And in we went and I was in the air force. And I — and this chap went off the next day, said ‘Well I’m going to have some leave.’ He was supposed to be instructing me but he pushed off and I was left with this. With something like thirty lectures to deliver each week to the recruits coming through. On lifestyle and so on including more rough chaplaincy talks. Plus that I found at the hospital to minister to Halton. And my only means of transport was this ancient RAF bicycle that I’d acquired in some way and I was told I had to parade to 8 o’clock in the morning or something. So from the mess which was the old Rothschild house, I’m going up the hill and it was beginning to spitter with rain. The chain kept coming of this blooming old bicycle. And I had to try and — my hands were getting oilier and oilier and I was trying to get the chain back on this bike. But I finally got up to the top and there were about a thousand men, you see, parading. An officer came marching towards me and I didn’t realise that the parade was handed over to me you see. So, I thought, hang on, the reason I was so unprepared was they heard that I had been in the navy so I didn’t, I got no officer training. I did not get the few months preparation that the doctors and dentists and schoolies and so on got. I was making this transition totally unprepared. So much so that I thought oh well here it goes. So having this officer march off and left me with this. And I thought, right, well here goes and I upped my arm, right arm, grabbed my hat with the right arc. Left arm up. Put my hat underneath my left arm and I prepared to continue with a few words and then a short service. When I looked around I thought nobody else was taking their hats off. I realised that they didn’t take their hats off in this new service. So I had to discreetly put my hat back on again and carry on with the service. And while the chap who used to be my batman used to arrive in his car I — the only transport I had was this old bike. Well that was a happy, or unhappy beginning to life in the Royal Air Force. And I subsequently raised the, they seemed to like me and I think, looking back, probably I was welcomed by them because I had naval ribbons. In the air force — medals. In the air force the only people who really are exposed to, if you like, danger or whatever, are the pilots and crews. Whereas the vast number are all on the ground and don’t get exposed to the enemy as it were. I think looking back probably the fact that I was wearing medals which showed that I had been involved as it were put me on a — and I was able to get things when I wanted something for the airmen or whatever it was. I got access to highest.
CB: Respect.
DW: Yes. And it really quite, it really was, looking back my navy time prepared me for my chaplaincy service. A) because nobody could come with a hard luck story to me because I could match anything he was going to come up with. But equally it made me probably empathetic to those who really needed help and perhaps even more than I could probably find a situation in the married quarters or something. Or whatever. I might be ahead of it and able to [pause] because you can’t have a good ship as it were if you’ve got somebody’s wife having it off with a chap two doors down. These are, these are you are not a little chap straight from the college. You’re someone who’s seen life. And so I was able to both enjoy and I think be of some value to the service that I had joined. Incidentally my brother, young brother, Albert was so determined that when he had to be, join up, he and my brother, his twin, were commissioned in the Black Watch but Albert was so determined to fly that he rejoined. Relinquished his rank when he had finished his, what was over. He relinquished his rank because the only way you could get to fly was start off as an airman and do your recruit. So there was a highland Black Watch officer doing his square bashing again under an RAF corporal. But that was my brother. Determined. And by this time he had, he flew all kinds of aeroplanes. And I flew with him in, for instance, a Vulcan that he, and he was one of those who, when at Waddington had to sit there knowing that if the balloon went up he had to get straight in to the cockpit and fly and that because there would be no where to come back to.
CB: Never return. Right.
DW: I think. And these are the guys that I could relate to. And there’s my own young brother. And I’ve flown with him in [pause] what’s that comfortable place to be a visitor or was it a guest crew because you sat right down the bottom in this little cubby hole with the side here and the inside of this plane was cold. Freezing literally. And up the top of the ladder was my brother, navigator. Above me. So it was a fairly lonely place there. Damned uncomfortable. And Albert — seven hours we flew as I recall. And he said, ‘I’m going to fly up over our house.’ So we were flying up Scotland and he flew over Arthur’s Seat and our house was on the slopes of the hill and I thought I’m not interested. Just get me back somewhere warm. But when you’re sitting for seven hours doing nothing whereas these guys are doing this all the time. But eventually he, he moved on to the aeroplane, I forget it’s name now. Similar. But it was the one that refuelled.
CB: The Victor.
DW: The Victor. And the Victor was a great place to be the passenger. Because right up the top of the little ladder there was navigator pilot and there was a seat in the middle that was slightly raised above the others and you had this fantastic view in front. So thumbs up for the Victor. So I’d done and I’d flown in Vulcan and a Victor. And a Victor was very comfortable for, for a — I flew in all sorts of aeroplanes. Particularly because my refereeing. I found out the PE officer at headquarters in Cyprus for instance had, was sick or had some lung problem. And I found I was the only boxing referee in the Mediterranean so I’ve been, I flew in all sorts of aeroplanes to get to referee a boxing match in Gibraltar or Malta and at the same time I’m in charge of the sub aqua activities there. For instance inspecting the pipelines that went, that had been put in to refuel aeroplanes. And a tanker would offload their fuel and it would pump ashore. Well it was vital that these, there were no leaks and of course it was relatively shallow and there was always, the worry was that they’d move and you’d get a slight leak.
CB: We’ll just stop for a mo.
DW: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: So you had a wide variety of activities but your first posting was Halton where you had no proper induction. How many postings did you have? Tours did you have in the RAF?
DW: Well in the first I was posted to Number 1 School of Recruit Training. After this few weeks at Halton. Because the boss chaplain visited and found out that I was in there on my own. And he said, ‘Where’s your — ’ I said, ‘He’s on leave sir.’ ‘Is he?’ So this guy was back and he said, ‘It’s very obviously you don’t need a second chaplain here. Having Wallace here, inexperienced a novice, running this on his own. You can’ and I went off. I was posted to Innsworth where I got friendly with a fellow. Jack. Oh I’ll remember his name in a minute. And he asked me to be his best man at his wedding. I said it’s a bit hard. A bit difficult because — no. I was to marry him but it was the bride was going to be married in her, was going to be married in the village church and in, of course the padre, the minister, the vicar so he said well I was in charge of the guard of honour. And so much against the rules as I thought, I organised, we organised the ceremonial swords that you had to have and in full dress uniform. And there I arrived with a dog collar on. But with the sword alongside of me and leaning there was eight of us formed the guard. The next day after the wedding I had a call. The commander in chief would appreciate it if you pay him a visit this morning. I thought oh God I’m going to get a rocket for being armed. And I started along the corridor and the door flew open, ‘Oh there you are. Come on in and have a coffee you see. Right. So I sat down, drinking coffee and he said, he said, ‘I wanted to talk to you about yesterday.’ He said, ‘Do you know that was the best blooming guard of honour I’ve ever seen?’ [laughs] And I get this chap and I in fact Peter Horsley. Air Chief Marshall Peter. He’s up there. He and I were great friends. He’s dead now sadly. And its things like this that I’ve got on awfully well and I’m not talking about crawling to get to know them. I think my naval experience was appreciated. And the fact that I could talk to men from my own experience and to officer’s with theirs so I feel I was probably was pushed in the right direction when I was asked which service I was going to go in to. Hence I’m RAF and, ex now of course. Very proud of my — not proud. Yes. Why not be proud.
CB: Why not? Why not? Yes.
DW: An airman as well as a navy.
CB: A fish head. Yeah.
DW: Yes. Is that enough?
CB: Yes. We’ll stop there.
DW: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: We’re restarting now after a bite. And we’re going to talk about the postings that Donald had.
DW: As I said, I was a relatively short time at Halton. Busy and enjoyable. But I found that myself posted to 6 flight training school. Number 1 school of recruit training which was RAF Innsworth and I was told that you could settle down here for a few years. Well, I had quite a good experience there but the phone rang on my desk. They said terribly sorry Wallace. Could you take two weeks leave and be at such and such. We’re having to post you to Aden because the chap there had fallen ill or some such thing and was being invalided home. Or his wife was. I can’t remember. But he’d gone but of course I went out but in those days you had to travel by sea so I had two weeks and there I was on board. A very pleasant experience, you know, in those days. The officers had the first class of this converted liner. As a duty. And joined there, and I won’t go into details because. I finally got to Aden. And in those days you didn’t have any facility to draw alongside so I had to drop down a ladder into a boat and put ashore. And my mess was, the, where I was going to live, was a [Tarshind?] it was called. Was a little headland where the officer’s mess was. And there was a few little bungalows there with sort of leafy surrounds and the, some of these bungalows were for married quarters. There were a few. And others were provided two accommodations each for an officer. And strangely enough you had your own body servant, if you like, they called them in those days. And I had a young fella called Ali who was a Somali lad. Somali. And of course they had no books. Nobody could read. But the only book was the Kitab. The Muslim bible as it were. Well, Ali nevertheless was a very bright boy and he was I suppose he was about sixteen or seventeen and he’d bring me my morning tea and light my morning cheroot. I used to smoke P John cheroot’s a lot. I’d have my cigar. My cup of tea and my little cheroot in bed often. I can remember on one occasion because you were wearing your shorts all day I arrived at the mess and Ali used to go around the back way and be there at the door to meet me. Take me to my place at the table. In those days of the Raj if you like. And I remember him looking at me and, like this, waving his hands. No. No. I thought what’s wrong with him. Has he been at the hash? You know the green that comes in each week on the camel loads from, and sends him a bit [pause] but no. He was trying to tell me I hadn’t got my trousers on. Well, you don’t miss it. You’re in your shorts all day but you’re in your trousers at night. And I hadn’t I looked down and realised I was just in my shirt tail. I walked out. I did a quick about turn and went back to retrieve my dignity as it were. And however years have rolled on and I’m at Cranwell where I spent, they kept me there for another year to complete a scheme I had. And I had been visiting somewhere to do something and had a staff car. And I said, ‘Stop at the next pub. I would like a glass of beer.’ So the driver pulled in at this pub. I walked in and there was a very crowded bar. And I was sort of trying to — I’m not very tall so it’s easy to be below everybody else and a voice said, ‘Could I buy you a pint, sir?’ I looked up and there was Ali. I had arranged for him before I left to do an Alaska job which meant that you got on board a ship and you could choose when your period two, three, four years service was over. You could choose which port you wished to have taken back. Ali had chosen Southampton and was now an inspector of steel. And his golden mark as it were went on the ingots was to prove the value and quality and so on. And there I am meeting him again. The most extraordinary coincidence of my life. One of them anyway. There. And I kick myself to this day that I did not get his telephone number and address when I left. And I was away in the car and I couldn’t get back.
CB: Yeah.
DW: But that was me meeting Ali as I said and it showed that my arrangements that I had been able to make for his future paid off and that I learned how successful it had been by this quite extraordinary coincidence. Yeah.
CB: After Cranwell where did you go?
DW: Cranwell. I was kept on at Cranwell. I spent four years there.
CB: What did you do there particularly?
DW: I ran sub aqua and introduced it to the cadets who as you know we tried to produce officers who are no question, are totally confident. But they can be an absolute pain in the back of the neck because I who had taught them that I’m on a boat, a little boat were diving in. What do you call it. Not research. Checking out pipelines and things under water and these guys — it was the Mediterranean in Cyprus. And these were guys who were coming ashore or sitting on the boat telling me how to put on my equipment. I thought, God, I’ll show them. So I said, ‘Right. We’ve got enough.’ Oh we were diving for underwater, at that point we had a duty for the RAF for the Natural History Museum.
CB: Was this a detachment to Cyprus?
DW: It, yes, and they were, I had been in the Natural History Museum. I saw a photograph of a whale. And it said very rare so and so and so and so. And I thought I’ve a much better photograph. So I called one of their people in uniform. They went and brought this chap from behind and we talked back, I said yes, I’ve got this photograph. ‘Did I ever see a Mediterranean seal like it?’ ‘Oh yes. Quite often. Used to try and swipe the bait.’ ‘Oh what colour?’ I said, ‘Brown.’ ‘No they weren’t,’ said he. I said, ‘Look. Who saw them? You or me?’ I can remember this conversation. The net result was that I was to try and take an expedition on their behalf to Cyprus. And we were to try and photograph the Monachus Monachus. The Mediterranean seal. And also to bring back a collection of coloured sponges from underwater caves which saw absolutely no light at all but these multi coloured sponges. And one of the questions as I understood it was why should you have colour in the darkness? You know. These are as I recall, anyway however I agree, as you could imagine, quite enthusiastically with this idea. And I collected a bunch of cadets to take as training for them and another officer, a flight lieutenant, to come along. And off we set for Cyprus. This was a return for me. We went up to the top of the island. And I went to the monastery which is at the esoteric Monastery to see if I could buy bread and a goat for a barbecue. And I was told I couldn’t buy but I would be given as much bread as I wanted. So we made sure that there was a good donation to a charitable outreach by the monks there. And set up our camp. Started trying to photograph the seal. We were successful in that and at the same time I gave a permission to gather some sponges. Now sponges are black underneath the water. They are mounds. They are covered in a kind of black polythene with holes in it and it takes, it takes a fair amount of time to recognise the sponge with it’s black covering as I said. And it will become the wash aid that you use in the bath. Because the bulk of them are wild as you call them and will never transform. Now, certain shades and slightly less gloss and so on which I could recognise immediately because of my experience. But these cadets who were getting on our backs by this time about knowing everything and telling us how to put [our gear on] I said right you can have your opportunity to take some sponges to take home. But I explained to them what to wear. I remember sitting a bit like Canute, you know. Sailing that close to the water. And they were coming up with their arms laden with these beautiful little black and I’m saying, ‘No. No. No.’ So they were casting their useless. And it might be just occasionally be yes. And I can remember the little blighters there. They had visions of taking home these. I can show you some of these I’ve got. But as I say you’ve got to have a particularly resilient nature to be able to withstand close proximity to a Cranwell cadet in training.
CB: At Cranwell itself.
DW: Pardon?
CB: So actually at Cranwell itself. When you were at Cranwell with the cadets. What was the main role that you had and what was the reaction of the cadets?
DW: Your main role first of all was as a chaplain. You conducted and you gave talks on lifestyle. And that were all tabled and each of the talks was as I said lifestyle. My memory came back. And the importance perhaps of having a faith. So you didn’t go there as an evangelist, as it were. One hoped, one would hope that would showing the sort of life that a normal Christian would live and if it is different or was different from that of others perhaps they could see something in your life that would encourage them to follow suit. So, as I said very active. For instance, I found myself, we had a mid-air collision between two air craft off the bay and I was responsible for trying to recover the part of the wing and fuselage of the two aeroplanes to show what angle they hit at so that it could be worked out who was responsible or stop such a [pause] so there I was and coming off the work, rushing up to take a service and then back down. But it was all just a part of life.
CB: So these. Most of the cadets were straight out of school.
DW: Yes.
CB: And they actually came from a wide variety of backgrounds but –
DW: They did.
CB: But actually there was a predominance, probably, of public school boys was there?
DW: I don’t know. That’s, that’s you’ve posed a question that I never even considered.
CB: Because they were used to chapel every day.
DW: I did not [pause] I took them as they were and I never recall giving any thought to their backgrounds. They were there. They were what they were. How they became what they were was really — I did not consider. I just sort of seemed to accept that these young men who had passed certain tests and were considered officer material and it was my job to pass on what I considered were principles and activities that would serve the royal air force well and them too
CB: I suppose, in a way, I’m getting to the what I’m trying to say is the public school boys would be the people who would have had religion every day when they were at school and I wondered how that impinged on their activities when they were at Cranwell and their activities when they were and their receptiveness and otherwise to your —
DW: I didn’t notice. That’s a question I never considered before. Never mind now. As I said, I can only say I took people as they were. I wasn’t interested in what they were before.
CB: Yes. I wasn’t thinking what they were only other than their attitude towards religion.
DW: Yeah. Well as I said I can only reiterate that this religion I’d hoped that they would follow suit. Go to church.
CB: Yes.
DW: And it’s not going to church that I’m interested in it’s become a follower of the Christ.
CB: Yes.
DW: Whom I admire and was my hero.
CB: After Cranwell where did you go?
DW: Right. At Cranwell. I was there for a longer time because I had this scheme. I can’t remember what it was. Oh I got married quarters. That’s right. I managed to get the married quarters into church. The married quarters were quite a way and it was all just officers cadets. But I got a bus organised and that went every Sunday around the married quarters. There was married quarters down there. And we finished up with quite a thriving Sunday school. In fact the photograph’s up there. And so what used to have been a kind of a detached part of the building for training young officers became what I thought the little parish church taking in airmen’s families as well as officers.
CB: Yeah.
DW: And I think that was one of the vagaries that they kept, kept me on there.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
DW: They already told me they were going to promote me. I can’t remember. And of course ultimately I saw the future. I only had chaplains as parishioners as it were and I to me I was a bit reluctant in that respect to leave because I really enjoyed having families.
CB: Sure.
DW: What rank were you then?
CB: I was a wing commander.
DW: Right.
CB: And I knew that this, ‘cause it’s the senior rank I could achieve in the royal air force. So ultimately I spent fifteen years I spent as a group captain.
DW: Where did you go from Cranwell?
CB: That was a ceiling.
DW: Where did you go from Cranwell?
CB: Well I had to buy a house somewhere.
DW: Posting.
CB: Yeah. The posting was I had of three offices. One, in Strike Command. Bomber Command, Coastal Command and Strike Command. Fighter, Bomber, Fighter and Coastal. That’s it. Three. Which ultimately became Signals Command. Four. And I provide services for these command in my denominations. And I had to find somewhere to buy a house convenient to living in married quarter which would have been very inconvenient. So we bought this house which served the purpose of access to airfields. For instance, my car would arrive in the morning and we would drive off to Beaconsfield.
Other2: Beaconsfield.
Other3: Beaconsfield.
DW: It became a, it became a —
CB: That’s the language school.
DW: No. It became a Borstal or something, you know.
CB: Right.
DW: Out west of here.
CB: Oh right. Broadmoor.
DW: Or a prison. So, anyway I was able to drive off usually these small aeroplanes with two seats.
CB: Yes.
DW: And off I would go somewhere in the UK. Fly me back home by six. So it was very civilised.
CB: Yes. Very good. When did you come here then? When did you buy this?
DW: 1967. I think it was. Something like that.
Other2: Nearly fifty years.
Other3: Nearly fifty years ago.
CB: Good. Good move. Right. I’m going to stop there.
DW: Good.
CB: Because we’ve done a brilliant job. I’m going to suggest that another time I pop back just to look at some pictures and things if we may.
DW: Yeah.
CB: And how to support this because you’ve done brilliantly well and I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
DW: Do you want to photograph the photograph?
CB: Well I was going to ask you whether that can be copied but what I’ll do is to arrange. Now, I’m actually Sundays is a busy day for probably is it?
Other: Sundays.
DW: Well.
CB: Do you tend to go to church in the morning?
Other2: We go to church in the morning.
DW: And then after church usually there’s —
Other2: Coffee and come home.
CB: Right. Well next Sunday I’m going to Hendon and so in the afternoon if I could pop in on the way back would that be convenient or have you got something else on?
Other3: Which day do we go to —?
Other: That’s the 23rd.
DW: Well we were going. Wait a minute.
Other: Shall I get the diary? Shall I get the diary?
Other2: I’ll go and get it. I know where it is.
Other: I saw it. It’s in the kitchen.
CB: It doesn’t have to be that day.
Other2: You happen to be passing.
CB: Happen to be passing.
DW: We’re going to the Currans on Monday.
Other2: On Monday. So we should be here on Sunday.
DW: So we’ll be away for four days. Is that —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Donald Wallace
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
2016-10-15
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWallaceDS161015, PWallaceDS1610
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.
Format
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01:42:15 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Navy
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Cyprus
Atlantic Ocean
Scotland--Rothesay
Description
An account of the resource
Born in Edinburgh, Donald was 14 when war began. As a messenger during the bombing he remembers wanting to get back at Hitler so joined the Royal Navy at 17. He trained at Harwich then joined HMS Hotspur on Atlantic convoy duties. He recalls his first voyage, learning about all aspects of the ship and undergoing initiation by being made to sleep on a wet deck instead of below.
Donald then trained at Rothesay as a submarine detection (ASDIC) operator before joining HMS Essington. He served on the Arctic convoys and recalls surviving a torpedo attack in the English Channel and being shelled from Guernsey whilst hunting a submarine.
After the war Donald entered the church and became a Royal Air Force Chaplain and he tells amusing stories of his RAF service. His first posting was to RAF Halton, where his wartime medal ribbons earned him respect, despite arriving late on parade with oily hands from a recalcitrant bicycle chain. Then he moved to RAF Innesworth where he arranged a guard of honour for a friend's wedding, which impressed his Air Chief Marshall.
Donald was then posted to Aden, describing accommodation, training, and service anecdotes. From Aden, he was posted to RAF Cranwell where he set up a Sunday School, taught cadets to dive and took them to Cyprus to assist in some marine research. He recalls travelling around the Mediterranean to perform pipeline inspections and to referee boxing matches.
His final post was administering Bomber, Fighter and Coastal Commands, for which he flew around numerous RAF stations.
He also describes flying in a Vulcan and a Victor with his pilot brother and speaks of his emotion on visiting the National Arboretum and reading the names of the dead from HMS Blackwood, which was hit by the torpedo that missed Essington.
In later life he received the Ushakov medal and the Légion d'honneur.
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
faith
memorial
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halton
RAF Innesworth
sport
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1005/10746/AColbeckJC170524.1.mp3
523a16a235ce2e945b8a2efc683102c5
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
Wenham, John
J Wenham
Description
An account of the resource
46 items. An oral history interview with Joy Colbeck (b. 1923) about her brother John Wenham (1925 - 1945, 1894709 Royal Air Force) documents and a family photograph album. He flew as an air gunner but was killed in a training accident 4 January 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Joy Colbeck and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle. <br /><br />Additional information on John Wenham is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/124831/ ">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
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
2017-05-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wenham, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name Is Chris Brockbank and today is the 24th of May 2017 and I am in Luton with Joy Colbeck and we’re going to talk about initially Joy’s experience in the war in the Royal Navy as a Wren but principally we’re talking about the experience of her younger brother who was killed on a training flight in the RAF and, in a crash near North Marston near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. So, Joy, what are your earliest recollections of early life?
JC: Well, I think it was recollections were moving house. I remember the house I was born in and my brother was born in. When we were about six or seven we moved to the next road to a slightly bigger house.
CB: In Maidstone.
JC: In Maidstone. All the time my father was a second in command in the grocery shop to Mr Henry Topley, his partner. And my father was, ran the business by his hard work. Mr Topley used to wear a top hat, stand outside and take the customers to the pay desk etcetera but, but my father was the one who drove the van, and he went to all the biggest houses in our part of Kent. Castles. Boarding schools. Had to pick, to pick up the orders from the cookhouse keepers, take them back to the shop, and a fortnight later my father would drive the van and deliver them back to the big houses before all, all mass buying. And so my brother, my brother never seemed to be part of this performance because he was always two years younger than me if you know what I mean. He, he took second, played second fiddle really. He [pause] I don’t remember him. He was a Boy Scout and all the way up and on, on the, we have a photograph here of his War Memorial, my brother’s death, in the Scout camp next to Guy Gibson who was a friend of Scout Master and practicing for the —
CB: The dam’s raid.
JC: The dams.
CB: Yes.
JC: On the Scout master’s lake. In his garden. But that’s beside the point but my brother was, he did it. He, my brother for some reason and we never know, we never got to the end he, he could not read. Now, we find this, I find this extremely difficult. He was [pause] I had left school and had been to secretarial college and was working at County Hall when my brother left school, because the school became a hospital and we were in a war zone. Whatever’s the word. Not war zone, is it? It was [pause] that we were in, it was, yeah, I suppose you’d say it was a war zone in England really, and was treated as such. My father was the chief air raid warden so he knew what was going on. And my brother just got on his bicycle and followed every Spitfire that was shot down and every German plane that was shot down. That was his whole interest in life that I remember. When I used to come home from work we used to say, ‘What have you got hold of today?’ And it was a bit of plastic or something which they all sat down, this little group of boys and made a little cottage out of the, out of the plastic windows. And he didn’t have a lot of friends and when, when his school closed my mother was so worried. He was in elementary school. He couldn’t pass any grammar school at all. And his reading and writing was extremely bad, but of course nobody took much notice of it and we wondered if he was dyslexic would he have been discovered by the RAF? How on earth did he become a bomber when he couldn’t read when he was thirteen?
CB: Extraordinary.
JC: I don’t know. Nobody ever mentions it. But he was, he was a nice boy. He was a lovely boy. People liked him but he, he didn’t shine. He didn’t shine at anything. So when he left school it would have been [pause] 1941 I suppose. I was seventeen in 1941. ’42, the school would have closed and my mother just had a tutor for him and my father got him a job in the brewery next to the shop, the grocery shop. Style and Winch’s brewery. And he worked in the lab washing bottles I suppose. But I don’t know. I’ve got a big gap because I wasn’t there.
CB: So, at seventeen what did you do?
JC: At seventeen I volunteered for the Wrens.
CB: Right.
JC: I left my job at County Hall and was supposed to go in the Wrens with my best friend who as soon as we got to London said she didn’t want to go and she became a Land Girl and I became a Wren. And they put me, I had no preliminary war training whatsoever. They sent me a letter saying, and a railway ticket to report to [pause] I was just going to say Paddington. It wasn’t Paddington. To the, to go to Lowestoft to report to HMS Minos as a writer to the captain. A writer meaning a shorthand typist but the rank is writer [pause] and I wasn’t welcomed. I was the first Wren and they didn’t want me because they were regular sailors. They weren’t service, there was no conscription in to the Navy at that time so they didn’t really want the Wrens but they got them. And so by the time I would get home on a weekend’s leave all the way by train across London and back by train down to Kent there wasn’t much left of a forty eight Wren’s pass getting there, and I didn’t see a lot of my brother. All I got was that he was working at Style and Winches. He was doing quite well in, in the brewery section and the next thing was that he had volunteered. He volunteered. He wasn’t conscripted. Volunteered for the RAF. And I think I only saw him two or three times after that. I, I’m trying to think how many times I saw him back. Not a lot.
[telephone ringing]
CB: I’ll just stop there.
[recording paused]
JC: And of course then we got, we got, I got shifted from up in Norfolk back down in to London to HMS Pembroke which is all the Wrens working in London. Whitehall. And I stayed there until I went to Westcliff on Sea which was a holding base for sailors waiting for Dunkirk, not Dunkirk, for D-Day. But I spent nearly two years in London.
CB: What were you doing in London?
[pause]
CB: What were you doing in London?
JC: Well, I just worked in in offices. Office job. And —
CB: Secretarial.
JC: I also, I did one interesting thing. I, because I had worked very hard on the setting up this, I’d been promoted to leading Wren and I was working very hard on the setting up of this holding camp and we had a lot of rather important people on the staff there. And we, the whole of Westcliff on Sea Promenade and the roads adjacent to the Promenade were requisitioned as a block and the civilians were moved off. It was mostly holidays. Small hotels. Private hotels. So it wasn’t difficult but the whole lot moved off and we moved, the Navy moved in and there were four thousand sailors and about four hundred Wrens.
Other: You had your choice ma.
JC: And then I worked very hard. Very, very hard because I worked for a wonderful woman called First Officer Bowen-Jones who was quite a high up ranking officer in the Wrens and she used to push, give me lots of difficult jobs to do. And one day she called me in and she said, ‘You’ve worked very hard. I want to send you on special duties.’ And she said, she’d got a lovely smile and she said, ‘You’re going to, maybe you’ll go with Churchill on one of his ventures abroad, to one of the conferences.’ She said, ‘Go and enjoy it. Report tomorrow to the Admiralty.’ When I got to the Admiralty it was a busy, busy, busy office full of American officers and British Naval officers from all over the world. And they were all [pause] well they would sort of shuffle up. We went on the back of a Land Rover from our billets in in [pause] oh, it was a long time ago. I’ll tell you in a minute. But we assembled at 6 o’clock in our billets. We were taken by Army car to the Admiralty. They had been working all day long deciding which way they’d go. Who’d go, who went and who didn’t. And as soon as we got there at 6 o’clock in the evening, it would be about seven we got there we started and we typed all that the, you know the ships and Naval officers had learned during the day. We typed it during the night on stencils on [reniers], and then we ran them off and we did that for six weeks and we had no time off. And then we were sent back to our posts and told to keep quiet. Not to say where we’d been. Not even to our officers. And we had done the invasion of Sicily and Italy, but in fact we didn’t know it was Sicily and Italy because we didn’t know and they didn’t tell us they were going to go to Italy. They just gave us a map reference along the, along the garden and up the stairs on the, on the grids. It was all done on the grid. And it’s all boring. There you are.
CB: Right. We’ll just take a break.
[recording paused]
JC: You mean one of the AGs ones.
CB: Now, we’re just going to recap quickly on yourself because you had two interesting experiences. One, Joy early on, one experience you had early on was in Lowestoft.
JC: That’s it.
CB: What happened there?
JC: What happened there? It was a Tuesday.
CB: Yeah.
JC: I had every Tuesday off. Worked the rest of the six days. In the mornings we did our washing and sewed on our buttons, etcetera. Well, about half past one the girls, we were, we were billeted in a private hotel in the attic. There were two rooms in the attic either side of the stairs and three of them were occupied over the stairs. They didn’t work, they worked in HMS Minos 2 which was a holding base. I worked in HMS 1, which was a minesweeper base, active service. So, they knocked on the door and said, ‘Are you coming down in to Yeovil, err into Lowestoft for a cup of tea at Waller’s Restaurant because they have cream buns. So I said, ‘Yes. I think so.’ So, they said, ‘Pick you up in half an hour.’ Half an hour later it was snowing. I said, ‘I think I’ve got a cold coming and it means walking both ways to Lowestoft in the snow. I’m not coming.’ And they said, ‘Ok. We’ll go without you.’ I’d been, I decided to have a bath. I was in the bath when the claxon went. We had no air raid warning. The claxon went. Out in the garden. Get in the shelters. Hit and run raids. So we, we just went. Ran down the stairs, out the back door, got in. We’d only just got in the air raid shelter when there was the most enormous explosion and about, we just didn’t know anything about it. About half an hour later the Wren officer on duty said, ‘Wren Wenham,’ that was me, ‘Back to duty.’ So I got dressed in to my uniform and walked in to Lowestoft and the whole of Lowestoft High Street was flattened. And I’ve got a picture. I, I don’t know.
[pause]
CB: Ok. Well, we’ll look at the pictures in a minute.
JC: No, we don’t. Here it is. Here’s my whatnot.
CB: Oh, report.
Other: Yes.
JC: There they are. Digging up twenty years later.
CB: Right.
JC: But, and I went into my office and the captain said that we had to stay on duty because the bomb had fallen on the main supply department and all, all my three, and it had fallen on Waller’s Restaurant next to the Naval supply because we were all in the High Street. So bang on Waller’s and every one, I think there were, seventy were killed. So, I lost my three friends. That was, that was number one.
CB: Right. Very hard.
JC: About three weeks later I was.
CB: This was 1941.
JC: About three weeks later I was machine gunned with two other Wrens walking to our quarters along the cliffs at Lowestoft. We just got down in the, in the whatnot. You had no warnings. So, that was two. I can’t think what the third one was.
CB: Right. So, if we go now towards the end of the war there were the V-1s and V-2s. So what experience did you have?
JC: Oh yes. That was dreadful.
CB: That’s in London.
JC: I, I was, I was at Westcliff. HMS Westcliff. After D-Day they began to get rid of, the numbers went down and the places were closed. We were just a closure. In August, in August 1944 I was promoted to chief, to Wren petty officer and it meant that I had to be moved because there was no, no requirement for a petty officer in there. So I was sent to the Royal Marines at Burnham on Crouch on a single posting as petty, just as what would be called secretary to the Marine’s officers because they had a big Court of Enquiry of, of, to do with the firing of an officer. And I had to go every day and take down in shorthand the doings of the court. I don’t know whether I made a very good job of it because nobody then was interested in, in talking slowly or [laughs] even knowing how to put questions. It was very difficult. And so there I was down in Burnham on Crouch, and every Sunday morning all the Royal Marines assembled outside of the Burnham Yacht Club for Sunday morning divisions. In the middle of the second, second hymn we got this colossal blowing, and we were all flattened on to the roads. Yeah. Onto the ground. Nobody was hit. The thing, the thing exploded up in the air, away up in the air and if it hadn’t exploded we wouldn’t probably have been here I suppose. But that was the third time that and after that I couldn’t sleep. And my posting came to an end and I went to the Royal Naval College at, hospital at Chatham and I was turned out. My husband came to tell me and [pause] I was still packing up my belongings when he came back again and told me that John had died. And —
CB: This is January 1944. Your brother John.
JC: Yes. And my father had phoned my husband who was on duty and he’d been to see the captain who gave him permission to come to Burnham because there was, it was the back of beyond to tell me and take me home. And I went home and, and it was awful really when I got home because my mother and [pause] when, when I was two and a half years old I had double pneumonia, and there was no hospital. I was just, my mother cared for me. My brother was eight months old and John went to stay with my father’s sister for [pause] I’ve no idea but he was certainly away from home for three months. So my mother couldn’t see him. There was, it was a real break and —
[doorbell]
JC: It was a real break. Not very nice I suppose. I don’t know how my mother would have coped to have her baby boy taken away from her. She had to look after me at home. I had pneumonia. Pneumonia for six weeks and my father took me out on my first walk and I cried so much that he kept on walking rather than take me home, and the next day I had pneumonia again. So that, so my brother still stayed with, with Auntie May and she features in this book. So he had a real break in his parenting. I don’t suppose it would have been a very quick cut off when I had pneumonia. I mean the doctor would have come. Our doctor, he came on a horse, on a horse, horseback. Privately. And, and my father took my brother in the van and off he went. So I don’t know what effect that would have had on my brother. It must have broken my mother’s heart I think. She was a wonderful mother wasn’t she?
Other: She was a lovely lady.
JC: Lovely woman.
CB: You said, you said your brother John had difficulty with reading.
JC: Yes.
CB: Did that get linked with that experience?
JC: I don’t know. Of course, he was only eight months old. I don’t [pause] that’s the only time. I know that it was snowing and there was no ambulances available. The doctor and the, and the vicar spent three nights at our house. Did their calls in between. He was very well looked after but —
CB: We’ll just stop there again.
[recording paused]
CB: These are all very important experiences to know in the background but returning to your brother John. Returning to your brother John. He joined the RAF on the 24th err the 28th of April 1943. Well, he attested then but he was only seventeen.
JC: Yes.
CB: He started, according to the records we’ve looked at, at Number 19 ITW on the 5th of February 1944 and shortly after that he was admitted to hospital and then he was temporarily discharged and put into hospital again. He then went to a different Initial Training Wing on the 24th of April 1944 and according to the records he then had been identified as an air gunner and you mentioned his difficulty with reading and so on and it may be that that had some bearing on the selection.
JC: Yes.
CB: Of his position in the aircraft.
JC: Yes.
CB: He then went to Number 1 Air Gunnery School on the 1st of July ’44 and from there in October, the 19th of October 1944 he went to 11 OTU, Operational Training Unit which was at Westcott. Which is the point of our story.
JC: Yes.
CB: And then he was killed in the crash on the 4th.
JC: Yes.
CB: Of January 1945.
JC: Yes.
CB: So my question there is that as you were in the Navy and busy and had little opportunity of finding out what was going on, what do you understand about what he was doing and what your parents knew? What did your —
JC: You mean while he was still training?
CB: While he was in the RAF.
JC: I don’t know. You see it was such a different life. Everybody’s son was in, in the Army, The Navy or the Air Force all of the way around him. If, if you weren’t, if you weren’t in the Forces there was something funny with you and I suppose you had to, I suppose you had to accept that your son or your daughter would go off into the Army. And, take my father, he’d spent four years of his, six years of his youth, of his young life not his youth because he married during his service but they’d all experienced Army life. So it was nothing different in a way. And I think they would have accepted what was going on. That he would join. He would join up but whether they would have ever accepted that he was going to be in the Air Force I don’t know.
CB: Why did he join the RAF?
JC: Why did he join the RAF?
CB: And not the Army or the Navy.
JC: I have no idea. I have no idea.
CB: And did you have any, you saw him rarely but did you have any conversations with him?
JC: No.
CB: About his service.
JC: No. No. I had no, you see I saw so little of him. I wouldn’t like to say how many times I saw him. Definitely not during the previous year to his death did I. I was going to. I told you, it’s in my husband’s diary we were going, I was going to take my husband home to meet my parents on a weekend leave because my husband had, we were already engaged but we were going to go home. Became engaged on my twenty first birthday and so [pause] I, when it came to, it’s just written in some, about the middle of October, November we were going to, my husband was coming to spend the weekend with, and would have slept in my brother’s bed and I was going to join them and I was hit by this bomb, V-2 bomber thing. So I was in [laughs] I couldn’t go to Maidstone. So my husband went by myself to meet my parents.
CB: For the first time.
JC: I think he’d met my mother because he came, he came to my mother at Southend on my twenty first birthday when I was in sick bay for a different reason, and they had given me [pause] He had produced my engagement ring while I was in bed covered in, I had a series of boils, awful things all the way around my neck and I’d had them for about a year, and they were trying to do what they could to get rid of it in the sickbay. But they couldn’t and I was swathed up in all these bandages and my mother came on the train to celebrate my birthday and she met Gerry there and he gave me my engagement ring. There it is. There we are.
CB: Very nice. Yes.
JC: And [pause] so it was, it was so natural in a way. It was happening all the way around him.
CB: And people didn’t talk about what they did in the Forces.
JC: They didn’t talk about it.
CB: They weren’t allowed to, and they didn’t want to.
JC: And they weren’t allowed to. They didn’t have the time. They were so worn out. My father was head of the ARP and they met, we were about the only people who got an air raid, a decent air raid shelter, and we had it because our next door neighbour’s brother built the new County Hall. He was a big builder, and while he was building the big County Hall he dug the hole with his digger of our, of our air raid shelter and he built us a double deck, double brick air raid shelter in our, half in their garden, half in ours. Two doors. We were very posh. We had radio and we had electricity and, but my father came home from work he, we were, we were down there. We, we put our pyjamas on as soon as we came home from work and we went straight down and we had our tea down in the air raid shelter. My mother, of course women didn’t work so my mother, my mother looked after my father and all the people who worked for him. And as soon as my father had had his tea he became the air raid warden. So I mean he didn’t talk about, we didn’t talk about family.
Other: I think the horrors were so bad as well.
JC: Yes.
Other: People didn’t want to dwell on them.
JC: They didn’t want to. They used to say —
Other: They wanted a change in their lives.
JC: My, my brother’s friends, four boys came to Maidstone in 1939 when his father built the A20. Not the M20. The A20 over, over the hill, down into the Weald of Kent and he bought these, his four sons all at school. And my father saw the for sale notice on the house and investigated who was moving in. Met them and said, ‘I’ll be your grocer. I’ll take your cards from you.’
CB: Ration cards.
JC: The [Riccomini] family. I’d love to know what happened to the [Riccomini] boys because as far as I know only the eldest one, who had a cleft palate survived and I think my brother was, was very friendly with the second boy called Geoffrey. And I don’t know what the other two were and I wouldn’t have met them anyway but Geoffrey used to come and play in our garden, and was the same age as my brother. And to think that they could, my father knew the mother and parents. To think that he knew that there was a family losing three and his was one. It was—
Other: I see what you’re saying.
JC: I’m sorry.
CB: Very difficult.
JC: We’re getting off, aren’t we?
CB: Well, it doesn’t matter because the point in the background there is Maidstone is in the front line.
JC: Yes.
CB: Effectively closest almost —
JC: It was.
CB: To the continent.
Other: Well, it’s about —
CB: So to what extent did you suffer air raids there?
Other: [laughs] She was hit by one.
JC: Well, we didn’t really suffer any real damage but we did have an unexploded bomb come through the roof of our detached house and my mother ran. Obviously, it was in the middle of the afternoon. There were no men. My mother, when the men came home from work ran to the ARP post, and said that there was a hole in the roof and they sent, they sent a man, an ARP man to investigate and he went up inside the house on a ladder and he got stuck in the hole. In the, in the, he was a big fat man and he got stuck.
CB: In the loft hatch.
JC: And [laughs] he became [laughs] didn’t he? All our children remembered the second world war was the man who got stuck in the hole. We had, we had behind our house was a place called Vinters Park which was a big private place and was used as a war, as a hospital in the war and their guns came over in to our garden at the back. So we were very close to the, we had every night we slept when we were there. Even when I came home on leave we slept down in the, we had six bunks in our —
CB: In your air raid shelter.
JC: Mr and Mrs Shaw didn’t have any children so there was my mother and brother. We mostly played cards and sent the money to the Red Cross. But we don’t, I don’t remember that we talked about people who’d died that day.
CB: What about these, these were anti-aircraft guns.
JC: The?
CB: Anti-aircraft guns you are talking about are you?
JC: We didn’t meet them.
CB: No. You had anti-aircraft guns next to you.
JC: They were over the field.
CB: Right.
JC: In Vinters Park, and they came over. The men didn’t come into our garden but in 19 — before I joined the Wrens, that was July ’41 Detling Aerodrome which was a mile from our house was bombed by the RAF and obliterated.
CB: By the Germans.
JC: And my father was on duty that night at the top of the road called the Chiltern Hundreds, the public house and he, he had the road closed and they wouldn’t allow anybody to come over the road. Well, about 11 o’clock that night he, my father brought two men to our house. They were soldiers. They were men from the Royal Air Force Defence Regiment. It wasn’t a very, it wasn’t an active, it was [pause] then anyway, they’d come back from a day, they’d come back from holiday leave to find they’d no air, no, no air base left. Not allowed up on the road. My father brought them home and they slept upstairs in my father’s bed that night, and the next morning they went back on duty. And the following night they came and knocked, morning they came and knocked on the door and said, ‘Can we, can we please come and sleep again because we’re frightened.’ And my father said they looked it. And they came for about three weeks and my father said, ‘Yes. You can come and you can sleep in a bedroom in the house in the daytime and you’re to help the men dig the hole and finish off the air raid shelter.’ So these men built our air raid shelter. And that was the only contact we had with, with soldiers.
CB: Yeah.
JC: But they were all the way around us. So my brother must, my brother was down in that air raid shelter every night. Had to be. And they weren’t allowed, boys they weren’t allowed to go off to the cinema in the evening. I mean, you didn’t go out. You went in to the air raid shelter. And what he did I don’t know, apart from the fact that after I left probably somebody else came and borrowed a bed for the night. Any vacant bed was taken up and it was, it was busy. It was really, really busy.
CB: We’ll take a break there.
[recording paused]
JC: My husband.
Other: Just one second.
CB: Right. So where did you meet your husband?
JC: At the Royal Palace Ballroom, Southend on Sea. And it was, I’d been in the Navy then for, I met him on the 28th of April 1944, Saturday night. And it was only the second dance I had been to in the whole of the war and the whole of my service. We seemed to spend all our time working. And so I met my husband at the dance and he asked me for a dance, and I met him then. And he was, he had just arrived at HMS Westcliff. I had been there already since, I think the 4th of September 1942. So I had been there nearly two years. My husband was a year younger than me.
CB: And what did he do? What was he?
JC: He was, he was, he was a sub lieutenant in the Naval Coastal Forces. He tried to be in the RAF VR but he failed one of his. I don’t know which one it was, but he failed one of his tests.
CB: And when were you married?
JC: 31st of March 1945.
CB: Right.
JC: And that was arranged before my brother died and we hadn’t told my brother. That would all have been, I don’t know if, well I suppose of course my husband would have told his future brother in law that wouldn’t he? So my brother must have known, but we didn’t send many letters. I can honestly, I can’t remember sending many letters.
CB: So —
JC: We didn’t send many. Didn’t send many [laughs] we sent food parcels to each other [laughs] but we didn’t send much else.
CB: We’ve talked about the fact that what your brother John was doing that your parents didn’t seem to know about it.
JC: Yes.
CB: And you certainly didn’t know.
JC: No. I didn’t know.
CB: So, how was it that you learned about your brother John’s death?
[pause]
JC: But what I learned, I arrived home with my husband on the 6th. Let’s see. Yes. It took, it took twenty four hours for the news to get through to my husband so that would have been the 5th of January. And we travelled back. There was no over, no trains out of Burnham on Crouch in the evening so it was morning of January the 6th that we got the train to Maidstone. And my mother was sitting there with her sister in law, Auntie May who’d brought John up as a baby, and they were just sitting there on the settee next to each other. They didn’t, they didn’t even seem to talk. It was absolutely unbelief on their, on their face that this could really have happened.
CB: Then what?
JC: Hmm?
CB: So you got there and saw mother and aunt.
JC: Saw mother and aunt and then all the, all the family and friends came up. I had to, my husband had to go back the next day. They wouldn’t give him any more leave. I had. I was given seven days, because by this time I was already on, I’d already been shifted to the Royal Naval Hospital at Chatham for despatch. And it was the old Naval physical standard.
CB: So, when your parents knew about your brother’s death, Joy —
JC: Pardon?
CB: When your parents knew about your brother’s death.
JC: Yes.
CB: What happened next?
JC: Well, we heard that, my father got on the phone to the, to the vicar in Buckinghamshire and asked him to find out some news. This young curate, eighteen, nineteen, no he would be about twenty. Twenty years old. He went to Westcott and requested an interview and was told, they said they wanted a letter. Well, actually my parents were very happy when they got this letter which is dated the 9th of January. But what they didn’t know was that every one of that, every one of the aircrew got the same letter. I mean actually lettered the same letter. I mean this must have been the standard letter one or two because we’ve seen it mentioned in the New Zealand papers. So, my father, all the other members of the crew, the five members were buried at Westcott.
CB: At Botley.
JC: Nearby. My father arranged, my father was church warden of our church and he arranged that my brother would have [pause] my brother would be buried at, from the funeral in his own church. My parents were Christian. Church of England. I’d say fairly strict Christian people but were very good people. Very, very good people. They, all the way through the war they entertained next to the church. Our family church was the Kent Royal Regiment’s Headquarters at Sandy Lane, Maidstone and every Sunday we entertained soldiers. And these soldiers were collected at church. I think the word got around, ‘Go to church on Sunday morning and Mr and Mrs Wenham will invite you to lunch,’ because we had a procession of soldiers and my father would write letters for them, because lots of soldiers were illiterate. My father would write letters. My mother mended them their socks, knitted their things for them. So they, they were very good people. They weren’t [pause] how do you put it? I don’t think they showed their grief apart, my mother became very quiet. She, she must have talked to my father about it. She must have told to him she didn’t want to stay. And as soon as we’d married within a year they’d sold the business which was due to be, my father had always hoped that John would follow in his business but that was no longer possible. And they, they sold everything up and moved to Hastings. Although my father at that stage was only borderline retirement and he went on to work for a further twenty years, but he really didn’t know what else to do with himself.
CB: So after the, after the funeral.
JC: Yes.
CB: The funeral was in the church at Maidstone.
JC: No. No. The funeral in the church was absolutely full of people. There was standing at the back. We all went and there were six airmen who carried the hearse, and we all went by transport of some sort to the Maidstone Cemetery. The military cemetery attached to Maidstone Cemetery and we had another service at the graveside and we had the Last Post and it’s the one bit of music I cannot abide. But it was snowing. Snowing again. Afterwards we went back to my parent’s home and his close relations were there and our neighbours and people from the church and we all had afternoon tea provided by my mother. Two of the airmen came up to, to my father and said that it made life easier to know that people could be so sensible over the loss of family they, they just thought that the fact that my mother had baked all these cakes for them eased the problem. It didn’t, did it? But so they all came back and then the men, we’d no idea they, I seem to remember I didn’t speak to them an awful lot but I seem to remember that, that they weren’t close members of [pause] they weren’t colleagues. They didn’t actually know my brother. Perhaps they had a special job, ‘Your turn’s come up,’ you know.
CB: They were representing the RAF.
JC: RAF. Yeah. Representatives of the RAF.
CB: Were, were they ground crew or aircrew? Do you remember whether they were —
JC: The men? I’ve no idea. No. No idea at all. But they spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening with us. And we didn’t know. We had no idea. I think that my father must have known that the New Zealanders were involved, but apart from that I don’t think my mother and father knew anything about these airmen.
CB: The other five were buried at the —
JC: Hmm?
CB: The other five were buried at the Military Cemetery at Botley.
JC: Yes. Yes, and there are pictures.
CB: Oxford.
JC: In it. In Sue Chaplain’s book.
CB: So when did you find out details of the crash?
JC: Oh, well that was when I belonged, I joined the U3A in Luton about ten years ago, I suppose. And I joined the family history group because I’d got an awful lot of pictures and things of Maidstone and that’s my that’s —
CB: Did you —
JC: That’s Maidstone. London Road, Maidstone. Sharp’s Toffee Factory Headquarters. That was the Sports Club.
Other: That was a Sports Club.
JC: And that house was built by my great grandfather.
Other: That’s right.
CB: Now —
JC: There he is.
CB: Just —
JC: And there she is.
Other: Listen. Listen, Chris is saying something.
JC: Hmmn?
CB: Just quickly, just —
JC: Yes. So, that —
CB: You didn’t know from the end of the war, well January ’45, until ten years ago are you saying you did not know how the crash had occurred?
JC: No. No. No, it wasn’t —
CB: And —
JC: It wasn’t mentioned. And I, I believe I’m positive that my father and mother, or my father never knew that. How the plane had crashed. I think he would have talked to us, don’t you?
CB: Did, where, when your own children were born did that cause your parents to wonder how their son, your brother had died?
JC: I don’t somehow think it did. We weren’t [pause] we weren’t actually living close to them. But Christopher the oldest was born when my husband was in Germany and my husband didn’t see Chris until he was nearly eight weeks old.
CB: Right.
JC: Graham was born, and his father had just had a heart attack so myself and Christopher and baby Graham we couldn’t go back. We were, we were living with my father in law. We couldn’t go back there. We had to catch a train and go to Maidstone where my mother took over.
CB: But your parents weren’t prompted to recall.
JC: No.
CB: The death.
JC: No.
CB: Do you think they had —
JC: No.
CB: Accepted that they would never find out or they were pushing it to the back of their minds?
JC: I don’t know. I can’t think. I really can’t think what —
CB: I think we’ll have a pause there.
[recording paused]
CB: We’ve talked about your perception of your parent’s attitude and the fact that they didn’t really talk about it but when your parents moved up here to the Luton area and settled here they had pictures, family pictures in the house did they? And how did they explain that?
JC: My parents.
CB: Yes.
Other: Yeah. They didn’t.
JC: My parents never lived in Luton.
Other: Luton.
CB: Oh, they didn’t.
Other: No. We lived together.
CB: No.
Other: We lived together after my parents, my grandparents moved to Hastings. My father my mother and us moved to Somerset to his parents and we were born and brought up in Somerset. So they never lived, we lived together.
CB: Ok.
Other: In Somerset. My grandparents then moved to Somerset so the whole family were in Somerset.
CB: Ok. So, I’m trying to focus on the pictures that your, your parents, Joy had in their house.
JC: Well, they had —
CB: They had pictures of your brother.
JC: My mother’s, my mother’s brother in law, her eldest sister’s husband was a photographer. A private. Made his own, hung his own things across the —
CB: For drying them.
Other: Plates.
JC: The negatives. And developed his own, and this was my mother’s and she had another one and she was very proud of the fact that they were always taking photographs and putting them in this book.
CB: But what I meant was in the house.
JC: In the house.
CB: Did they have pictures and how did they explain?
JC: Yes. Inside the house you mean.
CB: Yes. And what, how did they explain the picture of your brother?
JC: I don’t, I don’t think they needed to explain because —
CB: If they were asked.
JC: Because my brother was so much a part of, of the tight little family that there was then in Maidstone.
CB: Yes.
JC: That we all attended all the family dos. My father wasn’t very happy about it because they would drink, and they would have a singsong around the, around the, around the piano but my father wasn’t very keen on that and neither was my mother. But we all met together and I think my father was, you would describe him as the steady one of the family wouldn’t you? He was the one who, who worked hard and bought his own house.
CB: Yes.
JC: And he bought his sister a house because she was a complete invalid and any family trouble they went to my father, and my brother grew up in that. They didn’t have to talk about him because he was part of it.
CB: Yes. I’ve got that. What I was trying to get at was after the war.
JC: Yeah.
CB: After the war.
JC: After the war.
CB: There would be pictures in the house and your children —
JC: There was always a picture of my brother.
CB: Yes.
JC: Yes. There isn’t one in my house because I decided that that we’ve always got our poppy and we always talk about him but I, we’ve got three great grandsons. Nine, twelve and twelve. And although they came to, they were there at, at the parish meeting. You know. The church.
CB: In North Marston. Yes.
JC: They came to them all but I was, I was delighted. The two didn’t come up from Bath because it was a long way. No, but my, Sue’s daughter brought Woody who is now twelve. He came and he was a good boy. He enjoyed it and he, he, you know, took part. But apart from that I think on the whole that we, we don’t talk about it but they all have four of these books.
CB: Yes.
JC: This is the first book one. And then each one. We did it because in 1986 my husband had to leave the Civil Service because he was a driving examiner and he was injured in three work accidents.
CB: Right.
JC: And couldn’t, couldn’t undertake doing eight or nine emergency stops every, every day.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And he worked for Brian’s family and, but we, we, I was having to make the decision to carry on working.
CB: Yeah.
JC: Because otherwise we, you know we couldn’t manage to pay the mortgage etcetera and it was, it was [pause] oh, I don’t quite know how you would explain it but we felt a bit as if we were the bottom of the pile. All our children were successful. They were all running their own businesses except for Richard in Canada who worked in a furniture store. But all the rest were very successful and we felt that our grandchildren were growing up thinking of us as these were poor relations down the bottom. We didn’t have this and we didn’t have that, you know. We didn’t have lots of things. And so I sat down not thinking in, in 1986, three weeks before Christmas I wrote that book in my lunch hour at work.
CB: Right.
JC: Straight on to the typewriter. Straight on to the photocopier.
CB: Yeah.
JC: At the Post Office.
CB: Right.
JC: We had no other equipment. And it was to try and show them that we didn’t all have all these wonderful trips to America. One of them had been off in Concorde. That we didn’t live that way.
CB: No.
JC: Ours had been a wartime struggle.
CB: Indeed.
JC: And of course there’s that, part of my book was about telling them about my brother.
CB: Right.
JC: So we, we put it in to print for them.
CB: Yes.
JC: And they’ve still got that book.
CB: Right.
Other: Treasure it.
CB: A real treasure.
JC: Reduce them by half.
Other: It’s lovely. A lovely book to read.
CB: Yes. So the reason I asked the question was because so many people after the war, veterans didn’t talk.
JC: No.
CB: About their experiences.
JC: No. True.
CB: And what happens is that grandchildren, children of the children, children don’t, direct children often don’t get the information but the grandchildren sometimes —
JC: Yes.
CB: Elicit the story from their grandparents. So that’s why I was asking about the picture.
JC: Every one of our grandchildren has taken that book to school, haven’t they?
Other: Yeah.
JC: And it’s as I say it’s only half this size.
CB: Yes.
JC: It’s —
CB: It’s A5 size.
JC: A5.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And they still produce it and on occasions and they take, all of them all of them have taken them into school and we heard from the teachers how helpful it’s been.
Other: Helpful.
JC: And Woody’s family, when he was leaving junior, infants [pause] Junior School to go to a Senior Academy they did turning Luton into wartime as an event.
CB: Did they really?
JC: With an evacuee section.
CB: Amazing.
JC: And he used to, he took our book, and they wrote a book for me. His class. Telling me about —
CB: About Luton.
JC: About what they knew about. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. It was a catalyst for wider.
JC: It’s been a real. I wish everyone would do it.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And it did help me. It did help me through going through the U3A. We had a wonderful tutor and she told us, I told her that I had got in the back of my book here the obituaries of my great grandfather, Mr Joe. And my husband’s great grandfather who was a wool merchant. A scrimmage man. And we got them printed from the paper and I showed them to her and in my husband’s book it said that Mr Colbeck’s background were mostly public ministers in the Methodist Church, but one of his great grandfathers fought at Waterloo. So she said to me, ‘Send your money to the Waterloo Society. Three pounds.’ I waited nearly six months for an answer.
CB: Did you?
JC: And the Waterloo Society Man said, ‘We’ve had a reply. Somebody would like to meet you.’ So I said, ‘Well, can I have their number?’ ‘No.’ she said ‘But you, can we give her your number?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And so I met my husband’s cousin. No. Yes. My husband’s second cousin. A lady in Lancashire where the family came from. Or Yorkshire. And they invited me to meet the family and I was the only relative left and it was incredible.
CB: Extraordinary.
JC: I don’t know. I can’t see that we can be any interest. Any, we haven’t got anything to tell anyone have we?
CB: People are very curious about their history.
JC: Pardon?
CB: People are very curious.
JC: Do you think so?
CB: About their history. Well, that’s why some —
JC: They are?
CB: Well, on the television there are two programmes based on finding out your history.
JC: Yes.
CB: Anyway, I think we’ll stop there. Thank you very much indeed, Joy.
JC: Yes.
CB: For a most interesting interview.
JC: Yes.
CB: To do with —
JC: Yes
CB: The air crash of John Wenham.
JC: Yes.
CB: And the loss of his life.
JC: Yes.
CB: In North Marston.
JC: Yes.
CB: In January 1945.
JC: You’ve got all the rest. It’s wonderful.
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 Joy Colbeck
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-24
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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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AColbeckJC170524
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Pending review
Format
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01:17:58 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
Description
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Joy Colbeck was born in Maidstone, Kent and served within the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the war. Her brother, John, joined the RAF on the 28 of April 1943, qualified at as an air gunner in April 1944, before being transferred to an Operational Training Unit in October 1944 at RAF Westcot. It was here that he, along with the rest of his crew, crashed during a training exercise in January 1945. Joy goes on to explain that she doesn’t believe this affected her family very much, although she does state that people do not recall the war often, likely as they want to forget the experiences they had during it. Joy recounts several experiences of her own during the war, being a typewriter operator after volunteering at age 17. She served on board the destroyers HMS Whitehall and HMS Whitecliff, and the minesweeper HMS 01. She tells a number of anecdotes of her time during the war, including three stories of near-misses with bombs and machine guns. Joy was promoted to a petty officer before joining the Royal Marines at Bermondsey. She recalls meeting her husband during a formal dance at her naval base, but also recalls being incredibly busy during the war, an example being her husband having to meet her parents for the first time by himself as she couldn’t get the time off. Following the war, she believes that people did not talk about their experiences because they didn’t want to dwell on them and would rather move on. Joy continues to take part in memorial services, both Navy and RAF. As part of this, her mother, father, herself and her husband have all written books outlining their experiences during the war and she takes pride in her grandchildren knowing her story.
Contributor
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Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Suffolk
England--London
Temporal Coverage
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1941-08
1943-04-28
1944-02-05
1944-03
1944-10
1945-01-04
11 OTU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
crash
home front
Initial Training Wing
love and romance
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/796/10778/ADayMH171128.1.mp3
9ea556174e92adc2ad5ddbbaed1cf558
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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Day, Margaret Helen
M H Day
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Margaret Day (b. 1924, 2015932Royal Air Force). She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-28
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.
Identifier
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Day, MH
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 28th of November 2017, and with David Bray we are in the home of Margaret Day who was a WAAF in the war, and her husband Charles who’s already been interviewed. So, Margaret what are your earliest recollections of life?
MD: I think my earliest recollections are when I was three years old my father was in the Navy, and we went to Gibraltar. I had an older sister who stayed behind because she’d just started school. She stayed with grandparents. And a younger brother. And the Admiral at the time CNC, the Mediterranean was Admiral Townsend, and it was his daughter Helen that was my godmother. How I got my middle name. We had a small cottage on the, a stone cottage on the Rock. Admiralty House was halfway up the Rock, and I remember we had my brother and I had a donkey called [Burrabareeko]and we had a pannier each side. I was three and he was two I suppose and we used to go up and down on this donkey. And also the Admiral had two cows because everybody else on the Rock apart from the Governor had to drink goat’s milk. And they used to milk the cows and I remember being sent down with a jug when it was milking time to go back up the [laughs] back up the steps to take the milk home to my mother. And when I was four years old I started at an Army school which was, there was a lot of Army regiments there. I went to this Army school and we stayed there until I was five.
[pause]
CB: Ok.
MD: Then we came back to Portsmouth and my father was on the staff of Sir Roger Keyes as he was then.
CB: Admiral Sir Roger Keyes.
MD: Admiral Sir Roger Keyes.
CB: VC.
MD: He later became Lord Keyes.
CB: Yes.
MD: And my father was happy about that because he had served at Zeebrugge with Roger Keyes. I think, I think Sir Roger was on the large battleship or whatever it was. My father was in a small, a Mersey, Channel err cross Channel thing. A ferry called the Daffodil. And after the raid on Zeebrugge they renamed it the Royal Daffodil. And so because he had served with Sir Roger at the time they said that everybody deserved a VC. So they allocated three and the men were all asked to vote who should get them. And my father always said he voted for Sir Roger, and so he was very happy to be at Portsmouth with him. And strangely enough Sir Roger Keye’s eldest son Geoffrey that I knew because of being in the dockyard. He got a VC at Libya.
CB: Oh yeah.
MD: At some raid they did.
CB: On the Rommel raid. Yes.
MD: Yes. So, it was quite a unique family. So, I then went to school in Portsea until I was seven, and the commissions in those days were two years. If you were with the Mediterranean fleet it was two years. With the Atlantic fleet was three years. So of course all the sailors were hoping to get the Mediterranean fleet but, so my father was sent to Malta so we moved from inside the dockyard. My parents bought a house in Copnor, North Portsmouth, and he was, he was sent to Malta then. So, we, we just, but unfortunately when he’d been there a couple of years my mother had pneumonia and died. So he came back from Malta and the family was split up. And I then went back to Gibraltar with my father. My sister and brother stayed at home because they were settled. Apparently I didn’t settle very well, so he took me and I was fostered by the head gardener of the Rock. So I then lived in the grounds of Government House and I went to, then to another Army school. Came back when I was eleven [pause] My father then remarried a nursemaid. The Admiral in Gibraltar at that time was Austin, Sir Admiral Austin, and my father married the nursemaid that was, that he met there. And so we then moved to Gosport where he worked at, he was stationed at the St Vincent which was a training school for young boys. I think they were sixteen. And then the war came in 1939 when I was fifteen. I had to leave. I left school when I was fourteen and went to work across the harbour at Southsea to a large furnishing place. We did the soft furnishings for the royal yacht which was the Narlin in those days. And when the war, when the bombing started my father wanted me to come back to Gosport to work. So I went to work for Boots. And in 1940 one of the first daylight raids of, of the war was Portsmouth and Gosport, and a large bomb landed in our garden and I was trapped in an air raid shelter with my step mother and two neighbours which sort of went right up in the air and twisted. So we had, fortunately next door to us the Royal Air Force had taken over the balloon barrage thing and the airmen came out and managed to get us out of this air raid shelter. One of the people in it was taken to hospital so it was pretty scary. And my father was then sent to the Isle of Man because the St Vincent was evacuated there and the Isle of Man was full of internees. And there was no work there for, for me and my stepmother didn’t like it so we came back to Gosport and then I was, went to Overton to stay with friends. And since I was seventeen and a half I joined the WAAF. In those days you had to be eighteen to join the ATS or the Wrens and I was anxious. My sister was in the, in the WAAF and my brother had joined the Navy and my father was still in the Navy so I wanted to join up so as soon as I was seventeen and a half I joined. I applied to join the WAAF.
CB: Stop there for a mo.
MD: Yes.
[recording paused]
CB: Before we go on with your RAF career.
MD: Yes.
CB: I’d like to just dwell a little on the point of being on the receiving end of the air raids.
MD: Yes.
CB: So, because it was a Naval area there was obviously there was considerable attention.
MD: Yes.
CB: From the German bombers.
MD: Yes.
CB: The bomb landed how close to the Anderson shelter?
MD: Well, just a few, about fifty yards or so I should think.
CB: Right.
MD: Right. What would you say? It was very close. It was right in our garden.
BCD: Maybe twenty yards.
Yes, it looks to me as though it’s less than that. And so how, what was the, how did you feel the impact?
MD: Well, it was very strange. We, we always went. There were lots of air raid alarms, and we always went to the shelter. And as I say it was daytime and we had gone to the shelter and we could hear the, the guns. The anti-aircraft guns and the bombs. And all of a sudden there seemed to be a very [pause] a movement. I felt the earth moving and we sort of moved up slightly. Very gently. And but then of course all the earth started piling in which was rather frightening because we didn’t know how much earth was going to fall on us. But fortunately the balloon barrage people were next door and they came and dug us out. There was a Fort. Fort Brockhurst just across the road from us and a medical officer from there came out and had a look at us all. As I say one of the ladies had to go to hospital. But it was, it was terrifying.
CB: How many people were there in the Anderson shelter?
MD: About four. There were two, two ladies and I was a young girl and a younger child.
CB: And your stepmother.
MD: Yes, my stepmother. That’s four. Four altogether. Yes.
CB: Right. So you said that the explosion lifted the —
MD: Yes.
CB: Anderson shelter.
MD: Lifted us right up.
CB: Did it then land back where it was or did it move it away?
MD: It landed back where it was but —
CB: But you got covered in. Were you actually covered in the earth?
MD: Yes.
CB: Or just trapped by the earth?
MD: Well, my father had built this. When the Anderson shelters were built people were instructed how to make them safer and he had covered it all with a lot of earth. It was all covered over. And then of course the bottom. The earth came from the bottom and from the top and it was sort of piling in on us and that was, that was more frightening really because I began to get earth in my face and my mouth and I was afraid I was going to suffocate. But fortunately these men came out and they’d got crowbars and managed to open the thing up and pulled us out by our feet. Oh, that’s right, because my feet were above my head so I remember being dragged out by my feet.
CB: And how did they get the others out? The same way?
MD: The same way. Yes. But it was very difficult. I think my stepmother and I were on the top and for some reason the little girl and her mother were underneath so it was the lady that was underneath that was most seriously shaken up or damaged.
CB: And so it was like an earthquake in a way.
MD: Oh, it was. Yes.
CB: And this was daytime.
MD: Yes.
CB: So what were you dressed in at the time?
MD: Oh, ordinary clothes. Yes. I think it was about lunchtime.
CB: And you were in the shelter because there was an alarm. The alert.
MD: Because yes, there was an alert.
CB: How did that work then?
MD: Well, there was a, it’s a sort of a wailing siren that you can hear and as soon as you hear the siren you would go to the shelter and then the all clear was a flat note. So you knew when it was safe to come out.
CB: And how far away was the shelter from where you were? Where the house was.
MD: Well, it was it was quite close.
CB: Right next to it.
MD: I would say, I would say it’s closer to the house than the crater because these are pre-war built in the 1930s but they weren’t, they weren’t large gardens. They were —
CB: Was, was this a Navy house?
MD: No. My father had —
CB: The one he’d bought.
MD: He’d bought this house. Yes.
CB: Ok. Right. So, after that how did you feel? When you were pulled out?
MD: Well, yes I was very nervous after that whenever the sirens went off. So I was glad to be evacuated to Overton. To the rector and his wife who were friends of my step mother.
CB: Where’s Overton?
MD: Hampshire.
CB: Oh right.
MD: Near Basingstoke.
CB: And what happened to the shelter? Did they rebuild it or —
MD: Do you know I don’t know because we, we left.
CB: Because the house was wrecked as well was it?
MD: Well, it was half. Yes. It had to be boarded up and we had to move all our possessions.
CB: Did you?
MD: Into storage. And so I don’t really know what happened to that.
CB: Did your father sell the house later then?
MD: Yes.
CB: Or did you eventually go back there?
MD: No. He sold the house later on. Yeah.
CB: Right. Ok. We’ll pause there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Just on the Anderson shelter. Normally I think that they tended to dig out into the ground a bit.
MD: Yes.
CB: To make the top of the shelter lower. What was the situation with this one?
MD: To get the sides in.
CB: Right. In to the ground.
MD: Anchored. To anchor the thing. Yes.
CB: But with the bomb hitting the ground nearby.
MD: Yes.
CB: It shook the whole of the ground. Is that it?
MD: Yes. It lifted it up.
CB: Yes.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yes. So you decided to join the WAAFs.
MD: Yes.
CB: And the Army and the Navy you had to be older.
MD: You had to be six months older.
CB: Yes.
MD: I was very anxious to join up so –
CB: Yes. So, what did you think you’d do when you joined the RAF?
MD: I wanted to be a radio operator at sort of speaking to aircraft. But they hadn’t got any vacancies so they gave me a maths test and said that, ‘You can be a wireless operator.’ So, I said I was keen to join so I took that.
CB: And what did that involve?
MD: Well, first of all we went, I went to Gloucester where we were kitted out for about five days and after that we went to Morecambe in Lancashire to do the square bashing and stuff, and then I was sent to RAF Hutton Cranswick in Yorkshire, which was a fighter station at the time. But we were billeted at Leconfield because there were married quarters there, and that was bomber.
CB: How did you get between the two during the day?
MD: By, by transport, lorries, trucks.
CB: Open trucks were they?
MD: Yes. Yes. And —
CB: So when is this? What year are we talking about?
MD: Talking 1941 ‘42. I joined in ’41 and I think by ’42 I’d been posted.
CB: So, what was the training at Hutton Cranswick?
MD: Well, it was just, just general really because we were only there for two or three weeks. We were sent to the signals section, and they sort of gave us a little inside knowledge of what went on. But then we were posted to Lancashire, to Kirkham in Lancashire which was quite a large station and we used to go by train every day into Preston to the GPO where we were taught the Morse Code by civilians.
CB: How did you get on with that?
MD: Yes. I passed out. I passed the course and then went to Compton Bassett in Wiltshire for technical training. We had American radios and equipment there. So we had to, and learn all the procedure.
CB: How long did that take?
MD: That was six weeks. And then I was posted to RAF High Wycombe in 1942.
CB: So that was Bomber Command Headquarters.
MD: Bomber Command, yes. Bomber Harris was there at the time. He used to swoosh about in his car with someone driving him. Airmen scattering all the way. Very fast he used to drive on the roads. And originally I was what we call down the hole. It was underground and it was just communications between the various Groups. And after a while I was, came up from there to a monitoring section where we just monitored all the airwaves. And at one point I went to Beachy Head where they were tracking beacons and spurious beacons that the Germans were putting about and we had to —
CB: Navigation beacons.
MD: Navigation beacons for the aircraft, yeah.
CB: How did you do the monitoring then?
MD: Well, we sat with earphones on and tuned into the various frequencies, and wrote down whatever we got.
CB: Were you tracking where the beacon was situated and how did you do that?
MD: Well, it was —
CB: Because it wasn’t in Britain of course.
MD: No. No. But you could, you could pick up where the beacons crossed so —
CB: Do you know what they did with the information?
MD: No, I don’t. It was supposed to be top secret. We weren’t, we were very hush hush in that section. We were told not to speak to anybody.
CB: No.
MD: Yeah.
CB: How did you know what they were doing with the information?
MD: I, I didn’t know what they were doing.
CB: It was just you said the beacons crossed. The transmissions crossed.
MD: Yes. Well, that was when you could pick up the frequencies. You could get the frequencies of the beacons.
CB: How long did that last?
MD: That lasted until 1945. I was there for about three odd, three odd years.
CB: Based where?
MD: In High Wycombe.
CB: So that was only temporary at Beachy Head.
MD: Yes. That was just one off and then back again.
CB: And how did you like your job?
MD: I loved it. Yes. It was quite interesting. We always knew when there were raids on and basically what was going on.
CB: So, in your work at High Wycombe how would you describe what you were doing most of the time?
MD: Well, just receiving. When we were down the hole.
CB: Air signals or ground signals?
MD: Morse.
CB: All Morse.
MD: Morse Code.
CB: Yes.
MD: Yes.
CB: But was the origin of that transmission by radio or was it on the ground?
MD: It was from aircraft.
CB: Right.
MD: Yes.
CB: And you, using Morse you then wrote down. So what was the information that was coming?
MD: Well, it was usually in code so we would just write it all down and then in the hole they had a section where they could decode all the information.
CB: Right.
MD: There was some plain language but mostly it was code.
CB: So what was the origin of the, the transmissions from the aircraft? Where were they?
MD: Well, wherever they were flying.
CB: They were on raids.
MD: Yes.
CB: Right.
MD: Yes.
CB: And why would they be sending back signals?
MD: I don’t know. I suppose it, so it’s telling how they were getting on. I don’t know.
CB: I was just curious because —
MD: Yes.
CB: They had to maintain signal silence.
MD: Yes.
CB: Normally.
MD: Perhaps, perhaps when they were a certain distance they could communicate and say where they were.
CB: What I’m getting to is that you’re receiving it and putting in to plain language.
MD: Yes.
CB: It then goes to somebody else. But I wonder what, you receive it and write it down as a code.
MD: Yes.
CB: Is what I mean to say.
MD: Yes.
CB: Someone else decodes it.
MD: Decodes it.
CB: Did you find out very often what was actually in the signal?
MD: No. No.
CB: Was it, did you feel a need to know, or did you have a curiosity about it or did you just leave it?
MD: Yes. We were curious, but it was all very secret and the code section was mostly WAAF officers and you didn’t mix with any of the people that were doing the work.
CB: And what rank had you achieved by this time?
MD: I was a corporal.
CB: Right. How long did it, did you get corporal when you reached High Wycombe or what stage did you?
MD: No. At that, I became a corporal when I was overseas, sorry.
CB: Right. So when you were at High Wycombe.
MD: LACW.
CB: Yeah. Just to put that into context, you carried on in the RAF after the war, did you?
MD: Well, no.
CB: Or did you finish when the war finished?
MD: I finished more or less yes, when they started demobbing people.
CB: Ok.
MD: I was demobbed in 1946.
CB: Right. So we’re still back at High Wycombe.
MD: Yes.
CB: You’re feeding the code section. You started that in ’42 ’43 was it?
MD: Yes.
CB: When did you actually finish doing that job?
MD: Well, when I was posted overseas.
CB: And when was that?
MD: 1945.
CB: Ok. When the war in Europe had finished was it?
MD: It was, I think we were at, we were at sea coming along the Mediterranean when it was VE Day.
CB: Right. Where were you going? You’d been posted where?
MD: To Egypt.
CB: Right. And did you know what you were going to do when you were in Egypt?
MD: No. It was Telecommunications Middle East.
CB: Ah.
MD: And they were sort of the hub between the UK and the Far East and the Persian and Iraq force.
CB: So you got the information of VE day on the, when you were on the ship.
MD: Yes.
CB: What was the reaction of the people on the ship?
MD: Well, they were all delighted of course. It was a ship called the Georgic, and we left from Liverpool, and went out in to the Atlantic and picked up a convoy and came through the Straits because there were still submarines, U-boats lurking, and I think we were about halfway to Egypt when we heard the news.
CB: And what was people’s reaction in terms of —
MD: Very celebrating. Celebratory. Yes.
CB: Yes. And were you allowed to have lemonades on the ship?
MD: No. No, there was no —
CB: It was dry was it?
MD: Yes. Absolutely. Yes.
CB: So when you, when you got to Egypt what happened then?
MD: We got off at Port Said, and went to [pause] by lorries up to Almazah which was a sort of transit camp where we were in tents, and I remember there was a Camp Seymour where there was a sandstorm which was if you were in a tent it was was pretty horrific. But then I was posted to Telecommunications Middle East, TME where we were in concrete huts. Thirty girls to a hut and surrounded by a high wooden fence. They called it the WAAF compound.
CB: Why did they put the fence up I wonder?
MD: [laughs] Well —
BCD: She didn’t tell you she was on my Watch.
MD: Sorry?
BCD: Telecommunications Middle East when you were on my Watch. B Watch.
CB: Coming to that.
MD: It’s got nothing to do with him. Sorry.
CB: That’s Charles putting in a couple of comments. We’ll, come to Charles in a minute.
MD: Yes, don’t take any notice of him.
CB: Right. So there were thirty girls in a hut and you —
MD: Yes. A concrete hut.
CB: Oh, concrete.
MD: Yes.
CB: Crikey, right.
MD: Surrounded by a wooden, several huts surrounded by a big wooden fence. They called it the WAAF compound and they had guards on the thing. We didn’t have a, we had showers. But of course there was no air conditioning or anything so it was pretty hot, and chemical toilets. There was no running water.
CB: And is this place on the edge of a town or an airfield or in the desert?
MD: No. It was right out in the country at a place called [Kaf el Farouk?]
CB: Oh yes.
MD: It was several miles from Almazah. Right out in the desert.
CB: So in your time off what did you do?
MD: Went into Cairo because it was like fairy land, because there was no rationing, no blackout and there were troops of all nationalities. There were lots of Americans, lots of South Africans, all people congregating there so it was lively and, but of course I was only getting two pounds a fortnight or something so I couldn’t buy any of the clothes [laughs] but it was a, it was like, like going to fairyland after the UK.
CB: So when you got in to Cairo what did you actually do then? Window shopping?
MD: Yes. We used to go to the cafes and have ice creams and you meet up with various other people, airmen or people who were there and there were some places for troops. Canteens and stuff. Places that were —
CB: Actually in Cairo.
MD: In Cairo, yes.
CB: And you could have a drink there.
MD: Oh yes.
CB: Just stopping a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Start. Starting now.
MD: Yeah. Well, I was very fortunate because one of the girls that came with me from High Wycombe to Egypt was a widow. Her husband had been a major in the Indian Army and he was killed in Aden and she had joined the WAAF. But before that she had, her father was an Army officer and she had lived in Cairo and she had friends in Cairo who ran a [unclear] there. And so we could go there either to, on our sleeping out passes or just to visit and we could go to the various cafes and things. But she, this, this [unclear] was [pause] there were a lot of Army officers there who were being billeted there and so they were very kind. I remember one of them had a car and took us out to the pyramids which was wonderful because it, it was just the pyramids in those days. We’ve been back on a cruise ship and it’s all surrounded by bazaars. But you could, you could drive out in the moonlight and there’s the pyramids and it was just and I had always been interested in Egyptology since I was a child, and so I [pause] and also on leave we could, this girl and I we went to Cyprus once. We managed to get a lift on a Dakota. Another time we went to Jerusalem. And another time we went to Luxor. So it was, it was really very, very nice. Very enjoyable.
CB: So the aircrew were quite friendly about these sorts of things.
MD: Well, if there was a spare seat you could, you could get, but I remember that you sort of sat on a wooden bench either side of the Dakota and the air turbulence. There were no seat belts or anything, and we were hopping up and down with the turbulence. It was quite a hairy, and those old Dakotas rattled so and they made a dreadful noise. But it was, it was the visit to Cyprus which we stayed up. There was a place for troops up in the Troodos Mountains. So she and I stayed there for one of our leaves. So we managed to get around quite a lot.
CB: How did you manage to get back in time then as it was an ad hoc arrangement?
MD: Well, that’s, we couldn’t get back in time. We got there alright, but we couldn’t get a flight back for a day or so, so we were in a bit of trouble when we got back.
CB: When you got a bit of leave how long was that?
MD: I think we used to take seven days at a time so that we could spread it out and go to different places.
CB: What we haven’t talked about is the difference in the uniforms between being in Britain.
MD: Yes.
CB: And being out in Cairo.
MD: Yes.
CB: And Egypt and then going to Cyprus and so on.
MD: Yes.
CB: So what was it? What was the uniform like in Britain?
MD: Well, it was a tunic with a, and a skirt with a cap and a cap badge. Grey stockings and black brogue walking shoes which you weren’t allowed to wear anything but the regulation shoes so, and shirts with detachable collars which weren’t very nice and knickers they called blackouts which were huge voluminous garments. Of course, we didn’t have any coupons to buy anything else so —
CB: Oh, so you couldn’t but anything anyway.
MD: No. So, we you just had to make do with your uniform.
CB: And did you ever walk out in your free time in civilian clothes or were you always in uniform?
MD: No. Occasionally you could get a sleeping out pass with civilian clothes which —
CB: What, what would cause them to give you that?
MD: I, I don’t know really.
CB: Would it be a special event like a birthday or a wedding or something?
MD: Probably. Yes. Yes. It wasn’t, it wasn’t very often. Most of the time we had to be in uniform and carry our 1250s with us and —
CB: Carry your 1250s. Yes. Which is your ID.
MD: Yes.
CB: For people who don’t know. So was it the same uniform in the summer and in the winter in Britain?
MD: Yes. But when we got to Egypt it was the blues in the winter and we loved the summer uniform. We had sandals and socks and little short khaki skirts and blouses, and forage caps which was much nicer than the caps here.
CB: And the uniform was a lighter material. What was it made of?
MD: Sort of a heavy linen I suppose.
CB: But, but thinner than the UK uniform.
MD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So how did you feel from a heat point of view?
MD: Well, we were young and I suppose we didn’t really notice it so much. I was only twenty one and it was all so exciting to be in the Middle East.
CB: Right.
MD: No. The uniforms were very comfortable.
CB: And where you worked what was the, what were the facilities there? What sort of building was it?
MD: This, this was underground. A Centre underground so it was, it was, it was quite cool but there was no air conditioning. And I remember the first day I went down there I saw one of the airmen pick up one of these sort of folding chairs and bang it on the floor. And I said to him, ‘What are you doing with that chair?’ And he, he said, ‘I’m getting rid of the bugs.’ So every time I went on duty I had one of these chairs I had to bang it on the floor. They didn’t have proper fumigation or anything so —
CB: What did you do with the bugs? Did you tread on them or what?
MD: Yes.
CB: You liked the crunch did you?
MD: No [laughs] No, but they had a fierce bite these.
CB: Did they?
MD: Yes, they were so it, as I say there were, they had certain fans but it was really very warm.
CB: Underground.
MD: Yes. We had to walk there and it, but we had, we did shifts of course which were not very —
CB: What were the shifts?
MD: Eight to twelve. Twelve to six. Six to eleven. And eleven to eight the following morning.
CB: Was that hard going or fairly easy with that sequence?
MD: Well, it did mean that you got a, you had a sort of a stand-off in between, which meant we could go out. I think if you came off at eleven err at 8 o’clock in the morning and you weren’t on again until the following day it, it was quite, quite alright. It was a bit indigestible but —
CB: So, how did the sequence work? So you would be say on an eight till twelve. Then would you do that for a week or ten days?
MD: No.
CB: Or what would you do?
MD: No. It was, it was continuous rolling. The shifts just went on like that the whole time.
CB: Yes. But did you move between the shifts is what I meant. So —
MD: No. If you were on a certain Watch —
CB: Yes.
MD: Your watch did these particular hours.
CB: Yeah. You were always on that.
MD: And you always did the same hours.
CB: That’s what I meant. Yes. And after a month they didn’t change to a difference shift.
MD: No. No.
CB: Which one were you normally on? Well, were you on?
MD: Well, I was on B Watch as he says but —
CB: And B was which? Which was twelve to six was it?
MD: Yes. But then you would do the same. I think there were four different shifts.
BCD: Yeah. Four Watches.
MD: Four Watches.
BCD: And we used to go on at 8 o’clock in the morning.
MD: Yes.
BCD: Until mid-day.
MD: Yes.
BCD: And then mid-day until 8 o’clock at night.
MD: The following day.
BCD: 8 o’clock the following day.
CB: The following day. That’s what I’m getting at. Yeah.
MD: Yeah. I’m sorry.
CB: So it was a rolling shift system.
MD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So you would gradually get to working at night.
MD: Yes.
CB: And then you gradually get to work in the day.
MD: Every fourth night you would, you would be on duty all night.
CB: Right.
MD: Yes.
CB: And then when did you get a break? Was it seven days on and two days off, or how did it work?
MD: I I think it was —
BCD: We used to have the four Watch system but we used to have a week off in between.
CB: Oh right. So once you’d done four shifts rolling.
BCD: We did that for about three months or so. Or quite a, quite a lot of time and then we had a week off.
CB: Before you had time off. Yeah.
MD: Yeah.
BCD: That’s when we used to go together to Alexandria or somewhere like that.
CB: Ok.
BCD: I used to take Margaret —
CB: Ok. So, well let’s come back to that. So, I’m just going to stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, after you’d done the four shifts.
MD: Yeah.
CB: You end up at eight in morning.
MD: Yeah.
CB: And then you’re off for twenty four hours before you start again in the morning.
MD: Yes.
CB: How did you get, adjust to this constant change to your sleep time?
MD: Well, you just did it. I mean —
BCD: With difficulty.
MD: Yes. There was no [pause] the cookhouse was open all the time, so when we went on watch at 11 o’clock we could call in the cookhouse for some rations and then come, then come straight off and go to breakfast and then sleep. And then the following day start again one ‘til six.
CB: Right. So what was the food like?
MD: Oh.
CB: Because it’s hot weather. Was it a different menu from the one you would have in Britain?
MD: Yes. It was. It was slightly different but [pause] not a —
CB: So, what was the staple diet of your survival?
MD: I don’t know. I suppose it was [pause] there was, there was a lot of beef, which we couldn’t get in, you couldn’t get in the UK so but we soon got tired of it. I don’t know why they had so much but, and we used to get fruit from, the South Africans used to send fruit to the girls. They were very kind and on another occasion they sent us material so we could have dresses made. And on another occasion they sent nylons. So, the South Africans were very good.
CB: Of course being there it was easier to get meat.
MD: Yes.
CB: To you.
MD: It was.
CB: From South America and South Africa.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yeah. What about eggs?
MD: I don’t recall ever having eggs.
BCD: Pardon?
MD: We didn’t have eggs.
CB: No.
BCD: We had eggs Margaret for breakfast.
MD: In the officer’s mess.
CB: Right. And just as a comparison what would you eat in Britain?
MD: Yes.
CB: In those days. What was the menu like there?
MD: Well, that was very stodgy food. A lot of bread and margarine, and stews and sometimes rice pudding or something. It was, it, it was very unimaginative.
CB: But designed to keep you warm.
MD: Yes. Keep, keep you going.
CB: All by the RAF cookbook.
MD: Yes.
CB: Ok. So back to Egypt.
MD: Yes.
CB: Here you are on a shift system, a Watch system that runs continuously for a month.
MD: Yes.
CB: Before you get time off. Seven days off. In your time not on shift what could you do? Was there a NAAFI on site or what was there?
MD: Yes. There was a NAAFI. And also we had a swimming pool too so, and they used to have camel races and gymkhanas and things.
CB: How did you get on riding camels?
MD: With difficulty.
CB: But the gymkhanas were actually with horses were they?
MD: Donkeys, I think. Mules. Yeah.
CB: They were difficult to persuade?
MD: Yes [laughs] Had to give them a good kick, and [pause]
CB: Ok.
MD: But we had a lot of swimming which was very nice.
CB: Big pool.
MD: Yes. Quite a big pool. Not Olympic size but a fair size one.
CB: Was this in a compound where there was quite a bit of green because it was well —
MD: No. No. It was all sand.
CB: All sand.
MD: The only greenery was around the flagpole in the, in the, in the entrance as you came in. There was a flagpole with the RAF flag and the TME crest and they used to try and indent for a waggon load of Nile mud and if they could get this mud it was put around the flag post and there would be a very few flowers and outside the CO’s office there would be a few flowers but the rest was all sand. There was nothing else. No earth at all.
CB: You talked earlier about sandstorms.
MD: Yes.
CB: If you were in a tent with a sandstorm what precautions are you taking there? They’ve got sides on the tents. Are they able to bury those and does that work?
MD: Well, the ones at Almazah, there was a sort of a foot of brick work and then there was a gap and then the tent flap. So, so the sand just came in.
CB: Free of charge.
MD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So you had a job to clear that up.
MD: Yes.
CB: In fact, what do you do? Because of the wind and the sand do you all wear handkerchiefs or how do you deal with keeping it out of your —
MD: Well, just scarves really.
CB: Yeah.
MD: We had neckerchiefs and they —
CB: All the time.
MD: Yeah. But there weren’t, there was a lot of local labour, so they did the clearing. The shovelling out.
CB: The donkey work.
MD: Yes.
CB: What about things like laundry? How did that —
MD: We had, the girls could send their things to the laundry and that was quite good.
CB: So they, their aroma was fairly fresh but the blokes all were a bit smelly were they?
MD: I don’t know quite what the airmen did but we had, we had very nice laundry and our shirts, our khaki shirts came back very freshly laundered, the skirts.
CB: So, we talked earlier about when you were in Cairo.
MD: Yes.
CB: What things happened there that were good and not so good?
MD: Well, there’s a certain amount of rioting and one of our girls was caught up in somehow and got killed.
CB: How was she killed?
MD: Shot.
CB: What was the riot about?
MD: There was a lot of trouble about upper Egypt. Apparently, the British promised the Egyptians that they, they could have upper Egypt. As it seemed time went on and they didn’t. They didn’t ever get it, still haven’t. There was a lot of demonstrations and —
CB: And what did they do with the demonstrations? Were they quite violent or just shouting a lot?
MD: I think mostly shouting and waving sticks about because they didn’t have any guns or ammunition. Mostly the Fellahin. They were very poor and —
CB: What were they called?
MD: Fellahin.
CB: Fellahin.
MD: The Fellahin. Yeah.
CB: And how regular were these riots?
MD: Not, not very regular. Six monthly I suppose. I don’t know whether they —
CB: And the RAF had headquarters there. How did they protect that?
MD: Well, that was in, I don’t think, in Cairo they had —
BCD: Well, the headquarters was boarded up all around.
MD: Yes. They —
CB: Did you ever go there?
MD: No. There was, there was a Number 5 Hospital that I was put into once when I had a problem but that was all.
CB: So, the medical facilities were —
MD: Yes.
CB: Quite good were they?
MD: Yes, they were. And there was a WAAF medical officer at Heliopolis that you could go to if you didn’t like the MO.
CB: Didn’t like?
MD: The MO.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Sometimes they were a bit [pause] they weren’t very sympathetic to the girls, you know. They, they thought we were a lot of wilting violets and they, they weren’t very helpful. So if, I had rash on my face so I opted to go to the MO at Heliopolis and she sent me to the hospital in Cairo. I was there for a few days.
CB: So all in all how did you rate your stay in Egypt.
MD: I liked it very much. Very happy there.
CB: What was the most pleasant part of that?
MD: The travelling I think. I was able to go to Cyprus, Jerusalem, Luxor and later on when I met up with my husband we went to Alexandria.
CB: So how did you meet him?
MD: Well, he was the officer. One of the officers of the Watch. And I was the, I was in a department called snags which I liked.
CB: What was that?
MD: Well, we had a system called [Codnasti] which was a call sign operator’s number, NR number, directions, address, subject matter, time of origin, ending and if any of those went wrong the message would go to the wrong place or they would lose the subject matter or something. So when I went on Watch there would often be quite a stack of messages that had lost their way as it were. And I’ve always liked puzzles. I still do lots of puzzles and I had to sort out what had gone wrong and where they should have gone to and —
CB: And, and was there a lot of this in Morse that you were handling still?
MD: Yes.
CB: Or was it different?
MD: Some of it was morse and some was plain language.
CB: And you had to write this down having, because what rank were you here?
MD: I was a corporal.
CB: Right.
MD: And I had another girl who was an LACW when she was, we did it between us.
CB: Did you have more than one person reporting to you at any time, or always just one person was it?
MD: Just the one person yes, just the two of us working.
CB: Yeah. Ok. So how did this link with your husband to be start?
MD: Well, he was, he was one of the officers of the Watch. And you had to get things signed all the time. Keep going signing things and —
CB: Was he falling behind a bit and you had to chivvy him up?
MD: No. He was, he was always seemed to be walking around taking note of what was going on. So —
CB: You cracked —
MD: As he passed through I’d get him to sign something.
CB: He couldn’t escape.
MD: Quite.
CB: Management by walkabout.
MD: Yes.
CB: Worked quite well. So how long were you then in Egypt, and when did you come back?
MD: I went over in 1945, early in the year. I think April. I think. April or May and I came back July I think the following year. I would have liked to have stayed longer. It was so nice.
CB: Where did they post you to when you returned?
MD: No. I was immediately demobbed because I’d, I’d done five years and joined up when I was seventeen and a half and did five years so I had quite a high release number.
CB: Now, that was what it based on was it? The length of service.
MD: Yes, and, and your age.
CB: Yeah. Where were you demobbed?
MD: In Liverpool. Came back on the Mauritania and spent about five days being demobbed and debriefed and —
CB: What was the debriefing?
MD: Well, where, where you’d where you’d been and what you’d done, and —
CB: For the records or were they trying —
MD: Records.
CB: To find out if there was anything of importance that —
MD: No. I think it was just records. Yes.
CB: And the men had a set of clothes given to them when they were demobbed.
MD: Yes.
CB: What happened to the ladies?
MD: Well, we had, I think it was thirty coupons which was hardly enough to buy shoes and a coat. I had a few clothes left behind, but when I left home but — [pause]
CB: Did they give you any clothes?
MD: It was very, very difficult. We didn’t get any clothing. No.
CB: At all.
MD: No.
CB: Right. The men all got a suit.
MD: Yes. We just got clothing coupons.
CB: Right. So what did you actually do next then?
MD: I went to London where my father was now working in the House of Commons, in Black Rod’s department. And I, I was reinstated by Boots. You could apply for reinstatement and I went to a branch in, in London. And then I got married and it was back to the RAF again.
CB: When did you get married. And where?
MD: 1947.
CB: When?
MD: January 4th 1947. Chelsea Registry Office.
[pause]
CB: A good address then.
MD: What do you mean?
CB: Chelsea.
MD: Yes. Oh yes. I lived in Chelsea.
CB: Right. With your parents.
MD: Well, with my father.
CB: Yeah, with your father. Yeah.
MD: Yeah. He’d separated by then.
CB: From your step mother.
MD: From my step mother.
CB: Right.
MD: So he, he was living there. He was as I say he was, worked at the House Of Commons. A special badge messenger in Black Rod’s department. And —
CB: So when you were married where did you go and live?
MD: Well, for a short time in Haringey.
CB: Haringey.
MD: Yes. But, but that’s until we, my husband was posted to Marlow in Medmenham. Medmenham.
CB: Medmenham.
MD: And so we had lodgings in Marlow. Two rooms in a, well two rooms in a house. It was quite a big RAF station at Medmenham at that time and then from there we went to Pembroke Dock where we lived in a miner’s cottage with a tin bath on the wall. When the wind blew the bath used to swing to and fro.
CB: How did you fill the bath?
MD: Well, we had a, bought a huge pan from a gypsy and used to put it on the stove and fill it with hot water and we gradually filled the bath up. My daughter was born in a Nissen hut in Pembroke Dock.
CB: So you moved from the cottage to the Nissen hut did you? Or that was just the delivery room? The Nissen hut. Your daughter.
MD: The Nissen hut was the, was the RAF with the —
CB: Right. In medical, sick quarters.
MD: Yes. And then my husband was demobbed and we came to St Albans. And from there to Harpenden and here we are.
CB: Very interesting. We’ll just pause for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So you’re in this miner’s cottage.
MD: Yes.
CB: What was the, at what time of year are we talking about here?
MD: Well, it must have been the winter because my daughter was born in February.
CB: Yeah.
MD: And —
BCD: We went down there in late autumn time.
MD: Yes.
BCD: To Pembroke Dock.
MD: Yes.
CB: So, how did you heat the cottage?
MD: It was coal fires.
CB: Supplied by the Air Force.
MD: No.
CB: The coal.
MD: No.
BCD: No.
MD: No. In, in those days if you, if the officer was under twenty five he didn’t get a marriage allowance so we were, we were pretty hard up actually. Had to buy coal and pay rent.
CB: Do you remember what the rent was?
MD: What was the rent in the, in the Pembroke Dock?
BCD: About two pounds a week.
MD: Something like that. Yes.
CB: Quite a bit of money then.
MD: It was. Yes.
CB: With the bath you’ve had to put a lot of effort into boiling the water.
MD: Yes.
CB: In the tin.
MD: Yes.
CB: So you fill the bath. How full would you fill it?
MD: Well, about a third I suppose really and you had to carry the water from the, there was a very tiny kitchen, and the bath had to go in the living room which was very, these cottages are very small and carry the water from there to there and gradually fill up.
CB: So after one had had a bath what happened?
MD: I think, I think my husband was able to bath on the station.
CB: Right.
MD: It was just me I think.
CB: Yeah.
BCD: I used to swim in the sea too. Get it off a Sunderland Flying Boat to just —
CB: Dive in.
BCD: Yeah, just dive in.
CB: So you had a salty bloke come back.
MD: [laughs] Yes.
CB: But in practical terms did you share the bath sometimes? That is to say one did it, and used it, and then the other?
MD: No. I don’t think so. You always had a bath or shower on the station didn’t you?
BCD: Yes, I did. But occasionally as a bit of fun I had a bath.
MD: After.
BCD: At the cottage.
MD: Yeah. After me. Yeah.
CB: And then you had to ladle the water out.
MD: Had to carry this huge thing out by the handles and tip it down the drain, and put it back on the wall.
CB: I had to do that at school.
MD: Did you?
CB: Yes. Anyway —
MD: Which school was that?
CB: I’ll tell you later [laughs] So then you, from, from Pembroke Dock then you came, then your husband was demobbed.
MD: Yes.
CB: Himself.
MD: Yes.
CB: So then you moved on to other things.
MD: Yes.
CB: And your, what about your son? Where was he born?
MD: He was born in St Albans.
CB: Right.
MD: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So what was the most memorable thing you would say happened to you in your service in the RAF?
MD: Well, I would think going overseas and being able to travel around the Middle East.
CB: Yeah.
MD: It was pretty dull at High Wycombe. Not much excitement.
CB: No. You were able to travel around a bit on public transport at High Wycombe were you or was that a bit restricted?
MD: Well, there was, there was a bus service so you had to pay to get on a bus and go in to High Wycombe. Sometimes we walked because it was, would save money.
CB: Down from Naphill.
MD: Yes. Down the hill.
CB: And then the hard drudge back up again.
MD: Yes. Yes. I’ve done that a few times. Yeah.
CB: But you were fit.
MD: Yes.
CB: Enabled you to have a good appetite to eat the quality RAF food.
MD: [laughs] Yes.
CB: Right. Well, we’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
MD: I remember seeing her on Pay Parade.
CB: So, I just want to go back to your initial training.
MD: Yes.
CB: Which you did at Morecambe.
MD: Yes.
CB: What exactly did you do there?
MD: Well, it was mainly marching and lectures.
CB: What were the lectures on?
MD: About the RAF and discipline and that sort of thing.
CB: And did they talk about the air war because we’re right in the war now?
MD: Yes. No.
CB: Did you do aircraft recognition or —
MD: No. It was very basic really. We were, we were billeted with civilians in, landladies.
CB: Yes.
MD: And the food was a bit scarce. I don’t know how much they were paid per person but they didn’t provide a great deal of food.
CB: What about the people who were on the course with you?
MD: Yes.
CB: What sort of people were they?
MD: Well, we were, we were all, all together really. We hadn’t separated out into our trades or where we were going. So it was just sort of you came from Gloucester, got your uniform, went up to Morecambe and we were just sort of settling into service life really.
CB: And, what I’m getting at is your father was in the Navy. What rank was he in the Navy at that time?
MD: He was a chief petty officer.
CB: Right. So, he was a fairly senior man at the time compared with some of the other [pause] so you came from a family of a senior NCO.
MD: Yes.
CB: But you would have got people from all sorts of walks of life.
MD: All sorts of walks of life.
CB: What sort of background were they?
MD: Yes.
CB: What sort of people were they?
MD: Well, basically very nice. There were some rather rough people as you might say, but basically your average citizen I would say. Working class people.
CB: And how did they adapt to, because you knew about service life.
MD: Yes.
CB: If only from the Navy but how did they adapt to this circumstance?
MD: I think some of them found it rather hard. The discipline and having to be on time and things like that.
CB: And all of them had had jobs before had they?
MD: Yes. Most of them had.
CB: Had any of them just left —
MD: Some of us were volunteers and some had been conscripted of course.
CB: Ah, ok. So how did the conscription work?
MD: Well, they called people up in batches. Rather like they did the men, I think. If you weren’t in a Reserved Occupation you had to go in one of the services or be directed in to something.
CB: And how did they feel about that? The ones conscripted.
MD: Well, they, they just had to put up with it. They didn’t have any choice really. They weren’t, they weren’t very happy to be where they were but —
CB: Did you form a lasting friendship with anybody at that stage?
MD: Not at that stage. I did when I was in the Middle East but the thing was when we got home we were all in different parts of England. We didn’t have telephones or mobiles or communication. We didn’t have cars. It was very difficult. Once you sort of went to your different areas. It was, it was just letter writing really. And I, I still keep in touch with some of the girls. One in particular that was [pause] joined up with me. But —
CB: What did she come on? What did she do eventually? When she took a trade what trade did she go to?
MD: Telephonist.
CB: As well.
MD: Yes. Not wireless telephonist.
CB: Oh no, telephonist. Right.
MD: Telephonist. Yes.
CB: And where would she have been posted in that case?
[pause]
MD: I think it was Leighton Buzzard.
CB: Right. Stanbridge.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MD: And that was another thing you see. You were, often you were posted all in different directions so it was very difficult to keep in touch with people.
CB: Sure.
MD: In those days.
CB: Because you wouldn’t know where they were.
MD: No.
CB: Because the security —
MD: Yes.
CB: Was such that you weren’t allowed to say where you were stationed, were you?
MD: Exactly. Somewhere in England you had to put. Somewhere in England.
CB: Right.
MD: I remember when we were going on, on overseas and my brother was also, he was in the Navy and we, we worked out a code. If you said, “Give my love to all the people at number 6,” it meant that that was number six and that would be a place. So we’d try, we tried to get around it to let people know basically where we were.
CB: On a list.
MD: Yeah.
CB: Number 6 on the list.
MD: You put a list of all names of the places you thought you might be and if you say, “Give my love to all the people at number 3,” And then you would look on the list and that would tell you.
CB: Was this something to do with the fact that you were dealing with Morse Code as a code and so you followed the same concept yourselves.
MD: I think so yes. Probably. But we found ways of letting people know.
CB: Yes. Now of the people in other courses what famous person did you —
MD: Well, Sarah Churchill was in the intake above me.
CB: Oh right.
MD: So, and I remember seeing her on Post Parade. She was getting letters, and she’d, she’d married this American comedian Vic somebody or other but Randolph Churchill had rushed to America to stop her marrying him but arrived too late I think, so [pause] But anyway she was in the WAAF and then later she went to Medmenham as a photographic interpreter. And she had bright red hair.
CB: How did you know who she was?
MD: Well, because I, I knew her. I knew her by sight. She had this very bright red hair. And her picture had been in the paper a lot.
CB: Ah, that’s how you knew who she was, did you?
MD: Yes.
CB: Yes. So the security was a bit, was that from pre-war times or —
MD: No. That was.
CB: In the war.
CB: During the war. Yes.
MD: So variable security here identifying the prime minister’s daughter.
MD: Yes.
CB: In the paper.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Yeah.
CB: Right. And of the people who you trained with —
MD: Yes.
CB: How many of those got to more exalted heights?
MD: I think some of them became sergeants but, or if, if they wanted to do physical training or anything like that they would reach the rank of warrant officer but basically we were erks or corporals. There wasn’t much promotion.
CB: Ok. Because the RAF was a, a meritocracy compared with the other forces they say.
MD: Really?
CB: And I just wondered how you had seen that in operation.
MD: I think there were sort of people from all walks of life and, but there wasn’t any huge differences. I, I remember the thing that surprised me most when I joined the RAF was that everybody used Christian names whereas before that where I was working it was always Miss somebody and Mr somebody and even your next door neighbours were Mr and Mrs and it seemed very nice and friendly when I joined the Service that everybody used Christian names.
CB: Right. Well, Margaret Day thank you very much indeed for a most interesting conversation.
[recording paused]
CB: Just going back to your time in —
MD: Yes.
CB: In Egypt. There were a lot of people there so there would be a hundred and twenty people or something on a shift.
MD: Yes.
CB: And largely WAAFs but there were also men as well. What was the mix of tasks? Were they the same or did the men have a different role?
MD: I think mainly the girls did the signals work and, and some of the other, some of the men were sort of in charge of departments. But basically they were being moved a lot at that time and it was being more or less taken over by, by the WAAF.
CB: Right.
BCD: The men were mainly the engineer section.
CB: Right.
BCD: Anything went wrong they — [pause]
MD: RAF Regiment and that sort of thing.
CB: What did the RAF Regiment do?
MD: Well, guard the airfield.
CB: Oh, guarding it.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yeah. And was there a barbed wire fence around the whole place then to protect it from marauding tribesman?
MD: No.
BCD: You could see very little above ground. Everything was covered in sand you see. Massive place underground.
CB: Yeah.
BCD: But nothing from the top. The other thing that, you talked about eggs.
CB: Yes.
BCD: On our night shift we had our own canteen there with staff running the canteen and I used to look forward, about 2 o’clock in the morning, the staff used to have a half an hour off during that to have my egg, chips and bacon. That was lovely. And — [pause]
CB: Was this because you were in charge of a section or because you were air crew?
BCD: Well, no. I, my function was because of my technical ability on telecommunications and anything connected with that.
CB: Right.
BCD: I must admit I took to the training for radar and telecommunications, and I really got down to it and did pretty well. That is why I used to lecture in the Middle East. They used to call me to lecture to various —
CB: Various people.
BCD: Various functions and things. I lectured to various squadrons and whatever.
CB: Right. Well, we’re stopping there.
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 Helen Day
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
2017-11-28
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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ADayMH171128
Format
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01:15:16 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
Description
An account of the resource
As her father was in the Royal Navy, Margaret attended school in Gibraltar, Portsmouth, and (after her mother’s death) Malta, before returning to Gosport in the UK when she was eleven. In 1939, she was fifteen and working for a company making soft furnishings for the Royal Yacht. Margaret recalls when the bombing started in 1940 with attacks on Portsmouth and Gosport. On one occasion, a bomb fell in their garden and trapped them in their Anderson shelter. Margaret remembers being terrified, being rescued by RAF personnel who pulled her out of the earth by her feet, and one lady requiring hospitalisation. At the age of seventeen, Margaret joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and trained as a wireless operator. Her brother had joined the Royal Navy and her sister the WAAF also. Following initial training, she trained as a wireless operator at RAF Hutton Cranswick, RAF Kirkham, where she learnt Morse code, and RAF Compton Basset. In 1942, she was posted to RAF High Wycombe, bomber command’s headquarters. Based underground, her roles included communicating between Groups, monitoring radio frequencies to locate enemy navigation beacons, and recording encrypted messages from aircraft sent in Morse code. In 1945, Margaret was posted overseas and was on a ship in the Mediterranean heading to Egypt when news of VE Day came through. She joined the Telecommunications Middle East facility in Egypt. She recalls living in tents during sandstorms and visiting Cairo, the Pyramids, Jerusalem, and Luxor. She also visited Cyprus on leave in a Dakota C-47. After five years' service, Margaret was demobilised in 1946.
Contributor
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Andy Shaw
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Egypt
Great Britain
North Africa
England--Buckinghamshire
England--High Wycombe
England--Portsmouth
England--Wiltshire
Egypt--Cairo
England--Hampshire
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1942
1945
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
aircrew
bombing
ground personnel
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Nissen hut
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF High Wycombe
RAF Kirkham
shelter
Victoria Cross
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/996/34294/MTitmanN19180602-190817-03.2.pdf
4d1b932476833389431d29d28c6a3130
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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Titman, Nancy
E A Titman
Edith Annie Titman
Edith Annie Swift
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Nancy Titman (b. 1918), two information leaflets and a Conservative party news-sheet. See Nancy Titman 'Swift to Tell: Life in the 1920s - 30s'.
Collection catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-10-05
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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Titman, EA
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
The ONLOOKER
November, 1939
THE NATIONAL EFFORT
A Warning to Grumblers
PERHAPS the best compliment that has been paid to the truly wonderful way in which the nation has been reorganized for war is the fact that we are still able to grumble and complain about comparatively little things.
[indecipherable words] done in a big way and with striking success. The Navy has taken command of the seas. The U-boat campaign was crippled in the first weeks of war. The convoy system was set in operation without an hour's avoidable delay.
The British Expeditionary Force of nearly 200,000 men, magnificently equipped and provided with 25,000 mechanised vehicles, was landed in France without a hitch and without a casualty.
Our Air Force was ready from the first day, alike for its tasks on the Western Front, for the defence of our ports and cities against air raids and for anti-submarine work and convoy patrols.
The general defence system against air raids was ready and waiting from the first hour and if it was still waiting after two months one cause of this may well be its own efficiency and thoroughness.
It is just because these and other major [indecipherable word] of the war have been undertaken with signal success that many people have been grumbling and worrying over lesser things.
Some evacuees make no secret of the fact that they do not like [indecipherable words] holders are equally certain that they do not much care for their evacuees.
Other people talk about a shortage of bacon, a rise in prices, darkened railway compartments, reduced train services, restricted petrol allowances and all the bothers and inconveniences of the black-out.
No doubt these things are annoying and it is certainly a good thing that people are allowed to grumble and not, as in Germany, compelled to keep their mouths shut, if they want to escape the concentration camp.
But if we must complain – and are free to get it off our chests – let us keep things in the right perspective and, remembering that we are at war, take care not to make mountains out of molehills.
There were evacuees and householders in Poland, and we have seen the tragic pictures of them trudging along the roads in the rain, pushing wheelbarrows and perambulators containing all that was left of their homes.
We have also seen pictures of Polish towns, towns much like our own, with buses and trams in the streets, until German bombs [missing words]
So far we have been spared any such sufferings and horrors and at the same time the Government, putting first things first, has put in force all the active defence measures with remarkable speed and thoroughness.
In the same spirit and with the same zeal, all the other measures for the maintenance of the country on a war footing can be rapidly strengthened and improved. Meanwhile, do not let us exaggerate our personal inconveniences. A little patience and our British sense of humour will do much to maintain the full vigour of our support for the Government in its gigantic tasks.
If we should beware of the insidious habit of grumbling, we should also be on our guard against rumour and gossip. There was the story of the German radio report that the town hall clock in a Scottish burgh had stopped at a particular hour. In fact, the
[page break]
2 THE ONLOOKER
German radio made no such statement, and the town hall in question has no clock!
There was another story about certain recruits sleeping on straw, with only one blanket and going short of food. The local M.P. made enquiries on the spot and found the food plentiful and each man with "an excellent straw palliasse and three good blankets." So much for gossip.
TO FARMERS
Here are some of the points from a recent interview granted by Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, Minister of Agriculture, to the Sunday Times:-
We are not farming from Whitehall.
Our plans to bring 1,500,000 acres under the plough are being carried out with as little interference from London as possible [indecipherable words] on the spot who know [indecipherable words] farms. [indecipherable words]
Whatever price we fix for wheat in 1940 will give a fair return to the farmer, and that pledge "has the full backing and authority of the Cabinet.
MOONLIGHT MEETINGS
Local Conservative associations and branches in some parts of the country have found a way of "beating the black-out."
Meetings for the furtherance of the national war effort and social gatherings, such as whist drives, are being arranged for evenings round about the time of full moon, instead of being spread out over the month, as in peace time.
These moonlight meetings have proved to be very popular and one local agent writes, "We are getting even better attendances than we did last winter." So moonlight meetings are a good idea.
Under BIG BEN
During the difficult days since war was declared, Parliament has acquitted itself in a manner worthy of its highest traditions. In short, it has risen to the occasion.
When the Government introduced the formidable series of measures necessary for the safety of the nation and the effective prosecution of the war, these measures were passed with exemplary speed. It was the time for deeds, not debates, and the House of Commons showed the world that in the hour of challenge a democratic assembly has a capacity for swift and resolute action, which a dictator might envy.
There have been many notable speeches since the Prime Minister's memorable pronouncement on the Sunday when we entered the war. More impressive than all else, however, has been the series of weekly statements in which the Prime Minister has surveyed the progress of the war, expounded and encouraged the national war effort and answered the claims and charges of the enemy.
In these and other speeches, the Prime Minister has [indecipherable word] a remarkable grasp of realities, combined with determination, decision and drive. He has thus attained an unchallenged authority in his leadership of the House.
As the days have gone by, with their many problems, the House of Commons has maintained its right to examine and discuss both the proposals put before it and the actions of the executive as they affect the lives of the people and the successful conduct of the war.
There has been complete freedom of speech and, rightly or wrongly, members have on occasion given vent to comments and criticisms which elsewhere would have landed them straight into a concentration camp.
Watching the House at question time when Ministers are faced with dozens of questions regarding their conduct of affairs, one cannot but wonder how Hitler would explode if members of his suspended Reichstag suddenly got together and asked him the why and wherefore of his policy regarding food, petrol, evacuation and so on. The Gestapo would soon put a stop to all that.
If, now and again, as in the Old Age Pensions debate, members have been tempted to revive party politics, Parliament, broadly speaking, has contrived to combine a constant watchfulness with steady support of the national effort. This is doubtless because widespread throughout the House there is a recognition of the promptitude, efficiency and vision with which the Government has acted in all that ultimately matters in the prosecution of the war, whether affecting the Navy, the Army, the Air Force or Home Defence.
[page break]
THE ONLOOKER 3
LIFE in GERMANY
SO scarce was food in Germany that strict rationing had to be introduced even before the invasion of Poland. As a result Berlin was swept clean of meat, butter, olive oil and all other fat-containing substances.
A typical German food ration for one day consists of: breakfast – rye meal soup and bread; dinner – spinach soup, pumpkin, potatoes, bacon; supper – vegetable noodles, bread and blackberry leaf tea.
Berlin housewives have been standing in long queues at butchers' shops licensed to sell horse meat only. In fact queuing up for many hours on end has become a daily occurrence.
All holidays for German workers are now forbidden, save in case of illness or urgent family affairs.
Only war "substitute" soap is now available in Germany. Ration: 3 oz. per month. Clothing is also rationed, no man may possess more than two suits, and bathing suits are being used as underclothes.
Such is the financial plight of Germany that the Government are planning to commandeer the funds of the savings banks and insurance companies. No wonder Goering, Ribbentrop and Co. have invested their savings abroad!
No criticism of the Nazi régime is permitted in Germany and the mildest grumble against authority is liable to lead to arrest by the Gestapo. Thousands of people have been dragged off to the concentration camps and, as recent revelations show, are being most brutally treated.
[photograph]
A British family cheerfully starts to turn the garden into a war allotment.
TALES from the SEA
Has the British Navy got the stranglehold on the U-boats? It looks very much like it.
During the last war the U-boats sank over 300,000 tons of our merchant shipping every month for months on end, and in one month they sent almost 900,000 tons to the bottom.
It is a very different tale this time. In September we lost 155,000 tons and in October our losses were down to 83,000 tons. That is a long way below the 300,000 tons a month of the last war.
And in the process of attacking our merchant ships, one out of every three U-boats was either sunk or seriously damaged in the first two months of the war.
Meanwhile the British and French fleets seized over 600,000 tons of contraband intended to reach Germany, the British share being 420,000 tons.
Our contraband captures included 12 million gallons of petrol.
DIARY - 1940.
The Conservative and Unionist Pocket Book for 1940 – a combined pocket book and diary – is now ready. Price 1/2, post free, from Sales and Supply Section, Palace Chambers, London, S.W.1.
[page break]
THE ONLOOKER
HITLER'S OWN WORDS
"We Won't Lie and We Won't Swindle"
HERE are some of the pledges and promises which Hitler has given the world since he became Chancellor of the German Reich. They are all taken from his public speeches. Fuller extracts from these speeches are to be found in "A Hitler Calendar," published by [italics] The Times [/italics] at the price of one penny, or 1s. 9d., post free, for 25 copies.
HITLER SPEAKS.
The first and best point of the Government's programme is that we won't lie and we won't swindle. – [italics] Berlin, February [/italics] 10, 1933.
The German people have no thought of invading any country. – [italics] Berlin, May [/italics] 17, 1933.
We do not want a war merely for the purpose of bringing to Germany people who simply do not want to be, or cannot be, Germans. – [italics] On the wireless, May [/italics] 27, 1933.
"NOT CRAZY ENOUGH . . ."
I am not crazy enough to want a war. . . . The German people have but one wish – to be happy in their own way and to be left in peace. They do not interfere in other people's business, and others should not interfere in theirs. . . . When has the German people ever broken its word? – [italics] Berlin, November [/italics] 10, 1933.
PLEDGES TO POLAND.
We do not wish to interfere with the rights of others, to restrict the lives of other people. – [italics] Lippe, January [/italics] 14, 1934.
Germany has concluded a non-aggression pact with Poland which is much more than a valuable contribution to European peace, and she will adhere to it unconditionally. . . . We recognise the Polish State as the home of a great patriotic nation with the understanding and the cordial friendship of candid nationalists. – [italics] Berlin, May [/italics] 21, 1935.
The German Reich, and in particular the present German Government, has no other wish than to live on friendly and peaceable terms with all neighbouring States – not only the larger States but the neighbouring smaller States. – [italics] Berlin, May [/italics] 21, 1935.
PREACHING PEACE.
We want to be a peace-loving element among the nations. We cannot repeat that often enough [italics] Berlin, January [/italics] 30, 1936.
The motto must be, "Never war again" – [italics] Berlin, May [/italics] 1, 1938.
In general we have but one wish – that in [missing word] coming year we may be able to make our contribution to this general pacification of the whole [missing word]. – [italics] Berchtesgaden, January [/italics] 1, 1939.
Only the war-mongers think there will be a war. I think there will be a long period of peace – [italics] Berlin, January [/italics] 30, 1939.
BEWARE OF BOLSHEVISM.
Germany is the bulwark of the West [missing word] Bolshevism. – [italics] Berlin, November [/italics] 29, 1935.
We see in Bolshevism a bestial, mad doctrine which is a threat to us. – [italics] Nuremberg, September [/italics] 13, 1936.
We look upon Bolshevism as upon an intolerable danger to the world. . . . Any treaty links between Germany and present-day Bolshevist Russia would be without any value whatsoever – [italics] Berlin, January [/italics] 30, 1937.
If the sub-human forces of Bolshevism had proved victorious in Spain they might easily have spread across the whole of Europe. – [italics] Berlin, April [/italics] 28, 1939.
BROKEN PROMISES.
We have assured all our immediate neighbours of the integrity of their territory as far as Germany is concerned. That is no hollow phrase; it is our sacred will. . . .
The Sudetenland is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe. . . . I have assured Mr. Chamberlain, and I emphasise it now, that when this problem is solved Germany has no more territorial problems in Europe. – [italics] Berlin, September [/italics] 26, 1938.
"WE WON'T LIE."
Speaking in Berlin on September 1, 1939, when Germany was already planning to bomb open towns in Poland, Herr Hitler said:-
"I will not war against women and children. I have ordered my air force to restrict itself to attacks on military objectives."
Two days later the "Athenia," unarmed and [missing word] many women on board, was sunk.
Printed and Published for the Proprietors by Deverell, Gibson & Hoare, Ltd., 5, Lavington Street, Southwark, London, S.E.1
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
The Onlooker November 1939
Description
An account of the resource
Political news-sheet from the Conservative party covering issues: the national effort a warning to grumblers, information for farmers, parliamentary commentary, local conservative party meetings, life in Germany concentrating on food shortages and rationing and life under Nazis, naval issues, critique of pledges and promises made by Hitler. Includes one b/w photograph of civilian family digging in garden.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conservative party
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939-11
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939-11
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Germany
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
British Army
Royal Navy
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Format
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Four page printed document
Publisher
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Deverell, Gibson & Hoare Ltd
Identifier
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MTitmanN19180602-190817-03
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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
home front
propaganda
-
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52fe82fa91dfeb919b42c4fbcce3d048
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736461f9c73da8360255d231da17a0ad
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1169/18228/ETurnerRHTurnerKW441213-0003.1.jpg
c14a2945741cf857e283bce6084781d4
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
Turner, John
Albion John Turner
A J Turner
Description
An account of the resource
<a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/228620/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"></a>116 items. Concerns Flight Sergeant Albion John Turner (1911 - 1939, 561939 Royal Air Force) who joined the RAF as an apprentice in 1927. After service as a fitter he re-mustered as a pilot in 1935 and after training served on 216 Squadron flying Vickers Victoria and Valentia before moving to 9 Squadron on Handley Page Heyfords in 1936. He converted to Wellingtons February 1939 and was killed when his aircraft was shot down on 4 September 1939 during operations against shipping at Brunsbüttel. Collection consists of an oral history interview with Penny Turner his daughter (b. 1938), correspondence, official documents, his logbook and photographs. <br /><br />Additional information on Albion John Turner <span>is available via the </span><a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/228620/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IBCC Losses Database</a><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Penny Turner and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Turner, J
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BY AIR MAIL
AIR MAIL LETTER CARD
[postage stamp]
[post mark]
Mrs K. Turner
c/o 292 West Parade
Lincoln
Lincs.
[underlined] England [/underlined]
[page break]
Written in English
No EX1021
Sender’s Rank Corporal RM.
Name [underlined] R.H.Turner. [/underlined]
[page break]
EX1021
Cpl R H Turner RM
Wed 13th Dec, ’44. 650 LCM Flotilla
c/o B.F.M.O
Bombay
[underlined] India. [/underlined]
[underlined] Dear Kaye. [/underlined]
I don’t know whether this will reach you in time for Xmas or not – I hope so anyway. I hope you all at Lincoln have a happy Xmas and may the New Year bring us peace for all times.
Well Kaye, as you see by the address I’ve landed safely out here and am in the process of settling down and getting used to the heat and believe me it is HOT. Even now I’m perspiring and it’s about 9 P.M. and they say this is the [underlined] winter [/underlined] so goodness knows what the summer is going to be like!
The camp I’m in is right on the . .
[Indian scene, swift carrying letter]
[page break]
[Greetings, English winter scene, swift carrying letter]
coast and one advantage is that we manage to get plenty of swimming in – that’s about the only time we manage to get a bit cool. We walk about all day without shirts on so I’m hoping to get nicely tanned in time. At the moment I’m a nice brick red colour.
I’ve received some airmails from Norma & also Mum & Dad which I was happy to get you can guess after not hearing for about 6 weeks. Up to the end of November they were all O.K. I’m pleased to say – although I expect you’ve had more recent news of them yourself. I trust you all at Lincoln are safe & well – both Penny & Carole are getting quite big girls I
[page break]
guess and are looking forward to Xmas very much. Give them both lots of hugs & kisses from me won’t you?
I’ve only been ashore once since I arrived out here as the camp is in a deserted spot and we have to go about 20 miles by train before we come to any civilisation! Fruit such as bananas & oranges etc are very plentiful as well as ice cream and iced lemonade – but only in the town. I wasn’t too impressed with the town – especially as all the picture houses were booked right up – it was so dirty and smelly so different from our good old English towns!
Well Kaye, there’s not much room on these things so I will have to close for now. We are rationed until the 17th with airmails so will write again after then.
So night night – please give my love and Xmas Greetings to all at Lincoln.
Lots of Love Ron xxxxxx [inserted] Penney xxxxx & Carole xxxxx [/inserted]
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to Kaye Turner from Ron Turner
Description
An account of the resource
Written from Bombay wishing family a good Christmas and New Year. Describes a little of life and weather in India. Catches up with news of family and friends. Continues with description of his situation in India,
Creator
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Cpl R H Turner RM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-12-13
Format
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Three page handwritten air mail letter
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
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ETurnerRHTurnerKW441213
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
India
India--Mumbai
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-12-13
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
Contributor
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Robin Christian
David Bloomfield
-
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Title
A name given to the resource
Turner, John
Albion John Turner
A J Turner
Description
An account of the resource
<a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/228620/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"></a>116 items. Concerns Flight Sergeant Albion John Turner (1911 - 1939, 561939 Royal Air Force) who joined the RAF as an apprentice in 1927. After service as a fitter he re-mustered as a pilot in 1935 and after training served on 216 Squadron flying Vickers Victoria and Valentia before moving to 9 Squadron on Handley Page Heyfords in 1936. He converted to Wellingtons February 1939 and was killed when his aircraft was shot down on 4 September 1939 during operations against shipping at Brunsbüttel. Collection consists of an oral history interview with Penny Turner his daughter (b. 1938), correspondence, official documents, his logbook and photographs. <br /><br />Additional information on Albion John Turner <span>is available via the </span><a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/228620/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IBCC Losses Database</a><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Penny Turner 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
2017-05-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Turner, J
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
EX1021 Cpl R H Turner RM
650 LCM Flotilla
Monday 24 July. c/o G.P.O
London
My Dear [underlined] Kaye, [/underlined]
I’m so sorry I’ve been so long winded in writing to you but at last I’ve got a spell of rest and relaxation so here goes.
Firstly, I hope you all at Lincoln are safe & in the best of health – Mum has kept me well informed and I’m pleased to hear that everything is going on O.K.
I bet Penney & Carole have grown since I last saw them and are getting quite ladylike. I thought the photos that you sent home were very good. Won’t it be grand when we can see each other more often – I do hope they’ve
[page break]
2.
not forgotten their Uncle Ron!
Of course you’ve heard all about my bouncing Son from Mum I expect. We’ve had some snaps taken but they haven’t come out so great. Still I’m hoping to get some studio portraits taken soon so I’ll make sure you get one. I’m pleased to say both Norma & the babe are in the best of health etc – in fact everyone at home are – up to the last letter I received which was about a week ago. It was sad about Grandma going so suddenly this month wasn’t it – it certainly was a great shock to us all. Unfortunately she’d never seen the baby at all – it’s rather a long way out of town.
Have you heard that young Betty is also married now
[page break]
[underlined] 3. [/underlined]
It makes me realise I’m not so young as I used to was! [sic] I expect it’s just as hard for you to realise that I’m a daddy eh?
He certainly is a smasher and everybody at home is just crazy over him – in fact I’ve to take a back seat nowadays! I was rather fortunate in being stationed near home before come [sic] over hear and so managed to see quite a lot of him. But from Norma’s letters he’s growing very fast and even boasts of 2 front teeth now – They’re even making out he says Dad Dad!
Well Kaye, I dare say you know I’m over here in France and have been since D day – and I’m pleased to say I’m feeling very fit & well and haven’t had too bad a time of it – although I’ve had
[page break]
4
Some experiences which I hope I don’t have to go through again. At the moment I’m stationed ashore getting my land legs back again!
Things are fairly quite now although living conditions aren’t exactly “Ritzy”. The food is mainly tinned stuff and believe me we get more than our share of stew and biscuits. But still we’re all making the best of things etc & hoping it won’t go on for much longer.
Well, Kaye that [sic] about finishes me for now – please give my best regards to all at Lincoln – I trust everyone is O.K.
So goodnight for now lots of love to you, Penney & Carole Your loving brother Ron xxxxxx [inserted] Pennet & Carole xxxxxx [/inserted]
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Title
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Letter to Kaye Turner from Ron Turner
Description
An account of the resource
Catches up with family news and greetings. Comments on two children and of photographs sent. Continues to catch up with news. Mentions he has been in France since D-Day and writes of experiences.
Creator
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Cpl R H Turner RM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-07-24
Format
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Four page handwritten letter
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
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ETurnerRHTurnerKWXX0724
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-07-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Robin Christian
David Bloomfield
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
-
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Title
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Thomas, Arthur Froude. Album 4
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2020-02-11
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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Thomas, AF
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. An album containing photographs of 149 Squadron aircraft and personnel as well as pictures taken in 1946 of some of the bomb damage to German cities.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[photograph]
297 Squadron R.A.F. [indecipherable word] 1947.
[indecipherable word] L to R. P/O [indecipherable letters and name] D.F.C. D.F.M.
F/Lt. J. [indecipherable name], W/O Rowlands, F/O Price,
F/Lt [indecipherable name] D.F.C., F/Lt Downing,
P/O [indecipherable name], F/O [indecipherable name], F/Lt ?,
P/O Staves, P/O Powell, F/O [indecipherable name].
[page break]
[inserted] D/TELEGRAPH. 1/10/91 [/inserted]
Dresden protest over ‘Bomber’ statue
By Robin Gedye in Bonn and Jenny Rees
DRESDEN’S Lord Mayor appealed to the British Ambassador to Germany yesterday to press for the scrapping of plans to erect a statue in London of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who masterminded wartime air raids.
Officials in other German cities which suffered bomb damage have also protested at plans to put up the statue in the Strand next year.
A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said it had “no position” on the honouring of a man known in Germany as “Butcher Harris”, and did not wish to become involved.
Herr Herbert Wagner, Lord Mayor of Dresden, said the memorial did not belong in the Europe of 1992. “I do not wish to mitigate Germany’s war guilt, but Harris’s carpet bombing against civilians was not militarily justifiable.”
He said that on Sir Arthur’s orders, Dresden, Würzburg and Pforzheim, bombed in the last months of the war, were turned into “skeleton cities”, with the loss of 35,000 lives over two nights in Dresden, and 20,000 lives over several days in Pforzheim.
A campaign to lobby the British Embassy was started by the mayors of Würzburg and Pforzheim, who appealed in letters to Sir Christopher Mallaby, British Ambassador, to help stop the erection of the memorial “in the name of countless victims of bombing attacks against civilians”.
The £100,000 statue was commissioned by the Bomber Command Association, and the money raised by its members and those of the RAF Air Crew Association. It is to be unveiled by the Queen Mother next May and will stand opposite an existing statue of Lord Dowding, wartime commander of Fighter Command, outside the RAF Church, St Clement Danes.
Group Captain Ken Batchelor, 77, chairman of the Bomber Command Association, which has 7,500 members, said yesterday: “Quite frankly, why does Dresden think they were the only people bombed during the war? What about our own towns and cities, such as Coventry?
“It is sheer ignorance to suggest that this is honouring retaliation. We are not erecting this statue to glorify war, for the members of our association are the ones who never want to see war again.
“It was not a question of retaliation. The Ruhr was full of armaments and industry from one end to another, and we had to bomb urban areas, with Dresden as the focal point, to destroy the German war potential. We were fighting for our survival.”
Gp Capt Batchelor said the erection of a statue of Sir Arthur was “long overdue”. It was intended to be a memorial to the 55,000 air crew of Bomber Command who died.
He added: “We regarded Sir Arthur as a forthright commander, who was carrying out the orders of the British War Cabinet. We want this memorial to him because the post-war government denied him his peerage, and we were denied our campaign medal.”
[Photograph]
Sir Arthur: Germans called him ‘Butcher’
[New article]
“General Sir Arthur Harris”
Dear Sir, 6th April 1982
I would like to say what should have been said many years ago. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me courage and hope after we had suffered the devastation of the ‘May Blitz. Bombed out, no light or water in the house, windows broken, shelter useless, our family evacuated to Blackpool but there was no telephone out of Liverpool, no postal service and no direct railways working. We went to the Cinema and heard you on the newsreel giving your sympathy and promising that what we had had would be as a little zephyr to that which you would inflict on the enemy. The tears rained down my face and my despair vanished, I said to my husband, at least someone cares. After that my courage never flagged. Mr. Churchill’s blood, sweat and tears didn’t affect me, but your words I have never forgotten although I am now 83 and my husband 84. Thank you once again.
E. A. McKnight (Mrs.) Great Crosby.”
Ed: Such was the boost to civilian morale in the darker, hopeless days of war.
[New article]
[inserted] DAILY TELEGRAPH. 2/10/91 [/inserted]
Remembering Bomber H
THE PLAN to erect a statue of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, wartime C-in-C of Bomber Command, outside the RAF church of St Clement Danes in the Strand has incurred the wrath of the Lord Mayor of Dresden, who has appealed for the project to be abandoned. Herr Herbert Wagner’s view may command some sympathy even in Britain, among those who today regard the RAF’s strategic bombing offensive against Germany as a serious blunder or even a war crime. Yet it would be ironic if Sir Arthur, by any standards a notable wartime commander, were to be denied a public memorial, while Whitehall, for instance, remains dominated by equestrian statues of Earl Haig and that 19th-century military booby the Duke of Cambridge.
Sir Arthur was not the architect of “area” bombing. Churchill, Lord Cherwell, Sir Charles Portal and others embarked upon the air offensive when Britain possessed no other means of carrying the war to Germany. Sir Arthur was appointed to execute the policy, and did so with extraordinary, even obsessive, single-mindedness. If his superiors judged that he exceeded his orders, it was in their power, and was indeed their duty, to remove him. This was never done.
Although Dresden featured prominently on Sir Arthur’s target lists in February 1945, it was Churchill, rather than Bomber Command’s C-in-C, whose concern to impress the Russians before Yalta precipitated the devastating attack.
Just as killing British civilians in the Blitz did not break Britain’s will to fight, so killing or “de-housing” far larger numbers of German civilians did not break that of Germany. But it is not good enough, half a century later, to seek to equate, for example, the mass murders in Germany’s concentration camps with the RAF’s bombing of Germany. There was no doubt then, and there remains none today, of the strategic military purpose that underpinned the bomber offensive, however uncertain its achievement.
Sir Arthur was tough, even ruthless; but also a formidable leader of great forces. He passionately believed that his men’s efforts were bringing Germany to defeat. He deserves to be commemorated, not least for the satisfaction of his surviving aircrew, who revere his memory, and whose courage and sacrifice were beyond praise. The Lord Mayor of Dresden may be forgiven for uttering sentiments that might be expected of his office. But he should not be heeded.
[New article]
[inserted] 2/10/91 [/inserted] Bombing was justified
SIR – While appreciating the feelings that have prompted the Lord Mayor of Dresden to call for the plans for a statue of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris to be dropped (report, Oct. 1), I am afraid that he does not realise the context in which the bombing offensive was launched.
The decision was a political one made by the War Cabinet and backed by the Americans. Without it there would have been no re-entry into Europe in 1944.
Back in 1940 Europe was conquered. The British Army had been defeated. The Royal Navy could only just keep the crucial Atlantic lifeline open; it could not conceivably blockade Germany which, with access to all the raw materials he wanted, Hitler was building into an impregnable fortress. The war had to be carried to Germany, and the bomber was the only means available.
As a result of the vast quantity of resources and manpower diverted to the defence of Germany – 900,000 men for searchlights and ack-ack alone – it acted as the equivalent of a second front from 1941. Most important of all, together with the U.S. 8th Air Force, the bomber offensive forced the Luftwaffe to come up and fight – leading to its final defeat.
When the Normandy invasion began, there was not one German aircraft over the beach. Had their bombers been there, I doubt it would have succeeded.
Of the 55 million lives lost in the war, 35 million were those of civilians. The bomber offensive accounted for about 500,000. Every day that the war lasted, an average of 10,000 innocent men, women and children were exterminated by Hitler in his concentration camps; and as it progressed, that extermination programme accelerated, a very different story from Dunkirk.
Inevitably, in a life and death struggle of such magnitude, mistakes are made. One of them, in my view, was Dresden. But it was a mistake made in good faith, because it was based on intelligence reports, some of which proved to be false. The city lay only 50 miles from the advancing Russians, who had asked for maximum bombing along the whole line.
At the same time the appearance of the German jet Me.262 signalled to us that the tide of the air war could be turned if it were produced in large numbers, and brought an added sense of urgency to finish the war as quickly as possible, in Germany’s true interests as well as that of the Allies. Had we not returned to Europe in June 1944, I shudder to think what would have been.
All the same, everyone in Bomber Command regrets the mistakes and wishes, to this day, that some other means of prising open Fortress Europe could have been found.
Group Captain the Lord CHESHIRE
London SW1
[inserted] D/TELEGRAPH [/inserted]
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
Four Newspaper cuttings
Description
An account of the resource
Item 1 refers to a protest from Dresden over a statue to Sir Arthur Harris.
Item 2 is a letter thanking Sir Arthur Harris from a couple bombed out of their home in Liverpool.
Item 3 is an article titled 'Remembering Bomber H'.
Item 4 is a letter from Group Captain Lord Cheshire arguing the bombing was justified.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Daily Telegraph
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1991-10
Format
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Four newspaper cuttings on an album page
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
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PThomasAF20050044
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
British Army
Royal Navy
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany--Dresden
Ukraine--I︠A︡lta
Great Britain
England--Liverpool
England--Coventry
Germany
Ukraine
England--Lancashire
England--Warwickshire
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1991-10
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Anne-Marie Watson
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
searchlight
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1875/46438/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v070002-0002.mp3
5fa6f78c70bdc7d65611eb16871b5784
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
Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. Interviews with veterans recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.<br /><br />Interview with Bertie Salvage <br />Three part interview with Dougie Marsh <br />Interview with Terry Hodson <br />Interview with Stan Waite Interview with John Langston<br />Interview with Nelson Nix <br />Two part interview with Bob Panton <br />Interview with Basil Fish <br />Interview with Ernest Groeger <br />Interview with Wilf Keyte <br />Interview with Reginald John Herring <br />Interview with Kathleen Reid <br />Interview with Allan Holmes <br />Interview with John Tomlinson <br />Interview with Cliff Thorpe and Roy Smith <br />Interview with Peter Scoley <br />Interview with Kenneth Ivan Duddell <br />Interview with Christopher Francis Allison <br />Interview with Bernard Bell <br />Interview with George Arthur Bell <br />Interview with George William Taplin <br />Interview with Richard Moore <br />Interview with Kenneth Edgar Neve <br />Interview with Annie Mary Blood <br />Interview with Dennis Brader <br />Interview with Les Stedman <br />Interview with Anthony Edward Mason <br />Interview with Anne Morgan Rose Harcombe<br />
<p>The following interviews have been moved to the relevant collections.<br /><span>Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46454">Kathleen Reid</a></span><br />Interview with Wing Commander <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46467">Kenneth Cook DFC</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46456">Colin Cole</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/46464">Charles Avey</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46470">John Bell</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46459">Les Rutherford</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46460">James Douglas Hudson</a></p>
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Interviewer: Ken, good afternoon. I’d like first of all could you please give us your full name and your date of birth.
KN: Kenneth Edgar Neve, and that’s N E V E. I was born on the 30th September 1925.
Interviewer: Ok. Thanks very much. And what I’d like to do to start talking about your military career really we’ll go right back to the very beginning and talk about the time that you were involved with the LDV and you were a runner I believe.
KN: I was a runner for my father who was made captain of the Home Guard. He worked with a big factory making aircraft instruments and when war was declared they said well you have, we’ve got four or five hundred people working in the factory and we’re going to give, the LDV will be that unit there. That was the first one in Basingstoke and so he would, because he retired from the, from the Army in 1936 so when was [pause] war was declared 1939. So, war was declared and they said, ‘Well, crikey you’re the guy to do the job ex-colour sergeant major, you know.’ He was retired. So they employed him as captain of the LDV which became the Home Guard of course. And because I was brought up in the Army obviously and he said, ‘Well, look —’ he said, I said, ‘Can I join dad?’ He said, ‘Well, we’ll have to call you the captain’s runner.’ They gave me little khaki things and I used to be in there throwing grenades and all this stuff [laughs] And so anyway after, after a while I decided to join the Cadet Force so they made me a sergeant believe it or not. And then eventually I thought well it’s time now to decide whether I’m going to wait until eighteen to be called up or should I do it on the, on my seventeenth. So I did that and I don’t know how far you want me to go but when I went to Reading to say yes I’m fourteen and the guy says, ‘Well, what service do you want to go?’ Army, Navy, Air Force whatever. I said, ‘Well, I really wanted something with, with ships. I thought, I thought that would be rather nice.’ He said, ‘Well, do you mean the Royal Navy? I said, ‘No. No.’ I said, ‘It’s to do with aircraft as well.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You mean the Fleet Air Arm?’ So I said, ‘Yes, that’s fine.’ So anyway, I went to RAF Henlow for six months and qualified as an engineer and I just came back to my first unit which was, which is now the, which is now the first unit of the Fleet Air Arm was where the Southampton Airport is now and we had Walruses and all sorts of things, you know.
Interviewer: That was at HMS Raven.
KN: That was my first one there look.
Interviewer: Ok. Yeah.
KN: And so anyway, so I suppose I’d only, I was not far from Basingstoke you see and so I used to get home every other weekend. That was fine. So all of a sudden I was just going to breakfast one morning and there was a notice board which said I had to go and report and they said, ‘Oh,’ He said, ‘Yes. Well, they’ve got problems with the RAF. They haven’t got enough people with your qualifications and, —' and he said, ‘We’re going to loan you to them.’ The next thing I know 190 Squadron’s Stirlings. Can you imagine looking at Stirlings after one of those bloody things?
Interviewer: Must have been massive. Was it? Yeah.
KN: I mean the main wheels were over six, six foot six high they were.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: And so because I used to wander around there and nobody said, ‘Who are you and what are you doing?’ You know. I’ve got a Navy uniform by the way you see. So eventually I joined one of the units there and, and of course then I was there until after D-Day. I stayed with them all that time.
Interviewer: So, what did, what were your duties then on the squadron?
KN: Just aeronautical engineer. That’s all.
Interviewer: Ground or air?
KN: Ground. Ground. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you just, so it was general servicing and —
KN: Yeah. Well, because I’d done quite a big study and I was, I used to do the electrics, instruments, oxygen all those sorts of things. So that was my job.
Interviewer: Yeah. Did you find it a good aircraft to work on?
KN: Fantastic aeroplane. Yeah. Whenever I could get a ride in it I did you know. I’d had probably dozens of rides. We were testing after major work in the, you know. I’m not saying the right word.
Interviewer: Servicing.
KN: Yeah. Yeah. When they did ground, the servicing up to a certain degree you ought to have a test flight afterwards and I was always on that you see and so any way one, and I enjoyed it. It was wonderful life and, and then of course we painted all the white lines and three whites on each on the fuselage all ready for and there was all these soldiers coming on the day that we left with all the parachutists and —
Interviewer: This was ready for the D-Day invasion.
KN: Gliders and everything like that. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: On the day it happened and there were people were killing themselves. I don’t know whether you know this but all these Army guys here they couldn’t face it and I think there were two or three committed suicide.
Interviewer: Really?
KN: Waiting to be boarding on to the aircraft which I just couldn’t —
Interviewer: The fear of the unknown.
KN: Couldn’t take it. I was only a young lad really still you know.
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s incredible.
KN: It was.
Interviewer: That’s the first I’ve ever heard of that.
KN: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s amazing. I mean obviously then the Stirling had been employed on bomber duties but obviously when you saw it it was towing the gliders etcetera. Is that –
KN: Well, that was just before D-Day.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: Oh no. We were, we were doing normal bombing runs.
Interviewer: Normal bombing runs.
KN: And all sorts of things you know. Yes.
Interviewer: So did the squadron lose a lot of aircraft? Or –
KN: Well, fortunately not. I had two aircraft to look after and, with 190 and we never had any problems at all. We had the odd person who was shot up, the navigator or gunner you see and we used to have, well I didn’t have to do it but it was horrible inside, you know.
Interviewer: Clearing the mess. Yeah.
KN: And my, my job also was on the bomb release down in the front there you see. So I used to make sure everything when it was all loaded that it was ready for dropping you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: I just loved it.
Interviewer: From what I hear you know I mean you must have had a great affinity with the air crew then. The planes you were on.
KN: Oh yeah. Oh, yes.
Interviewer: Were they a young happy bunch?
KN: Yeah. Well, I was sort of left alone because I was this old man out you know. Who is this guy? You know. He must be something special the job he’s doing here you know. He’s dressed different and, oh yeah.
Interviewer: Did you live in a billet then on the station?
KN: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: How was that then? The after hours. What did you do in the NAAFI etcetera?
KN: Not a lot. Generally just a NAAFI you know and then of course the old wagons used to come around with the coffee and tea and —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: Various things. Yeah. It was fantastic. And, and of course after that once D-Day took place we carried on. We were dropping people all over left, right and centre. And then eventually the senior, well from Daedalus in Lee on Solent was their headquarters.
Interviewer: Right.
KN: For the Fleet Air Arm. And this guy used to come up every so often. He was a flight lieutenant sort of type you know and he said to me, he said, ‘I think you’ve had enough here haven’t you?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve enjoyed it.’ If you know what I mean. So he said, ‘I want you, we’ve now got a Technical College.’ The Fleet Air Arm. Which we never had before. That’s why I had to do my initial training at RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire. Six months was the first one I did. So they wanted me so I did extra, a lot of extra study and don’t forget I left school at fourteen.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: And so I went to the new college and I did ever so well and so when I, it was time for me to go I joined BOAC which was at Aldermaston. What was an aircraft unit. And so I worked for them and then they sent me to America and Canada to study the new aircraft that was going to come over for London Airport when it was made. It wasn’t even made then you see.
Interviewer: Right. What was the name of this aircraft?
KN: Well, there were, there were two or three kinds but they were all American. All American. Nothing English at all. I’m sorry I can’t remember that now.
Interviewer: That’s ok.
KN: I mean, so after, after that I decided, I went to Montreal for a year to study. When I came back we were at Bristol and our aircraft was in in Bristol and they said I’d done such a good job over there and we were going to do this. Well, it never happened because there were seniors coming in from all over the place to Bristol getting ready to go to London Airport. So I didn’t have quite the seniority that they’d got and eventually, so I said well to heck with this because I said, ‘Look, this guy in Montreal said I’m going to send you a good report. You’ve done ever so well.’ He said, ‘Well we can’t because there’s people been in longer than you have and yet you are expecting me to teach them what to do, you know with these new American aircraft.’ So, one thing led, so I happened to go home at the weekend and I went and got “Flight” magazine and there was a firm wanted somebody like me, aeronautical engineer at Blackbushe near Camberley. And I did about four or five years there. They made me, I was in charge of five units there you know. Radio, electrics, this, that, and the other thing and they said, and all of a sudden somebody said to me, ‘The Canadian Air Force are looking for people you know.’ So it was in West London so I wrote to them and I got an interview and all the rest of it. I mean the thing that we, they couldn’t believe was because I did have all these wonderful things. I’d done it. Studied well and I got. So this, what was it? He was quite a senior officer and he sat down. He said, ‘Right, Mr Neve,’ he said, ‘We’re quite amazed at how much you’ve done in the aeronautical world.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve had the opportunities and I’ve enjoyed it.’ So he said, ‘Right, let’s just take some, I’ve got to send all this off to Ottawa before to say yes we’d like to have you and, of course [laughs] I’d like to tell you this story if you don’t mind. He said, he said to me, ‘Ok. Right. Now, let’s talk about education, shall we? University?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘What? Technical College or – ?’ ‘No. No.’ He said, ‘Well, where did you finish up?’ I said, ‘At Fairfield School, Basingstoke. Fourteen.’ He said, ‘You’re having a joke, aren’t you?’ You know. Sort of thing. I said, ‘No. I left 1939 at Basingstoke.’ And so he said, ‘No. I can’t, I can’t send this to Ottawa. It’s ridiculous. They might think oh he’s done ever so well and he left school when he was fourteen.’ That is grade five or something in Canada. You know whatever it was you know. So, he said, so he said to me, he said, ‘Is there any way you can get somebody to write from your school to say that, ‘Yes, you did attend,’ at least, you know. So, Mr Pill, I was in the top grade when I left at fourteen and his name was Mr Pill. He was a Yorkshireman and he was brilliant with bits of chalk. Right between the eyes if you were nodding off you know. So, I wrote a letter to Fairfield School and he’d left there and he’d gone to another big school. But eventually I had a letter to say, “To whom it may concern. Yes, I would like to confirm —” Da da da and all the rest of it. So I sent it off. It went to Ottawa and they accepted it. The next thing I know I’m four years with Sabre aircraft in Germany.
Interviewer: Wow.
KN: Without getting to —
Interviewer: They posted you straight to Germany on a fighter squadron.
KN: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah. That must have been marvellous because the Sabre obviously was just for the enemy —
KN: Well, we had more prangs than whatever.
Interviewer: Really? A lot of crashes.
KN: Terrible. Their engines used to suck out you know.
Interviewer: Big problem.
KN: If you went down too low. If you didn’t keep up a certain speed when they, if they went off looking for people or looking for an object or all the rest of it and they used to get and then the engines just used to go, ‘pfft’ like that. And we lost so many.
Interviewer: Really?
KN: Believe me. So after, after four years they sent me to Prince Edward Island, Summerside and had a wonderful time there, you know. I enjoyed every bit. That was my aircraft there.
Interviewer: That’s a, is that some sort of an Electra or [pause] it looks like an Electra.
KN: No. It’s an Argus that one is.
Interviewer: Oh, is it Argus we’re looking at? We’re looking at a photograph now of a Canadian four piston engine —
KN: Yeah.
Interviewer: Obviously, a Maritimes because it’s got a boom tail on it.
KN: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: Well, what, you see this what our job was it was equipped in the front there with looking for submarines which we should have had during the war. We used to fly six foot over the water. I used to go on all the crews because I used to, well there were various reasons I did and because I was crew chief. They made me crew chief you see. So we used to leave, we used to leave Summerside, go right down the east coast of America right down to the bottom then we’d cross over and we were working with the RAF. They had submarines and we had to find them and if the weather was right we were only so many, thirty feet above the water and this was a fantastic machine. Anything within twenty miles it would pick it up. Anything metal. So then we’d go across to South Africa and we would play. We’d do the same thing for other units and we’d go all the way up through Europe and we ended up in Iceland and that sort of thing. It had thirty five flying hours. We had double crews.
Interviewer: Amazing. I mean that, it’s such a story that’s not been told really about what, what fledgling Air Forces after the war did. I mean the Canadian Air Force obviously as you know was quite small at the outbreak of war and was a huge Air Force when they finished.
KN: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Interviewer: And yeah. That’s wonderful to recount those stories. I mean I’d just like to think of you, looking back really just to go back to we talked about you ended up working on world breaking machines really but you started off there working on what was affectionately known as the old Stringbags when you first started.
KN: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Did you feel working on that aircraft you had a particular affinity for working with such an old aircraft? Was it something special?
KN: If I tell you something it can be taken off of there? So, I’m working on one of the old Swordfish you see and I’m right down and I’m looking at all the instrument panels behind the flying panel alright. There was something wrong with this one. It wasn’t working. So I worked on that and got it right. So I’m there laying down here and I’m doing all this with just a torch you know. And the next thing I [laughs] a pair of legs come in the cockpit and all I’m looking at is a pair of legs and some knickers. [laughs] So, I said, ‘Who the hell is that?’ You know, and she says, ‘Oh, it’s me.’ Because they were having girls then in the Fleet Air Arm, you know learning instruments and various other things. So I thought that was rather different.
Interviewer: Well, that will always stay with you won’t it forever. Yeah. A lovely little story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Ken thank you ever so much for just recounting some of the tales there. I mean, I think you can honestly say that your time in the military was certainly and working with the military was certainly varied. To think that you started off before the war really and finished up as part of a NATO operation in Germany.
KN: I’d like you, when you, when you decide you’ve had enough I’ve got something I’d like to show you up behind you. Let me just —
Interviewer: Ok. Alright. Well, you know that’s that done but thank you ever so much as I say and we look forward to putting this on to our Archive and thank you very much, Ken.
KN: I had a wonderful war and you know I, everything just I never worried. I mean the house next door at Beaconsfield Road in Basingstoke you know all those flare bombs they used to drop there? Well, they burned out next door to me. There was a bomber, a bomb, a bomb had dropped, a German bomb had dropped one three hundred mile, three hundred yards away and that was a sort of a hospital thing for women you know I think it was and all. And I used to I mean at fourteen I used to go out at night with all the lads because all the big [pause] you know when there was a, when the siren went we knew there were aircraft coming over from the coast and that and of course we used to have all the big lights, the searchlights and we used to go up by the church if not the school where I went was not far up the road and I’d go and I would be with all the men all the time. It was just something to do you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: And we’d pick it up. Not we but where they were doing it they’d pick it up and then of course then would drop and they would release sort of bombs going left, right and centre and it didn’t bother me one little bit.
Interviewer: You’ve no fear at that age.
KN: No.
Interviewer: Yeah. It’s amazing.
KN: It was excitement.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KN: It was lovely.
Interviewer: Well, thank you so much for recounting that.
KN: Well —
Interviewer: And I hope you’ve enjoyed telling the story to us.
KN: Yeah. Ok.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Kenneth Edgar Neve
1004,1005-Neve, Kenneth Edgar
Identifier
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v07
Coverage
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Royal Navy
Royal Air Force
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eng
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Sound
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00:19:49 audio recording
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary. Allocated C Campbell
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Dave Harrigan
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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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.
Description
An account of the resource
Ken Neve served as a runner with the Home Guard before joining the Fleet Air Arm. He was posted to RAF Henlow as an engineer.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England-Hampshire
Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean--Solent Channel
Contributor
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Julie Williams
ground personnel
Home Guard
Swordfish
Walrus
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1875/46455/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v230002.mp3
523ce88877fb13518712fa48add88342
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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Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-19
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. Interviews with veterans recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.<br /><br />Interview with Bertie Salvage <br />Three part interview with Dougie Marsh <br />Interview with Terry Hodson <br />Interview with Stan Waite Interview with John Langston<br />Interview with Nelson Nix <br />Two part interview with Bob Panton <br />Interview with Basil Fish <br />Interview with Ernest Groeger <br />Interview with Wilf Keyte <br />Interview with Reginald John Herring <br />Interview with Kathleen Reid <br />Interview with Allan Holmes <br />Interview with John Tomlinson <br />Interview with Cliff Thorpe and Roy Smith <br />Interview with Peter Scoley <br />Interview with Kenneth Ivan Duddell <br />Interview with Christopher Francis Allison <br />Interview with Bernard Bell <br />Interview with George Arthur Bell <br />Interview with George William Taplin <br />Interview with Richard Moore <br />Interview with Kenneth Edgar Neve <br />Interview with Annie Mary Blood <br />Interview with Dennis Brader <br />Interview with Les Stedman <br />Interview with Anthony Edward Mason <br />Interview with Anne Morgan Rose Harcombe<br />
<p>The following interviews have been moved to the relevant collections.<br /><span>Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46454">Kathleen Reid</a></span><br />Interview with Wing Commander <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46467">Kenneth Cook DFC</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46456">Colin Cole</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/46464">Charles Avey</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46470">John Bell</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46459">Les Rutherford</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46460">James Douglas Hudson</a></p>
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RH: Right.
Interviewer: Hello there. Just for the record could you just please give your full name and date of birth.
RH: Yeah. My name is Reginald John Herring and I was born on the 25th of the 4th 1930.
Interviewer: Ok. Thanks. My name is Dave Harrigan and I’ll be just carrying out the interview with Reg. Reg, then, well let’s just start really before the war obviously.
RH: Yeah.
Interviewer: Just to talk a bit about your family background where you came from. Family history if you like and then we’ll just proceed through.
RH: Yes. Well, briefly I was born in Hackney. I had three brothers, three sisters and we moved from Hackney, they were going to pull the house down. I should say also at this point that my mother had died when I was six years old. So at that point we moved from Hackney to a place called Becontree. At that point my elder sister was married and away from the home. My second sister was away living in Norfolk with her friend. Her boyfriend. My third sister was engaged to be married and my eldest brother was already married. My second eldest brother had moved away to Wolverhampton to get married and I was left with my father and my elder brother Joe who was four years older than I. At this point it was during the beginning of the Phoney War. One thing that is vivid which I made a note of there is the barrage balloon incident at Whipps Cross Hospital, near Bridge Road where they hoisted a barrage balloon. We were all excited about it and so forth. Then the Phoney War went on. In the meantime, apparently I understand now that we were not at that time entitled to an Anderson shelter. We didn’t qualify for one so dad decided to build one and we were banned from going to the end of the garden until he’d finished it. This project involved the half rolls of mangles, wooden mangles and I don’t know if you can remember these wooden mangles or not but they are split into two half-moon sections. So we had, I don’t know how many of these mangle rolls delivered or dad brought them along but we were not allowed to go down there until he’d finished. And the great day come. It was a Sunday. I remember it being a Sunday and off we went down the end of the garden to see this wonderful shelter that he’d built which looked like Fort Knox with all the wood and as I say the dirt and a couple of little shelves inside for two candles apparently. Well, we said, ‘Oh yes, this is fine dad. Great.’ You know, ‘This is marvellous.’ Well, the following week it rained like hell and the whole lot collapsed. So we still [laughs] we still were not entitled to an Anderson shelter but by this time the six months had gone by and the war had actually started so we were evacuated, Joe and I, my brother. And the first evacuation was to Sizewell on the east coast. We weren’t there terribly long, about a month or so when for no reason we were aware of we suddenly got moved from there over to a place called Hockley Heath, twelve miles west of Birmingham. It wasn’t very pleasant. It was a detached home. Sorry, a semi-detached home with a Welsh family lived on one side and the people we were living with was, the husband was Welsh and the wife was English. The husband was a very stern man and we didn’t very much care for him at all. But by this time the time was creeping on. We had the usual things a child would have to do. Chopping wood and my particular job was to keep this water container full of water because we had no gas. We had no electricity. The lighting was an oil lamp that came down from the ceiling and it was, and the battery powered radio [pause] I’m going a bit too fast here. By this time Joe was now fourteen and he disappeared. He was taken back home. Apparently because he was fourteen and dad said he was ready for work so he couldn’t stay there. So I was now left on my own with this family. And the two children next door didn’t like me at all. I was a London boy. They didn’t like me. Anyway, time went on and as I say my duty was to fill this water bin up and also chop the wood. Keep the woodshed full of chopped wood. So this went on. If I wanted to I couldn’t, I was never allowed into the best room. We had a kitchen sort of with a wood burning stove in the corner but the best room I never went, actually went in. I went through it to go up the stairs to go to bed but I was never allowed to sit in it. So if they had their battery powered radio on with accumulators obviously I could listen to it through the wall. So I was quite content to listen to the radio through the wall until it was time for me to have to go to bed. And then we had a bus that took us to school. We had an incident on the bus. Now, again I was a bit of an outcast being a London boy. I wasn’t a local lad. I didn’t mix too well so I used to sit at the back of the bus and I always stayed there. And there was an incident with a malicious, wrong word, a girl was molested down at the front end. The bus driver by the way had a sort of a metal screen around the back. I can’t recall it exactly but he could hear the noise but couldn’t see what was going on and he wouldn’t stop the bus. I don’t know for what reason until we got to the school where there was a big kerfuffle and we was all taken into this room and interviewed. Nothing was said. We were all interviewed and the following day the bus turned up again as usual for school and there was this lady accompanying the students on the bus. So we all go to school again and again we get interviewed. Come back home and I can remember the woman saying to me, ‘You’d better go straight to bed because I don’t know what he is going to do when he comes home.’ Which frightened the life out of me. So now I went up to bed and shed a few tears. And then I heard a knock at the door and the voice I heard was, ‘Well, I think it’s better to leave him alone for tonight.’ So with that I didn’t hear any more and this lady went away. There were no telephones by the way. There was no way of communication other than by physically knocking on the door. Who this lady was I don’t know to this day. The following morning thinking I was going back to school again I started to get dressed and the lady came up and said, ‘I want you to put on your best clothes.’ She said, ‘We’re going to the Bullring at Birmingham,’ she said. ‘Apparently,’ she said, ‘Whatever was said about you was wrong and this is a present.’ So off we go to the Bullring at Birmingham. I’m wondering what I’m going to get as a present and we go into this ironmonger’s shop. Came out with a three quarter size axe. And then it dawned on me what the present was. It was for me for the wood from the shed. So anyway, I was out in the woods, the two lads next door and myself and looking for broken trees and sort of to cut up and they decided they wanted to have a go at me with birch branches. So they started battering me with these birch branches so I lost my temper and chased them back home with the axe. Shortly after that I got called back to London. Dad called me back to London and I then went on to Canterbury Road School and I was there for about two years I think. At that time my sister Maud who lived in Canterbury Road and her husband said to my father, ‘Well, we can give you one room for you and Reg to live in,’ you know, ‘For the time being.’ So dad and I lived in this one room. My sister had never done anything to it. Never cleaned it or anything like that. She had one child at this point and time went on. We had a couple of air raids then one in particular where we’d, we had a Morris shelter or a Morrison shelter which as you know is still famous with children in the second room at the front and the siren had gone and things were getting a bit noisy. So I grabbed the young boy, Terry, the youngest son and got him in to the shelter and my sister was just following us in when this bomb dropped. The next thing I know is that I’ve managed to pull the grill up. I remember getting the grill up. The grill was a framed mesh that you could drop down. I remember pulling it up and then it was all rubble then. Or dirt and rubble, noise, darkness. And then we heard the voices. ‘Are you ok? Are you ok?’ And these hands came in and started pulling the rubble and dust away and brought the grill down and as I made a note in there I said the faces, everybody’s face was white and grey. We all looked the same you know [laughs] It was quite weird. We got out at that particular point and then disaster struck. My sister had come into the room which she didn’t normally do and she’d found bed bugs under the bedframe. Now, the bed frame was the old-fashioned frame of two steel, one forward, one aft. Sorry one frame at one and one into the other and the bed itself was in a silver frame with a mesh on it dropped into it and it was in those joints where these bed bugs were coming. Now, my sister obviously told her husband who was a captain in the Home Guard and I could hear him having strong words with my father and the next thing I knew was we’d moved. We moved to one room in Leslie Road in Clapton. That home is still there. I’ve got it on the internet. So we got this one room. I’m now, what? Fourteen? About fifteen. Fifteen, sixteen years old. Dad had a girlfriend, a lady friend and when we moved there she said, ‘Well, I’ll take Reg’s ration coupons and his clothing coupons and I’ll see that he gets —' you know. Well, that didn’t happen. I never saw them again and I never got any clothes from her or anything else. Dad never stayed there. I say he never stayed there that’s wrong but he very infrequently stayed there so I’m more or less left on my own in this room. And the situation was that we had, there was a bathroom there but they’d boarded the bath over and left a bowl, a washing up bowl and there was a bucket with a lid on it that you could shut, put over the bucket and that was our toilet. And I used to have to take this bucket, it was terribly embarrassing for me at that age to have to take this bucket down the stairs, through their kitchen and empty it into their toilet at the bottom of the stairs and then wash it out and bring it back up again. And then horror of horrors I discovered more bed bugs. So I went out and bought myself a couple of boxes of Swan Vestas and I rolled the mattress back as far as I could get it at one end and I literally sat there burning these bed bugs. One in each corner and I moved the mattress back and burned the other corner. And when I saw my father I said, ‘I can’t stay here any longer. You know, I’ve had enough.’ So I went and joined the Navy. So I must have been seventeen and a half then. So that’s basically the, that part of the history. The rest of it is Naval.
Interviewer: I think it would be interesting just to so what was the actual date that you joined the Navy?
RH: I joined on the 1st of January 1948.
Interviewer: Right. So obviously after training there you just, you were part of the post-war fleet really.
RH: Yes, I mean I don’t know if you want the movements. I mean it was quite a quick.
Interviewer: Yeah. Please. Yeah.
RH: I went to Royal Arthur which I now understand was Butlins at the time or before the war. I was there for six weeks and then I was transferred then to HMS Anson which was a thirty five thousand ton battleship for a further six weeks which I then got myself into serious trouble. I knew nothing about the Navy like most of the new lads. Nothing. So the routine of having to change and get dressed into another part of the uniform, working rig they called it and be up on deck in twenty five minutes was beyond my capabilities. I couldn’t shower and, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shower, get changed, get up on deck which was five decks below the main deck, right [laughs] to be on parade in time. And of course, having a shower in stone cold and it wasn’t fresh water it was salt water I couldn’t stop myself I had to urinate in the shower and one of the old ABs, able seaman who had seen the last war and the war before that, you know collared me. Put me in the rattle on charge. So I was then charged and my punishment was to be up on deck at 5 o’clock in the morning with two other lads who were also under punishment and we had a hundred weight of potatoes and we had to peel them by 7 o’clock.
Interviewer: By hand.
RH: That was part of the punishment. The other part of the punishment was jumping over six inch anchor cable with a rifle over your head. You know, to hop over the cable and hop right around the [unclear] front end, back over the starboard and port anchor and come back again and then hold the rifle out at arm’s length for thirty seconds. And the, what do you call it? The sight would make a dent in your arm. Actually bruise it, you know. We’d done this for seven days I think it was on the trot. It was all good fun.
Interviewer: So once you’d been indoctrinated then obviously we talked a bit about how the Korean war broke out. Would you like to mention that a little bit?
RH: Yes. That was quite quick for me. Theres a routine in the Navy that you were obliged to look at the notice board every morning. That’s the first priority. The reason for that is to see if you’ve been drafted. You’re being sent somewhere else. So I was in, hang on I’m in advance of myself. Yeah. Prior to that I was on bomb and mine wreck dispersal. Do you want that bit or shall we just move to the —
Interviewer: We’ll move onto the thing. Yeah.
RH: Yeah. Yeah, I was on HMS Tyrie, which was a trawler. There’s a photograph of it there. A converted trawler for wreck dispersal and we blew up wrecks on the east coast. Big [unclear] they were quite large [blows] because we used to use pairs of five hundred weight charges tied together. Take them out and you’d have two depending on the size of the wreck you’d have probably two on one side of the side of the boat, two on the other side of the boat. Not the ship. The sea boat. Right. You would have previously located that wreck with ASDIC, now called Sonar and you’d drop a marker buoy on it. So the following day you’d come back ready to drop your charges down alongside the ship. The idea being that either to blow a trench one side and then blow the ship or the remains of the ship into the trench or take off the superstructure. It had to be at a certain level below high water for the passage of big ships.
Interviewer: Right.
RH: Coming through the Channel. So that was the theory. We’d had a particularly nasty one where we’d lowered the charges and we were ready to blow and I’ve written what happened then. The boat sailed off for about two miles away and the sea boat then had a big reel of cable in it, electrical cable with a chunk of old copper iron plate for the earth and set the detonator charger, you know. And you would go by the buoy marker as to where the charger was obviously. Now, we didn’t realise it. Nobody realised it. Unfortunately, the gunner who was in charge of all this operation had gone sick and was replaced by another gunner who was very very young and unfortunately, no didn’t quite know what was going on. The chief torpedo man told him that it was unwise to set the charge until we’d done our last run and made sure that the buoy hadn’t moved. But he decided we’d carry on. Anyway, we blew the charge and we were too close to it and this three quarter ton reel of, three quarter underweight not a ton went over the side along with the stoker who was in charge of the engine. He got a broken arm, the coxswain got a broken ankle because the rudder came down and whacked him in the leg. So it was panic stations for a while and of course we got the first wave of the blow. So we managed to get the boat in line with it so we’d got bows on to it and took the, took the wave. In the meantime, the ship hurried along at ten noughts, we couldn’t go any faster [laughs] and picked us up. That was the Tyrie. I then went in the depot and went on to bomb and mine disposal and we had to go out to a Grimsby trawler during the night that had picked up a mine in its net. They wouldn’t let it in harbour obviously because of the, and if you could imagine this big net full of fish and stuck inside the fish was a dirty great mine swinging on a davit. So, anyway, we get out there and get aboard and it was an old World War One mine corroded, terribly corroded but in the compartment of the mine itself you’ve got quite a large airspace. You’ve got the main charge but quite a nice airspace and which had got compressed air in it and you’d got the detonator and primer and then the main charge. You’d got a detonator, primer, charge in that order. So the primarily thing is to get the detonator out first. Once you’d got that you were fifty percent safe. So to get to this situation we said to the skipper, ‘Well, you’ll have to lower the mine down on the deck.’ Bearing in mind that with a trawler there was plenty of light so it’s fair, you know. So plenty, so we got the coconut matting and lowered the mine down on the deck. And then we cut them out the trawler net and the skipper was screaming his head off because it was about three hundred pound he said for a new net. So we cut the net and all these fish came pouring out all over the place. You’ve now got a deck full of slippery fish, blood, guts and all the rest of it hanging out and a horrible looking mine sitting there very forlorn, you know [laughs] So anyway fortunately we spotted the detonator so the officer in charge said to me, ‘Alright, Herring.’ I don’t know, they don’t call me Reg. Herring. He said, ‘Put that in your pocket and get up on the bridge.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir. I put it in my pocket and I trundled up to the bridge. The skipper said, ‘What are you doing up here?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been ordered to come up here with the detonator.’ Well as soon as I said that he shot off [unclear] [laughs] So I’m standing there with this detonator in my pocket. I mean it’s dead, it wouldn’t do anything and we got the, got the primer out and declared the mine safe etcetera. So I then got the order to throw that detonator over the side and that was the end of that episode. Another episode was a bit sillier which involved a callout by a man. I don’t know what harbour it was, I don’t know what seaside resort it was but this chappy had previously reported a landmine on the coast. On the, on the foreshore. And the way I understood it was that if a mine was found above high water it belonged to the Army. If it was found below high water it belonged to the Navy. So we got called out and he had previously reported a mine, a landmine and it had been dealt with by the previous squad to me. So I was the new boy in this squad. You know, the do it all lad. So off we go down to wherever it was and I can remember there being a jetty with a load of people on it in the distance. But the chappy said he’d marked it with some stones but unfortunately the tide was coming in so we had to be a bit sharp about it. So we formed up in line abreast and shuffled our way through the surf until we, one of us stumbled across this little pile of stones you see. I say little pile, it was quite a big pile. Right. Ok, we’ve located it. By this time the sea is now coming in urgently so the gunnery officer in charge said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Herring, get out there,’ he said, ‘With the phone.’ We had been a portable handset phone and, ‘Get out there,’ he said, ‘And see if you can feel around it and tell us what the measurements are and so forth, roughly.’ I said, ‘Right.’ So I’ve got my hands in this sand and silt, I’ve got the sea coming up and I can’t swim by the way. I’ve got the sea coming up over my shoulders and I’m saying, ‘Well, I think it’s about two foot wide, sir and about two inches, three inches deep.’ Because as far as you put your hands in the sand it came back again at you. So you know you couldn’t really tell. I said, ‘It’s got a handle in the middle.’ So, I heard a sort of a mumble. ‘Right. Ok. Get a line on it. It’s a mark —’ something or other. I could only just get this in the phones. So I tie the rope around the handle. It’s quite true this is. We all got back to the shore, pull the cord tight on this so-called mine and the four of us got on to the end of it and heaved. Nothing happened. So we commandeered four policemen. Now, by this time the crowd on the jetty had got bigger. They was quite some way away but they had got bigger. And the four policemen and ourselves heaved on this line so the order is two, six, heave. You’ve probably heard it yourself. So anyway, ‘Two, six, heave,’ and we were all flat on our backs and out comes a brightly green painted dustbin lid.
Interviewer: Oh no.
RH: So [laughs] it was just after that I was sent to Korea [laughs]
Interviewer: As a punishment [laughs]
RH: I was causing too much trouble I think.
Interviewer: I agree. That’s marvellous. I mean we’re getting near the end of our time but if its ok with you I’d just take a quick resume really of your service in Korea. You know, what actions that you saw.
RH: Yeah.
Interviewer: The ship you served on.
RH: I was shipped out to Hong Kong and I was supposed to pick up the Cossack at Hong Kong.
Interviewer: That’s HMS Cossack.
RH: Sorry, the HMS Cossack. Yes. But unfortunately, I was unwell and was transferred to the Peak Hospital which is or was right on the top of the mountain at Hong Kong. There was a Navy hospital here. In the meantime, Cossack had sailed off to Japan ready to load up for the Korean action presumably. Anyway, I was sent to the Peak and after about five weeks I came back down again and I joined a New Zealand frigate for passage to Hong Kong, to Seoul. That was what I was told. They were going to Seoul because nobody really knew anything at that point in time and I joined the frigate and we sailed out of Hong Kong and I was, I went down to the Mess desk and the Mess deck was in total silence. And that’s totally unusual for a ship. Everybody was dead quiet. And it turned out that when you were in harbour on a, on a warship they normally put an awning over the quarter deck so the officers can have tea parties and so forth while they are in harbour. But as soon as you leave harbour you take it down and this rating had gone along the guard rail itself to take down part of the awning and slipped and gone underneath the [port screw]. So the journey out to Cossack was quite miserable. It was only about, I don’t know twenty four hours or so. The two ships met in some bay. I don’t know what bay. I don’t know where it was but this frigate joined up with the Cossack and they lowered the boat and I jumped in it. Take the boat over to the Cossack, climbed the ladder, saluted the quarter deck and before I could get down below she was underway and off to clear. At 5 o’clock in the morning we were firing all guns and we had anti-shock lamps and every one blew. We had, what was it? Coconut. Not coconut. Cork. We’d had corks all over the deck head. So apart from the broken glass and everything else we were covered in cork. That was our opening attack [laughs]. The next thing that invaded us was cockroaches. So I mean the ship had never fired it’s guns for a long time. It hadn’t fired them since the, I think it was the Narvik raid. It had been fired with dummy shells, you know blank shells but never the actual cordite shells so of course the kick back was tremendous. It went right through the ship and all the cockroaches thought we’ve had enough of this and fell down like, you know [laughs] So you got a dinner full of cockroaches. What did we do then? Yes, we’d done a lot of secret things that no one would ever admit to. We had a job to go and apparently to pick up this man who was supposed to have been an agent for South Korea and we had twelve bods on board and by God they looked ferocious. They were blacked up. They were bearded. They weren’t Naval people at all and they sat on the torpedo deck during the passage and we’d, we’d hoisted up alongside on the port bow. I remember a dhow, a small dhow. I don’t know the details of it but I found out afterwards that the idea was that they were to be taken to a certain point up on the Korean coast, loaded on the dhow, sailed off and capture this bloke. They caught the bloke because I’ve seen photographs. Well, I’ve seen the bloke himself with a bullet through his head on the upper deck of our ship. That’s another little story. They brought him back but they wouldn’t bring him back alive. They would not bring him on board alive. They insisted that they kill him first and they did. They killed him first and they sailed off on their dhow and that was the end of that. So we had this body in a cabinet, a steel cabinet on the deck which normally held brooms and scrubbers and things like that you know. And this body was temporarily bunged into this cabinet. Right. Now, we have the middle watch coming up. The middle watch is from twelve to 4 o’clock in the morning and the gunnery people are always on standby. They’re not at action stations but they were at what they called cruising stations whereby they can immediately be at action stations if required. So therefore they’ve got to stay by their guns. So there’s one man on the phone, sitting on his guns who has to be on watch all the time. The other three or four of them could lay down on the decking if they wanted to. But they couldn’t leave the deck. They had to be in their positions. Now, apparently, I don’t know who organised it to this day, how it was worked out but the body during the middle watch was taken up and laid alongside the now prone sleeping sailors who were dozing off during the middle watch. When it came to the end of the watch they all sort of woke themselves up and started to come down the deck for their food and which left one bod laying down who nobody knew about. So, ‘Come on Harry, what the hell are you doing.’ You know. ‘Get up. It’s the end of the watch.’ And of course, that’s what they’d done they’d put the body on the deck at the same time [laughs] So —
Interviewer: Military humour never changes does it?
RH: No. No.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RH: But —
Interviewer: Ok. Well, thank you very much Reg. We’ve come to the end of the time now.
RH: Yeah. That’s alright.
Interviewer: It’s a wonderful tale you’ve told there. Very eloquent. Thank you very much and we will be in touch with you. Ok.
RH: Alright. Fine. Yeah.
Dublin Core
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Interview with Reginald John Herring
1014-Herring, Reginald CJ
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v23
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Dave Harrigan
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
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Royal Navy
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eng
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00:36:25 audio recording
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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IBCC Digital Archive
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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.
Description
An account of the resource
Reg Herring was living in London at the start of the war with his father and elder brother. His father built a shelter that collapsed after a heavy rainfall. Reg was evacuated to Sizewell and then to near Birmingham. After the war Reg returned to London and decided to join the Navy where he worked as bomb and mine disposal. He had many interesting years in the Navy including a strange mission to collect the body of a spy.
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Great Britain
England--Birmingham
England--London
England--Sizewell
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Julie Williams
childhood in wartime
evacuation
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10783/PdiPlacitoLH1701.2.jpg
89587cbda0f20671b0c4ea1b85001701
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10783/AdiPlacitoLH170209.1.mp3
bb9d0b5a910e57882406f39298fe61e0
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Title
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di Placito, Lawrence Henry
L H di Placito
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Lawrence 'Lawrie' di Placito (1922, 1646268 Royal Air Force). He served in Air Sea Rescue.
collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-03-09
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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diPlacito, LH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewee is Dav, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Laurie Placito. The interview is taking place at Mr Placito’s home in Line in Surrey on the 9th February 2017. Okay, Laurie so if we could start with you, your parents, where you were born and where you grew up.
LP: Yes, I was born in Chertsey, Surrey 21st 1st 1922. [Ringing sounds] with six boys, three girls and two children already pre-deceased at the age of three and four. I was educated at the Stepgate school, council school, until the age of eleven, where I passed the scholarship for the grammar school, which was Stroves Grammar School, Egham. And from there I left Egham, Stroves in 1936. I took up employment at the post office as a sorting clerk and telegraphist, at the wages of twelve shillings and sixpence per week, of which one shilling and three pence was stopped for unemployment benefit. War came, before the war came in 1939, I joined the sixth battalion of the Surrey Territorial Regiment, with the headquarters in Chertsey, Drillhall Road, Chertsey, which consisted then of two or three times a week marching up and down the roads, drilling and such like. This brought us up to the summer of 1939, before the war had started. I was called in to the office to say that I wouldn’t being going to the summer camp with the rest of the lads, because of my Italian parentage, I therefore, I was sort of thrown out of the Territorial Army. Now this clashed with my position at the Post Office because I was, at the Post Office I signed the Official Secrets Acts; the Postmaster told me, he said they can’t really do that he said, but things what they were, so I just had to accept it. Now in, war started September the 3rd 1939. I saw all my old friends go off before into the summer camp. They had about three weeks summer camp training. At the end of the training war broke out and these lads were shipped out to various places, with the barest of minimum of training, not firing a rifle in, in, anger or shooting, just all theory really. I therefore then, I left the post office and I was employed at a boatyard, building naval vessels in, on the Thames in Chertsey, where I was friendly, very friendly with another young lad. Now we’d talked about this air sea rescue business what we’d heard about, so we both decided to join. We went to Acton town hall to join the RAF Air Sea Rescue. We were called into separate rooms, but before this I didn’t have much knowledge of sea going, but David, my friend, he knew all about the sea and the points of the compass and such like and he genned me up on questions. So eventually we were called into two separate rooms. I was questioned concerning my knowledge of the sea but I explained I didn’t know much but anyway at the end of the day, I was accepted. You know, David came out of his room said how did you get on? He said they won’t accept me he said, because I am a trainee boat builder and I was only a labourer really, so that put paid to that friendship [laugh]. Going back previously to this, to early ’39, I was only seventeen, I went to Surbiton town hall near Kingston, was a recruiting office and I applied to join the Royal Scots Greys Cavalry Regiment, because I was so full of horses. Now the recruiting sergeant told me, he said for one thing you’re too young, you’re not seventeen and a half, he and another reason he said, forget about the horses he said you’ll never see a horse on active service. Well that, this was all previous to me joining up at the town hall. So, I waited quite some time for my application to come through before I was called up, and from there I received me travel warrant, to travel to Cardington in Bedford. Now Cardington was a pre-war airship station, and the airship mast was still in place where the, all the different airships used to moor. At Cardington I was issued with kit, which consisted of uniform, boots, shirts, etc. It was a bit of a hit and miss affair because you lined up in front of a counter and a fellow looked at you and said I think you’re about a size and threw you a coat or jacket hoping it would fit. Anyway, that soon sorted out. We was only there a very short time to draw kit, from there I was posted to Great Yarmouth, RAF Great Yarmouth to do basic military training. Now this consisted of marching up and down the, the roads, rifle drill, shooting, bayonet, with the bayonet with the dummy, you had to charge at the dummy with the bayonet. Now what that meant for me being an air sea rescuer [chuckle] I never, would never know., This was a very, quite basic training, but it consisted of assault courses, as I say, rifle shooting, the Sten gun what had just come into operation, using the Sten gun. Sitting in an enclosed room without your gas mask, when a gas was turned on you had to find your way, to get your gas mask on before the gas got too much for you, which obviously you had somebody standing by. We were there for about two, Great Yarmouth, we were there Great Yarmouth for about two, two months, marching up and down the roads. One particular thing I always remember was our drill corporal was a Yorkshireman, a Corporal Harrison. And on every march you had to sing On Ilkley Moor Bar Tat, I knew every word of Ilkley Moor Bar Tat. Anyway that came to an end and we travelled well at once to go to Tayport, on the Scottish Coast. Now Tayport, well obviously it was a port, but it was also home to RAF Leuchars It was an Australian squadron at Leuchars, mostly Australian squadron, but we were there just doing menial work ‘cause it wasn’t a training station for air sea rescue it was just a pit stop, so my day was employed either helping in the hangars, or we had a very zealous CO with his garden. That garden had to be kept up, it was pristine, there was even stones had to be painted white, all round the garden. What’s more, he had a dog, and this dog was obviously come and dig up where you had to. This lasted for a few weeks and for the first two or three weeks I was stationed, rather I was in barracks with the Aussie squadron, And all day long every time someone would come in it would play – what’s that Australian song?
[Other]: Waltzing Matilda.
LP: Yes, Waltzing Matilda, that would be on all day every day, Waltzing Matilda. Well eventually I came out of that, back into the English section of the RAF and from there, oh I had this thing of joining to be a flight, a flying airman, so I went into the office where you remuster, that’s where you changed your trade. Now I spoke to the recruiting I suppose he was an officer, I’m sure. I explained what I wanted to do. He said ‘Whatever for?’ Well I said I think I was just getting a bit fed up of waiting around for this air sea rescue. So I applied to be a wireless operator air gunner. His reply was ‘I’ll give you a bit of advice boy’, he said ‘Only birds and fools fly.’ Now I thought that wasn’t a very nice thing, because he’s sitting in an office all day long, with those poor fliers night after night out flying, doing a terrible job. Well, anyway, within the space of another couple of weeks I was posted and I didn’t hear any more of that application. So from Great Yarmouth I went up to Tayport, that’s how I got to Tayport. As I say I was at Tayport for a bit, killing time actually. And then we got posted to RAF Corsewall, Corsewall Point, that’s on the other side of Scotland. That’s at the head of Loch Ryan at the head which led down to Stranraer, the waters at Stranraer. Now here we commenced our training, our air sea rescue training proper. It was a very, very, what shall I say very complex because it covered so many subjects., We had to study for instance buoys, buoys how they was attached to lines underwater to a mooring called a mooring trot, how to scull a boat, a small rowing boat with one oar, navigation, morse code and semaphore flags. The morse code was, was [chuckle] was a bit of a laughable situation because you’d be paired off and you had to send, one would be sending, one would be receiving morse code course there was many rude messages sent from one airman to another! Also aircraft recognition you would be thrown cards and you, you had to say straight away, English bomber, English fighter, German bomber, German fighter such like, and also from school work you were given a books and pens and you had to write notes and notes down of rules of the sea, the meaning of flags and such like. And then there was the practical training where we were taken down to the waters edge to the port and it would be put on different vessels and you would practice how to work a boat. These were called sea plane tenders, there was a, an old hulk moored, moored out at sea and you had to come alongside. The coxswain would shout out ‘come along port side to or starboard side to,’ and you had to turn your boat round to starboard of course there was lots of times there was lots of crashes [chuckle] ‘cause not many boys were able to control boats like that. As I say it was very thorough, thorough training. It, although it was an uncomfortable billet. The billets were nissen huts scattered about in the woods. And for the washing facilities were very basic, you had wash tubs, but for the toilets consisted of, of a row each side just with sacking in between each person so you could have a conversation with the follow sitting opposite on the other side of you, and I’m saying when I said it was basic, it was basic. At the end of the, at the end of the, at the end of the huts, nissen huts there was a big container of a blue liquid. [Turns away] What’s that liquid, erm,
[Other]: I can’t remember.
LP: Perm, permanganate of potash,
[Other]: Yes.
LP: Every man had to gargle with it, permanganate, and if you didn’t and you went sick with a sore throat you were in trouble, you were on charge, as I say it was very basic the conditions. The nissen huts were equipped with a paraffin stove in the middle of the hut. Now you were issued with a ration of paraffin and that had to last you so much, so many days, or day or whatever it was. If you used it up that was your fault, but you’ve got to remember we’d be out at sea, or on the boats rather, you’d be wet and cold, so that paraffin did always last. Now another situation was you had to do guard duties, now the guard duties consisted of dotted around this camp, in the woods, sentry huts, well, just stands really, just a metal stand, you would do I think it was either two hours on or four hours off, or vice versa. This was after you’d done your days’ work at the training. Now, one of, one of the duties of the guard, night guard, was called a rover patrol, he would as the word say, he would wander round the camp just looking at different places keeping an eye. I’d have an old Lee Enfield rifle, First World War issue, with five rounds of ammunition. Now if you come across a German I don’t know what would happen [chuckle]. One amusing, well I don’t think it was amusing really, on my amble round the roving patrol I came across a big bowser, a big tanker, which I thought contained paraffin, I thought well this is lovely [laugh]. Now, I searched around to find a container, luckily I found this container, put it under the bowser, turned the bowser on but instead of paraffin it was all effluent, effluent that came out [laugh]. So I was in a bit of a state, the rest of the, that was cleaning me uniform. Food, I suppose for RAF food wasn’t bad you just had to line up and you were served by a WAAF, RA WAAF girls. But you held out, you had a mess tin, knife, fork and spoon and tin mug. You’d hold your mess tin in front of the WAAF and she would dish whatever was up – plonk. Well, the food wasn’t all that great, but another incident, rather amusing. The officer would come round. A shout would go up ‘Orderly Officer, any complaints?’ But the Orderly Officer would come round accompanied by an NCO, ‘Anybody any complaints?’ Well, one brave soul shouted out ‘Yes sir, I’ve got a caterpillar on my plate.’ The officer walked over, this is true, he walked over to the boy, he said ‘There sir, it’s a caterpillar.’ ‘Hmmm,’ he said, ‘just push it off’ he said, ‘with your spoon.’ ‘Well, I wasn’t going to eat it sir.’ So that was another happy episode. Previous to this I forgot to mention, when I was at Great Yarmouth there was one particular airman, late in the afternoon he would go up to the NCO in charge, say a few words to him and off he would go, well we had to continue till the end of the day. So I said to this boy, after a couple of visits I saw him. I said what do you say? What gets you to come home so early? ‘Well, I’m in the boxing club.’ So I was always interested in boxing as a youngster so I said ‘Can I join?’ he said we’d be only too glad to have you. So I joined the boxing club there which was an asset really, I boxed and a couple of times at Great Yarmouth amongst the RAF. Well also, now also, back up to Tayport, not Tayport Corsewall Point, Corsewall, there was a boxing section there. And the fellow in charge was a guy who was an athlete, a pre-war was a runner, he wasn’t a boxer, a runner oh can’t remember his name. We used to have running, training before going on duty so I joined the boxing club there. Now, I did very well there really, because I’m not praising myself, but every Sunday we had what’s called a uniform parade. We had two uniforms, there was the best blue. Now on this best blue parade, everybody was lined up on a Sunday morning had a full inspection, the flag would be hoisted, the CO of the whole section would come round and inspect each man, so he gets to me, the Orderly Officer who was with him taps me on the shoulder and says you stay there you and I thought ‘Now what’ve I done?’. And so when the parade was dismissed and everyone went, the CO and officers came up and congratulated me ‘cause I’d boxed the night before apparently and I won my two bouts. I always remember one because it was an officer and I anyway that was the end of that but also stationed there was, I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of him, a Steve Donahue, now he was a champion jockey of England, Steve Donahue, like our Lester Piggott today. Well his son was Pat Donahue, now Pat Donahue was an officer, first of all he was just a NCO but the second time I visited he was an officer and he was a very good boxer. Pat, Pat Donahue, a very good boxer and I was very friendly with Pat although it didn’t do him any favours but was just the fact that we became good friends what with him being an officer and me being NCO, just a private. What more can I say about that? Oh, another amusing incident, on a Sunday as I say, you had the day off. They used to run the transport buses into Stranraer, which was quite a bus ride away and there were no such thing as seats and you was just clinging on, hanging on as best you could. I was hanging on at the back of the bus, and the fellow next to me, he said ‘Where do you come from?’ I said ‘Oh, you probably wouldn’t know, a place called Chertsey, in Surrey,’ and he laughed, he said he lived at Everstone. Now he turned out, he was Worts w-o-r-t-s funeral directors and Harry Wort was a funeral director, well there again there was another strange quirk because when we finally moved from Corsewall Point to various stations Harry moved off and I didn’t see Harry again till he arrived a year later when he turned up at Newhaven, he’d spent what they called the white man’s grave, the Gold Coast in Africa. Well, I don’t know quite how long we were at Corsewall Point because, it was a very long, as I say, it was, covered a lot of work, classroom work, practical work, seamanship and such like but eventually I passed out from the giddy heights of AC2 to aircraftsman first class with a rise in pay. [Laugh] I’ve got my figures actually what rise in pay. Shall I get those figures now? Well, my rise in pay, my pay in 1942 that was three shillings per day. And out of that three shillings, I made an allotment to my mother of one shilling and sixpence per day, so that was ten shillings and sixpence per week. And this was for twenty four hours a day service. [chuckle] But then in March 43 I was a AC1, I was getting four and ninepence per day and I was still one shilling and sixpence to my mother. August the 1st 1943 I was receiving five shillings and threepence and still making the allowance of one and sixpence to me mother and I think it was not until 44 that I was getting six shillings per day [papers shuffling]. But I had, had a very good family. My sister used to regularly send me money, so really I wasn’t too bad. I did not smoke, when I say I used to drink, it was, you couldn’t afford to drink a lot anyway. Now [pause, shuffling of papers] Can I go back to my days at Great Yarmouth?
DM: Oh yes, yes.
[Other]: [ Cough]
LP: Yes, during my days at Great Yarmouth, the raw recruit, you obviously jumped to any order that you were given. Now, the second day I was there, the corporal in charge tapped me on the shoulder ‘Haircut Hughes!’’ I said, ‘Corporal,’ I said, ‘I had a haircut yesterday.’ He said ‘You’ll have another one today.’ So everybody tapped on the shoulder had to have a haircut. Now after you had your hair cut, you had to give the barber a sixpence, so he must have done very well out of – him and cohorts. And also at Yarmouth I think it must have been a big college because it was a big open room with showers, no shower enclosures, just open showers. You had to have a shower today – another sixpence. So that was quite a lump out of my, those must have made good living the barber and the shower man. And also I must, [shuffle of papers] injection time. Now it would be a column of men you had to bare one shirt sleeve, go past a so called medical orderly for an injection. There was no just holding your arm, just walk by one big stab. No change the needle. Next one up, another big stab. And I see grown men what I don’t know if it was fright or nerves just collapse on the ground.
DM: Can you remember when you started actually active service? When you’d finished your training. 43 or 42
LP: It was the beginning of 43. January 43, yeah. Now, I’ll come to that now. I was posted from Coreswell Point, Scotland to Gosport, Portsmouth. I was only there a very short time and this consisted of we were based on Stokes Bay, part of Portsmouth Waters, Southampton Waters, it was a testing ground for torpedoes. At the end of a long runway, a seaway, was an old hulk, bored, the aircraft would come down, drop the torpedo obviously aiming for the hull. And our job was to patrol up and down retrieve the torpedoes and so forth. Well that lasted only could have only been there only a few weeks. From there I got a posting to Newhaven. Now Newhaven was a very busy station. And it was there that the actual air sea rescue began. I was, I was told to find a billet in the town, Newhaven town, because the actual nissen huts were full and the, a certain number of airmen were billeted with families in houses. Well I was stationed with billeted with a Mrs Cook, her husband was away on war work, she had two children and an old grandmother, but she did look after me. She used to obviously get a ration allowance for food. As I say, from there I was taken straight on to high speed launch 190. Now it took quite a bit of get used to because you were mucking in with old hands really and I was a newcomer, but I got quite capable. My first job was a gunner. The gunner at this time there was a stand outside each a stand either side of the wheelhouse with a Vickers drum fed machine gun. Now my job was to hang on to that machine gun. Don’t forget the boat is not just cruising up and down its moving. But, as I say it was, it was a drum-fed machine gun but these didn’t last very long as it wasn’t so long after the guns were taken off of that and then we had a for’ard gun, revolving turret with twin browning machine guns, that was my next job I was a Browning machine gunner front turret. The turrets, the armament on the boat as I say they disbanded these two shields machine guns. There was a front turret, a rear turret, and then they decided to put a twenty millimetre Oerliken canon right at the stern of the boat. Well that did slow us down a little bit, the cannon. For there I was the gunner, that was my job, I had to be in the gun turret, and it was only after that I took my second class coxwain’s course, I was called in one day, the CO said I think you should take a coxwain’s course. From there I had been at Newhaven, I don’t know, five six months, I was sent up to back up to Corsewell Point for another bout of training as a coxswain. Well I passed that out, that meant a, that meant a rise in pay and also a jump in rank from leading aircraftsman to corporal. By this time I was quite, what shall I say, well quite at home on the boat: I knew what to do and what not to do. And my job was to be in the wheelhouse. There was a first class coxswain, the skipper and the second class coxswain in the wheelhouse. And you took it in turns to coxswain the boat.
DM: How many of you were there on the boat?
LP: Well on the boat, the boat consisted of the skipper, obviously an officer, a flight sergeant first class coxswain, a second class coxswain, a wireless operator, a medical orderly, two engineers, and two more gunners. Roughly, sometimes you’d have eight of you, sometimes there’d be ten of you. Now, the day consisted of hours and hours of searching, we had, the first boat that was always called the first boat, on first degree, that was usually, the rendezvous thirty miles south of Beachy Head, that was the usual one for the first boat, you’d be on station if you were the first boat you’d be on station, at six o’clock you’d be on station if not near that you’d be on your rendezvous. Now when you were on your rendezvous, patrol up and down just waiting orders really, it could be a long, long long day. But suddenly you’d get a crash call now this was taken by the wireless operator and ours was a very good one named Norman and a good wireless operator too. If he didn’t have his helmet on, Norman he would have it by his side. Now he could pick up our particular call we were a seagull, seagull something, I forget my number but we were seagull something. As soon as Norman heard that, he’d get the signal and that came from the Navy. Now although we were RAF Coastal Command, we were directly under the command of the Navy when it come to positioning. So you would take the course of that call and go up and down, up and down and what you would do call a square search, you would do a certain distance, a mile, one way, turn starboard right then back again so you were doing a search square all the way to where it had been reported – a crash. And you would report search and search and whatever you did your search. Now sometimes you’d be there all day log and do nothing but another time you’d be flying here there and everywhere. On one particular, one particular search, I’ve got it written down here somewhere, we had a crash call I was a gunner at the time and I was still in the front turret. This was in my early days. We were patrolling along and suddenly this spitfire came overhead. I didn’t know it was a spitfire at the time, fired his machine guns in front of us. At first thought I thought it would be a German, he turned round, turned round again and then I could see it was a spitfire, and he took us right up to this pilot sitting in his dinghy, which was a good save, we saved him. Now on that journey, the turret and I’m not exaggerating or making it up, a mine floated past and I could have stretched out and touched it. But there’s nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t the first mine I’d see, they was quite frequent. Quite often you would see a mine broken free of its moorings floating. Now we used to have to report the Navy and the navy would send out a vessel and destroy it. But that was very handy when they would explode the mine you’d get buckets and buckets of dead fish, or stunned fish and it was just a case of scooping the fish up. Although when I was in a private billet I used to have, the landlady used to supply my rations, but the rest of the crew, or those who weren’t in private, they would draw rations for the day and we would have what they call a galley which consisted of a methylated spirit stove and you would do your cooking, but the fact that I wasn’t part of it didn’t make any difference really, you was just part of mucked in together. Clothing, clothing we were well-equipped. We had duffle coats which no other RAF had, proper rain coats, rain macs, we had sea boots, jack boots, just slippers for ordinary time on the boat when you were in harbour and also our CO he was Squadron Leader John D. Syme, a very, what shall I say, a man’s man. His main concern was the welfare of the boats crews. Now all of the boats crew and the probably the base crews as well, we had sheets to sleep in, not just a blanket because the ordinary issue was blankets, two blankets, but John D. always made sure we had sheets, clean sheets. On board, when you slept on board if you were on duty at night, then you would sleep in a sleeping bag, and you had fold down bunks.
DM: Would you be at sea?
LP: I’m sorry?
DM: Would you be at sea when you were sleeping?
LP: Yes. You would, there was no regulation you would be at sea eight hours, ten hours and then come home. It didn’t work like that. You went out until you were called. You just couldn’t say well it’s time to come home, you just did as you were called. As I say, I’ve got a record of it here where you’d be out. You’d do a crash call and that would take a day and then you’d still have to go out. So the hours was long. Also, another thing, it was, it was the only base in the whole of the RAF Air Sea Rescue that received a rum ration, going back to the old days. Once you’d been at sea so many hours, you were entitled to the skipper’s, to the skipper’s, to the skipper’s thoughts it was time for a rum and everybody had a rum ration. And if you stayed out longer and longer you still had another rum ration. But that was entirely up to the skipper.
DM: Did you ever get attacked? Did you ever get attacked?
LP: No. We were always told you must never open fire on anything unless you were attacked first. We lost a couple of boats on the, what they call it, the early landing, where it was a failure?
DM: What was that Dieppe?
LP: Dieppe, yes. We did lose a couple of boats, I wasn’t at Newhaven at the time, but we did lose a couple of boats there. Two or three got killed. When DD come here around we had armour plating put on top of the wheelhouse. And on the part of the fore deck was armour plated and you had a big five white star painted on the fore deck for aircraft recognition as an allied sign. Now I’ve got somewhere I picked up Germans, shall I tell you about?
DM: Yes, that would be very interesting.
LP: Right.
[Other]: Doc here ten past one in the morning.
LP: Yeah, ten past one in the morning, crash call to position 360 degrees Hove two and a half miles, search the area till hours when message received to return to harbour. After seen in dinghy airmen picked up German wireless operator from a JU88. We searched the area for the remainder without result. Returned to Newhaven, and prisoner handed over to Naval authorities at 0705 hours.
[Other]: No further incident 1400 hours.
LP: Then 1400 hours we searched till quarter to five, 1745 hours. Now going back to that German,
DM: Yes.
LP: Now going back to that German. This was early hours of the morning and we picked him up with a searchlight. Previous to that there’d been an air raid over Newhaven, the district. The funny part of it was. We kind of felt it was we picked, he’s sitting in the dinghy, he’s got a very pistol in his hand. We said ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’ friend, no answer, he didn’t answer. And it took several minutes to realise he wasn’t British or Allies, he was a German. Part about it was on this particular journey the engineer was a Belgian. His name was Albert, They called him Albert. Now Albert wasn’t a regular on the boat, it was a one-off. Now Albert, was forced to leave Belgium in the German invasion. Albert hated [musical sound]
DM: Yes.
LP: Albert hated Germans he realised it was a German he was for throwing him back in! Well, it took a bit of persuading, but another interesting thing was, I kept his very pistol, the Nazi very pistol and had a whistle attached, and part of his parachute we divided up, silk parachute. I had quite a nice piece of silk parachute which I gave my sister for her baby girl at the time wasn’t it. It made her christening gown. I think the skipper had his boots, I think the skipper had his boots. Anyway we took him back to harbour. Oh, we clothed him, we had dry clothing, gave him dry clothing, we took him back to harbour and then it was quite a way from the water’s level to the harbour wall – which was up a steep. Somebody had the bright idea of blindfolding him. Well he put the blindfold on and he was absolutely shivering. He thought we were going to shoot him. Anyway we got him up on board and got him to naval and it was a couple of weeks later that a complaint came through that somebody had taken his fur lined sea boots, flying boots and I kept that very pistol and the whistle for not, four, five, years back.
[Other]: Four, five years.
LP: Years, then I gave it to somewhere in Newhaven.
[Other]: Museum.
LP: Newhaven.
[Other]: Museum.
LP: Yes, museum at Newhaven. Anyway to pick somebody up early hours of the morning just with a searchlight, he was lucky, wasn’t he?
DM: He was.
LP: Another. Which one’s this one?
[Other]: The Walrus, where you rescued the men from the Walrus.
LP: Not the one off the French coast was it?
[Other]: Don’t think so, no.
LP: This is another. This made the headlines in the paper this rescue. [shuffling of paper] That’s the original but,
DM: That one: ‘Six RAF men saved in the battle of the Seine’?
[Other]: That one.
DM: Six men saved from the wreck of a Wellington bomber, so that was you, you rescued those men?
LP: Well, it’s strange really, I won’t go into all the details of how we got there.
DM: Well you can do.
LP: Can I?
DM: Yeah.
LP: Well, shall I read off that?
[Other]: Hmmm
LP: If I read it off that, I can’t read it. [Pause] There’s a lot to read isn’t it.
[Other] You dropped the lifeboat.
DM: Which bit are we talking about? So they obviously came down over the other side of the Channel, the French side of the channel.
LP: The mouth of the Seine.
DM: Right. So why were you, were you sent there or were you already there?
LP: No, no we were on patrol in the channel when we got a call, so we had to break off from where we were to go there. Now, two RAF launches took place.
DM: When was this, do you know? Oh yes, July 17th 1943.
LP: Yes. Two launches were sent there. Now I was on 190 and after you see all the air, fighting going on we found that airmen, six airmen, were in an airborne lifeboat, it was one of the first that had ever been dropped. They climbed out of their dinghy into this airborne lifeboat. Now I think the other boat was 177, 190 177. 190, we reached the crew first. Now our coxswain, the first class coxswain, Bert Underwood, a very good coxswain, in his anxiety, he came along a little bit too fast for the crew. We threw ‘em a heaving line, we were going a little bit fast for them to hold onto the line, consequently we passed. 177 behind us, they picked the crew up. Strange part was, they picked the crew up, turned round and gone straight back to Newhaven. Now we were left out there, off the French coast [laugh] with this lifeboat. First of all, orders came ‘Sink the lifeboat, return to base’. So on board we had a tool chest consisting of axe and various tools these were passed along. At the last moment a message came up again, ‘Return to Newhaven with lifeboat.’ So that meant towing, so consequently, we had to put the tow line on the lifeboat and tow it back to Newhaven which took ages, ages. I don’t know what time we got back, I never know what time we got back, but that was a good rescue that.
DM: Did you rescue any other bomber crews during?
LP: Yes, yes. That another one? Routine patrol in the channel, a fine day, round about mid-day skipper said it’s about time we had something to eat, so we were preparing something to eat, when looking up at the sky, we saw a US American fighter bomber a P38 I think it was, a twin-fuselage. That disappeared and then we saw a parachute gently floating out. We followed him, where the parachute was going to land, and it turned out that when he had pulled his cockpit cover he’d dislocated his arm. He was floating in the water, unable to save himself. We were alongside in minutes. One or two of the crew jumped overboard, held him up while we got alongside him, and picked him up and took him back to base. I’ve got a letter from his CO, this letter is dated 29th of March 1944. Dear Sir, The excellent work of the members in your command when they rescued First Lieutenant T.G. Giles, United States Army, from the waters of the English Channel on the 16th March 1944 cannot be allowed to pass without an expression of appreciation. It is my very great pleasure to send you this letter of commendation for bringing about an operation with such happy and favourable results in the case of an officer of my command. Lt. Giles was forced to bail out of his plane while returning from an operational mission over occupied enemy territory. In so doing he sustained severe injuries. His condition was such that he was practically helpless when he reached the water. He was not able to find his dinghy and he would not have been able to get into it if he had and he was not even able to inflate his Mae West. It is fortunate indeed that launch 190 commanded by Craig as was brought alongside without delay. This pilot could not have survived any length of time in the sea on his own. The prompt and sure action of the ASR personnel in this instance merits the highest praise. The courageous action of the men who when over the side to render assistance is most noteworthy. I am fully aware that this rescue is not an isolated incident, but one of a number of superb accomplishments on your parts that have saved many ditched airmen, both British and American, under catastrophic circumstances, but one cannot disregard that if it were not for the immediate aid given so skilfully and successfully, and I am sure that Lieutenant Charles would not be alive today. The sentiment of the whole of this organisation when I express that thanks of a job well down. The crew of the HS190 was the Skipper, Flying Officer Craig, Flight Sergeant, first coxswain, Sergeant Placito, second coxswain, leading aircraftsman Fiddler fitter, LAC Hayes Leading aircraftsman Leading Aircraftsman Hyde crew. That was a good rescue that one.
[Other]: It was.
LP: There’s so many more [chuckle].
[Other]: Still there’s a sad one.
LP: How about or bore you too much, if you left me that, well there’s not much attached to that one, not so far off the French coast there were German floating stations which consisted of a bed, provisions for downed airmen. And on a couple of occasions we came across these stations but fortunately or unfortunately there were no airmen alive in it. We just inspected them, took note of what was there and left.
DM: Do you have any stories around D-Day? What happened on D-Day with your group?
LP: Well on D-Day it was quiet actually, our D-Day was very quiet. Our boats weren’t considered deep sea going; they were built for speed. Pictures of them where they came out. I’ve got no big thing about D-Day. We went out early, picked up odd, odd bits of floating material rafts and such like but no actual rescues. D-Day was a quiet day considering the other days you would be there all day and all night.
DM: You were talking earlier about a rescue involving a walrus.
LP: Yes,
DM: Okay so this is where you picked up a civilian body.
LP: 0710 routine patrol over Beachy Head. Crash call to position search direct by Beachy Head Beachy Head Station, that would be the station at Beachy Head.
DM: Coastguard, or maybe coastguard?
LP: Coastguard, that’s the word. We carried out in company with a Walrus and sir sea rescue aircraft at 1445 received another call to position. On position at 15:15 hours quantity of wreckage found at 1600 hours we sighted a body of a civilian
[Other]: Civilian.
LP: Position 5 degrees off Newhaven seven miles delivered body to police. Returned to patrol until 2115 hours. [shuffle papers] Yes, we picked that poor boy up, that civilian bather. What wasn’t nice, the skipper wasn’t pleased to take him on board, no he thought about either sinking the body or, but he was told, yes, that was sad that.
DM: Take you on now to the end of the war. What happened when hostilities ceased?
LP: Yes, just let me et me thoughts. Yeah, I finished the war off as a transport driver actually.
DM: How did that happen?
LP: The Japanese war finished in
[Other]: August.
LP: August. Okay then yeah. When peace, okay then, when peace was signed with Germany in May, it meant that there was no longer essential for so many routine patrols to take place owing to the fact that it was just friendly aircraft. When peace was signed completely with Japanese surrender, the station the RAF station I don’t know what to try and say.
DM: You were still at Newhaven?
LP: Yes, still at Newhaven. I know what, the end of the German surrender the Japanese war was still in. It was decided to send boat to the Far East. The boats that were chosen to go were copper plated hull that is the hill was plated with copper plate to stop borings from sea insects. 190 although I wasn’t aboard at this time, 190 got as far as Gibraltar when it was halted and that the operation to go to the Far East was aborted, was no longer necessary, The reason I was no longer on board at this time I failed a medical exam and you had to be A1 to be a boats crew. So I was taken off HSL 190 and given a shore job. I was lucky enough to be made a transport driver. We had a Bedford vehicle used to run messages to Thorley Island and into Brighton. This was a very good job because it was so easy going. The reason I got the job was an old friend of mine who was on 190 was a transport driver his job was to drive the warrant officer his name was Stevens a nice gentlemanly man, Steves, Stevenson, he was to take him where he wanted to do to go. Bill Stoneman used to frighten the life out of him wherever he drove. He wasn’t a driver he relied on somebody else to drive or whether Bill did di deliberately or not I don’t know but he fell out of favour with the WO I was called into the office by a friend of mine, Don Stovey, who was a clerk and said that Warrant Officer Stevenson wanted a new driver, a different driver would I take the job. Of course I jumped at it. So from there on I was the station driver. The strange part about it was, I was the only one knew where the vehicle was kept. It was kept in a side street in Newhaven in the town. So consequently we used it on many occasions at night for our trips into Brighton, [chuckle] but I think this soon came to an end when I think it was spotted by another, a Marines, not a Marines, a motorcraft, I beg your pardon a motorised section of the RAF in Newhaven at the time and I think it was one of their vehicles that was mistaken for us and anyway from then on the vehicle had to be kept outside the officers mess on the harbour. Yeah.
DM: So you finished your time in the RAF as a driver.
LP: I finished sa a driver, yeah.
DM: Can you remember when you were demobbed?
LP: I’m sorry?
DM: Can you remember when you were demobbed?
LP: I got demobbed in 1946 I don’t know, middle of 46, something like that, I was demobbed, yeah.
DM: Did you go back to the post office or
LP: No I didn’t I no, I didn’t I just worked for me brother-in-law driving and one thing an another. But it was such a funny thing feeling you know being under orders twenty four hours a day. I forgot to say, that when it got near D-day time, all the civilian billets were closed and where we used to have single beds in the, in the nissen huts they were all double bunked so, to get all, so all the boys were on call. Yeah, it was a good job driving because quite often they, the officer would go into Brighton to pick up papers and also the rations were picked up in Brighton at the, one of the big hotels I think it was the Metropole or the Grand Hotel which was run by RAF, yes, it was the Australians had taken over. Which was the hotel that was bombed? Was that the Metropole?
DM: That was the Metropole.
LP: Was it? Yeah.
[Other]: I think it was.
LP: Yeah, I think it was the Metropole yeah, well the Australians were living there they had taken it over, and that was also then, I used to have to go in for a clothing exchange because what usually happened, well it always happened, if you had something worn, your clothing were worn and you thought need a change we had a storeman at Newhaven, Tiny Wellman, he was a big fella, they called him Tiny Wellman, he was the storeman, and it was up to him if you wanted a new pullover or a new shirt or whatever, it was up to him whether you got it or not. Which was, you know he either liked you or didn’t like you. But after that, all the clothes were kept at Brighton and it was my job, I could take clothing in and exchange it, so consequently I did a good, had a good job changing clothes for the boys that wanted, you know new shoes, whatsoever. But you used to get up to all sorts of tricks to earn a shilling, because one particular, in the Metropole, the Australians had taken over, and there was one room with dozens of pairs of shoes, they would throw the shoes in, me and a friend of mine I used to take with me, we would sort out shoes, take ‘em in to the clothing exchange, get a new pair of shoes for pair of old ones. The things you did. [Chuckle] I tell you one other happy episode too. When the war ended, horse racing started, and Brighton was, I think it was the first race course in the south of England to open. Now, there was no signalling affairs, there was no way when the horses. I don’t know if you understand horse racing but when they go down to the start, there was no way that they knew where the horses were at the start or when the start, starting gate opened or not. So they came to Newhaven to look for a signaller or signallers. One of my best friends was a signaller so he said you come, he said you can do the transport, so I used to take the transport, it lasted for about three or four days. We would take two men down to the start of the racecourse, and two men at the finish with Aldis lamps because there was no speakers as such, and they would signal when the horses were ready to go off, to start, they would signal to us they’re off and then obviously we knew if they’d won or lost so we had a good few days, three or four days with that. But going back to that American we saved he piled cigarettes, whatever, in a day or two the CO sent down. I didn’t smoke, it didn’t matter to me, but one of the do-gooders there tried to put the block on it, to say you know you didn’t do it for, for cigarettes. Obviously we didn’t do it for that but that was his kindness to do it wasn’t it. I would have liked to have met that American some time.
DM: Yeah, I suppose all the people you rescued you don’t really know what became of them after they walked off your boat, that was it, they were gone.
LP: Yeah. We used to have something about the size of that polished wood and every rescue you’d put on you’d put a roundel on, you know, RAF roundel, you’d stick one of those on and we had that on the.
DM: Did you used to put a swastika on when you rescued a German? [Laugh]
LP: No, we didn’t put a swastika on, no. We had two Germans, two particular Germans. One German, I had only been there a short time. He was in the water or in a dinghy. We picked him up and he had the sense enough when he’d baled out he’d wrenched his leg and his leg I don’t know, was half off or half on the sense enough to have tourniquets round his thighs. We saved him. There you are, years and years ago.
DM: Yes, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Lawrence Henry di Placito. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
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
2017-02-09
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AdiPlacitoLH170209, PdiPlacitoLH1701
Format
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01:27:39 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
British Army
Royal Navy
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence di Placito served as a second-class coxswain on the RAF Air Sea Rescue launches during the Second World War. He was born in Chertsey and attended Egham grammar school where he was a member of the cadet force. Upon leaving school in 1936 he was employed with the Post Office as a clerk/telephonist. Early in 1939 he joined the 6th Battalion East Surrey (Territorial Army). Lawrence went through military training, but he was told he would not be allowed to remain in the unit because of his Italian parents.
At the outbreak of war, he left the Post Office and was employed building naval vessels at a boat yard on the Thames in Chertsey. It was here that he first heard about RAF Air Sea Rescue, which he successfully enrolled into. Following training at various establishments he was posted to Newhaven on High Speed Launch 190 as a gunner.
Lawrence describes rescue operations: a Spitfire leading them to an airman in a dinghy; a Wellington aircrew rescued close to Le Havre on 17 July 1943; a German wireless operator who baled out from a downed Ju 88 and his parachute being divided amongst the crew, and finally rescuing the United States serviceman T G Giles who baled out of a P-38.
Occasionally they would come across mines that had broken free. These would be guarded until the Navy arrived and detonated them. This would result in the surface being covered in stunned fish which the crew would be able to scoop up.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Chertsey
England--Great Yarmouth
England--Newhaven
England--Bedfordshire
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
France
France--Le Havre
England--Norfolk
England--Surrey
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-07-17
1944-03-16
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
air sea rescue
animal
bale out
ground personnel
Ju 88
military living conditions
military service conditions
Nissen hut
P-38
RAF Cardington
RAF Great Yarmouth
shot down
Spitfire
sport
Walrus
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2052/33662/PSouterKP2131.1.1.jpg
6f4781c1a2894f6c1b607d82378297ed
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2052/33662/PSouterKP2132.1.1.jpg
99fdd8197db68d2cc1cccc107878e68c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2052/33662/ASouterKP210710.1.mp3
504241e825931f427344c812d2b631c3
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
Souter, Kenneth Place
K P Souter
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-07-10
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Souter, KP
Description
An account of the resource
30 items. An oral history interview with Kenneth Souter (b. 1919, 129001 Royal Air Force), his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a fighter pilot with 73 Squadron in North Africa and as a test pilot. After the war he flew Lancasters during the filming of The Dam Busters film in 1954.
The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TS: For coffee. Ok.
[recording paused]
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell and the interviewee is Ken Souter. Ken’s son Tony Souter is also present and the interview is taking place at Mr Souter’s home in Morden in Surrey on the 10th of July 2021. Ok. Ken, maybe you could start off by saying a bit about what you can remember about where you were born and growing up and your childhood.
KS: When I was born?
DM: Yeah.
KS: Oh. Well, that must have been 1918 I think, and I was living, my parents were living in Amberley Street. That’s in, well not the rough end but you know not very much up and up in Sunderland. Eventually moved to a better house, and still in Sunderland, but by Seaburn was the seaside part of the operation. From there I went to school there at the Argyle House, I don’t think. I can’t remember the name of the school. It’ll come to me maybe.
DM: Yeah. Don’t worry.
KS: Something. But it was just a private school, and I stayed there until I was about probably fifteen, sixteen, and we moved to various houses. Moved from one house to another, but still in Sunderland and my father had a, well it was a big company for buying and selling props. What are called props. The props were —
TS: He was importing timber wasn’t he from Finland to be used as pit props in the mines?
KS: Pardon?
TS: He was importing timber from Finland and Norway.
KS: Correct. Yeah.
TS: To be used as pit props for the, for the coal mines in the area.
KS: For the what?
TS: The coal mines.
KS: Correct.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: That’s right. Yeah.
TS: So, he had, he had a couple, I think he ended up buying a couple of ships and whatnot.
KS: I think to cut it short we, did we move to, the family moved to Spain?
TS: No. That was much, much later. You moved to Chester. Chester le Street, Chester le Street, which is just down the road from Sunderland.
KS: Oh yeah. Yeah. And then I remember, I remember —
TS: Yeah.
KS: Not much about it.
TS: No. And then you, you went. You joined up. You went to the Air Flying School didn’t you at, were you, actually you were involved in boxing for a little while, weren’t you? You joined a boxing club.
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: Because we had a picture of you.
KS: What? In the, in the, my father’s company where these pit props were imported. They’d come by ship.
TS: Yeah.
KS: And then what they do the pit, they called it the yard which stores all the timber. And then the boxers used to come and train there.
DM: Right.
KS: Yes. Because it’s hard work, you know. You get a lump of props and they put them on their shoulder and stack them up. And I worked with them for exercise, because a lot of the boxers came just for exercise. And from there I can’t really remember very much. I can’t remember very much.
TS: But—
DM: Did you, after you finished education did you go straight into the Air Force or did you do something else first?
KS: I couldn’t say.
TS: I think you worked for your dad for a while, didn’t you? You worked in your dad’s company for a little bit.
KS: Yeah. Not very much.
TS: Right.
KS: Perhaps a year.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Something like that.
TS: Yeah. My memory is that you ended up in Cambridge at the, at the Flying School for aspiring pilots. Is that, would that be correct?
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
DM: What, what, can you remember why you decided to learn to fly? What prompted you?
KS: I’ve no idea. I was a —
DM: Just a young man’s fancy, I expect.
KS: Yes. It was a toss-up between that and the, and the college for drawing, for art because I was keen on drawing then. And, so I went to work for my father which is quite, well it’s difficult in a way because as the boss’s son I don’t, I hadn’t been naughty with him and all this sort of stuff, you know. You can imagine it. And I just remember then going to South Africa.
TS: No. That was, that’s a long time later.
KS: Was it?
TS: Yeah. A lot happened before you went to South Africa. The Second World War for a start.
KS: Oh.
TS: No. The chronology is much later but maybe David might be interested in what happened when you went to flying school at Cambridge. Ken’s brother was, his older brother joined the Army and became a captain eventually during the war but Ken went off to Cambridge to, to train as a pilot.
DM: Do you have any memories of Cambridge and learning to fly?
KS: Yes. A little bit. Not very much. It’s all boring stuff with biplanes.
DM: Yes. Of course. Yes. Because this would have been in the 1930s, wouldn’t it?
KS: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
TS: I have your first, first flight here, in a, air experience flight on the July the 5th in 1939.
KS: Oh really?
TS: And you were in a de Havilland 82 which is probably a Tiger Moth I should think, isn’t it?
KS: Pardon?
TS: In a de Havilland 82, which might well be a Tiger Moth.
KS: A Tiger Moth. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s when you started your training.
KS: Started what?
TS: That’s when you started your training on the Tiger Moth.
KS: Yes.
TS: And then you went solo. You went solo. It’s here somewhere. First solo in June the 4th in 1940. That was your first solo.
KS: Oh. My solo. Yeah.
TS: Ok.
DM: So, you learned to fly. You got your pilot’s licence. You were in the RAF. Can you remember where you were posted first of all? What, or what job you did? You know, what, were you, did you go into Bomber Command then or was that later?
KS: No. No. It was later. Once you qualified on Tiger Moths and Harts you remember Hart.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Harts. That was the Tiger Moth. Hart. And then the aeroplane you’re going to fly. I forget what it was. It’s just an upbeat from the Tiger Moth. I don’t know what it was.
TS: Yeah. You were on Harts.
KS: Harts.
TS: Yeah. Your first solo on a Hart was in July 31st in 1940.
KS: Yeah. I joined the Air Force. It was around about that time, I think. I did training. Funnily enough down here, across the road there was my initial training where at the time there were not all that many pilots around so you could apply to go as a pilot, or not. I’m wrong. I said that wrong. You could apply to, at school you could apply to go into various things and I applied to [pause] I forget what it was now. I can’t remember.
TS: So, the Cambridge flying was like a, like a Cadet Corps presumably.
KS: That was training.
TS: Like a training Squadron.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. And looking at your logbooks here when you went on to the Hart —
KS: Yes.
TS: That was when you had started serious fighter pilot training and they taught you aerobatics, and combat flying and all that sort of stuff on the Hart.
KS: That’s correct.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, at some time, you must then have been trained to fly multiple engine aircraft because you ended up flying multiple engine aircraft so you would have.
KS: Sorry. I’m not with you.
DM: Well, you were flying single engine aircraft. Learning aerobatics and all that.
KS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: And then ultimately you ended up flying aircraft with four engines. So, you would have had some additional training.
KS: Yes.
DM: Before that happened.
KS: Correct. Yeah.
DM: But that wasn’t at Cambridge, or was it?
TS: If I could help you out here. It’s, there was a long gap between him flying fighters and bombers.
DM: Right.
TS: The fighter pilot stuff was all during the Second World War, and you can come on to where he was —
DM: Yes.
TS: Later on.
DM: So, in, in the Second World War when you’d completed your training what, what did you get? What were you flying then? What were you posted to fly?
KS: The heaviest one I flew I think was a Hart. A Hart. It’s a sort of forerunner of the Spitfire I think really. It was very difficult. It was difficult to fly. Yeah. So that’s, and then, I was on the BNF.
TS: Yeah. You went on to, I mean Harts and I think the Audax, which I think were similar aircraft. And from the Hart you went on to, to fly Hurricanes.
KS: Oh. Was it?
TS: Yeah.
KS: Oh.
KS: So, in October 1940 you were on, converted on to Harvards, training aircraft.
KS: Oh.
KS: And then from Harvards you went. Your first flight was on a Hurricane was on October the 20th 1940. So, you were training on Hurricanes for quite a while before you got posted.
KS: The forerunner to a Hurricane.
TS: No. No. You were on Hurricanes in, in October 1940.
DM: And where was that?
TS: Just having a look [pause] 43 Squadron.
KS: 43 Squadron.
TS: Yeah. Does that ring a bell?
KS: Oh yes. Yes.
TS: So, I think, I think all is, at some point he was posted to 43 Squadron with Hurricanes and completed his training on those.
KS: Yeah. 43 Squadron. You’ve got to remember there weren’t all that many aeroplanes available.
TS: No.
KS: And the people like the guy that [pause] I don’t know. A lot of famous people, I can’t remember who they were.
TS: Well, in the meantime there was the Battle of Britain, of course.
KS: That’s right. Yes.
TS: Which you missed out on.
KS: Yeah. I was stationed down at, after —
TS: There you go.
[pause]
KS: I was stationed at the, on the, all the pilots of the Battle of Britain were based around London.
TS: Yeah.
KS: And I was on, I was flying there but I wasn’t, I wasn’t —
TS: You weren’t part of the Battle of Britain because you were still training.
KS: No.
TS: Yeah. Ok. So, I’ve got you flying with 43 Squadron until January the 9th in 1941, when your Squadron was shipped out to North Africa. Do you remember that?
KS: No.
TS: Yeah. You do. You’ve told me often about it.
KS: Eh?
TS: You’ve told me a lot about it in the past so —
KS: Have I? [laughs]
TS: Yeah. You were put on an aircraft carrier.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. You remember that.
KS: Just. Yeah.
TS: So, tell us about that.
KS: Well, I got a lot of my grey hairs there on this aircraft carrier. It was terrifying [laughs] because you go balling down the runway and the end of ship approaches very quickly, and you sort of quickly visualise going under the water [laughs] It’s terrifying.
TS: So, I’ve got your logbook here. You ferried your Hurricane down to Tangmere.
KS: Tangmere. Yes.
TS: Yeah.
KS: That was a big Battle of Britain station.
TS: And then in, as I say in January 1941 your Hurricanes were put on board HMS Furious.
KS: Furious. Yeah.
TS: On the way to North Africa.
KS: Yeah. David, do you want all this small talk?
DM: Oh yes. That’s fine.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. It’s all interesting stuff.
TS: Right. So, so, you were bundling along in the aircraft carrier. At some point —
KS: Yeah.
TS: Some guys flew off to Malta along with your best mate who went to Malta and you went a little further and flew off to Africa.
KS: Yes.
TS: And through a very circuitous rate ended up in the, in the northern desert.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Led by a, it says, your logbook says you were led by a Blenheim. So, at some point a Blenheim must have picked the Squadron up, and led you on this circuitous route through, through Nigeria and parts of Africa.
KS: We were led because a lot of the part was no, no maps.
TS: Yeah.
KS: So, you followed the Blenheim. That’s why they were there.
TS: And hoping that they didn’t get lost.
KS: Yeah.
TS: The Blenheim presumably had a navigator on board.
KS: Yeah.
TS: With a map.
KS: Correct. Yeah.
TS: Ok.
DM: Do you have any memories of your time in the desert?
KS: Pardon?
DM: Do you have any memories of your time in the desert?
KS: Well, yeah. There’s not much to write about. Sand and more sand and more sand, and then it gets into the trees. Yeah. I remember it very well. Lived in tents. [unclear] I just continued flying training and we, I think we, yeah, I don’t know how long I flew in the desert. About six months, I think. Or a year.
TS: Yeah. You joined 73 Squadron in the desert.
KS: Oh. Did I?
TS: Yeah. Yeah [pause] but you also did a lot of test flying didn’t you of repaired aircraft that you were flying quite a bit? The photographs that we have from that time shows you flying a number of different types of aircraft that had been repaired.
KS: I think I must have flown into Africa like we just discussed and eventually went back to England.
TS: Well, that was much later on so we’re going to cover the time in the desert now.
KS: Well, there’s not much to tell you really.
TS: Right. It was just routine operational stuff in the desert.
KS: Yes.
TS: Patrols and —
KS: That’s right.
DM: Yeah. Looking at the logbook it’s —
KS: Yeah.
DM: It’s patrols and convoy patrols and —
KS: Yes. Routine stuff.
DM: Patrol over enemy prison camp. I assume that was a prison camp where —
KS: Yeah.
DM: Your enemies were rather than enemy. And I see you flew to Tobruk.
KS: Tobruk.
DM: Yeah. So, all the sort of and Sidi Barrani, and I see you’ve got, you’ve written down here in your logbook which was in April 1941, “Chased some JU87s but too late.”
KS: What’s it say?
TS: Chased, “Chased some JU87s.”
KS: Oh yeah.
TS: But too late.
KS: Oh [laughs] really.
DM: So obviously they were too far in front of you. And then you say on the next day you got hit by Jerry ack ack.
KS: Oh, was I?
DM: You had quite an eventful time really. And then there was a gentleman. You said Bill Wills was killed by ground strafing.
KS: Yes.
DM: Was he —
KS: Where was he killed?
DM: While ground, while ground strafing. So, he obviously crashed, or was shot down, I imagine.
KS: What was his name?
DM: Bill Wills.
KS: Oh yes. I remember him very well. He was a very nice guy. Was he shot down?
DM: Yes. And killed it says.
KS: Oh.
DM: Yes.
KS: Well, there was a period of [unclear] weather.
DM: Yeah. And then I don’t know if you remember this at the end of April you went sick with acute tonsilitis.
KS: Got what?
DM: Acute tonsilitis.
KS: Tonsilitis.
DM: Yes. Probably the dry air or something I expect and all that sand.
KS: Really?
TS: Yeah. He had a big issue which dogged him right through his flying career of ear infection which probably was about that time and he ended up in Cairo Hospital and was off flying for quite a while. And, and that eventually when he, when he returned to civil flying much, much, much later that eventually did him and he had to give up his licence because of his ear problem. What’s interesting, I don’t know whether, whether Ken will be able to remind you of he had a big accident with his Hurricane trying to take off in a sand storm. Do you remember that?
KS: What was that?
TS: You had a big accident in your, in your Hurricane while trying to take off in a sandstorm and you hit a truck.
KS: Oh.
TS: And the story goes.
DM: Oh yes. It’s in here. That was on the, that was an eventful month, April. That’s was 8th of April in 1941, “Wiped off Hurricane taking off in sandstorm.”
KS: Ah yeah. I remember.
TS: The back story, do you want to hear the back story of that?
DM: Yeah.
TS: If you remember something, just cut me off and butt in but the story you told me a while ago —
KS: Couldn’t be reliable.
TS: Was that you were, one of your pilots had landed out in the desert and you and another pilot had seen where he was and you were going back to pick him up. And there was some urgency to get back there and hence you were committed to taking off in this sand storm which was in hindsight probably not a good idea. But the idea was to go and rescue this other pilot, and apparently that used to happen quite a bit. Pilots used to land out and they’d climb in another, sit on the other pilot’s knee as they flew back. So, I think that’s, if I remember rightly that’s what you were doing at the time. And there are some interesting pictures of what you did to the Hurricane. And the clock that I have of yours came from your crashed Hurricane if you remember.
KS: Yeah.
DM: That would be one of the famous Smith’s clocks, would it?
TS: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
TS: I’ve not got a picture of it here but I’ve got it at home. Yeah. It was one of a number of accidents actually [laughs] he had out there because he was, he was test flying repaired aircraft and there are pictures in his albums of him landing with a trail of smoke out of the engines and engines catching fire and all sorts of things.
DM: Yeah. And I see in here that you started to fly other aircraft. Particularly when you were posted to the Met flight in Khartoum. That’s when you started to fly Lysanders. A Valencia on one occasion.
KS: Oh really? A Valencia.
DM: And Blenheims as well.
KS: Oh God.
DM: So, you were starting to get some practice on different aircraft then.
KS: I don’t remember much of that. Where was that? In Africa?
DM: That was in Africa. That was still, that was in May 1941.
KS: ’41.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Oh right.
DM: Yeah. You had a few hours on all, on all of those. And then that continued on into June. You sort of, I guess this is when you were starting to test aircraft because in, in June you flew Hurricane, Blenheim, Valencia, Tomahawk, Blenheims again, and then back to the Hurricanes again. So, you know, you were, you were flying a multitude of aircraft. Mainly the Hurricane.
KS: Yes.
DM: Mainly.
KS: It was. Yeah. It was mainly Hurricane.
DM: So, you, how do you remember when you came home from Africa or did you go somewhere else first?
KS: No. I came straight back to the UK. I can’t remember when it was.
TS: You flew to Portugal, I think. In a Sunderland.
KS: Oh, that would be taking me home.
TS: Yeah. This is what we’re talking about.
KS: Oh yes.
TS: I think after your ear infection I think you were taken off flying duties and —
KS: Yeah.
TS: Is that right?
KS: Probably something to do with that.
TS: Is that right. Yeah. There are pictures of you in Cairo Hospital with lots of nurses around.
KS: Oh yeah [laughs]
TS: And the odd, according to your photo album, the odd floozy here and there.
KS: Was what?
TS: The odd floozy. Which is a term we don’t hear nowadays.
DM: Yeah, because you were still flying in December 1941 in the desert. You were, you were sort of doing a lot of test flying on Hardys, Kittyhawks, Tomahawks which you seemed to fly in Tomahawks quite a lot.
KS: Yes. It was at one time. I can’t remember why.
DM: Test flights I think it says.
KS: That would make sense to me.
DM: Yeah. Yeah. On one occasion in a Kittyhawk it says you overshot into bushes.
KS: Oh no. No. Really?
DM: It doesn’t sound like you, does it? No. I can’t believe that.
TS: I’m surprised they had bushes in the desert actually.
DM: Well, yeah. Well, I think —
TS: There can’t have been many.
DM: I don’t know where we are now. We’re obviously still out there somewhere.
KS: Yeah. There are. Little clumps.
TS: Yeah. Little, little shrubs aren’t they?
KS: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: It mentions Wadi Halfa.
KS: Wadi Halfa, yeah. I remember that.
DM: And it says you flew something called a Lodestar as well.
KS: A lodestar.
DM: Yeah. L O D E S T A R.
KS: I don’t remember that.
TS: An American transport plane, I think.
DM: Oh right.
KS: Possibly.
DM: Obviously, you must, I think, I mean there’s a gap. So, you were continually flying in the desert up until February 1942.
KS: Yes.
DM: And then you don’t fly again until May. So that may well I presume have been when you were in hospital probably, do you think?
KS: It’s possible.
DM: 1942.
TS: I think.
DM: Yeah.
KS: I probably went home to the UK.
DM: You were, well once you started again you were still. No. You were still [Wadi Natrun] or something. So you —
KS: Wadi Halfa.
DM: Wadi Halfa. Yes. You were, you were, after your, your enforced break you were still out there in June 1942. So, you were away from home for a long time.
KS: Yeah. I spent quite a bit of time in the desert.
DM: Yes.
TS: Look, that’s Ken in 1942.
DM: He looks like a film star.
TS: Doesn’t he. Yeah. Do you recognise him?
KS: No.
TS: No. Ok.
[Needs to be excused. Recording paused]
DM: Ok. So eventually you came back to the UK.
KS: Yes.
DM: And according to your logbook the first part of the journey was in a Sunderland. In a Flying Boat.
KS: Yes. That was when we went to [pause] where’s that holiday resort?
DM: Lisbon No. No.
KS: Yeah. There. Around there.
DM: Yeah. And then you sort of, you came home. You came home from there. So it says here that you flew from Cairo to Khartoum.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Then from Khartoum to Lagos.
KS: Oh, Lagos. In the desert.
DM: Yeah. Then to Bathurst which I always thought was in Australia, but there’s obviously another one somewhere. And then from Bathurst to Lisbon. Then from Lisbon to Foynes in Ireland.
KS: To where?
DM: Foynes in Ireland. I expect it was a refuelling stop.
KS: Sounds —
DM: And then, then to Poole. I imagine the one in Dorset where all the rich people live.
KS: [laughs] I don’t remember much about that.
DM: So, I assume when you came back you must have had some leave.
KS: Yeah.
DM: And where, were your parents, where, would they still be living up in the north east then?
TS: I think so because his dad would be a Reserved Occupation wouldn’t it, for the —
KS: Yes.
TS: For the coal mines.
DM: Yeah, and he might have been a bit old anyway then.
KS: Yes. Up north. Up north. Sunderland.
DM: Yes.
KS: That’s right. Yeah.
DM: So then after —
KS: I went to Usworth.
DM: Right.
KS: There. Where is that near? Usworth. Have you heard of it? Usworth.
DM: I was waiting for you to tell me where it was near because —
KS: Eh?
DM: I’ve heard of it but I’ve no idea where it is.
KS: That’s, well, it’s northeast. Newcastle. That way.
DM: Right. Yeah. You don’t sound like a Geordie, you see.
KS: No. But there was [laughs] I don’t, I don’t suppose I was home long enough to get the accent.
DM: No. That’s probably true. That’s probably true. So, after that you started, I think you did some test flights and reconnaissance flights and some photography flights as well in a, in a Prefect which I always thought was a car but obviously there was —
KS: A what?
DM: Was there an aircraft called a Prefect. Do you remember that?
KS: Yeah. I’ve heard of that. I can’t remember what it looked like. A Prefect.
TS: If you look at the front there’s some pictures of the planes he flew on. I don’t know whether it’s there.
DM: What have we got? Let’s have a look.
[recording paused]
DM: So, you come back home. Had your leave and then you start sort of like a new chapter in your Royal Air Force career, and I see that one of the things you were doing was target towing.
KS: Oh yes.
DM: Was that in Scotland?
KS: Yeah. I think so. Yeah.
DM: Did you have any sticky moments with people hitting the aircraft or anything like that?
KS: I don’t think so. No. No. I don’t [laughs] There might have been. I can’t remember having one.
KS: And I imagine that was mainly low-level stuff.
KS: No. No. Not necessarily. I think. No. It was just normal flight, you know. Perhaps maybe up to ten thousand feet. Something like that.
DM: Right. And then you did a lot of, you have to help me out here one of you, CCG duties. Is it coast guard or something do you think?
KS: CCG?
DM: Yeah. It was in a Martinet.
KS: CCG. Was it a flying thing?
DM: Yeah. It says that the duty was CCG.
TS: It would be Coast Guard, wouldn’t it?
DM: I think it must have been. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: I don’t know what it, what it stands for.
DM: It must have been Coast Guard work I would imagine.
TS: So, it was up near Scapa, well the Orkneys would have been Scapa Flow, isn’t it? Up in that direction?
DM: And then there’s a lot where you’re doing, obviously I assume this is a route. Some Y Line, Z Line, X Line. Things like that.
KS: What?
DM: Y line, Z Line, X Line. I don’t know what they would have been. Whether they were patrols perhaps. They were all about an hour, an hour and a half long.
KS: What did it say?
DM: So, for example, “July the 13th 1943 Martinet. Self and second pilot McGilvary. McGilvary. Y Line. 1 hour.”
TS: Was that to do with target towing do you think? Maybe it’s —
DM: It’s listed among the coast guard stuff so I don’t know.
TS: Whether that’s a patrol route or something. Or —
DM: I think it must have been.
KS: I don’t think it must have been very important.
DM: I think it’s a job for Mr Google.
TS: Yes.
DM: But it was mainly flying the Martinets, and mainly target towing. You did a lot. You seemed to have done a lot of that. Do you remember who you were providing target practice for? Was it, I suppose it was trainee fighter pilots was it? Or was it for bombers?
TS: I think a lot of it was for the Royal Navy, wasn’t it?
DM: Oh right. Well, that would make sense because it was obviously over the sea by the sound of it.
KS: I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe, yeah. Maybe target. I don’t know. Is it in Scotland?
DM: Yeah. We’re still in Scotland, I think. Yes.
KS: Yes.
TS: You had a great times in the Orkneys, didn’t you? There’s a, in your albums there’s a number of pictures of you up in the Orkneys, and you quite enjoyed it there.
KS: What?
TS: You quite enjoyed your time in the Orkneys, in Scotland. I remember you saying because in your albums there’s quite a few pictures of you up there. Usually with floozies of some description.
KS: A what?
TS: I think you had a girlfriend up in, in the Orkneys.
KS: Yeah. I had.
TS: Yeah. And a dog whose name you remembered I think when I last discussed it with you.
KS: Yes.
TS: And here’s the picture.
KS: Oh yeah. That’s the dog.
TS: Yeah. What was the name of the dog?
KS: Butch, I think.
TS: I think it was. You’re right. Yeah.
KS: I think it was Butch.
TS: Yeah. I think it was.
KS: Yeah. That was in the Orkneys.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: A nice girl.
DM: So, you were up, you were in Scotland for quite some time, and then in 1944 you were doing a lot of air tests of various Martinets and Ansons. It was basically. And something called curve of pursuit crops up from time to time which, is it some sort of navigational exercise maybe? I don’t know.
KS: What is it? What did you say?
DM: Curve of pursuit.
KS: Don’t know.
DM: No.
TS: But that would be some aerial manoeuvre wouldn’t it be? Do you think?
KS: Does it say a lot of that?
DM: There’s a fair few of them.
KS: I must remember then.
DM: So, like in a Master with pilot officer Bullen, curve of pursuit. With Sergeant Clark, curve of pursuit. Always with a different co-pilot or passenger, so it could have been a navigation exercise or something, I guess.
KS: Yeah. I think so.
[pause]
TS: Well, unless there was some sort of protocol for vectoring pilots onto enemy aircraft or something. There was some sort of protocol for that.
DM: Maybe. I don’t know where you are now when you, when you’re doing this. I imagine you’ve left the Orkneys. We’re in 1944.
KS: Yes.
DM: And then we, we sort of, you then had a, you had a couple more flights in a Hurricane in 1944, in August 1944. Local it says, so —
TS: Does it mention the Seafire in there somewhere?
[recording paused]
DM: So, I see from your logbook that in 1945 —
KS: Yes.
DM: You started flying, you were seconded I imagine to the Fleet Air Arm. To 771 Squadron.
KS: Yes. I remember that.
DM: Do you remember what you did?
KS: No.
DM: Were you testing aircraft? Was that, was that why you were there?
KS: Yes. We were testing aircraft and it was at Oxford. Oxford? The airport near London. Where was —
DM: Right.
TS: Not Duxford?
DM: Oh. Could be Duxford. Duxford?
KS: Where?
DM: Duxford.
KS: Don’t know.
DM: It’s not far from London. It’s Cambridgeshire.
KS: The name seems to ring a bell but I don’t know why.
DM: I mean you were doing all sorts of things there. Like it’s got, “Destroyer. Anti-aircraft. Winged target.” Whether they winged you or you winged them I don’t know.
KS: Oh yeah. Yeah. That was an aeroplane towing a target and the following that is an aeroplane testing out its guns if I remember rightly.
DM: Right.
TS: On the Seafire business there’s an interesting picture here in his album. It’s a drop tank. Drop tank trial on the Seafire Mark 15.
KS: What’s that?
DM: Right.
KS: Drop tank trial on the Seafire.
TS: Yeah. That was part of your NAFDU work, I think.
KD: Oh yes.
DM: Yes. Which we think stood for — NAFDU.
TS: Naval Air, Naval Air —
DM: Force.
TS: Force.
KS: Fighter Unit.
DM: Fighter.
TS: Yeah. Fighter Defence Unit.
KS: Fighter Unit, NAFDU.
DM: Right. Right.
KS: NAFDU. Yeah.
DM: Can you remember what a DBX was?
KS: Pardon?
DM: A DBX. Because you did a, you did three flights to DBX Duke of York which is obviously a ship or a land base because —
KS: No. I don’t know what that is.
DM: DBX. I don’t know what that is. Do you know how you can, this is a very unfair question but do you know how you came to be seconded to the Royal Navy? Why that happened?
[pause]
TS: It’s perhaps on the back of your test pilot work in North Africa maybe.
KS: Hmmn?
TS: Maybe on the back of your test pilot work in North Africa. I think you had a reputation.
KS: I don’t know. What was the question?
DM: How you came to be in the Royal Navy. Why they moved you across to the Royal Navy.
KS: I don’t know. I think probably it was from the Air Force. Royal Air Force that. I really don’t know.
DM: No.
KS: I don’t know.
DM: You probably, you probably volunteered in inverted commas. That’s what it was. I mean looking, looking at your logbook from the war, so your first stint in the Royal Air Force there are, you’ve, you’ve compiled a list in the back of the aerodromes that you visited during your service.
KS: Oh yes.
DM: And there’s a hundred and twenty three of them.
KS: No.
DM: Yeah. A hundred and twenty three.
KS: I didn’t think there were that number.
DM: No. Range and that’s sort of like ranging from Cambridge of course. In fact, the first one was a place called, it’s near Newcastle. Walsington.
KS: Usworth.
DM: No. It says Walsington here. Or Halsington. I can’t see if it’s a W. I think it’s a W. Walsington I think. But then it was Cambridge which of course was where you did your training as we’ve already seen. And then eventually of course you end up in 1941 in Lagos and that was when —
KS: Lagos.
DM: You started out there.
KS: Yes.
DM: And then so many places out in Africa until you make the flight back via Lisbon and Foynes. And then after that you make your way up to Inverness and then to Tain which I imagine is the place in the Orkneys.
KS: Tain.
DM: T A I N. Tain. It’s in Scotland. It says it’s in Scotland.
KS: Yeah. It rings a bell somehow. Yes.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Tain.
DM: Yeah, and then various places in Scotland, and then ultimately in 1945 you end up in places like Gosport, Westhampnett which is obviously when you were with the Fleet Air Arm.
KS: Yes.
DM: And then I think the last place in the logbook is a place called High Post. Where ever that was.
KS: Is what?
DM: High Post. That was probably part of your demob, I would think. Probably where you flew to finish. So, you did, were you given the opportunity, can you remember at the end of the war?
KS: Yes.
DM: And as you visited a few German airfields and places obviously after the war ended.
KS: Yes.
DM: But were you offered a commission to stay on and refused it or —
KS: I think I had, a commission. I was a flight lieutenant.
DM: Right.
TS: I think that was after the war. When, when you re-joined the RAF for the second time.
DM: Right. So, anyway, you left the Air Force at the end of the war, didn’t you? You took a break from the Air Force.
KS: Take a break. Yeah.
DM: Yeah. What —
KS: I went civil flying.
DM: Right. Right. And what, what, who were you flying for?
TS: I think you’ve got the order mixed up because you went out to South Africa. Do you remember? To visit —
KS: Yeah, with —
TS: With Harry. Your brother.
KS: The family.
TS: No. No. No. With your brother.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Who had a business out there and I think you worked with him for a few years in his engineering business.
KS: I think so.
TS: Yeah. Which was when I was born in 1949. Out there.
KS: Were you born there?
TS: Yeah. And then we came back.
KS: Yeah.
TS: I think the following year. In 1950 or something. And then later on, I think ’54, I think you re-joined the RAF.
DM: It says ’51 in here.
TS: ‘51. ’51.
DM: Yeah. ’51.
TS: That would figure because I was born in ’49 and we came back in 1950 to the UK.
KS: Did I, did I re-join the Air Force then?
TS: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. According to your logbook you re-joined the Air Force, well, you started flying again in March 1951. And the first aircraft that you flew was a Lincoln.
KS: Was it?
DM: Yes.
KS: Lincoln.
DM: Which was quite a new aircraft then. A new type. Well, I mean I know it’s a version of the Lancaster.
KS: Yeah.
DM: But it was a new, a new type.
KS: That’s right. It was.
DM: And a new thing and it was familiarisation and landing, and stalling and asymmetric feathering, and all the multi-engine type stuff, I imagine.
KS: Yes. It was quite a handful.
DM: Yeah. Do you, can you remember why you joined the air, re-joined the Air Force?
KS: I don’t know.
TS: I think you were probably looking for a job, weren’t you? I imagine getting a job in those days was —
KS: Yeah. I, yeah, I thought that why I joined the Air Force was to get some flying in so that I could go civil flying.
DM: Right. That makes sense.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Hence the Lincoln of course because —
TS: Yeah.
DM: It’s a big aircraft.
TS: Yeah. There’s some letters we have in the album from the Air Ministry actually signing him up for his second stint, and with it came a commission to flight lieutenant, and you were signed up for twenty years’ service at the time. And you actually, at the advent of the, of the dawn of the, of the V bombers they were downsizing the Air Force, and they were making crews redundant and I think you took a golden handshake. Early retirement. So, you didn’t actually do the twenty years. You baled out before that.
KS: Silly thing to do, wasn’t it?
TS: Well, not really because that was the beginning of your civil flying career.
KS: Oh.
TS: After that.
KS: Oh, I see. Yeah.
DM: I don’t know. It’s difficult to see from the logbook where you were based. Tangmere is mentioned quite a lot but I don’t think that was your base.
KS: No.
DM: You were flying to and from Tangmere and doing, doing air tests and so on.
TS: I don’t know whether you would get a Lincoln, would you, into Tangmere?
DM: Well, it says [pause] where are we? I can’t find it now, can I? Yes. Oh no. You’re quite right. That was in an Anson. The first, the first Tangmere venture.
TS: Right.
DM: Which would make sense.
TS: I’m only guessing because Tangmere was a fighter, fighter squadron, wasn’t it?
[recording paused]
TS: Yes. You were. You’d, they put you in Bomber Command, and the go to bomber at the time was, was the Lincoln which was a derivation of the Lancaster. A later model of the Lancaster. So, a lot of your time, early time was spent refamiliarizing yourself with a multi-engine plane and doing all the tests. All the tests, and test flying that are associated with flying big heavy bombers. And I think eventually, I mean David will correct me, I think you ended up at Scampton and Hemswell up in East Anglia. In Lincolnshire.
KS: Scampton.
TS: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s right. I think, and that would have been 83 Squadron, wouldn’t it?
TS: Yeah.
DM: That was your Bomber Command Squadron was 83 Squadron, and I think they were based at Scampton at one point. And it mentions here in 1952 you did some Battle of Britain flypasts. Or you did the Battle of Britain flypast. You did a rehearsal.
KS: Yes.
DM: A couple of rehearsals. Including landing at Biggin Hill.
KS: At Biggin Hill.
DM: Yes.
KS: Oh.
TS: It just so happens I have the picture here.
KS: Eh?
DM: Oh yes.
KS: Oh, is that, is that what it is?
TS: That’s the Battle of Britain flypast.
KS: Oh, that’s me in the middle.
TS: In 1952.
KS: That’s 414. That’s right.
TS: Is that right David? Does that tie up with —
DM: That’s the right date. Yeah.
No. But the aircraft.
KS: You can see, you can see the cutback where the bomb —
DM: It’s a Lincoln and it says —
KS: The bomb went out there.
DM: 414.
TS: Yeah. No. No. This was a Lincoln which was, the thing you’re looking at is a radar dome under, under the aircraft. For the Dambusters you use, you use a Lancaster but this is a, this is a later aircraft so the big bulge under the fuselage which you, I think you thought was the bomb is, is a radar dome.
KS: Oh really.
TS: So, this is in 1952 and the, the Lancaster was then redundant. It was obsolete.
KS: Redundant.
TS: Yeah. And this was, this was a new version of it.
KS: Oh.
DM: Basically, I mean we’re continuing on to 1953, and of course you were operational but there was no war on, and it’s mainly instrument testing and sort of just flying from one place to another. But that was when you were based in Hemswell.
KS: Yes.
DM: A number of exercises in crew training and that sort of stuff.
KS: Yes.
TS: Was that a concrete runway at Hemswell then?
KS: Oh yes.
TS: It was.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So —
KS: All the interesting ones are while the war was on.
DM: Yeah. Although, of course, there is a very interesting one coming up which was when you ended up flying for the film of the Dambusters.
KS: Oh yes.
DM: And you were sort of in charge of the group of pilots who were, who were flying the planes for the film, weren’t you?
KS: That’s right. Yes.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
TS: But prior to that he was in Malaya doing, doing the stuff in Malaya which you’ll probably come across.
KS: What?
TS: Do you remember going to Malaya? To Singapore.
KS: Pardon?
TS: You went out to Singapore with your Squadron.
KS: Yes.
TS: And you were based in Changi. Do you remember that?
KS: Yeah.
TS: And you were doing bombing missions over, over Malaya to try and suppress the communists who were trying to take over the country there. So, I remember you telling me that you used to, there was a lot of partying going on, and then you would get an instruction to go and bomb. Drop some bombs on some bombs on some coordinate in the jungle on some poor people who were trying to reclaim their country back from the, from the United Kingdom. And then you go back and finish partying. Is that right?
KS: I can’t remember.
TS: No. I shouldn’t think you can.
KS: I can’t remember.
DM: So, that, that’s what they called the Malayan Emergency, wasn’t it? And were you based in Singapore then? Or —
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
TS: So, you must have flown out. It must be a long trip out from the UK because I remember when we joined you out there for a year we flew from, I think from Croydon in some, some Hermes or something, and it took us about three or four days to reach Singapore going via India. So, when you flew your Lincolns out there it must have taken quite a while to get there. Do you remember that?
KS: I remember going out. Flying the Lincolns out.
TS: Right.
DM: So would that have been in —
KS: Well, we landed at Changi.
TS: That’s right. Yeah.
DM: I’m trying to find out when? Can you remember what year that would have been?
TS: Fifty [pause] fifty. Well, the Dambusters was ’53, I think. So it must have been early 50s.
DM: Oh no. Here we are. No. the Dambusters is ’54 and this was, it was ’53. So you were in the UK in July ’53 doing various RAF Review rehearsals for formation flying and then you were off to Habbaniya in August 1953.
KS: Off to where?
DM: Then to Mauripur, Negombo and then to Tengah, in brackets Singapore.
KS: So, was this flying out there?
DM: Yes. You see, that was, that was your route out I imagine. So, you took a Lincoln. 672 was the aircraft.
KS: Yes. I remember the number.
TS: Do you? Really. That’s his Squadron, David when he was out with the Lincoln.
DM: So, yeah. You had five crew and three passengers on the flight out there.
KS: Oh, was it?
DM: So quite a crowded aircraft I would imagine. And you arrived in, on, I think you finally arrived in Singapore on August the 26th 1953.
TS: So how long would that take to get there?
DM: They set out [pause] I guess it was the 21st so it was [pause] they flew to somewhere called Idris then, and then from Idris to [Habbaniya] the next day. And then the next leg was [Habbaniya] to Mauripur. Mauripur. And then the 24th was Mauripur to Negombo which I assume is in North Africa.
TS: Yeah. Sounds like it.
DM: Sounds like it doesn’t it? Yeah. And then on the 26th from Negombo to Tengah stroke brackets Singapore.
TS: Gosh.
DM: And then it’s —
TS: It must have been a very boring flight.
DM: Well, yeah. And then you didn’t fly for five days after that, and then on the 31st you and the five crew did a cross country navigation exercise.
KS: What was that?
DM: That was, so after you arrived in Singapore, they gave you five days off.
KS: Oh.
DM: And then you went on a navigation exercise.
KS: Oh.
DM: And then four days later was your first bombing mission. So, you [pause] and then, then still out there you did a Battle of Britain flypast in September.
KS: Where?
DM: Well, I assume you were still, you must have still been still been out in Singapore because there’s no mention of any transit flight or anything. I suppose, outposts of the empire.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: Yeah. I don’t remember that.
DM: Frighten the locals you know [laughs]
KS: I don’t remember that at all.
TS: I remember visiting the airfield when you were there and they had an aircraft called a Beverley which was a huge transport aeroplane, an ugly thing, and they used to do parachute drops over the, over the airfield which for a, you know for a young kid was very exciting.
KS: I don’t remember.
TS: Well, you were probably off doing something else but it was a very busy airfield. It’s now, it’s now of course the main international airport in Singapore.
KS: At Singapore.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, in 19, on the 13th of November you probably won’t remember this but I’ll give it a go. You were involved in an air sea rescue search off Singapore.
KS: Oh.
TS: I don’t remember that either.
KS: I don’t remember.
DM: Two and a half hours that was.
KS: How long did it last?
DM: Two and a half hours. It doesn’t say you found anybody but, and then you did some more strike flying and then —
KS: Air Sea rescue.
DM: Yeah. Somebody must have come down in the drink, I guess. You went to Hong Kong in December. And then you, you came home in January 1954 and again that was another very long flight. You took off on the 7th of January from Tengah to Negombo. Then from Negombo to Mauripur the next day. Mauripur to Bahrain. Then Bahrain to Fayid. Fayid to Idris and Idris to Hemswell. So, you were actually six days flying back.
KS: Really? Six days.
DM: These days you’d be about eleven or twelve hours wouldn’t you, you know?
TS: Yes. Yeah.
DM: So then then you were back home and you were made a flight commander. Do you remember that? In February 1954.
KS: What was it?
DM: You were made flight commander.
KS: Oh, I can’t remember.
DM: Do you have a recollection of that?
KS: No.
TS: What does a flight commander do? [pause] Apart from commanding a flight.
KS: Commands a flight [laughs]
TS: Ok.
KS: Yeah.
DM: I suppose that would explain why you were the man in charge of the seconded people and some civil pilots too who were doing the Dambuster film. Because you were a flight commander so you, you were sent there to keep them in order and take charge.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, you did a number of air displays and various other things and you were, it’s interesting actually. Obviously, you started flying Lancasters again. So, you’ve been flying the Lincoln and the Lancasters were mainly sort of, you did some low flying practice and various other things and then you were attending air shows and doing flying displays. So almost an early version of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, I would imagine. Something similar.
TS: So that was about the same time as the Dambusters film though.
DM: This was May 1954. And then [pause] yeah. So, the actual, yes, no, you’re right. The dam, so there was some local familiarisation flying and some display flights. There was display flying in the Lincoln. Local familiarisation flying in the Lancaster, and then you started practicing for the Dambusters film on the 8th of April 1954. Low flying practice.
KS: Oh, was there?
TS: Because, because according to the book about the filming of the Dambusters they had to get the Lancasters out of mothballs. They were mothballed in various places, weren’t they? And then —
KS: Yeah. They would be, wouldn’t they?
TS: They were.
KS: Yeah.
TS: There were four aircraft all together and I think they —
KS: Four?
TS: Well, there were four. Three and one spare, I think.
DM: Yeah. And I remember, remember reading that each aircraft was painted with a different number on the side so they could duplicate six aircraft with the three that they were flying. Yeah. So filmed from one side it looks like one aircraft. Filmed from the other side it looks like another. Do you have any recollection of how you got involved in that? Was this another case of sort of somebody telling you, you were going to do it or —
KS: Yes. I can’t remember that.
TS: I think it was mainly due to your flying. Flying prowess that you —
KS: Oh yeah probably because —
TS: Because you’d got —
KS: All this flying.
TS: Yeah. You got good reports in your logbook for your flying skills.
KS: Yeah. I think something like that. Yeah.
DM: I mean you were still flying the Lincoln from time to time in, during filming. So, to do an instrument rating test on the Lincoln in the middle of flying on the Battle of Britain, the Dambusters film. I know there was a lot of very low flying involved in the Dambusters film.
KS: Oh yes.
DM: And I’ve read in the book about it that you took some exception to that at one point because you thought it was too dangerous.
KS: What was that?
DM: You, apparently you had a bit of a set to with the director, or one of the assistant directors because you felt you were being asked to, you and the other airmen were being asked to do things that was somewhat dangerous.
KS: Yeah. It was all dangerous. I remember bad things. Over the, over the lake, and where we were practicing prior to the big show I came along the water. I was sort of almost touching the water and ahead of me was a hill and I left it too late and I got myself into the position that I’d got to climb over the hill and I took on too much. And I said often this flying over the hill, and the crowd got closer and closer. As I was going up the hill it was becoming bigger. Oh dear. I was, I was right on the ground by the time I’d got to the top of the hill. I was almost scratching the top. I said to myself never again. How could you be so stupid to take on things like that? Because it had a certain amount of power, but not all that much. I remember that very well.
TS: Because I think the director, at the sixty feet that you were flying at over the water I seem to remember you saying the director thought on the camera it didn’t look that low so he asked you whether you could go even lower.
KS: Right. Yes.
TS: And you said you’d give it a go.
KS: Yeah.
TS: And I think at some point you were so low that the prop wash was whipping up water off the lake surface.
KS: Yes. That’s right.
DM: Yeah. That may well be. It doesn’t, doesn’t mention the incident but on the 22nd of April you were low flying and being filmed over Lake Windermere. So that that could well have been it I would imagine.
TS: Yeah.
DM: And those fells are pretty steep.
TS: Yeah.
DM: Aren’t they? Around the lakes out there.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, you survived the war but nearly bought it when you were making a movie basically.
KS: Yes.
DM: Do you have any other memories from that time about making the film?
KS: Making a film.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Oh yes. I remember. Yeah. I remember making a film but it was fairly straightforward like over, flying over Lake Windermere, you know. Just a normal flight. Only it was low. But that was the only difference. It was quite fun. Quite, quite fun.
TS: Well, I think for pilots who like, you know if you want to fly low, it was legal during the filming but probably —
KS: That’s right.
TS: Not otherwise.
KS: Yes.
TS: I remember you telling me a story about going mushrooming in a Lancaster. Do you remember this? I’ll remind you. Then maybe you might remember. You were, I think you were at Kirton Lindsey because of the —
KS: Yeah.
TS: The original road went off a grass runway.
KS: Yes.
TS: And both Scampton and Hemswell were concrete runways.
KS: Right.
TS: So, I think you went to Kirton Lindsey, didn’t you?
KS: Yeah.
TS: And I think between takes of the filming, you were just sitting around and being very high up in the cockpit you could spot these. I remember these massive horse mushrooms you used to get on airfields.
KS: Oh.
TS: And you used to trundle about with a Lancaster looking for these mushrooms, and then the tail gunner would nip out when you found one. Out of the back door, grab the mushrooms and then you’d go to the next one.
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: But, and you told me a story about the station commander banning you from the airfield because of the, the hairy flying that you were doing.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Do you remember that?
KS: Yeah.
TS: Can you tell David what happened?
KS: Yes. Well, I mean, it wasn’t all that big.
DM: No.
KS: Kirton Lindsey. And to get right back as far as you could get, and turn the aeroplane around and right brake, flaps down, and all the rest of the trip because there was not much space and putting the power on, and we started. We were here. That’s the end of the airfield.
TS: Yeah.
KS: And here were the offices. The officer —
TS: Officer’s mess.
KS: Offices as a, as a —
TS: Oh the —
KS: Not a person but the office, you know.
TS: Yeah.
KS: And we got balling up to this, and it seemed to be so long that we were on the ground and this office was coming up getting bigger and bigger and eventually I lifted the thing off the ground, and you usually get a bit of side kicking if you haven’t got enough speed and we just scraped over that one. Seemed to be living, I don’t know I make it sound very dangerous but I suppose it was really.
TS: So, so, so what happened when the CO called you in and said that you —
KS: Oh, we were banned.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Don’t come back.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, you were quite a long time on the filming weren’t you because looking in your logbook you’ve still got Dambusters, and still flying 679 mainly, the Lancaster. At the end of August, you’re still, still going strong doing various filming and things. And then I think it looks as though it was about, yes still September still flying the Lancaster. You must, must have got very familiar with it as an aircraft.
KS: Oh yes. Yeah.
DM: How did it compare to the Lincoln?
KS: Well, virtually it was the same as far as I was concerned.
DM: From the pilot’s perspective. Yeah.
KS: Similar.
DM: And then you, then again in September 1954 you were back on the Lincoln.
KS: Yeah.
DM: To do the Battle of Britain flypast, but you actually rehearsed in the Lincoln and did it in the Lancaster, so I suppose because they decided since they’d got the plane they decided they’d do the flypast. Then you also had a spell with the Lancaster again while they’d got it. You did an Air Ministry Film Unit photo, photoshoot in the Lancaster in October 1954.
KS: What was that?
DM: “Air Ministry Film Unit. Photos and ferrying,” it says.
KS: Air Ministry?
DM: Yeah. I suppose while they’d got the aircraft up and running they thought they’d take a few pictures of it for posterity or something like that.
TS: Yes.
KS: I don’t remember that.
TS: We’ve got some stills from the film which are also in the book, and there’s one of a, I think it was a Varsity they used for the filming, air to air filming and there’s a picture of the cameramen in the cockpit or something but which has been mislabelled in the, in the book I think as you and it’s not. It’s actually a film unit. This was a camera platform they used, and they used a Varsity aeroplane to have the camera in to do the aerial shots from the, from the, you know air to air shots of the Lancasters.
KS: Oh yes.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Well, they had the camera out of the window.
TS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, it would seem that after you’d finished you did a little bit more flying in the Lincoln in October 1954, but then there was a gap in your logbook until 1955 and then you had a trip in a Vampire. That was your, I think that was your first flight. Yeah. You were second pilot in a Vampire. Circuits and landings.
KS: Was I?
DM: And you were cleared for solo flying in a Vampire on the 17th of January 1955.
KS: A Vampire. I don’t remember flying that.
TS: I think this must have been the beginning of your conversion on to, I think the Canberra bomber had come on stream, and I think all that early jet stuff with the Vampire and the, I don’t know what other aircraft there was. A Meteor, I think. I think that was part of your conversion on to the jets from the Lincoln.
KS: I think it would be, yeah.
TS: Prior to flying the Canberra.
DM: Yeah.
TS: Yes.
DM: And then you were out in the Far East again.
TS: Right.
DM: Well, Changi. In a Valetta. You obviously didn’t fly there because you did a flight from Changi to Labuan. And then Labuan. And then Labuan to Clark Field. That was at the end. That was in a Valetta.
TS: Really? I don’t remember that.
DM: Yeah. And then in February 1955 you flew from Clark Field to Kai Tek, Kai Tec to Saigon and Saigon to Changi. You weren’t doing much flying then. And then back. Then in March you were back on the Vampire and that’s when you started to fly the Vampire all the time. Although again not many flights. The flights seem to have been very few and far between on the Vampire. Probably hadn’t got enough fuel or something.
TS: Do you remember the Vampire? It was a —
KS: I remember the Vampire. Yeah.
TS: It was quite a small aircraft with a twin boom tail.
KS: Yeah. I never flew it.
TS: Yeah. You did. It says in there. But I remember you telling me it was a very nice aircraft to fly.
KS: Oh really?
TS: Yeah.
KS: I don’t remember flying it.
DM: I’m not sure where you, yeah you were flying it out in the Far East. You were flying it at Changi. You were based in Changi and you also flew a Valetta while you were out there.
KS: A Valetta. Yeah.
DM: And then you came back home in [pause] so you, obviously the flying was a bit fewer and further between then, because in January you were, in 1956 in January you were still out in the Far East. And then you don’t fly again until April, and that’s when you were flying at Boscombe Down and Andover in April 1956.
KS: Boscombe Down. What’s that? Was that an airfield?
DM: Yes. It’s an airfield. Yes.
TS: Test Pilot’s School.
DM: It’s where you were and you were flying. You were flying an Anson. And then in May 1956 you started to fly the Meteor.
KS: Meteor.
DM: I’m sure you remember that.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Quite a dangerous aircraft by reputation, I think.
KS: The Meteor.
DM: Yeah. I mean quite a few pilots came unstuck in Meteors, didn’t they?
KS: Oh really. I didn’t know that.
DM: I think so. Yes. There were quite a few crashes. Particularly early on.
TS: Were they difficult to handle then? Or —
DM: I think there were problems with them.
TS: Problems with the —
[recording paused]
DM: So anyway, you really got back in to flying in May 1956, and that’s, that’s when you were, you were actually usually the second pilot but sometimes the first pilot in a Meteor and it was obviously when you were doing your training then.
KS: Doing my —
DM: Doing your training in the Meteor in 19 —
KS: I think so.
DM: Yeah. And still in June and you were up to the type 7 and the type 8 Meteor by then. I don’t know what the differences were. Did you enjoy flying a jet?
KS: Yeah. Yeah. That’s —
DM: Still young enough to enjoy it.
KS: Yes. It was alright. It was good fun.
DM: I imagine that everything happens very fast when you’re flying a jet.
KS: Oh yeah.
DM: You’ve got to have your —
KS: Very fast.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. If you’re taking off and something goes wrong, and you’re just off the ground what do you do? Go straight ahead.
DM: Yes.
TS: But did they have ejector seats in those days? In the early days of — did they have ejector seats in the early days of jet flying, or was that a later development?
KS: Yeah. I think they had.
TS: They had. Ok.
KS: I think so, yeah.
TS: Right.
KS: Yeah. As they, as they used to drop people in behind the, behind the lines. The German lines.
TS: Yeah. But I don’t think [laughs] that’s quite the same thing I don’t think.
DM: No. So latterly in your Air Force career I see you were flying the Canberra.
KS: The Canberra. Yes.
DM: Yes. You did a lot of flying in the Canberra, which I suppose was all good practice for when you went into civil aviation after you left the Air Force really. It doesn’t say where you were based. I don’t know where you based.
KS: I was based at Scampton.
DM: Oh right. 61 Squadron it says for one of them.
KS: I can’t remember the number. I was based there. Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Basically, a lot of the war I’d go away and come back. Go away and come back.
TS: There’s the, there’s the Canberra. Do you remember that one?
KS: Oh, oh yes.
TS: Yeah. It’s a pretty aircraft actually. And there’s one here of you in Gibraltar with someone.
KS: Very easy to fly a jet. No big problem.
DM: Yes, that was 61. After you had done your training, you were in B Flight, 61 Squadron. Had you been promoted or were you still a flight lieutenant then?
KS: No. I never got any higher than a —
DM: That was it.
KS: Flight lieutenant.
DM: That was the ceiling of your career.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Too much of the bad boy. You probably answered back too much. Yeah. So —
KS: Yes. There’s not much you can take out of that really is there?
DM: Well, no. I mean we know that you signed up for twenty years in the Air Force.
KS: Hmmn?
DM: You signed up to do twenty years in the Air Force the second time you went in but you didn’t do twenty years, did you?
KS: No.
DM: You, you sort of, I suppose these days it was, you’d say you took voluntary severance.
KS: Yeah.
DM: And that, that’s when you went into civil aviation was it?
KS: That’s what?
DM: When you went into civil aviation.
KS: Yeah, well, I can’t remember the date.
DM: No.
KS: 1950, was it?
DM: Well, you were still in the Air Force in ’58. I think ’58 was when you came out of the Air Force.
KS: Was that it?
DM: Yeah.
KS: Oh.
TS: His, his first job if I remember rightly was with Napier’s. And —
KS: Sorry?
TS: Your first job when you left the RAF was as a test pilot for Napier’s flying, quite coincidentally, flying a Lincoln that had been kitted out with a dorsal wing. A wing coming out of the top of the fuselage which they were doing experiments about de-icing on the wings, so they had all sorts of nozzles and cameras and stuff.
KS: Yes. Yeah.
TS: And I think you had to go off and find some clouds that were, you know likely to be to be, to precipitate some icing.
KS: Cumulonimbus.
TS: Yeah. So, so you did that for a while, and in your album there’s a letter of thanks at Napier’s for your time test flying with them.
KS: Who was that?
TS: Napier’s. The, well, the aviation people. They used to make engines, didn’t they?
KS: Oh, did they? Such a lot. I don’t remember it.
TS: Well, you crammed quite a lot in so it’s difficult to remember all the detail. I’ve been pouring over your logbooks so I probably know more about it than you, and David’s found stuff that I didn’t even know about so I need to go and have another look at them.
KS: Yeah. What you just said. Something about [pause] what was it?
TS: I was talking about Napier’s and test flying.
KS: Yes.
TS: For the de-icing rig that they had on, on a Lincoln.
KS: Yes.
TS: And I think that worked quite well because you’d been flying Lincoln and so you could, you know you were quite useful to them, I think.
KS: Yes. I don’t remember very much about that.
DM: No. You weren’t with them very long I don’t think.
KS: No.
DM: But I can remember coming to visit you at Cranfield Aerodrome which is now, it’s —
KS: Where?
DM: Cranfield.
KS: Oh.
DM: In Bedfordshire. Which is where you were based and flying from.
KS: Oh right.
DM: And at the time I don’t know if it’s relevant to this, but at the time when you were flying, I used to wander around the hangars at Cranfield.
KS: Oh.
TS: And at the time it was a kind of overspill for the Imperial War Museum.
KS: The what?
DM: For the Imperial War Museum, and what later became the RAF museum at Hendon.
KS: Oh really?
DM: And the hangars were stacked full of German aircraft.
KS: German.
DM: Which had been captured.
KS: Yeah.
DM: And also some experimental aircraft that were there. There was, I remember seeing a seaplane. A jet seaplane that was there. And I think all this stuff eventually were, was transferred to the RAF museum at Hendon. But as a young kid it made quite an impression.
KS: It’s a wonder they let you get out alive.
TS: Well, yeah actually.
DM: So, just to finish up you’ve left. You left the Air Force. You worked for Napier’s doing testing.
KS: Yes.
DM: And various other things. Where did you go after Napier’s?
[pause]
TS: That’s a tricky one.
KS: I was flying for [pause] I was flying for what was that? Oh, how could I get it out?
TS: Well, the executive.
KS: Pardon?
TS: The executive flying you did.
KS: Yes, the executive.
TS: But before that, before that you were going around job hunting. Doing various jobs flying where ever you could find them. And I remember you used to go to air shows and you’d be flying a, something like a Rapide, to giving people just, you know joy flights.
KS: Yeah.
TS: At air shows and I think you did that, you know where ever you could just to keep your hours up.
KS: What?
TS: Just to keep your hours up.
KS: Yes. That’s right.
TS: Just to keep your flying hours up.
KS: Yes.
TS: And I remember going on a trip with you once in a Rapide with all these people who hadn’t flown before.
KS: Oh.
TS: And then I think you got a job and I’m not sure how you got the job and I’m not sure how you got the job but you got a job with a merchant bank flying a de Havilland Dove, that they’d bought as an executive eight seater aircraft or something, and you were based at Hatfield which was a de Havilland or Hawker Siddeley, it became. It was their airfield so you were based there with this Dove.
KS: Yes. I was there a long time.
TS: Yeah. So off you go with the Dove. Do you remember. Do you remember flying the Dove? I used to fly with you a bit.
KS: Yeah.
TS: In the Dove.
KS: Yes. I remember.
TS: So, so you’d be flying what? To mainly in the UK with these merchant bankers doing —
KS: Yeah. A lot in the UK but on the continent.
TS: Ok.
KS: Quite a lot in the continent really.
TS: It was a nice little aeroplane I seem to remember.
KS: Hmmn?
TS: It was a nice little aeroplane.
KS: Yes. It was.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. I remember we used to go at weekends. We used to go to [pause] I can’t remember the name. There’s an airfield.
TS: You used to go, you used to go to Norfolk quite a bit, because the head of the merchant bank had an estate there and they used to go shooting, didn’t they? They used to have shooting parties and things.
KS: Oh yeah. That’s right. But that’s not the one I’m thinking of. I was thinking of Manchester. That way.
TS: Oh right.
KS: I remember taking, in a Rapide, a group of ladies.
TS: Oh, this was doing your joy flying.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Your air experience flights.
KS: That’s right. Anything to get a few coppers.
TS: Yeah.
KS: But this, they these ladies their average age about forty five, I suppose and their weight was about the same in stones [laughs]
TS: They were matron, matron type ladies, were they?
KS: What?
TS: They were kind of matronly ladies.
KS: Yes.
TS: Of some girth.
KS: Oh yes.
TS: That’s right.
KS: I doubted how many of there, because I was only flying a Rapide, you know, and it’s not, not a very big aeroplane, and it turned out I think there were about four or five of them. I thought Jesus. I wouldn’t like to have this weighed you know. It wouldn’t be allowed I wouldn’t think. Anyway, they were all happy and merry, you know. All off. They’d been saving up to go to London I think it was. Somewhere. And it was all right. I took off. It didn’t take too long to get off. I thought it might take the whole runway but they were very sweet ladies [laughs] and that was it. Weekend flying.
TS: Yeah. I remember you did quite a bit of that, I think just, just to make ends meet.
KS: Yeah. Anything like that. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Because I remember, I remember you telling me that, you know being a pilot, being a civil pilot in those days was feast or famine. They either had too many pilots or not enough and I think you probably hit a period when a lot of the RAF pilots were out trying to find work, and I think work was quite difficult to find.
KS: Right. Yes. It was.
TS: So, after the Dove. Do you remember what, what happened after the Dove? They bought a Hawker Siddeley 125. A jet aircraft.
KS: A 125.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: Yeah, and then they shared that with, with Beecham’s, the pharmaceutical company.
KS: That’s right.
TS: And —
KS: That wasn’t a jet. It was a propeller, wasn’t it?
TS: No. No. No. It was a jet. The propeller was the Dove.
KS: Eh?
TS: The propeller driven aircraft was the Dove. That was a twin engine propeller.
KS: Yeah.
TS: And then you went on to the Hawker Siddeley 125 which was a jet. One of the first executive jets that were, that were around.
KS: Was it?
TS: Yeah. We have a model of it somewhere.
KS: Really? I can’t remember.
TS: You can’t remember [laughs] and you did a lot of European flying I remember with that because —
KS: A lot of European.
TS: Yeah. Because eventually you went to work for Trusthouse Forte. Do you remember that? And they had holiday villages all over Sardinia, and all over Europe so you were doing quite a lot of European flying then.
KS: A lot of work was what?
TS: You were doing a lot of European flying with Trusthouse Forte.
KS: Yeah.
TS: The hotel group people.
KS: Yes. Yeah.
TS: And then you, then you retired from that. I think you had another bout of problems with your ear if you remember.
KS: Probably.
TS: You were getting ear infections from the damage that was done way back in the war, and I think eventually you chucked it in because you were, you were, you know you were having problems with it.
KS: Yeah. That was —
TS: I don’t know how old you were then. Probably, what, in your fifties?
KS: Sixty.
TS: Yeah. There’s, there’s, a civil flying logbook there somewhere.
KS: Oh, is there?
TS: And that was that.
KS: Oh. That’s in there.
TS: And I tried to get you in to a glider to go flying.
KS: Hmmn?
TS: When I was doing gliding at Lasham.
KS: Yes.
TS: I tried to get you in to a glider to take a trip, and that was the, that was the first time you would have flown for quite some time, I think. Apart from going on an airliner.
KS: Yeah.
TS: And I remember you saying that you’d survived the war, and years of flying with the RAF and you weren’t bloody getting into a plane with no engine.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
KS: It could be.
TS: Yeah.
DM: So, when you retired that was it. You didn’t fly again after that. Not as a pilot at least.
KS: No. I never really retired. I stayed and I’d do some —
DM: Just stopped.
KS: I could do weekend flying there.
DM: Right.
KS: And I went to fly for Trusthouse Forte for their top brass and there was some money there. But they were all very nice people really.
DM: And I guess once you did retire. You left Trusthouse Forte and retired, you, you were able to sort of have a life of leisure.
KS: No.
DM: Did you take up, did you take up art again because I know you were a very keen artist.
KS: What?
DM: You were keen on art, weren’t you?
KS: Oh yes.
DM: And so you did some of that when you retired.
KS: Yes. I’m still doing it.
DM: Right. Oh, that’s good.
KS: Done that one up there. That painting.
DM: Yes.
KS: Here you are, David. The —
DM: Oh right. So, this is your, this is your civil aviation logbook. From London Heathrow to Swansea. Something you don’t see very often. Yeah.
KS: When was that?
TS: What?
KS: Finished flying.
TS: It’ll, David will tell us. It’s in your logbook there.
DM: I can’t find a year.
TS: No. I couldn’t either.
DM: I can tell you it was October. Oh, 1970. We’ve got 1970. I think 1970 it looks like it finishes.
KS: 1970, was it?
DM: It looks like, unless there’s any more lurking at the back. No.
KS: No. There wouldn’t be.
DM: 1970. So, you would have been just over fifty, wouldn’t you?
KS: Fifty?
DM: Yeah.
KS: I was looking for a job.
TS: But you, did you miss flying? I don’t think you did, did you?
KS: I think I did in a way. Yes.
TS: You probably missed the travel and the high rolling lifestyle.
KS: Pardon?
TS: I think you missed the travel and staying in nice luxury hotels when you were flying but I remember you saying that you know you’d done, you’d done so much flying that actually you didn’t miss it that much when you finished.
KS: Yeah.
TS: But where some people I know, and certainly when I was at Lasham they, you know some pilots couldn’t get enough of it you know. They they’d retired and they wanted to carry on flying so they went and bought Tiger Moths and other aircraft so that they could keep going.
KS: Oh really? I think if they’d been flying like I was with commercial flying, I think at the end of the day I think you’ve, I think you’ve had enough.
TS: Yeah. I think you probably had the best of it actually, because I think flying these days is probably not, not that interesting or it is certainly safer though.
KS: Yeah. They’ve got all the aids. Yeah. I still, still —
TS: So, so, what, what was your favourite aeroplane out of all, all the aeroplanes you flew?
KS: The Spitfire.
TS: Right. That’s what everyone says.
KS: Eh?
TS: That’s what everybody says.
KS: Oh really?
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. It was a nice aeroplane.
TS: What about the Hurricane?
KS: Yeah. It was, yeah. Well, I didn’t fly the what the, what was it called?
TS: What? The Hurricane?
KS: Hurricane. I flew that a lot.
TS: Yeah. You did. Yeah.
KS: But —
TS: You didn’t fly the Spitfire that much.
KS: No. There’s not all that difference.
TS: Because you were with a Hurricane Squadron for most of the war.
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: Yeah.
KS: But the Spitfire was nicer.
TS: Yeah.
KS: To fly in.
TS: But what I didn’t know was, I mean reading some of the books that you’ve got is that the Hurricane made up the bulk of the aircraft during the Battle of Britain, you know, there were far more Hurricanes weren’t there?
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: Then there were Spitfires. It was a much easier plane to make, I guess and repair.
KS: Yes. As I say it was a jack of all trades.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. It was a nice aeroplane.
TS: And did you, I mean when you, when you moved to bombers was that, was that, was that interesting for you because having handled a fighter aircraft, bombers were very sluggish and a very different type of flying, I imagine.
KS: Not really. I wouldn’t notice any difference.
TS: It was, because, as you said before, you know it was a job, and you know it seems very glamourous now but at the time it was just run of the mill flying, I guess.
KS: Right.
TS: Is that, would that be fair?
KS: Yeah. But I mean to fly a Hurricane or any of these fighter aeroplanes they were owned by the government. I mean, the fighters, and you didn’t really get a look in unless you were in that part of the world.
TS: Yeah. I think you cost them quite bit of money with the planes that were written off through no fault of your own but —
KS: Yeah. We don’t talk about that.
TS: No. I remember reading about the Hurricanes in Malta which they, they didn’t have very many and they had to keep them flying at all costs.
KS: Yeah.
TS: And they repaired them and repaired them.
KS: Yeah, that’s right.
TS: And they became unreliable.
KS: Yeah. That was in Malta.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Do you remember your mate who flew off the aircraft carrier at the same time as you and went to Malta? The Scottish guy.
KS: Yeah. I can’t remember who they were.
TS: No. Your best friend went to Malta, didn’t he?
KS: Yes.
TS: Yeah. Do you remember his name?
KS: No.
TS: Because I don’t either.
KS: Eh?
TS: I don’t. it’s in the back of my head somewhere. He was probably called Jock because he was from Scotland. So —
KS: He was a Scots. A Scotsman.
TS: He was. Yeah.
KS: Yeah. His picture was on one of those.
TS: In one of those books. Yeah.
KS: One you brought.
TS: Yeah.
KS: The photographs.
TS: But he flew off the aircraft and you never saw him again did you because —
KS: No.
TS: He was killed in Malta not long after.
KS: No. I didn’t. I didn’t. I don’t know what happened to him.
TS: Well, I did explain to you he, he his engines started leaking oil, and he was trying to get his aeroplane back to the airfield because they were short of aircraft and then I think he was very afraid that it was going to catch fire which they often did apparently.
KS: They were afraid.
TS: That it was going to catch fire. That the oil was going to ignite.
KS: Oh, I see.
TS: And, and so he, he baled out, but he wasn’t high enough and his parachute didn’t open.
KS: I never heard that version.
TS: Yeah. I’ve told you before about it but you’ve probably forgotten.
KS: The latest I heard that he was flying from Malta and he got shot up and he got back but it was a job to get back. But he died soon after, so whether he was shot out there. Bullets in him I don’t know.
TS: No. Whether he, whether he got shot up and the engine was damaged. That could have been the story. But, unfortunately, he did, it was reported at the time because someone witnessed the accident. He tried to bale out and he wasn’t, didn’t have enough height and that happened quite a lot apparently in Malta, and it certainly wasn’t the first incident like that and —
KS: It could be but I, I thought, I thought one of the stories was that I was stationed out, not in Malta but where ever.
TS: In North Africa. In Libya.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
KS: That he, he got back, because someone told me that he had a job walking up getting in and out the aeroplane. I was all muddled up.
TS: I think that’s probably somebody else, but certainly the accounts that I’ve read in the two books, one is, “Hurricanes over Malta.”
KS: Yeah.
TS: And the other one which was called, “Scramble,” which is —
KS: “Scramble.” Yes.
TS: Takes in a fair chunk of Malta but that’s what happened to him. That he baled out and his parachute didn’t open but whether he’d been shot up before that and his aircraft was damaged but he, they had a lot of problems with reliability with the engines.
KS: Well, yeah. There was. They didn’t have all the —
TS: Well, they didn’t have spares for a start.
KS: That’s right. They had, it was very hard to keep them airborne.
TS: Yeah. So, when did you hear about him dying? Was it after the war or did word get back to you at the time?
KS: No. I think the war was still on.
TS: Right. Ok. Because he’s buried in Malta. There’s a —
KS: Hmmn?
TS: He’s buried in Malta. There’s a naval cemetery there.
KS: Yes.
TS: And a lot of the Hurricane pilots ended up in, in that cemetery.
KS: Yeah. I’ve never heard that one before.
TS: Yeah. it was in the book.
KS: Oh really?
TS: Yeah.
KS: It’s a good bet that there were a lot of killed.
TS: Oh, they had a hell of a time. They really, you know, I mean it’s just, you know amazing.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ken Souter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-07-10
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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01:32:07 Audio Recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASouterKP210710, PSouterKP2131, PSouterKP2132
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 Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth Souter was born in Sunderland. His father ran a business importing wooden pit props. Kenneth learned to fly at Cambridge, and his first air experience flight was on the 5th of July 1939, and after training he went solo on the 31st of July 1940 flying a Hawker Hart. After completing advanced training he joined 43 Squadron flying Hurricanes. He flew off HMS Furious to North Africa, and joined 73 Squadron. After flying many aircraft types and on fighter operations and having to contend with flying in the desert he flew back to the UK. He was posted to RAF Usworth on his return. He was attached to the Royal Navy target towing with Martinet aircraft, and in 1945 he was seconded to the Royal Navy flying amongst other aircraft the Seafire. He left the RAF after the war, and re-joined in 1951. He took part in Battle of Britain flypasts and in 1953 took part in bombing missions flying Lincolns against the communist insurgents during the Malayan Emergency. Whilst flying as a display pilot he took part in the filming of the Dam Busters film flying Lancasters which involved low flying. He flew Canberras in 61 Squadron and he continued flying after he had left the RAF.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1951
1952
1953
1954-04-08
1955
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Malaysia
Malta
Singapore
North Africa
England--Lincolnshire
England--Sussex
Singapore
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
43 Squadron
61 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lincoln
Martinet
Meteor
pilot
RAF Tangmere
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/859/11101/AHarrisIR-SW180324.2.mp3
9079e793b890b29a429fceba459dd629
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, Pat and Frank
Pat Harris
Iris R Haris
I R Harris
Frank Harris
Stanley W Harris
S W Harris
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Iris 'Pat' Harris and Stanley 'Frank' Harris. Pat Harris's brother Flight Sergeant Jack Carter (576282 Royal air Force) was killed over Germany flying from RAF Bardney 22 March 1944.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harris, IR-SW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: Today, which is the 24th of March 2018 at 14.45 it’s Denise Boneham interviewing Pat and Stan Harris at their home in Diss. Pat, would you like to tell me a little bit about your brother’s service?
PH: Yes. He went in to the Air Force straight from school when he was almost seventeen. He went as a an apprentice, a toolmaker but the instruction was shortened because of the war and then immediately he’d qualified, he volunteered for aircrew and he became a navigator. And he was operating from Bardney in Lincolnshire.
SH: 9 Squadron.
PH: 9 Squadron, and he was with two Australians in the crew and one Canadian and one young man who was only eighteen. I didn’t know the other two at all. And then he was reported missing and unfortunately we didn’t know until after the war what had happened, which was a great strain on my mother who was home alone because I was already in the Wrens. And we finally found out that they had crashed in Germany and then they were buried after the war in Rheinberg and we have visited that cemetery which is beautifully kept. And it was great loss for my mum because there were three of us girls and one son so that was a bit sad.
SH: It was a long distance existence.
PH: My mother was living on her own. I didn’t have a father, and when I went in the Air Force err in to the Navy both my sisters were married so she was home alone. And I hadn’t been in, I was only seventeen and a half when I joined up so I’d only been in the Wrens about six months when he was reported missing which was a great shock being away from home and I really felt it greatly. My mum used to listen every evening on the wireless. They used to have a list when they heard about prisoners of war that, and she hoped that his name would come up but it didn’t. In fact, somebody of Jack’s age who had also been reported missing she heard his name which filled her with hope, but it wasn’t to be. So we didn’t know anything until the end which was pretty grim for my mum.
[recording paused]
PH: Yes. When Jack came on leave sometimes the Australians came, and in fact I have a treasured little photo of the pilot with my niece who at that time was a little tot of two, and I’ve got the snapshot here which is rather sweet. Yes, we knew them and sometimes I took Jack and the two Australians to the Kodak dances which I used to go to religiously [laughs] and, you know we loved having them. It was all very sad. I can remember, and he was a navigator, when we used to walk home from, if we’d been to a dance and he used to be pointing out the various star formations to one of the lads, Alan. And it was all very interesting to have them there and hear bits from their lives but they didn’t talk about a lot of what was going on of course. I didn’t realise it was 9 Squadron. They did talk about Bardney, and they were quite happy there and we have visited since. Since we’ve been up here we have been there but there’s more or less nothing to show which is a bit sad. But we went into the church there so it was nice to be able to point to where they’d been. Also of course his name is in the Cathedral, in the books there and they did, you know turn the page for us to see it which was rather nice.
[recording paused]
SH: Go on.
PH: Lincoln Cathedral. As a family we did visit Rheinberg quite often. My mother went until she was a bit too old. My eldest sister went regularly every year with the organised group until she was too old. So, we kept in contact and we were very very pleased with the condition of the cemetery which was beautifully kept.
[recording paused]
PH: Not the parents of one of the Australians that we knew, but a family friend in Australia who had also lost their son. And when I was back home having been discharged they came over because they wanted to see where he had trained. He was an only child, and where he had trained and that sort of thing. So they came to visit us on their travels on behalf of Alan’s parents. So that was interesting. It was nice to meet them.
[recording paused]
PH: The reason my brother went in to the Air Force in the first instance was because when he left school he had an idea that he would like to be a GPO engineer but he had to be eighteen, and he was only just seventeen. And my mother would not let him dawdle around for the next year and perhaps lose interest in things. So his second choice had been that he would like to go in to the Air Force so, and that’s why he became an apprentice toolmaker.
SH: You could say he was flying on Lancasters in 9 Group. In 9 Squadron.
PH: Oh, yes. He was flying on Lancasters in 9 Group. And I had only been in the Wrens about six months when we heard that he was missing, and quite a shock. He was then twenty one or twenty one and a half and it was rather sad that he had written to me a very long letter which I still have, when I went in to the Wrens telling me what to do and what not to do [laughs] and how to behave. I still have that letter. And I did get a letter from him after he was, just after he was missing. I’d just heard and this letter came and I had sent him a letter which was returned to me as well, which was sad. His name was John Carter but he was always called Jack, he always had been Jack and I have seen his name of course on the Memorial. And the Australians, the two Australians in Jack’s crew. One came from Melbourne, and one came from Broken Hill but I’m not sure which way around that was. But they fitted in very well when they came home with us and on the way home when we’d been to a dance my brother used to be pointing out the stars to the other two and what they meant which was quite interesting. Their names was Jimmy Jubb and Alan Johns.
[recording paused]
SH: When I joined the Air Force [pause] Oh God. In, in about, let’s see in about 1941 I joined the Air Training Corps in Harrow. And that was before there were several Air Training Corps squadrons around that area. And I stayed there, in there before going in to the Air Force. One of our civilian instructors took us and when I say us the football team, the cricket team and athletics to an airfield just outside London and he arranged for one of his colleagues who was stationed there to provide a Wellington for the day and to take us in twos. Fifteen of us. Fifteen others. So I put my hand up quickly with my friend Peter Robbins, he died just after the war in an air crash and we went up as the first two. We did one circuit and came in and landed because weather conditions. So out of all the people who went there for that day only two of us had a flight by a Polish pilot. And the civilian instructor had brought a fountain pen that he was going to give to the pilot at the end of the day and I always remember him saying, ‘What do I do with this now?’ [laughs] That was first flying. And from then on I went in to the Air Force under the category of PNB, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer. I got ten months deferred service, although I went in after six months with another course and it wasn’t long after that that all the training of pilot, navigators and bomb aimers was stopped. They’d got too many and all they wanted at that time were air gunners or wireless operator/air gunners. So I remustered as an air gunner and passed up, passed out in Dalcross in Scotland. From there I went in to a Wellington training course. I was a [pause] I’ve forgotten the name of the title anyway and we did a course at Silverstone and from there we posted. Oh, we converted on to Lancasters at Cottesmore, but by that time both the war had been ended and I did, so I didn’t, didn’t do any operational flying. And then after that, after the Jap war ended I went on to transport for about a year and a half and then was demobbed. Oh yeah. At, at Cottesmore we started flying on Lancasters, and there were two, there were ten, ten crews each of seven men in the course and one night in a circuits and bumps operation one of the Lancs crashed and they were all killed. But the crew that were killed there were seven, there were six officers in the crew and one rear gunner as a sergeant but that rear gunner because he was stationed with the officers and he had nowhere to go in the evening he always booked in with us. With my crew. And he went, he reported sick the day before that crash to go with my bomb aimer to meet a couple of WAAFs in, in Oakham, Rutland and he survived of course but the man that, or the crew that took his place, a warrant officer, he and the six officers were all killed. That’s just about a month after the Jap war ended. I remember that the pilot of that plane who was on our course he was getting married in two weeks time from that time. Yeah. That’s all. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. During our time at Cottesmore we were told that we were being trained for Tiger Force which was the British Government to send a force of RAF, Army and Navy out to the Far East to back up the Americans who they recognised had done so much for us in Europe. So that’s another point I never got to really [pause] To driving, yeah. When I came off flying I had another year and a half to do, to spend in the RAF, Air Force and we were able to choose the next, next part of the RAF training that we went in to. So I put down transport and I was sent up to a place called Dishforth, RAF Dishforth in Blackpool, and we trained on civilian cars. Austin 6s. And passed out there and was posted then to a place called Hinton in the Hedges, where they were preparing all sorts of vehicles. Every lorry you could think of was being serviced. And every day we would report there to drive them up to Manchester. Somewhere north of the Manchester and I think they were being issued to the French government. And then after that I was given the job of driving the army Matador with its trailer, eight wheel trailer, and we were clearing all the radar equipment all around Cornwall and Devon because it was being destroyed by the salt and the sea situation and I’d been sent out to there and collect them and bring them back to Welford near Reading. And then after that if course I was demobbed.
[recording paused]
SH: We went down to Sutton. Sutton Bridge. Do you know Sutton Bridge? I ended there. Yeah. And the other place we went to was an Army place up in Yorkshire. Now, I’ll just say, well it’s not much to say about demob really is there?
[recording paused]
SH: Oh, my goodness. When the war ended and my, one of my best friends who was, he had been a bomb aimer we, we more or less lost contact because he got married whereas I hadn’t been married. But somewhere six months to eight months after that that I met my wife Pat and it turned out that she had been in the Services. Demobbed a little earlier than me. She was in the Wrens and so we had quite a bit to talk about with the RAF and the Wrens. We were finances. Finances? Not finances.
PH: Fiancés.
SH: Fiancés [laughs] We were fiancés for about a year and now of course we’ve been married for seventy years. Our [pause] takes place in about —
PH: September.
SH: September this year. When I, when I first met Pat she gave up her dancing career and when I gave up I’d already, in order to meet people I’d joined a Cricket Club and I merely packed that in. So we then went on to live in a small little flat. From that flat we went in to her mother’s house because her mother had retired and gone down to Port Isaac in Cornwall. And from there we moved to North Harrow, another house. From there we moved to Ickenham, a much bigger house. And when I retired we came up to Diss in Norfolk, and we’ve made another move within Diss to get a smaller house to cut out the garden and the staircase and here we are in a small lovely little bungalow.
PH: My mum worked in an estate agents. She was a secretary and up came what we called the flat but actually it was the upstairs of somebody’s house. So we had the front room and a bedroom and the other bedroom had been turned in to a kitchen. But there was nothing at all in it except a cooker. We had no hot water. We used to go to my sisters to get bath once a week.
SH: I should have said all that actually, shouldn’t I? [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 Pat and Frank Harris
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHarrisIR-SW180324
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
00:19:54 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
Description
An account of the resource
Pat Harris’ brother John ‘Jack’ Harris joined the RAF straight from school as an apprentice. During the war he volunteered for aircrew and trained as a navigator. He was reported missing when Pat was serving in the Wrens. His death was finally confirmed and he is buried in Rheinberg Cemetery.
Stan Harris joined the RAF and began training as an air gunner just as the war was ending. During his training at Cottesmore the gunner of another crew who was a sergeant reported sick in order to meet some WAAFs along with the bomb aimer in Stan’s crew. While he was absent his crew including the officer who had replaced him were all killed.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
9 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
ground personnel
killed in action
Lancaster
navigator
RAF Bardney
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1720/28756/AMaxwellMI190904.1.mp3
140988a4844426fd04d1e0c366915bd9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Maxwell, Margaret Irene
M I Maxwell
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Margaret Maxwell. She was a child during the war and remembers the bombing of London and Coventry.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Maxwell, MI
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MM: I can’t remember the date.
[recording paused]
DB: This is an interview with Margaret Eileen Irene Maxwell at her home in Coggeshall in Essex. It’s the 4th of September 2019 and it’s 14.20 hours. Also present is her daughter Ann Maxwell. Margaret, can you tell me more about your experiences during World War Two?
MM: I was just about to turn twelve when World War Two was declared. It was Sunday morning and mum and I were sitting on the back doorstep of our house at 98 Parkside Avenue, Romford in Essex. The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain was scheduled to speak to the nation on the radio at 11am 3rd of September 1939. As soon as we received the news a siren sounded. We later found out it was a false alarm. I went across the road to see my friend Barbara. I knew it was a serious situation because the year before we had had the Munich Crisis and Chamberlain had declared peace in our time. However, by the time war was declared we had already been issued with gas masks which everybody had been instructed to carry with them at all times. I detested my mask and recall the awful smell of rubber when I had to try it on. We all carried them religiously to start off with but we got a bit lax about later carrying oh sorry a bit lax about carrying them later when it appeared there wouldn’t be a gas attack. The first year after the declaration things appeared to be quiet. We continued in our daily lives including going to school. At the outbreak of war cafes, restaurants and cinemas all closed but as the war progressed they started to open up again. I was too young to worry about the closure of cinemas, restaurants and theatres but I remember the local church never closed and put on social events every day. We had table tennis, shove ha’penny and card games. The Wykeham Hall next door to St Edwards Church held a dance every Saturday and as I got older I used to go there with my friends. We also went to Warley near Brentwood for dances. As it was all barracks there were many servicemen there. There were no preparations to speak of at our school Romford Intermediate, Park End Road apart from a trench which was dug in the middle of one of our playing fields. We knew that we had to use the trench for protection in the event of an invasion. If Hitler had invaded at this time the general consensus was that we would have been overrun as we were ill prepared. Later brick shelters were built on one of the playgrounds and each shelter could take a class of about thirty five children. There was no electricity and I remember spending hours in the gloom knitting. We also had many singsongs to pass the time. Our lunch break was changed in order to allow us to go home earlier but at the start of the war we were not allowed to leave for home until someone appeared to accompany us. Before the war no one living fairly close the school was allowed to cycle to school but the war changed that as we all needed to get from A to B as quickly as possible and for many people the bicycle provided that speed.
[recording paused]
MM: Prior to the war we all had a one third of a pint bottle of milk a day. During the war this milk was delivered in large quantities and especially appointed milk monitors were tasked with decanting it into metal mugs. The milk was often warm, especially during the summer months as there was no refrigeration and as the metal mugs were frequently not washed properly we had to get used to it tasting rancid as well as tasting of metal. It was a disgusting experience. Our education was disrupted in other ways. One of the first casualties was the science department. The chemicals contained within that department would have been a hazard if fire had broken out with an incendiary or a bomb. Incendiaries were specifically designed to start fires whereas the bombs caused massive damage and immediate loss of life.
[recording paused]
MM: Domestic science was taught on a rota basis. One term cooking, one term needlework and one term laundry. Rationing made a huge difference to the cooking lessons as we had to take our own ingredients. As a direct result of the war we were taught to cook in a [haydocks] A large box would be lined with hay, a casserole would be brought up to heat on a cooker and then transferred. Transferred to the box, covered in hay, closed in and left for a number of hours to cook in its heat. Rationing had an effect but we never felt hungry. For most households cooking was done by the mother and rationing forced people to be more inventive. An example of rationing would be one egg, about two ounces of sugar, two ounces of butter per person per week. Dry egg powder was more available. Eventually we surrendered our egg ration in exchange for chicken food called Balancer Meal which we fed to three hens. We got many more eggs that way. I used to spend hours queuing up in the market for any food that wasn’t rationed like offal. We would visit the cornfields after harvest to glean what we could to feed the chickens. We also had an allotment which my father hated tending. It was my mother who liked the gardening.
[recording paused]
MM: One of my most vivid memories was of Hitler’s concerted effort to raze London to the ground known as the Blitz which was fought during the period of 7th of September 1940 to the 10th of May 1941. Shortly after it started I was in Romford marketplace on my bicycle like many thirteen year olds. The air raid siren went and I knew I had to get home. It was a Saturday and the market place was very crowded which was usual. However, as soon as the siren sounded the marketplace emptied in an instant. Just like rabbits disappearing down a burrow. I pedalled furiously up North Street to get home. It seemed an age as my bike was only small. There were anti-aircraft guns being discharged somewhere nearby and it seemed to me that as I was racing to get home these guns were following me and I was absolutely terrified. When I reached home I threw my bike in to our small front garden and dived in to the house through the already open door. My friend Joyce was bombed out of her house three times so her family frequently had to be found somewhere else to stay. On one occasion the roof fell in and Joyce was in her bed at the time. Our house shook very badly one night when a bomb exploded nearby and shrapnel came through the windows. I still have a coffee table which was damaged in that raid. At that time we did have, didn’t have an Anderson shelter. The criteria for being given a shelter by the government was that the head of the household should not be earning more than £5 a week. My dad did earn £5 a week so did not qualify for the shelter. Our next door neighbour’s head of the household George Lambert was only earning £3.50 so they qualified for the shelter despite that fact that four other adults were all earning reasonable wages. George’s wife Hetty was a school teacher and his three daughters Dorothy, Hazel and Kitty were all working so that they certainly pushed up the household income well beyond £5 that my family of four had coming in. It was very unfair.
DB: Okay.
MM: When they got their shelter they did invite us to share it with them so sometimes there were nine of us in one shelter in their garden. The three girls drifted off. I was too young to realise or to be told where they had gone but I assumed some sort of war service. This led my family to share this shelter with the parents. Unfortunately, there were wooden floorboards, wooden boards on the floor and after one particularly wet night in the shelter my mother woke up on the boards and they were floating with her on them. She vowed never to spend another night in it and my father decided to have a brick shelter built at the top of our garden. I recall feeling much safer in our neighbour’s Anderson shelter than in our own brick shelter although I cannot say why. During the Blitz I heard bombers going over us as most of the air action took place at night. We had no street lights which older teenagers felt useful if they had a boyfriend and didn’t want their dad to see them kissing him goodnight. Later I had an American boyfriend and my dad was not happy about it. The Americans were disliked but I realise that it was mainly because they didn’t seem to suffer the same deprivations as us. They always seemed to have enough clothes, lovely food and the luxuries we couldn’t get like chocolate. Some relatives who lived in Warwick invited my family to stay during the Blitz so we travelled up by train. We travelled at night so I couldn’t see very much. Later on during that night Coventry was hit badly and in the morning we went on our hired bikes to survey the damage. I walked through the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and I thought it looked so much like London. There was destruction everywhere. I had an uncle who lived in Leigh on Sea and although it would have been lovely to visit him at the seaside we weren’t allowed to go there. It was only residents who were allowed in to seaside towns. Obviously because they were important to our defences. With the benefit of hindsight I realise that my teenage years were very different from what they would have been if I had been able to live a more normal life. As the years passed we all got used to it. My father had served in the Machine Gun Corps in the First World War and had seen active service in the trenches in Ypres, Belgium. He developed nephritis as a result of being up to his waist in water day in and day out and was discharged from the Army. He was only aged thirty nine at the outbreak. You ought to put in there out the out [pause] Sorry.
[recording paused]
With the benefit of hindsight I realised that my teenage years were very different from what they would have been if I’d been able to live a more normal life. As the years passed we all got used to it. My father had served in the Machine Gun Corps in the First World War and had seen active service in the trenches in Ypres, Belgium. He developed nephritis as a result of being up to his waist in water day in day out and he was discharged from the Army. He was only thirty nine at the outbreak of the Second World War hostilities. However, as men were called up for military service by age starting with the younger men by the time my father’s turn came he was too old so became an air raid warden. He worked full time as an office manager for Marks and Clerk Patent Agents in Lincoln’s Inn Fields during the day. It was the only job he did until he retired after fifty years with the same firm. He would come home and after dinner we would wait for the 6 o’clock siren to sound as we knew that would be the signal to go to the shelter.
[recording paused]
MM: Sorry. Okay. Dad used to go out during and after an air raid to assess the damage and make sure people were safe. I remember seeing a huge bomb crater in the middle of the town after one raid and when dad looked in to it heard a ticking sound. It was an unexploded bomb and we had arrived before the defence services. We got away pretty quickly. The nose of a V-2 rocket fell into our neighbour’s garden and I remember being surprised at how huge it was. Another bomb made a crater outside the Parkside Hotel and a bus fell into it. There was a furniture shop called Henry Haysom’s in North Street and during one bomber raid it was completely burned out. A land mine ended up in a tree, also in North Street but that was safely removed and diffused before it could hurt anyone. I’ll stop now
[recording paused]
My brother Ken joined the Navy and he was on the bridge of HMS Lawford when she sank in the English Channel. Although the facts of the sinking were kept quiet we later discovered that the vessel was the first casualty of a German aerial torpedo. My brother gave his lifejacket to a chap who couldn’t swim and as a result of the time he spent in the water and the shock he spent six months recovering at Milford Haven. When he came home he refused to sleep in the shelter saying if his name was on a bomb so be it and he slept in his own bed. On those occasions mum stayed in the house too. I was too frightened and I stayed in the shelter. When I left school I was almost seventeen and I used to travel to London by train each day. I could then see the number of buildings that had been destroyed as you get closer to London. So many of the tenement buildings had been burned and damaged by bombs and incendiaries.
[recording paused]
MM: My first job was as a secretary for a firm of stevedores and master porters. I had to sign the Official Secrets Act because we saw copies of bills of lading for goods which were going from Tilbury and obviously they all related to our war effort and were top secret. I later worked for Mr Charles William Hill, the senior partner of [Bronden] Hill Solicitors in Gray’s Inn Square. I was getting used to the legal terminology and had to learn the shorthand for these words. Although Mr Hill was a perfect gentleman most of the time I remember him telling me that my shorthand was, ‘No bloody good,’ because sometimes I couldn’t read it. Part of the building had been bombed but the staircase remained and I had to walk up these stairs to access my office every day. My future husband Jim was working on a balloon site in Primrose Hill when he was blown up by the blast from a bombing raid. Most iron railings had been removed but where Jim was working the railings were still in place. The blast threw him up in the air and he landed up on these railings pinned on spikes which entered his body under the arm and through his leg. He was hospitalised for a time recovering from his wounds. Although it seemed quite exciting at the time the war had a profound effect on me and even now I cannot hear an air raid siren, an air raid siren without it triggering some awful memories of the death and destruction. By the end of the war I found it very difficult to sleep and could only get a good night if my father stayed with me until I fell asleep. I would have, I would have preferred to have grown up without the trauma of war but we all made the best we could of it. I made some good friends and despite the circumstances we had a great deal of fun. We all looked forward to a better life when peace was declared.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Margaret Irene Maxwell
Creator
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Denise Boneham
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-09-04
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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00:16:09 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMaxwellMI190904
Description
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Margaret was almost twelve years old at the outbreak of World War Two and living in Romford, Essex. She remembers the announcement made by Neville Chamberlain on the radio on September 3rd 1939. Margaret recounts being issued with a gas mask and how cafes, restaurants and cinemas were initially closed. Her local church, St Andrew’s, remained open and provided daily social events such as table tennis. Her school, Romford Intermediate, made some preparations for the war including a trench dug in a field. Later, brick air raid shelters were built on a playground which could house up to thirty children. She also recalls rationing, but never felt hungry and feels that rationing made people be more inventive with cooking. They kept hens for eggs and also had an allotment.
She experienced the Blitz shortly after it started as one Saturday she was in Romford market when the air raid sirens sounded. She recalls how frightening it was, and how she cycled home as fast as possible, as the aircraft batteries began firing. Her friend Joyce was bombed out of her house three times. Her family did not qualify for an Andersen shelter, but the neighbours invited them to sleep in theirs. Later, her father built a brick shelter in their own garden. She travelled by train to visit family in Warwick during the Blitz. That night Coventry was heavily bombed, and Margaret witnessed the damage the next day, including walking through the ruins of Coventry cathedral. Margaret recalls landmines, a V-2 rocket in the neighbour’s garden and unexploded bombs, as well as details such as a bomb crater outside the Parkside Hotel which a bus fell into. Just before she was seventeen, travelled to London every day on the train and could see the bomb damage. Margaret worked as a secretary in the cargo industry and due to the nature of the work had to sign the Official Secrets Act.
Her father had served in the Army at Ypres during the first World War. He became an Air Raid Warden during the Second World War. Her future husband Jim served on a balloon battery at Primrose Hill, and survived been impaled on iron railings by the blast of a bomb.Margaret’s brother Ken was in the Royal Navy and his ship HMS Lawford was sunk in the English Channel, by a new aerial weapon. After helping other crew members, he was rescued and spent the next six months recovering at Milford Haven.
Contributor
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Andy Shaw
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Warwickshire
Wales--Pembrokeshire
England--Essex
England--Warwick
England--Coventry
England--London
Wales--Milford Haven
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939-09-03
1940-11-14
1940-11-15
1945
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Balloon Command
British Army
Royal Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Air Raid Precautions
bombing
Chamberlain, Neville (1869-1940)
childhood in wartime
civil defence
fear
home front
shelter
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1246/16384/MNealeETH1395951-150731-048.1.pdf
797498dcd38cfa16c36ae6f19671107e
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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Neale, Ted
E T H Neale
Description
An account of the resource
123 items. The collection concerns Edward Thomas Henry Neale (b. 1922, 1395951 Royal Air Force) who served as a navigator with 37 Squadron in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy. The collection contains his training notebooks from South Africa as well as propaganda leaflets dropped by the allies in the Mediterranean theatre.
The collection also contains a photograph album, navigation logs and target photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alison Neale 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
2015-07-31
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Neale, ETH
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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[Drawing of Service personnel]
“Khaki and Blue we welcome you”
Durban is glad to see you.
[Page break]
HELPFUL ORGANISATIONS
The following organisations will gladly assist in the entertainment of visiting soldiers and sailors, who are invited to get in touch with the following:-
Rotary Club. – Luncheon meeting every Tuesday at Marine Hotel, Esplanade, at 1 p.m. Secretary, C. Teeton (tel. 56124; res. tel. 85267). Sons of Rotarians in the Forces especially welcome.
Masonic Fellowship.- Information regarding Freemasonry may be obtained form the Masonic Hall, Smith Street (opposite Greenacre’s); tel. 24261.
Sons of England.- Provincial Secretary, A.K. Todd, 7-8 Royal Exchange Buildings, cor. Smith and Field Streets, tel. 21642; residence 335 St. Thomas’ Road, tel. 48328. Lodge meetings held frequently at S.O.E. Hall, 473 Smith Street.
Toc H.- Toc H members or friends are invited to ring up Mr. W.E. Steuart, c/o Messrs. Maythems Ltd., Maydon Road. tel. 57126; residence, Beach Hurst, Marine Parade, tel. 26595. Meetings Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m., Lucas House, Commercial Road, opposite Victoria League Club.
Toc H League of Women Helpers, Ellison Club, 79 Field Street, tel. 25802.
Overseas League.- Hon. Corresponding secretary, Mrs. W.A. Larmuth, Durban Women’s Club, Stuttaford’s Buildings, Field Street, tel. 21752.
Royal Empire Society.- Hon. corresponding secretary, J.R.T. Crampton, 19-20 Gersigny’s Buildings, Leslie Street, off Gardiner Street, tel. 21418.
Australian and New Zealand Association.- Secretary F. Jempson, c/o S.A. Slippers (Pty.) Ltd., 98 Gale Street, tel. 25188; residence, 63 Bartle Road, tel. 57967.
Association of Friends of Free France.- Secretary, M. Verdoncq, 26 Baker Street, off Smith Street, tel. 20421.
Durban Caledonian Society.- Chief, J.K. Samson, c/o Standard Bank of S.A. Ltd., West Street; residence, 150 Evans Road, tel. 56874. Secretary, W.B. Smith, 24 Toledo Avenue, tel. 49405.
Natal Cambrian Society.- Secretary H.I. Rowlands, c/o Messrs. Payne Bros, 398 West Street, residence tel. 49145. Musical evenings arranged at Seaforth Private Hotel, 10 Palmer Street (Mrs. E. Matthews, tel. 20027).
Lancashire, Yorkshire and Northern Counties Association.- Secretary, Mrs. E. Jackson, 6 Beach Hurst, Marine Parade, tel. 27446.
Society of Londoners.- Secretary, Miss F.M. Lloyd, tel. 49182. Social evenings at Merchant Navy Club, 17 Gardiner St., 7.30 p.m., second Tuesday in every month.
British Empire Service League.- Offices are situated in the basement of the Municipal Buildings., City Hall.
Memorable Order of Tin Hats (M.O.T.H.).- Hon, sec., Major C. Bass, G.H.Q. Warrior’s Gate, Od Fort Road., tel. 26046, who will afford information regarding meetings of Shellholes.
Durban Camera Club.- Secretary, L. Bevis, Municipal Museum , City Hall, tel. 26611 (ext. 102).
Durban Amateur Cine Club.- Secretary, W.B. Gray, 110 Sir Duncan Road, tel. 57338.
Durban Chess Club.- Secretary, H. Fairbridge, King’s Mansions, Esplanade, tel. 26250. Meets every Tuesday, 7.45 p.m. Club rooms, Stuttaford’s Chambers, Field Street (second floor).
Philatelic Society of Natal.- Meets first and third Wednesday of each month at 31 London Assurance House, 319 Smith St. (take lift to third floor), 7 p.m. Hon. secy., G. Milner Palmer, tel. res. 48790, office 23553.
Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.- S. Carson (R.O.H.), 39 Gardiner Street, tel. 21373; residence, 16 Madeira Road, tel. 38770.
[Page break]
Ancient Order of Foresters.- Secretary, Miss N. Hughes, c/o Natal Mercury, Devonshire Place, off Smith St., tel. 24511. Meetings first Wednesday in each month at Foresters Hall, Alwyn House, 452 West Street, at 7.30 p.m.
Independent Order of Oddfellows (M.U.).- Secretary, W.J.H. Baker, 72 Madeline Road, tel. 36835. Meets first and third Mondays each month. Oddfellows Hall, Albany Grove, off Smith Street, near Playhouse, at 5.30 p.m.
Independent Order of Rechabites (S.U.).- Secretary, J.B. Matthews, c/o W. Sharp, 10 Stamford Hill Road, tel. 21234. Meetings second Monday in each month, Congregational Church Schoolroom, Aliwal Street, at 8 p.m.
Moral Rearmament (M.R.A.).- Office, 717 Payne’s Buildings, West Street, tel. 24248; after hours tel. 47958 or 49394.
Christian Science Reading Room.- No. 1 Rhodes House (ground floor), 368 Smith Street, tel. 22010. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.
Automobile Association of S.A., 30 Gardiner Street.
Royal Automobile Club of S.A., 5 Club Arcade, Smith St.
The Housing Section, S.A. Women’s Auxiliary Services, will gladly arrange for members of the Forces who are granted short periods of leave to be accepted as guests in private homes or on farms in various parts of Natal. Please contact Flat 5, Fire Station Buildings, Pine Street, tel. 26257.
The office of the Non-European Army Liaison Officer is at 141 Warwick Avenue, tel. 24543. It is suggested that non-European Officers and Nurses contact this official on arrival.
Information regarding other Associations or Organisations established in Durban is obtainable at the Publicity Bureau, corner of West and Church Streets.
CONSULAR REPRESENTATIVES.
Belgium: Mr. Henri Moumal, Reid & Acutt’s Buildings, 41 Esplanade, tel. 20132.
Denmark: Mr. O. Rasmussen, Whytock Building, 397 Smith Street, tel. 20731.
Free France: Capt. P. Lerequier, 42 Menteith House, Smith Street, tel. 20181.
Greece: Commander E. Lychnos, 24 Southern Life Building, Smith Street, tel. 25086.
Netherlands: Mr. F. Heckman, Netherlands Bank Building, 335 Smith Street, tel. 20387.
Norway: Mr. J.J. Egeland, 397 Smith Street, tel. 21694.
Poland: Mr. Stanislas B.M. de Rosset, 166 Goble Road, tel. 39461.
Portugal: Mr. V.M. Morgado, Netherlands Bank Building, Smith Street, tel. 22603.
Sweden: Mr. A. Lindholm, 99 Smith Street, tel. 25524.
U.S.A.: Mr. John Corrigan, Consul, Mr. Robt. C. Strong, Vice-Consul, Netherlands Bank Bldg., 335 Smith St., tel. 22461.
Yugoslavia: Mr. Alex. Blaikie, 130 Williams Road, tel. 21585.
New Zealand Govt.: Mr. H. Middlebrook (Hon. Representative). No. 3 First Floor, natal Bank Buildings, West Street, tel. 21483.
ZULU PHRASES.
[Phrase] Zulu. Pronounced.
Go straight ahead. Hamba pambili. Harmba pambeeley
Stop. Yima or Mana. Eeema or Marnar.
Turn around. Penduka. Pendugar.
Turn back. Buyel’ emuve. Buyella muvar.
How much? Imalini? Marleeney?
Go to the Point. Yana e Point. Yarnar Point.
Go to Maydon Wharf. Yana e Kangella. Yarnar Kangella.
Wait for me here. Ngilindela. Gilinderlar.
Good-bye. Hamba kahle. Harmber garshle.
A Zulu will probably express his thanks by the word “Mnumzana,” pronounced “Oomnnmzarnar”; or, if very pleased, will use the word “Inkosi,” pronounced “Inkorsi.”
Ricksha pullers and other Zulus use the following word to express money: 3d., Teekie (Itiki) or Upenn; 6d., Sispens or Zukwa; 1/-, Usheleni; 2/-, Scotchman; 2/6, Fakulin (Ufgargoleni).
Visitors will also note that Europeans use the word “Tickey” to express “Threepence”.
[Page break]
“WELCOME TO DURBAN.”
This greeting is a very sincere one and, on behalf of Durban, is expressed to you by the compilers of this publication, the Durban Publicity Association, offices, corner West and Church Streets, opposite City Hall.
We trust your stay with us will result in your getting to know something of the delights of this “Sunlit City by the Sea,” that you will partake of the hospitality of its citizens and make many new friends, and that they will ripen into lasting friendships; and when the time arrives for you to leave us, we cannot do better than repeat the farewell expressed by our beloved Prime Minister, General Smuts, who said:-
“Good-bye, officer and man, visit us again; you will always be welcome; some of you might like to settle here when the war is over. You will be welcome.”
And so in some other languages we say:-
Afrikaans: Durban heet u welkom.
Belgian: Welkon in Durban.
Danish: Velkommen til Durban.
French: Bien venue à Durban.
Greek: Kalos orisete sto Durban.
Dutch: Welkom naar Durban.
Norwegian: Velkommen til Durban.
U.S.A.: Glad to know you, Cousin.
Yugoslavian: Dobro dosli vojnici u Durbanu.
Polish: Witajice! Pozdrawiamy was serdezcnie do Durbano.
Russian: Privetsvuyu vas v Durbane.
YOU WILL LIKE TO KNOW THAT
DURBAN is the premier seaport and the popular All-Year-Round holiday resort of the Union of South Africa.
Durban (lat. 29° 51’ S., long. 31° 0’ E.) is the third largest city in South Africa; Capetown and Johannesburg being larger.
The population of Durban is 280526, (Europeans 105,742 African Natives (mostly Zulus) 74,132; Asiatics 92,183; Coloured 8,469).
The area of the city is 43,050 acres, approximately 67 square miles.
The rateable value of Durban (1941-42) is £47,175,010.
The average maximum temperature throughout the year is 76.4° and minimum 63°. Average mean temperature 69.7°. Average maximum temperature (midsummer), December-February, 81.3°.
Durban enjoys 2,401 hours of sunshine during a year, equalling 54.8 per cent. of the total hours of daylight.
The mean annual rainfall is 45 inches, the greater part falling during the summer months (October-March).
Mean sea-water temperatures: November to March (summer) 76°, April to October 69°. Winter months, June-August, 67.3°.
The speed limit in Durban, except where indicated otherwise, is 30 miles per hour. The rule of the road and sidewalk is “Keep to the left.”
City Hall, Post Office, Railway Station and Publicity Bureau are two miles distant from the Point (Docks) bus terminus.
A FEW DON’TS
Don’t sunbathe to long on midsummer days. Take small doses until you’re tanned. Smearing your shoulders, arms and legs with Vaseline or other pomade before bathing will help.
Don’t drink on an empty “tummy.” Have a good square meal first. The canteens will provide all you require.
Don’t attempt to board moving buses. Wait for the next one.
Don’t cross streets against the robot. Use pedestrian crossings where provided. The traffic rule is “Keep left.”
Don’t hesitate to ask townspeople for information. They will gladly assist anyone of the United Nations.
If you wish to post this folder home, don’t hesitate to ask the Publicity Bureau for an envelope – Free.
[Page break]
REFRESHEMENT CANTEENS and CLUBS
The organisations listed below are happy to provide refreshments and facilities to members of H.M. Forces and the Allied Merchant Navy.
IN CENTRAL AREA.
Victoria League Club, 209 Pine Street (near General Post Office, one minute from railway station). Open 8.30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Light meals served. Comfortable writing and smoking rooms, recreation hall with three billiard tables, tennis table sets, dart boards, etc. Concert hall. Dressing room with hot baths and cold showers.
Wesley Hall Canteen, central West Street, near Gardiner Street corner. Light refreshments FREE. Magazines, gramophone records and games. Free cigarettes and writing materials also supplied to those who need them. Open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Entertainments also arranged. Service testaments containing the King’s message can also be obtained, gratis.
Navy League Club, Metal Buildings, 25 Field Street (Esplanade end). Open 9 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. Refreshments provided. Rest and writing rooms. Hot and cold baths. Dances held Mondays and Thursdays. Sing-song every Sunday evening at 7.30 p.m.
South African Women’s Auxiliary Services Canteen, Old Court House, corner of West Street and Aliwal Street (next east end of City Hall). Open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Meals and light refreshments. Rest and writing rooms. Games, billiards.
Salvation Army Soldiers’ Red Shield Club, Albany Grove, next to Mayfair Hotel and opposite the side of the Playhouse. Open from 10 a.m. Light refreshments, reading and writing facilities.
Young Men’s Christian Association, Elizabeth Crookes Hall, Beach Walk. Two minutes from City Hall. Reached via Beach Walk at side of Royal Hotel, or from Esplanade. Open daily 8.30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sundays 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Refreshments, indoor games, reading and writing room, two billiard tables. Dances on first and third Wednesday of each month. Partners provided.
A limited number of beds are available in the Y.M.C.A. building, adjoining the Hall.
South African Women’s Voluntary Air Force Canteen, Milton House (upstairs), Smith Street, opposite Mayfair Hotel and next to east end of City Hall. Open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Light refreshments.
Sons of England Rest Room and Canteen, Union Buildings, corner of Pine Street and Mark Lane (near Victoria League Club). Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Light refreshments, games, reading and writing facilities.
Toc H Servicemen’s Club, 36a Gardiner Street (next to Wardkiss Hardware Co.). Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Light Refreshments.
Foyer des Forces Francais Libres (Free French Club), 112a Commercial Road (above Lipworths}. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Refreshments (French cooking), reading and writing facilities.
American-Canadian Club, Security Buildings, 345-347 Smith St. (in passage). Coca-cola and cookies. Reading and writing material and games. Music. Open 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.
IN BEACH AREA.
Durban Jewish Club, Old Fort Road, near corner Marine Parade. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Hot and cold meals and light refreshments. Writing and reading rooms. Dressing rooms with hot and cold showers. Sporting facilities: billiards, squash court, tennis, bowls. Undenominational.
Stand Easy Club.- Pavilion Tea Room, corner of Marine Parade and Old Fort Road. Open daily from 2 p.m. Light refreshments, games galore, reading and writing facilities. Dancing on Tuesdays and Fridays from 7.30 p.m. Sing-song with popular artistes on Sundays at 7.30 p.m.
Christian Science Rest Room, Marine Parade South, corner of Smith Street (adjoining Rink Garage). Open 2 p.m. to sunset daily. No refreshments. Reading and writing room.
[Page break]
IN POINT DISTRICT
St. Peter’s Canteen, Point Road, near corner of Hospital Road. Open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Refreshments, games. Dancing Wednesday and Sunday evenings.
Seamen’s Institute and Rest, 154 Point Road, opposite Vasco de Gama Clock and near corner of Southampton Street. Open always. Refreshments at all hours. Indoor games, billiards, reading and writing rooms. Cinema shows every night at 8 p.m. Concerts and dramatic performances in theatre frequently. Cricket and football fields available. Sleeping accommodation for Royal Navy and Merchant Navy. Sunday evening service 8.40 p.m.
Missions to Seamen (for Seamen only), Wellington Road (near end of Point Road). Open 9 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. Indoor games. Concert and cinema show nightly. Dancing twice weekly. Services on Sundays.
CONGELLA.
Seamen’s Institute Branch Canteen, Maydon Wharf. Open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Refreshments, indoor games. Cinema shows frequently.
Umbilo, S.A.W.A.S. Canteen (Stella Park branch), Bartle Rd., at Umbilo bus terminus, near Union Flour Mills. Open 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. Meals and light refreshments. Writing facilities.
IN SUBURBS.
Journey’s End Moth Shellhole Social Club, Kensington Drive, Broadway (off Northway), Durban North. Open each Friday from 7.30 p.m. and on other necessary occasions. Dancing, refreshments, free. Limited number of dancing shoes provided.
Greenwood Park Presbyterian Church Canteen, North Coast Rd. (bus stop 34). Opens Every Sunday 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and when other occasions demand it. Free meals. Games, two Badminton courts (open-air).
CANTEENS OPEN OCCASIONALLY.
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church Canteen, corner Albert Street and Commercial Road, opposite Fire Station. Light refreshments, games, reading and writing facilities. Concerts and social evenings organised. ALL FREE. Open 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. when occasions require it.
St. Paul’s Hall Canteen, adjoining St. Paul’s Church, corner Church and Pine Streets. Open when occasions demand it. Refreshments, etc.
Congregational Church, Aliwal Street (near Esplanade). Free refreshments.
Wayside Canteen, Presbyterian Church, Berea Road, corner of Manning Road (alight at stop 16). Open 2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. on rush occasions. Free refreshments.
NON-EUROPEAN CANTEENS.
For Indians: Indian Servicemen’s Club, 140 Field Street.
For Coloureds: St. Raphael’s Hall, Stratford Road.
For African Natives: Methodist Church Hall, 205 Grey Street.
SERVICES RESIDENTIAL CLUBS.
Officers.
Fleet House, Residential Club for Naval Officers (Branch of Navy League), 155 St. Thomas’ Road, Berea. Accommodation with board for 25 officers. Specially low charges. Tel. 49393.
Other Ranks.
S.A.W.A.S. Servicemen’s Residential Club, Queen’s House, 11 Queen St. (near railway station, off Soldiers’ Way), and Annexe on opposite side of street. Bed and early morning tea 9d. Over 900 beds. Lock-up kit rooms, hot and cold baths. Light refreshments (no meals served). Reading, writing and recreation rooms, billiard table. Open always.
Other Annexe, Ouma’s Victory House, Dougall’s Building, corner of Berea and Umbilo Roads. Open from 8 p.m. 100 beds. Same charge, etc. as at Queen’s House. Booking of beds to be made at Queen’s House during day.
All Night Inn, Soldier’s Way (opposite railway station). Sleeping accommodation for Naval personnel. 200 beds. 1/- night. Beds booked from 10 a.m.
Compiled and published by the Durban Publicity Association.
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[Three photographs of men enjoying the facilities in Durban]
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TRANSPORT AND MOTOR TOURS.
Travel on Municipal trolley buses, motor buses and trams is free to all members of H.M. Forces, in uniform, and also to those in hospital blue and grey, provided they wear their uniform cap and red tie. This privilege is suspended between the hours of 4.30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Monday to Friday inclusive.
Troops are asked to avoid unnecessary use of conveyances between 4.30 p.m. and 6 p.m., in order that the ordinary public requirements can be met.
Ordinary fares must be paid on “Race Course Special” and other special service trams and buses.
All routes are indicated on the map, thus: “Route…”
TROLLEY BUS SERVICES.
Route 2, Marine Parade, via West Street and Upper Marine Parade. Terminus Somtseu Road. En route: Hotels and flats, open-air swimming bath, central bathing beach, Aquarium, Snake Park, Beach Amusement Park, Amphitheatre gardens (special open-air dances arranged); Municipal bowling greens. Victoria Park, behind Parade (alight at Sea View Street); Beach tennis courts (alight at Hotel Empress).
Soldiers’ Clubs: Stand Easy Club, corner Old Fort Road; Jewish Club, Old Fort Road. Alight at Old Fort Road corner.
Route 3, South Beach, via West Street and South Marine Parade; terminus Addington Hospital (Government and Military hospitals). Popular bathing beach, change rooms, Beach concerts, Municipal bowling greens. Soldiers’ Club: Christian Science Rest Room (adjoining Rink Garage), corner Marine Parade South and Smith Street (near Hotel Seaside).
Route 4, Point Docks, via West St. and Point Rd. Terminus 2 miles. En route: Soldiers’ Club, St. Peter’s Canteen, Point Rd., corner of Hospital Rd.; Seamen’s Institute and Rest, 154 Point Rd., Missions to Seamen, Wellington Rd. Churches en route: Christ Church (C. of E.), Point Rd., corner Masonic Rd., and St. Peter’s Church (R.C.), Point Rd., corner Hospital Rd.
(All above services leave from Church Street.)
Route 5, Umbilo (4 1/2 miles). Industrial area on left, residential area beyond. Congella Park (corner Umbilo and Pioneer Roads), Stella Park, Stellawood Road (off Umbilo Road.)
Route 6, Queen Mary Avenue, Glenwood.
Route 7, Glenwood (Bulwer Park and Manor Gardens), to terminus, Chelmsford Road. Residential area, Bulwer Park en route (2 6-10 miles.)
(All above leave from West Street, opposite Post Office.)
Routes 8 and 9, Mayville Hill (via Toll Gate). Main Road (inland) to foot of Mayville Hill. Extensive inland views (3 3-10 miles)
Route 10. Springfield Road (via Overport), to terminus, Springfield Road. Traverses attractive residential districts, inland views from terminus (4 miles).
Route 21, Musgrave Road (via Berea Road), via Pine Street, Cathedral Road, West Street, Berea and Musgrave Roads to Marriott Road stage, returning to city via Musgrave and Florida Roads, First Avenue and Soldiers’ Way (3 miles).
Route 22, Marriott Road, to Marriott Road stage. Musgrave Road (3 miles), thence returning to City via Berea Road.
Note.- Routes 21 or 22 form a circular tour of the Berea (time 40 minutes). Wonderful panoramic views, stately homes, beautiful gardens and gorgeous flowering trees and shrubs. Musgrave and Florida Roads are lined with flamboyant trees, in bloom in December and January. Large hotels en route: Osborne, Caister and Ocean View.
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The Municipal Aviaries are situated in Mitchell Park (east end Musgrave Road), a beauty spot, restful and charming, with huge indigenous and other trees. Refreshments obtainable. Jameson Park, near by, is renowned for its glorious gardens, beautiful palms and flowering trees and shrubs.
Route 23, Botanic Gardens (via Berea Road), proceeds via Pine Street, Cathedral Road, West Street, Berea and Botanic Gardens Roads and Edith Benson Crescent to Botanic Gardens, returning to city via Cowey and Clarence Roads, First Avenue and Soldiers’ Way; and
Route 24, Botanic Gardens (via Greyville).
Note.- Routes 23 and 24 are the inner circular tour of the Berea (2 4-10 miles). The Botanic Gardens are well worth visiting. Open daily until 6.30 p.m. Summer, 5.30 p.m. Winter.
Route 29, Maydon Wharf, via Church, Smith and Russell Streets and Maydon Road to Francois Bridge. Traverses industrial area.
Route 30, Nicolson Road. Latter portion of route through pretty residential districts with extensive panoramas of city.
(All above services leave from Traffic Centre, Pine Street.)
TRAM CAR SERVICES No route numbers.
North Ridge Road and Morningside, from Gardiner St. (opposite Post Office), via Soldiers’ Way, First Avenue, Stamford Hill Rd., Sutton Cres., Windermere Rd. and Trematon Drive to junction with North Ridge Rd. (3 1/2 miles).
Umgeni.- From Gardiner St. via Soldiers’ Way, First Avenue, Stamford Hill and Umgeni Rds., passing Windsor Park municipal golf course, to terminus at Connaught Bridge (3 3/4 miles.) The Roadhouse (dancing nightly) is on the north bank of the river.
SUBURBAN OMNIBUS SERVICES.
(All buses depart from Traffic Centre, Pine Street.)
The suburban bus services (indicated on map) are as follows:-
Route 25-27.- Durban North and Greenwood Park.
Route 28.- Mount Vernon via Hillary (via Rossburgh, Seaview and Bellair).
Route 31.- Sydenham (King George V and Springfield Hospitals).
Route 32-33.- Westville.
Route 34-37.- Brighton Beach (Bluff Marine Drive).
Route 38.- Fynnland Beach (Bluff).
N.B.- Route No. 1, “CITY,” indicates returning to centre of City.
A special train service is provided between the Clairwood Transit Camp and the city. (Return fare, a “tanner.”)
Motorists passing the camp invariably offer lifts to men in uniform and bring them into town.
Departure times of last buses from the City to all termini are: Weekdays and public holidays 10.30 p.m. The last bus returning to the City from Greenwood Park via Durban North is as 11.15 p.m. weekdays, 10.15 p.m. Sundays.
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[Map showing Durban City transport routes]
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SPORT.
CRICKET, RUGBY AND SOCCER.
Visiting members of the Army, Navy and Air Force Services requiring grounds are asked to communicate with the Durban Football and Cricket Grounds Association. Chairman, Mr. W.K. Robertson, telephone 25141. Secretary-Manager, Mr. V.C. Robbins, Kingsmead Ground, telephone 21067.
The Durban District Football Association will gladly provide full playing kit for organised Soccer teams. Apply Mr. J. Rycroft, Secretary, tel. 22075.
Eleven Municipal Parks and Recreation Grounds in various parts of the city are available, free, for teams desiring to play Cricket, Football, Basketball and Hockey.
Arrangements for the use of the grounds should be made with the Director of Parks and Gardens, Botanical Gardens, tel. 46037.
TENNIS.
Players will be welcomed at various clubs. Please contact Mr. W.H. Hammond, tel. 36734, or Beach Tennis Courts, tel. 24141.
Queen’s Club, whose courts are situated at the Ocean Beach behind the Marine Parade (bus stops Nos. 11 or 12), offer honorary facilities to members of the Services. Tel. Mr. R.S. Ford, No. 61554.
GOLF.
All golf courses in Durban and the surrounding district extend an invitation to visiting troops and, where possible, will assist by providing clubs, etc. At the Royal Durban Golf Club no green fees are charged and, when possible, clubs are provided free, and at other clubs members’ green fees apply. Play at the Durban Country Club is, however, confined to Officers.
The Municipal Golf Course, Windsor Park, is open daily from 7 a.m. (Secretary, tel. 36880). Tariff: Green fees, 18 holes, Monday to Friday, 1/-; Saturday, Sunday and public holidays 1/6. Caddie fees (first class), 18 holes 1/9, 9 holes 1/-, (second class) 1/3 and 9d. Hire of set of clubs and bag, 2/-. Nine-hole Mashie Course, per round, 6d.; hire of clubs, 6d. per round. Refreshments, lockers and showers obtainable. Take Umgeni tram.
BASEBALL.
Mr. H. Gethin-Jones, c/o List Bros., 360 West Street, tel. 23441 (residence tel. 22244), will make arrangements.
BOWLS.
All of the many bowling clubs will be glad to see visitors as spectators. Those desiring games please ring Mr. Ivan Southwood, tel. 26611 (ext 139), residence tel. 57443.
The Municipal bowling greens, South Beach and Victoria Park (behind Marine Parade), are open for play daily. Moring session commences at 9.15 a.m., afternoon session 2 p.m.
HOCKEY.
Please contact Mr. D. Marais, c/o Natal Technical College, tel. 20064, residence tel. 47023.
BOXING.
Those interested in the fistic art are invited to attend the Fred Crookes Gymnasium, Natal Technical College, top end of West Street, every Saturday afternoon at 2.30 p.m. As opportunity occurs tournaments are staged for visiting servicemen. Contacts: Mr. J.C. Barnes, tel. 22531 and residence No. 36692, or Mr. Trevor M. Pay, residence tel. 49237.
HORSE RACING.
Frequent race meetings are held by the Durban Turf Club (course at Greyville at the foot of the Berea, indicated on map), “Race Course Special” trams leave from Gardiner Street, opposite Post Office, for Greyville (fare 6d.).
RIDING SCHOOLS.
Information obtainable at Publicity Bureau, West Street.
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PLACES OF INTEREST.
Art Gallery and Museum.- Municipal Art Gallery and Museum, City Hall, entrance Smith Street, opposite Playhouse. Open 9.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily (Wednesday 9.30 a.m. to 2 p.m.), Sundays 2.30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Open until 8.30 p.m. when large numbers of troops are in Durban. A Guide-Lecturer is in attendance and will gladly show visitors around.
Library.- Municipal Library and Reading Rooms, City Hall. Same entrance as to the Art Gallery. Library open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. Reading Rooms open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
Botanic Gardens.- Situated on Berea (indicated on map), 50 acres. Fine specimens of trees, palms, etc., from various parts of the world. Open 7.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. October-March; 7.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. April-September.
Burman Drive is a Wild Life Sanctuary where monkeys abound. Take Morningside (North Ridge Road) tram to terminus. Wonderful inland and marine panoramas from the view site at the top of the drive. The monkeys are fed daily by the Warden from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., but take some bananas and nuts and feed them yourself.
Mitchell Park, situated on Berea (take Marriott Road bus). Lofty trees and spacious lawns. Large collection of birds in aviaries. Waterfowl and small collection of antelopes. Tea garden.
The Robert Jameson Park is nearby. Always a riot of colour. Fine indigenous trees and plants.
Indian and Native Markets.- between Queen and Victoria Streets, near Roman Catholic Cathedral (see map). Oriental atmosphere in Indian market; basketwork, fruit, etc. In Native Market, Zulus make and display beadwork and other ornaments, curios, skins and walking-sticks, etc.
Old Fort and Warriors’ Gate.- In Old Fort Road (see map). A historic spot, now an old-world garden. The old magazine is now a beautiful memorial chapel.
Warriors’ Gate adjoining is G.H.Q office of the M.O.T.H. (Memorable Order of Tin Hats). The largest Ex-Service order of its kind in the world. Patron: Mademoiselle of Armentieres. In the upper room are over 120 shields, each representing a Moth unit, and other interesting exhibits. Open daily (except Thursday) 10 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The Custodian will show visitors every feature of this unique building.
Aquarium.- Lower Marine Parade, central Beach (adjoining Kenilworth Tea Rooms and next to open-air bath). Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Admission 6d.
Snake Park.- Snell Parade, north end of central Beach. Take Marine Parade bus to terminus. Hundreds of African snakes handled by skilled assistants. Full information procurable on snake-bite treatment. Open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Reduced admission charge 7d.
Beach Amusement Park.- North Beach. “All the Fun of the Fair.” Games and side shows, etc. Open from 2 p.m. weekdays.
Zulu Dances.- On Sunday afternoons at 4.30 p.m. at Municipal Native Sports Ground, Sometseu Road (see map). Reached from Marine Parade bus terminus. Admission free.
Amphitheatre Gardens.- Sunken gardens at north end of Marine Parade, occupying 5 acres. Delightfully laid out. Fascinating stonework, rockeries, etc. Open-air dance arena. Popular concerts.
GREETINGS AND EXPRESSIONS IN AFRIKAANS.
Goeiemore … Good morning.
Goeie nag … Good night.
Alles van die beste … Everything of the best.
Alles sal reg kom … Everything will come right.
Wag ‘n bietjie … Wait a bit.
Bly om u te ontmoet … Glad to meet you.
Hoe gaan dit? … How are you?
Ko mons soek vir die kantien … Let us look for the canteen.
Baie dankie … Thank you.
Wat drink jy? … What’s yours?
Tot siens … Au revoir, or Until I see you!
Hou die blink kant bo … Thumbs up!
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Welcome to Durban
[Drawing of three service people]
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WOMEN’S CLUBS.
Ellison Club (Toc H League of Women Helpers’ Club for Service Women), 79 Field Street, between West and Pine Streets. Open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Meals and light refreshments. Lounge-dining room, rest-writing room and all the comforts of a home. Sleeping accommodation (20 beds) for week-end and occasional leave.
S.A.W.A.S. Service Women’s Club, 3rd floor, Fire Station Buildings, Pine St. Open always. 40 beds. Same charges as at Queen’s House. Meals can be obtained at Ellison Club.
The Red Cross V.A.D. Sunshine Service Club, 80-81 Club Arcade (first floor), 305 Smith Street, opposite Mercury Lane (for members of the South African Military Nursing Services and Overseas Visiting Sisters and Nurses). Open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Writing and rest room. Hot and cold baths, etc.
Durban Women’s Club, 4th floor, Stuttaford’s Chambers, Field Street, welcome all members of Visiting Nursing Services. Open 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.
With a few exceptions, all the canteens welcome Service Women.
ENTERTAINMENTS
MUNICIPAL ENTERTAINMENTS.
Variety and light orchestral concerts, given by the Durban Municipal Orchestra, the Theatre Orchestra and Dance Band, are arranged daily in the City Hall, the City Gardens opposite, and the Amphitheatre Gardens, North Beach (Bus No. 2). Concerts and dances are advertised in the daily newspapers and at the City Hall. When large numbers of troops are in town special Garrison Variety Shows are presented under the direction of the Musical Director, Edward Dunn, late of Blackpool, Buxton, Bath.
All Municipal entertainments are free to H.M. Forces and Merchant Navy.
CINEMAS.
The principal cinema theatres are open daily, except Sundays, to visiting troops at specially reduced prices. Times 2.15 p.m. and 5 p.m., evening 8 p.m. Criterion Theatre and Prince’s continuous performances from 10.30 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. For Sunday openings see daily newspapers.
On Saturdays four showings are screened at the Playhouse and Metro Theatres. A Newsreel is shown daily, except Saturday, at the Playhouse at 1 p.m.; admission to troops 6d. and 1/-.
DANCING.
Open-air dancing on the Garden Terrace, Athlone Gardens Hotel, Durban North, every afternoon except Sundays, admission free. Every night except Sundays in semi-open air, couples only, couvert charge 2/- per head. Wed. and Sat. nights dancing in the ballroom; couvert charges Wed. 5/- per couple, Sat. 7/6 per couple; reservation of tables necessary (tel. 61661.)
Dancing nightly, except Sundays, at the Roadhouse, North Coast Rd., Umgeni, couvert charge 2/- per head; you must be accompanied by a partner.
“Tops” Palais-de-Danse, 161 West St., open weekdays 3 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 11.30 p.m.; dancing partners provided.
Top Hat Tea Room, Umhlanga Rocks Drive, Durban North, dancing nightly.
Dinner-dances are held at the Caister Hotel, Musgrave Rd. (charge 10/-), on Saturdays. Reservation of tables necessary; telephone 48591.
“Cinderella” dances are held every Saturday night, 8 p.m., at the Royal Durban Light Infantry Drill Hall, Epsom Rd., under the auspices of the R.D.L.I. Women’s Auxiliary Comrades’ Assn., 7/6 per couple; table reservations, tel. 61552.
COSMO CLUB and STARDUST CLUB.
Officers of H.M. Forces are accorded honorary membership of these “dance till dawn” clubs, the addresses being: Cosmo Club, 8a Umgeni Road, corner of Old Fort Road; Stardust Club, corner West Street and Cathedral Road (positions indicated on map). Dancing from 9.30 p.m. onwards. Taxi fare to either club from City Hall, 1/- or 1/6 for 1 to 4 people.
Information Bureau, West Street (next to Post Office).
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SOCIAL CLUBS.
The privilege of honorary membership is accorded to all officers of His Majesty’s Forces by the following clubs:-
The Durban Country Club (golf, tennis, squash, bowls; meals).
The Royal Durban Golf Club, Greyville.
The Royal Naval Yacht Club, Esplanade.
The Mercantile Club, Whytock Building, 397 Smith St.
The Southern Club, 2nd floor, Poynton’s Bldgs, 339 Smith St.
The Merchant Navy Club, Alliance Buildings 17 Gardiner St. Open to all Captains and Officers of the Merchant Navy, the Royal Navy and other services, open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.
Netherlands Club, 483 West St., For all members of the Netherlands Mercantile Marine, the Netherlands Navy, Army and Air Force. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The Durban Jewish Club, Old Fort Road.
The Union Club of South Africa, corner Smith and Field Streets, extends the privilege of their club to Chief and P.O.’s of the Royal Navy.
The Port Natal Marine Club, Rees’ Building, 146 Point Rd. (opposite clock). Open to W.O.’s and Sergeants of the Army, Chief and P.O.’s of Royal Navy and officers of the Merchant Navy.
Orient Club.- Officers of the Indian Army, Royal Indian Navy and Indian Air Force will be welcomed at the Orient Club, situated near Umbogintwini on the South Coast road (12 miles). Please contact Mr. A.I. Kajee, president, 37 Albert Street; tel. 22981, residence tel. 22750.
BANKS.
Barclays Bank (D.C.& O.): head office, 359 West Street; Natal Bank branch, corner West and Gardiner Streets.
Standard Bank of S.A. Ltd.: head office 329 West Street.
Netherlands Bank of S.A. Ltd.: 335 Smith Street.
Banking hours: 9 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. Monday to Friday; 9 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. Saturday.
MONEY EXCHANGE AND TRAVELLERS’ CHEQUES.
Facilities for the exchange into South African currency of moneys likely to be in the possession of members of H.M. Forces are available at the commercial banks (Barclays, Standard and Netherlands) between the hours of 9 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. Monday to Friday and 9 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. Saturday; and at the office of Thos. Cook & Son, Mercury Lane, between West and Smith Streets (see map), during the hours of 9 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. Monday to Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. Saturdays. Sterling and dollar travellers’ cheques can also be encashed at prevailing rates of exchange.
English notes, also dollar bills, are encashable, the former at par, and the latter at the fixed rate of 4s. 10 1/2d. per dollar.
POST OFFICE HOURS, Etc.
Cables and telegrams: 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Monday to Saturday.
Note.- E.F.M. telegrams, via Overseas, of standard texts, covering greetings, health, money, congratulations, etc., etc., are accepted at a cost of 2/6. Three text numbers may be used in a telegram out of a selection of over 120 available. This service is available to members of H.M. Forces and Mercantile Marine who wish to send telegrams to relatives and friends in overseas Empire countries, except Eire and India.
Other cable rates to Great Britain: L.C. (deferred) rate, 7 1/2d. per word. N.L.T. (night letter telegram) rate, 25 words or less, 10/5, excess words 5d. per word. Full rate 1/3 per word.
Money Orders, Postal Orders, Savings Bank: Weekdays, except Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Stamps, Post Restante, Registered Letters and Parcels: 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., weekdays.
SHOPPING HOURS.
Retail Stores (outfitters, drapers, grocers, booksellers, jewellers, etc.): Monday to Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday 8 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m.: Saturday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The hours of business at stores may vary and are somewhat curtailed.
Chemists: Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Special group arrangements for urgent medicines at week-ends are posted on the doors of various pharmacies.
Hairdressing Saloons: Men’s – Monday to Thursday, 8.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.; Fridays, 8.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.; Saturdays, 8.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Ladies’ – Monday to Friday, 8.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.; Saturdays, 8.30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Newsagents and Tobacconists: 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., weekdays.
Restaurants and Fruiterers: 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. weekdays and Sundays. Some with late hour privileges to 2 a.m.
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CHURCHES.
IN CENTRAL DURBAN.
Anglican Church (Church of the Province of S.A.); St. Paul’s Church, Church St.; Central Baptist Church, 155 West St.; Congregational Church, Aliwal St.; Dutch Reformed Church. 151 Smith St.; Methodist Church, West St. (near Gardiner St. corner); St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Commercial Rd. (opposite Central Fire Station); Emmanuel Cathedral (Roman Catholic), Cathedral Rd.; St. Andrew’s Street Synagogue, St. Andrew’s St.; First Church of Christ, Scientist, corner Russell and St. George’s Streets.
Services on Sundays, generally 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Holy Communion at Anglican Churches 7 and 8 a.m. Mass at Roman Catholic Cathedral 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 a.m. Sundays. On request, later masses are arranged for troops at St. Peter’s Church, Point Rd. Requirements of Catholic Chaplains attended to. Hebrew Services 6 p.m. Fridays, 8.30 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. Saturdays.
A list of churches of various denominations in other parts of the city, and of sundry undenomonational churches, is obtainable at the Publicity Bureau.
REFRESHMENT CHARGES.
The charges for refreshments indicated below are those usually made in restaurants and tea rooms in Durban.
Tea or coffee … 4d. & 6d.
Tea, scone and butter … 9d.
Milk (hot or cold) … 4d.
Cocoa … 6d.
Ice cream … 3d. and 6d.
Milk shake … 4d. and 6d.
Coca-Cola … 3d.
Minerals … 3d.
Orange or Lemon Tomango, Lime Juice, Grenadilla, etc. with water … 4d. and 6d.
Orange or Lemon Tomango, Lime Juice, Grenadilla, etc. with soda water … 9d.
Cold fruit drinks … 4d., 6d. and 9d.
Ice cream sodas … 6d.
Milk cocktails … 6d.
Sundaes … 1/-
Fruit lunch (fruit salad and cream with bread and butter and tea or mineral … 1/6
Cold lunch, meats and salad with bread and butter and tea or mineral … 1/6
Fried fish and chips, with bread and butter, tea, coffee or milk … 1/6
Steak and eggs, bacon and eggs, sausages and eggs, with bread and butter, tea, coffee or milk … 2/-
Mixed grill with bread and butter, tea or coffee … 2/6
At hotels and grill rooms where liquor is obtainable, the charges are higher and vary according to the class of establishment. The prevailing charges for table d’hote meals at the best hotels are: Breakfast 3/- to 3/6, luncheon 3/6 to 4/-, dinner 4/- to 6/-. At many other hotels the charge made to servicemen for a full course meal is 2/- to 3/-, irrespective of the class of meal.
The prices of liquor are:-
Beer (lager or ale), per reputed pint bottle … 10d.
Beer (lager or ale), per 10oz. glass … 7d.
Beer, draught, per imperial pint … 1/1
Whisky or imported gin and water … ½
Whisky and soda or other mineral … 1/5
South African brandy and water … 9d.
S.A. brandy and minerals … 1/-
Bars and liquor licensed premises are closed on Sundays.
Cigarettes.- Well-known South African brands range from 1/4 to 1/11 for packs of 50; Du Maurier and Gold Flake filter tip, Peter Jackson and Viceroy Virginia., 50’s 2/9. Imported Players, 20’s 1/5, 50’s 3/6; Gold Flake, 20’s 1/3, 50’s 3/-
Chocolate Slabs.- 8 oz. 1/-, 4 oz. 6d., 2 oz. 3.d.
TAXI TARIFF.
The official municipal tariff is as follows: Minimum Fares. Maximum Fares.
For any passengers up to four-
For one mile or part thereof … 1/- 1/6
For each succeeding half-mile or part thereof … 6d. 9d.
Four people can therefore travel by taxi for one mile for a total sum of 1/- (minimum) or 1/6 (maximum).
Waiting time.- For every 5 minutes waiting time after the first 5 minutes, 6d. One hour waiting time is therefore 5/6.
Night Tariff.- Double tariff may be charged between midnight and 5.30 a.m.
Every driver of a taxi is required to be in possession of a tariff card, supplied by the City Council, which must be displayed in the taxi..
Always ask the driver beforehand for a definite quotation for the journey to be undertaken. To avoid disputes, please take particular notice of the number of the car.
N.B.- If fares in excess of the above are demanded, the hirer should require the driver to proceed to the nearest police station.
Charges usually made from City Hall or Post Office to:-
Addington Hospital … 2/6
Vasco de Gama Clock, Point Road … 3/-
Bus terminus, Point Docks … 3/9
Flats and hotels on South Beach and Marine Parade … 2/- to 3/-
Ditto on Snell Parade to bus terminus … 2/6 to 3/-
Caister Hotel, Musgrave Road … 3/9
Maydon Wharf … 2/- to 3/9
Greyville Race Course … 3/-
Clairwood Camp … 10/- to 12/-
Country Club … 4/6
Athlone Gardens … 6/9
Roadhouse … 6/9
Cosmo Club … 1/6
Stardust Club … 1/6
RICKSHA FARES.
The authorised tariff for rickshas for one passenger is 6d. per mile or portion thereof, and a higher fare, if demanded, should not be paid. Charges from Post Office to:-
Albert Park … 6d.
Marine Parade (corner West St.) … 6d.
Indian and Native Markets … 6d.
Kingsmead … 6d.
Flats and hotels on South Beach or Marine Parade … 1/-
Vasco de Gama Clock, Point Rd. … 1/-
Bus terminus, Point Docks … 1/-
Maydon Wharf … 1/- to 2/-
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[Map of Durban]
[Street map of Durban]
[Three photographs of Durban]
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THE ENVIRONS OF DURBAN.
Owing to the prevailing conditions it has been found necessary to cancel all Municipal motor coach de-luxe sight-seeing tours.
Along the Natal coast, south and north of Durban, are many delightful seaside resorts which will appeal and can be reached by rail and road. Southwards, the resorts are Isipingo Beach, Inyoni Rocks, Amanzimtoti, Doonside, Warner Beach, Winkle [words unreadable] (31 miles) and many others further south. [Words unreadable] surf bathing, fishing, golf, tennis, bowls, etc., Modern hotel accommodation. En route: waving canefields and Zulu reserves. Safety bathing pools at Isipingo Beach, Inyoni Rocks and Umkomaas. Troops at Clairwood Camp should entrain at Clairwood Racecourse station. Frequent train service both ways.
On the North Coast, Umhlanga Rocks (the beach is 5 miles distant from Mount Edgecombe station). Municipal bus service to Umhlanga Rocks from Pine Street, 9.15 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. Tues. and Thurs., and 10 a.m. and 3.45 p.m. Sundays. Fare 2s. 6d. return. En route: charming countryside, sugar canefields.
Inland: Through pretty suburbs climbing to Fairydene, Pinetown, Kloof and Hill Crest, and thence to Bothas Hill and Drummond (35 miles, 2,128 ft.) for views of the famous Valley of a Thousand Hills and Zulu kraals. En route: enchanting scenery, country residences, banana, pawpaw and pineapple plantations.
All the foregoing tours can be undertaken in a day or less. Reduced rail fares available to servicemen with leave passes.
Branches and canteens of the S.A. Women’s Auxiliary Services are established at many of the places mentioned and hospitality is always offered to the Services by them.
Motor excursions to beauty spots and places of interest are also arranged for parties of men by the S.A.W.A.S. Contact Entertainments Section, Flat 4, Fire Station, Pine Street, tel. 26258 or 27046; also the R.A.C. of S.A., 5 Club Arcade, Smith Street, tel. 23347.
SHORT LEAVE TOURS.
For those able to take a short period of leave the following tours are suggested:-
Drakensberg Mountains. Majestic scenery and mountaineering. 4 or 5 days. 150 miles, reached by rail and/or road (2 days travel). Hostels at Cathedral Peak, Cathkin Park. Drakensburg Garden Hotel and Natal National Park.
Hluhluwe Game Reserve, Zululand. 2 to 4 days (road, 1990 miles). Noted for white and black rhino, buffalo and other big game. Hostel accommodation. Road travel each way, 7 hours. En route: interesting native life.
[Words unreadable] Lake and False Bay can be [words missing] this tour if more time available. An anglers’ paradise. Flora and fauna, hippos and crocodiles. Bird Sanctuary.
Trout (Brown and Rainbow) and Black Bass Fishing, In several rivers in the midlands of Natal (80 to 150 miles). Seasons: Trout, September to May; Black Bass, January to June.
Farm Guest Houses in the Midland and Northern parts of Natal. Many such establishments offer a restful break. Riding, trout fishing, golf, tennis, swimming pools, etc. Altitudes vary from 2,000 to 6,000 feet.
[Page break]
Johannesburg (the Metropolis of South Africa) and the Reef, and Pretoria (the Administrative capital of South Africa). Rail 494 miles, road 417 miles. Rail time each way 17 hours; by road 10 hours. Pretoria is 36 miles by road and 43 miles by rail beyond Johannesburg.
Kruger National Park, Transvaal, 7 to 10 days. Big game. Several well equipped camps an rest houses in the Park.
Further particulars of these and other tours, and advice, will be gladly offered by the Director of Publicity, Publicity Bureau: Messrs. Thos. Cook & Son, Mercury Lane; and the S.A. Railways Tourist and Travel Dept., Church Street. Rail concession fares are frequently available.
BATHING AND SWIMMING.
Free admission to the City Bath (salt water), situated in West Street, opposite the City Hall and next to the Publicity Bureau) and to the Beach Open-air Bath, Lower Marine Parade, is granted to all uniformed members of H.M. Services on the following days and times:-
City Bath.- On weekdays, excluding Mondays and Thursdays, from 6.30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sundays from 6.30 a.m. to 8 a.m. Hot sea water baths, charge 1/6, and hot fresh water baths, charge 1/-, may be obtained. Included in this charge is the issue of towels and soap.
Beach Swimming Bath.- On weekdays, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, from 6 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. during the summer months, and from 7 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. during winter months. Bath closed on Fridays.
Men possessing costumes and towels are required to use them. Men not having these articles may obtain them by depositing 1/- for a costume and/or towel, which deposit is refunded on the articles being returned, together with the deposit slip. Care should be taken of the deposit slip, as no refund can be made without it.
On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays admission may be obtained on payment of the ordinary charges, viz: reserved booth 6d., hire of costume 6d., hire of towel 3d.
South Beach Change Rooms.- For surf bathing. Free on weekdays, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, from 7 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. during summer and 7 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. during winter months.
On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays (hours 7 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. summer months, and 7 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. winter months) a charge of 3d. is made for the use of the dressing room and clothes hanger. Hire of costume 6d., hire of towel 3d.
Owing to the depletion of the Life-Saving Staff due to active service, no protection to bathers is provided on the bathing beaches on weekdays. Bathers are therefore warned to exercise great care and not to be venturesome.
Voluntary Life-Savers are on duty on Saturday afternoons, Sundays and public holidays only. Sound advice, therefore, is “Take no undue risk and always bathe with others.”
Where organised parties of men desire admission to the Beach swimming bath or the City baths, West St., please contact the Beach Manager’s office, Ocean Beach (tel. 24467), and the Superintendent, City Baths (tel. 23238) respectively.
Arrangements for the use of the Beach bath for water polo matches, etc., can be made through the Beach Manager’s officer.
Troops must observe the temporary restrictions imposed on the beaches.
[Page break]
[Three photographs of service personnel enjoying the environs of Durban].
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
Welcome to Durban
Khaki and Blue We Welcome You
Description
An account of the resource
Two leaflets produced by Durban to introduce service men to the city. They include details of organisations, greetings in Zulu and Afrikaans, canteens and clubs, transport, maps, sport, places of interest, entertainments, taxi fares, places to visit and bathing and swimming.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Durban City
Format
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Two printed leaflets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MNealeETH1395951-150731-048
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
British Army
Royal Navy
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
South Africa
South Africa--Durban
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1543/28496/ETansleyEHTansleyAE411114.2.pdf
410a142237b1270af5161c95b34a553e
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
Tansley, Ernest Henry
E H Tansley
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
2016-09-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tansley, EH
Description
An account of the resource
98 items. <br />The collection concerns Pilot Officer Ernest Henry Tansley (1914 - 1943, 149542 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 57 Squadron and was killed 2 December 1943. Collection consists of photographs, letters, memoires, biographies, accounts of operations, logbook extracts and official/personal documents.<br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Anne Doward and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br />Additional information on Ernest Tansley is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/122894/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] ON. ACTIVE. SERVICE. AFLOAT [/underlined]
[postmark]
SEA. A.E. TANSLEY. JX263230.
H.M.S. CHASSE. MARIE.
TRAWLER BASE.
PORTSMOUTH.
[page break]
WRITTEN FROM MANCHESTER NOVEMBER 1941 WHILST AWAITING HIS OVERSEAS POSTING TO AMERICA TO HIS BROTHER ALBERT
[page break]
[underlined] 14/11/41.
c/o MRS. MARKS
“MOORWINSTOW”
LEICESTER AVE.
SALFORD 7.
MANCHESTER.
Dear Albert.
Thanks a lot for your letter and also the two ties that are fine.
I will send you off a £1 for Peters uniform in a day or two, I meant to send it before, and don’t you worry about asking we agreed to go halves didn’t we and in any case you can’t afford to keep spending money on other people like you do.
Well as you see we are still at this dump, and honestly Albert, if anything has come near to breaking my heart this is, I have almost forgotten what I volunteered for. Fly with the R.A.F. what a farce I am just about back to where I
[page break]
started from. We are simply wasting our time here, and are treated like a pack of schoolboys. At least Albert you are in operations, you have got a job to do. I wonder if I even shall, I feel like throwing in the sponge. I do realise how you feel now, but it is hard to visualise all this when you are in “civvy street” isn’t it. I think we shall be here quite a while yet, they might at least have given us a longer leave mightn’t they. Well I suppose I will have to put up with it.
I will write to Rene & tell her to listen in to Ray Rich on Tuesday & I will try myself, only we haven’t got a wireless here, but I will try to get to a Y.M.C.A & listen.
[page break]
I think Peter is getting a bit impatient about his suit so get it as soon as you can won’t you. Don’t bother to send me any fags Albert, you can’t afford to keep doing it and I manage to jog along alright. Sorry to write such a moaning letter, but you know how I feel don’t you.
Well cheerio for now Albert and best of luck. [underlined] Ernie. [/underlined]
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
Letter from Ernest Tansley to his brother Albert
Description
An account of the resource
Writes thanking him for letters and discusses money jointly spent on sons uniform. Talks about his current location and lack of progress and thinks they are wasting their time. Speculates on the near future, Catches up with other family matters.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E H Tansley
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-11-15
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three page handwritten letter and envelope
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ETansleyEHTansleyAE411114
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 Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Manchester
England--Hampshire
England--Portsmouth
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-11-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Robin Christian
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1543/28497/ETansleyEHTansleyAE411211.1.pdf
c6de8c7f8d9912a5469434b97362902e
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
Tansley, Ernest Henry
E H Tansley
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
2016-09-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tansley, EH
Description
An account of the resource
98 items. <br />The collection concerns Pilot Officer Ernest Henry Tansley (1914 - 1943, 149542 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 57 Squadron and was killed 2 December 1943. Collection consists of photographs, letters, memoires, biographies, accounts of operations, logbook extracts and official/personal documents.<br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Anne Doward and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br />Additional information on Ernest Tansley is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/122894/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[censor sticker] EXAMINER 6896 [postmark] [postage stamp]
SEA: A.E. TANSLEY JX263230.
[deleted] H.M.S. CHASSE MARIE. [/deleted]
[deleted] TRAWLER BASE [/deleted] 43 Hanover Place
[deleted] PORTSMOUTH [/deleted] [indecipherable word] S [missing letters]
[underlined] ENGLAND [/underlined] London W. [missing letters]
[page break]
[censor sticker] P.C.90 OPENED BY
[page break]
[canadian ymca logo] “And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One (Dickens Christmas Carols)
3 Sec. 3 PLATOON. F. SQUADRON
No2. WING. No31. P.D.
R.C.A.F. STATION
MONCTON. N.B.
CANADA.
Dec. 11th. 1941.
[underlined] Dear Albert. [/underlined]
Sorry I havn’t [sic] written before but as you know it takes quite a few days to settle down in a new place, and you can probably guess how new and interesting everything is here. I sent a cable to Rene and have had a reply. Its great to know you can still maintain fairly speedy contact with the folks at home.
I guess it relieved her immensely too to know I had arrived safely here, although there is no need for people to worry about me, I am like the bad penny always turning up. Anyway there is no need for further concern, about my welfare, as I am now in a safe place far from all danger.
I joined for a bit of excitement and instead of that get transplanted thousands of miles away from all trouble and strife, into
[page break]
a land of peace and abundance; join the R.A.F. and dodge the war. Well how are you keeping, still keeping the sea lanes clear; you are doing a real job of work.
How is Dolly and Mr. & Mrs Shaw, I hope they are all well. We had a fairly rough crossing; I did not mind that though, but the conditions on the ship were awful; troops sleeping in every nook and cranny; I slept in the lifebelt racks, for preference; I had some fresh air anyway. Still one soon forgets those things, an I am accommodating myself to the new conditions here now. Seemed strange going back to the same old place for embarkation. They would not let me get away to see the chaps there; but just as we were casting off, I caught sight of Gunner Main, and we managed to exchange a few words of greeting.
It seems strange after nearly two years of blackout to come here and see everything so brilliantly lit, gaily decorated shops, cluttered with things we have not seen for many, many months. Its a grand country and the people are very hospitable -
[page break]
we get numerous invitations to spend the evenings with the local people - but it is not like home, and being with the folks who are near and dear to me.
It does not seem fair that I should have all these opportunities, to enjoy myself, while all you people at home live in such dull and dreary surrounding’s, with nothing to look forward to, living from day to day; I wonder when it will all be over, when we can live sane happy lives again.
The snow has commenced to fall here, not much at the moment, just a mere couple of feet deep, with four or five feet drifts; but it will come down in earnest very shortly.
Its a marvel how they drive their cars on these roads, if it was England they would put them by for the winter. I shall not be here much longer, in fact long before, you get this I shall be in the States, basking in the sunshine. I am afraid I shall be here very much longer than I anticipated, still I may be home for Xmas 1942, that’s if I last the course, which seems to be a
[page break]
pretty tough job out here.
I have not told you much about the place, but shall have such a lot to tell you when next I see you won’t I?
Well take care of yourself Albert and the very best of luck. Fondest wishes [underlined] Ernie. [/underlined]
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
Letter from Ernest Tansley to his brother Albert
Description
An account of the resource
Settling into new location after arriving safely in Canada. Catches up with family news and talks a little of his activities. Comments on lack of blackout compared to home and writes of hospitable local people. Mentions arrival of snow and how well the locals manage to drive in the conditions. Concludes by saying he would have a lot to tell him when they met next.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E H Tansley
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-12-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four page handwritten letter and envelope
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ETansleyEHTansleyAE411211
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 Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
New Brunswick--Moncton
England--London
Great Britain
New Brunswick
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-12-11
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Robin Christian
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1543/28498/ETansleyEHTansleyAE420526.1.pdf
bfde147702fbdb1e361f742d2b42233c
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
Tansley, Ernest Henry
E H Tansley
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
2016-09-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tansley, EH
Description
An account of the resource
98 items. <br />The collection concerns Pilot Officer Ernest Henry Tansley (1914 - 1943, 149542 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 57 Squadron and was killed 2 December 1943. Collection consists of photographs, letters, memoires, biographies, accounts of operations, logbook extracts and official/personal documents.<br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Anne Doward and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br />Additional information on Ernest Tansley is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/122894/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[postmark] [postage stamp]
SEA. A.E. TANSLEY. JX263230
H.M.S. CHASSE. MARIE
TRAWLER BASE.
PORTSMOUTH
ENGLAND
[inserted] EXAMINER 71 [obscured number] [/inserted]
[page break]
A/C. (UK) TANSLEY E.H.
429.
COCHRAN. FLD.
MACON.
GA. U.S.A
[inserted] [calculations] [/inserted]
[inserted] [two obscured letters] ENED BY [/inserted]
[page break]
WRITTEN FROM COCHRAN FIELD
GEORGIA IN MAY 1942
TO BROTHER ALBERT.
IT APPEARS THAT SOMEONE HAS PENNED
IN SOME OF THE
UNREADABLE LETTERS
[page break]
A/C. (UK) TANSLEY. E. H.
429
[US Air Corps Crest]
AIR CORPS BASIC FLYING SCHOOL
COCHRAN FIELD, GEORGIA [inserted] U.S.A
Tuesday 26th May.
[underlined] Dear Albert [/underlined]
Seems ages since I wrote to you, and I suppose it is really: still I do not expect you worry quite so much about correspondence, now that you have Dolly there. Its when you are away from everybody that you miss things so much when some one who is dear to you, is fairly close it doesn’t quite hurt so much, you still feel you are part of the Old World; that you have not been deserted; you can still talk about things you understand & love; well I guess I am getting a little sentimental and that will not do, still you’ve got a rough idea of what I mean haven’t you? or have you? Anyway it doesn’t really matter.
Still on the same little old tub? I reckon you would miss that now, you’ve got quite an affection for it now I expect: you [inserted] know [/inserted] its funny how you get attached to even inanimate objects. Favourite tie and shirt, walking stick, but then we never had a walking stick did we. I had a letter from W. Spring yesterday, things seem to be going along much the same up there. They get 10/- a day for walking about now & the great Charlie still reigns; poor fools they are still building him up. You know I think we will have another war to finish up after this one.
Dad doesn’t seem to be getting much work. I hope they are managing to scrape along alright.
I understand [indecipherable word] & Diane are with them
[page break]
now, hope the arrangement works smoothly.
I suppose Fred will have his commission by now, expect he will feel very proud of himself.
I suppose its O.K. for him to walk with a naval rating & an aircraft hand.
At the moment of writing I am in hospital been in about a fortnight with Septic arm & measles. Still I leave tomorrow, although unfortunately I have been put back a class, so instead of leaving here in 5 days for advanced I have to stay another 6 weeks; if you knew how much I wanted to get home or how much I hate this place you could readily appreciate my feelings.
I do not know when I shall get home now probably about Xmas if at all, so I hope you’ll take care of yourself
Must say cherio [sic] for now give my love to Dolly.
Best Wishes
[underlined] Ernie. [/underlined]
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
Letter from Ernest Tansley to his brother Albert
Description
An account of the resource
Writes of worrying about correspondence when one is so far away from home and continues with philosophical chat. Catches up with family news. Writes that he is in hospital with septic arm and measles. He would be out the next day but had been put back a class. Does not know when he will be home.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E H Tansley
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-05-26
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page handwritten letter and envelope
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ETansleyEHTansleyAE420526
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 Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Hampshire
England--Portsmouth
United States
Georgia--Macon
Georgia
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05-26
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Christian
training