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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/275/3428/PHughesAM1507.1.2.jpg
dc0f50c199ecb3d1a768a5afff785dff
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/275/3428/AHughesAM151001.2.mp3
1e4c41fe15e110071c21f1366db28182
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hughes, Angas
Angas Hughes
Angas M Hughes
A M Hughes
A Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
29 items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Angas Murray Hughes (b. 1923, 417845 Royal Australian Air Force), his logbook, prisoner of war identity cards and dog tags, two memoirs and 21 photographs. Angas Hughes flew 32 operations as a bomb aimer with 467 Squadron from RAF Waddington. One of the aircraft he flew in was Lancaster R5868, S-Sugar, now at RAF Hendon. He was shot down in September 1944 and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Angas Hughes and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Hughes, AM
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: This is an interview being carried out at the Riseholme College for the International Bomber Command memorial. The interviewer is Clare Bennett and the interviewee is Mr Angas Hughes, who was with 467 Squadron, and it is the 1st of October 2015. Well Angas, um, an Australian who, um, joined the war at the age of eighteen. But what was your home life like in Australia? What did you do as a youngster?
AH: Oh, as a youngster, I naturally I went to school but in the beginning we were partly brought up in the first of the — or last of the big depression but fortunately I came from a family that, er, didn’t suffer that much during that time. I after, after leaving the primary school I went to a college and I passed my examinations there and, er, for a short time I worked at the Imperial Chemical Industries that led eventually, on my eighteenth birthday, I joined the Air Force Reserve.
CB: What year would that be?
AH: It was 1941 and I was then — eventually I was called up on I think it was 12th of June 1942 but in the meantime between ‘41 and ‘42 we were on the reserve. We went to, um, a high school under the RWAF and doing navigation. We did exercises on, on maps etcetera until we joined up in, er, until we were called up in 18— 1942.
CB: What were your feelings about joining up? You know, was it adventure? Was it because everyone else was doing it. What, what inspired you to join?
AH: Well I think times then were a little bit different to what they are now and it was all king and country in those days. And, er, my father was in the, er, First World War and, er, I thought it was my duty to, er, join up and I was a little bit, er, dubious [?] with Biggles at that time and the Air Force was the one for me.
CB: And your family were happy for you to join or did they discourage you in any way?
AH: Oh, they tried to discourage me but, er, at the age of eighteen we had the option to volunteer so I did. They weren’t too happy about it which I think all parents were the same.
CB: So you embarked at eighteen on a ship and — for England, is that right?
AH: Yeah, we trained in Australia. We flew in a — navigation school was down at Bowen [?], the original ATS was at Victor Harbour, and from there we went to the navigation school at Mount Gambier flying in Ansons. And then we went to the bombing and air gunnery school in Port Pirie flying Fairey Battles. And the last one was at the Aeradio [?] School in Nhill, Victoria, flying Ansons there. And by that time we, we had finished our training in Australia and eventually we were posted overseas. We were on our way to Canada but when we got to — we went across the, er, Pacific. It took about six weeks to get across there. We landed at San Francisco. We went by Pullman up to Camp Myles Standish at Taunton, Massachusetts. We stopped there for about six weeks and eventually we caught the, er, Queen Elizabeth from New York to Greenock in Scotland which took about six days to get across.
CB: Were you worried at that time on that crossing, U-boats etcetera or was it just youth and —
AH: I think it was just youth and also it was such a fast ship that that was fairly safe. We had no escort or anything. And from there we went to, er, Brighton, down on the south c— down on the coast. We were there for a few weeks and eventually we finished up at Whitby Bay doing a six weeks commando course with the RAF Regiment and from there we were posted to, er, West Freugh Scotland for bombing, and then to an OTU at Lichfield where we were crewed up. From there we went to — we were there for three months at, er, Lichfield. Then we went to Swinderby, Scampton for a month training on Lancs, eventually to, er, 467 Squadron at Waddington.
CB: And your other crew members, were they Australians?
AH: Six, there were six Australians and the flight engineer was an English— Englishman or Welshman, his name was Taffy [slight laugh], Taffy Barnes [?]. I don’t know what his Christian name was. [laugh]
CB: So you started on what amounted to thirty-two ops so what were the sort of raids that you did?
AH: The first one we was with S for Sugar. We went to a place called to Portiers down in the south of France and, er, from there on I did Germany, ops on Germany and also on various places in France, mainly flying-bomb sites in France, and marshalling yards.
CB: And you were a bomb aimer at this time?
AH: I was the bomb aimer all of the time, yes.
CB: And you were happy with that or did you —
AH: Oh yes. I was there. I had no choice then. [laugh]
CB: Didn’t you yearn to be a pilot or anything?
AH: No. No, I wanted to be a navigator right from the beginning so bomb aimer was, was fairly close to — well we were navigators as well as bomb aimers so, er, I used to always plot the course myself as far as — to know where we were anyway, plus the navigator, I was able to assist him along the line.
CB: Was this in, er, Lancasters?
AH: This was in Lancasters, yes.
CB: Did you fly in anything else on the bombing raids or —
AH: No, I only flew with Lancs on bombing raids. On training we flew on Wellingtons and St— and Stirlings for training plus the original Oxfords and, and Ansons.
CB: So you, you flew in, er, Stirlings?
AH: Yes.
CB: Because they were notorious. What did you feel about them?
AH: I never like them myself. The pilot didn’t like them. None of the crew liked them but fortunately we were only there for a month. [laugh]
CB: So it was a relief to get on to Lancasters.
AH: Oh yes. They were a beautiful plane. Plenty of — they were fairly easy to fly apparently or the pilot said that they were fairly easy to fly. He had done flying before the war. He was much older than what I was. He was the oldest of the crew.
CB: How was old was he? Do you remember ‘cause you was what about twenty at this time?
AH: I was nineteen, twenty, yes I was twenty ‘cause I had my twenty-first birthday after I was shot down. Dusty would have been twenty-nine to thirty.
CB: He was the pilot?
AH: He was the pilot yeah. And, er, on our thirty-second trip we got shot down on the way to Karlsruhe. We were at eighteen thousand feet. That was out last trip actually I believe. We had the gunnery — the gunnery leader of A Flight of 467 squadron on board. I think Clarkson [?] had done sixty-two missions.
CB: As the bomb aimer, um, it’s obviously your responsibility to drop the bomb where it should be dropped and you have to take over the plane, not flying obviously, but you have to give the pilot the orders to drop.
AH: I gave the pilot instructions where I [unclear]. Also the, er, bomb aimer right from the beginning he would assist the navigator by map reading where he could and giving points and also the direction of searchlights over, over various, er, targets and that, dodging the searchlights, which, er, stopped the flak getting too close to us.
CB: ‘Cause you would have to fly straight and level for the target point wouldn’t you? What, what did you feel when you saw the flak coming and, you know, the lights and —
AH: Well your, your mind was mainly on the target and bomb site. It was — I suppose the fear was there but, er, you didn’t actually feel it. You had a job to do and if you didn’t do it probably that, er, that might have been the end.
CB: You obviously had confidence in your — Dusty the pilot. You were a good crew together?
AH: Ah, yes. We had a terrific — the seven of us were, were all great friends. When we went out we all went out together and we were very — all just like a group together all the time.
CB: A band of brothers if I can pinch an Americanism?
AH: Mm?
CB: Band of brothers?
AH: Yeah that could be the term to use, yes.
CB: Do you remember before you were — the flak got you, do you remember near misses or the — you know, any —
AH: Ah yes. We had — I remember once at — we went to a — it was about our seventh op I think — it was an oil place at Gelsenkirchen in Germany. We nearly got the chop there that night and with the fighters but fortunately we were lucky to get out of it.
CB: Did the gunners have to fire or was it manoeuvres or —
AH: I think it was mainly manoeuvres we got out with the rear gunner. He could tell where — or he would have instructed the pilot as he, as he tried to knock him out of the air.
CB: So we come up to the, the operation, your thirty-second, how come you did an extra two? Do you know ‘cause the usual —
AH: I don’t know. It’s just that we — well, I always thought with the tour was thirty but they must have made it longer or — I’m not sure, but I knew that was gonna be our last, that to have the gunnery leader on board.
CB: Mm. So as you neared your thirtieth operation you didn’t think, ‘Oh this is it, this is our last one,’ and then you’re given two more?
AH: No they hadn’t told us.
CB: Right.
AH: They didn’t tell us that it was on the thirtieth trip it was our last. They may have even extended the length, the number of flights for the tour. I’m not sure.
CB: So what happened on this, on this fateful thirty-second operation?
AH: Well we were just flying at 1800 feet. Everything was very quiet.
CB: And Karlsruhe, I believe, was your target?
AH: Karlsruhe. That’s it. Just out of the blue one of the engines got hit and the wing was on fire. I had no idea that there was flak around or anything. We couldn’t even see the — I didn’t even see the flak from the front. So we just had to, er, get ready and bail out. It was at mid— about midnight I think from memory. And eventually I — I didn’t meet any of the other crew. I was on the loose for about approximately three nights I think from memory.
CB: So your, your parachute deployed with no problems?
AH: Oh no. The parachute opened alright and, er, I eventually got down to the Rhine and there I was caught walking along the Rhine by one of the, er, German’s equivalent of the home guard in England. And from there on I was caught in jails and I had my twenty-first birthday in a German jail.
CB: In a Stalagluft?
AH: Er, no. It was a kind of a jail.
CB: Oh right.
AH: And then eventually we went to the interrogation camp up at Frankfurt. I think everyone went there. And then I got posted to Stalagluft VIIB which was over near Poland. I think it was in — I’m not sure if it was in Poland or on the Polish border. And from there — we were there until January and then we moved on the long march to, er, south of Berlin to a place called Lucken— Luckenwalde.
CB: How long were you in the Stalag?
AH: We were there from — well I was shot down on the 27th September I think it was and then we moved out of Bankau in, er, January and we got liberated by the Russians in April then. I think it was April.
CB: What was life like in the Stalag? Were you with any of your crew mates?
AH: There were a couple, a couple in there but where I was just in with some Canadians and some English and even some of the boys from — pilots or the glider pilots from Arnhem were there.
CB: What was life like?
AH: Oh, it wasn’t rosy but, er, it was nothing like “Hogan’s Heroes”. [slight laugh]
CB: Did you know of any attempts to escape by — you know, tunnels, or was there talk of escape or —
AH: There was talk of tunnels and — but, er, where we were there was no point of escaping because the Russians were coming one way and —
CB: How did you know they were coming? Was it —
AH: There was a wireless on in the camp.
CB: So you knew that they were on their way and —
AH: Yeah, we were told that and eventually you could, you could hear them. Or you could see them in the distance, many miles, there were flashes and that but I [unclear] good night.
CB: So on this January day the Germans come and say, ‘Get your things, you’re going lads.’
AH: ‘Pack up. You’re on your way.’ And we just left.
CB: Were you expecting this march? Or what were you expecting?
AH: Yeah we were expecting it but we didn’t know when. We were told one day and we were told another day and then bang! It happened. Well it’s a lot — several of the boys got a — tried to escape on the way. There was no point escaping through the snow and the ice. You had nowhere to go. A lot of them were killed and a lot of them died.
CB: What did you do for food? Did you find any of the population giving food or anything?
AH: No, no, they had no — very little food. I’ve got a, I’ve got a map which shows the amount of food that we, that we had. Occasionally we’d have, have a — some bread and some, er, kind of a porridge mix. Very little really.
CB: And how long was it that you were walking, do you think?
AH: It was about three weeks roughly.
CB: Where did you sleep?
AH: Well we slept in barns and in with the cows and the pigs and they — anyway it was quite warm actually in there with the cattle but, er, we were mainly in the barns, as they call them, cow sheds or — I don’t know what they called them in Germany.
CB: The guards were obviously have to walk with you. What was their attitude to this and —
AH: The older guards were quite good. The younger ones were the, er, were the ones you had to watch. I think the younger ones were ruthless while the older ones were the — out of the German army. I don’t think they were touched with the Nazis as much as the younger ones.
CB: Did you know where you were walking?
AH: We didn’t have the faintest idea. We crossed the, er, Oder at a place called Breslau, or near Breslau. I think it’s called something else now. It might be called Wrocław I think now. I might be wrong there. And then we eventually finished up in this place called Luckenwalde. I don’t know if I pronounced that right but —
CB: I think Luckenwalde is about right, yes. So you walked all the way? There were no trains or —
AH: We walked. The last — I don’t know how long it would be but we were on a train in the, in the end. That was the — I don’t know how long that would have been, we were in it about a day, I suppose. We were, we were just in carriages, we were in carriages just like a cattle truck, all closed up each side.
CB: Food and water provided?
AH: Oh no, just, er, just space.
CB: So you got to Luckenwalde and then, um, it was another camp I presume?
AH: Oh, it was a big camp?
CB: And had the other marchers, marchers, or the men had they joined and everyone arrived at Luckenwalde. Was that it or did you join the other people?
AH: There was, I think there was every nationality in the world at this Luckenwalde. It was a huge camp. A lot of Russians were there. There were French. There were Americans and a lot of Australians and a lot of the other Air Force people too, English people.
CB: And how long were you there?
AH: We got there — oh heavens — it would have been about February, about the beginning of February, and we were there for — ‘till April when the Russians liberated the camp and just after that the Americans came to take us so they must have broken through there. But the Russians wouldn’t let us go and eventually the Americans took us in, took us away in, er, June. That would be ‘45, June ’45. So we were there approximately a month under the Russians.
CB: How did you feel at this point? Were you frustrated with the —
AH: It didn’t matter that much because we used to go out of the camp. I went through the records what the Germans had left there. I kept — I’ve got my records and a few of the other boys got theirs too.
CB: So from, from there the —
AH: We just woke up one morning and there was no, no Germans there. They’d all gone. [laugh]
CB: And the Americans just — what did the Americans do with you then? Was transport arranged?
AH: Well, the Russians wouldn’t let us go originally and then, er, when we were actually liberated by the Americans the second time we went to a place called Halle Leipzig by truck and then we caught planes to Belgium. We had a night in Belgium. They supplied us with some money. The only things we went to was the pubs and, er, the next day we flew back to England. Then we went to — under the auspices of the Australian Government, the RAF there, and we went to down to Brighton and I eventually got back to Aus— to Australia in December.
CB: A long time. A long time after being liberated.
AH: Well they looked after us quite well for a while there. Anything we wanted we could have virtually. [slight laugh]
CB: So you’re back home in Australia and what did you do after the war?
AH: Oh I went back and did — finished my accountancy and I, er, got registered by the Australian Government as a tax agent and I had my own practice in Adelaide and I finished up in — I retired in ‘83.
CB: What do you think of the war and the aftermath? Did it affect you?
AH: It was hard. I found it hard to settle down. Some could settle down quite easy and I found it hard to settle down and — but eventually I overcome that I think.
CB: What is your, what is your attitude to how Bomber Command was treated after the war?
AH: Oh, nobody knew much about Bomber Command, especially in Australia because we were Australians in England and it was mainly — and Australia was mainly Japan.
CB: Do you think people didn’t understand what you’d been through?
AH: I’m certain they didn’t. I don’t even think the Australian Government knew. I think they do now but at that time, er, I don’t think they realised what the, er, what it was like in England in those days.
CB: How did that make you feel?
AH: I just had to take it. I couldn’t do much about it in those days.
CB: And your Bomber Command medal. Would you have liked a medal?
AH: Well, looking back I think there should have been a Bomber Command medal but after, after seventy years we got a clasp. [slight laugh]
CB: Do you think that was, you know, better than nothing or was it just too late?
AH: Well, it was too late for a lot of them unfortunately because, er, I was one of the younger ones but a lot them would have been over thirty —
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHughesAM151001
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Angas Hughes
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:28:00 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Clare Bennett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-01
Description
An account of the resource
Angas Hughes was born in Australia and served as a bomb aimer with 467 Squadron based at RAF Waddington. He describes initial training in Australia as a reserve and after call-up in 1942. He was transported by ship to Scotland via the USA and Canada. He flew all the operations on Lancasters and was shot down over Germany on the thirty-second operation. After about three nights he was captured near the Rhine and spent his twenty-first birthday in a German jail before being transferred to an interrogation camp near Frankfurt and eventually to Stalag Luft VII. After about three months the camp was evacuated and the long march to Luckenwalde began. He gives a detailed description of what the long march entailed, arriving at Luckenwalde, after about three weeks. He describes hearing and seeing signs of the Russian advance before the camp was liberated. However, it was the Americans who took them away. On returning to Australia Angas took accountancy exams and set up his own practice in Adelaide.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Tychowo
United States
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
467 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
Dulag Luft
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF Waddington
searchlight
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/549/8811/AKirkDJB150610.2.mp3
b456a190eebd5766875b7ddfcfe95964
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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Kirk, Dennis
Dennis John Bonser Kirk
D J B Kirk
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kirk, DJB
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Dennis Kirk. He served in a reserved occupation but also in the Home Guard and as an air raid warden. On 5 March 1943, Lancaster ED549 crashed attempting to land at RAF Langar. Denis Kirk was first on the scene and helped the only survivor.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-15
2015-06-10
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command centre, the interviewer is Clare Bennett, the interviewee is Mr Dennis Kirk. The interview is taking place at Mr Kirk’s home at Plungar, Nottinghamshire, on the tenth of June twenty fifteen. Right Dennis, so whereabouts were you born?
DK: I was born at Barkestone, in the next village, and my brother and my sister, and my father and my mother lived at Harby Farm, Barkestone
CB: What date was that?
DK: That was er, we lived there ‘till nineteen twenty-nine, then we moved to [unclear] Plungar in nineteen twenty-nine.
CB: So, you were born, in?
DK: April the twenty fifth nineteen twenty [laughs].
CB: And, do you remember much of your early life?
DK: Well, I, I had a good life, you know, in, in the village. Everybody played games and that, and the school was at Barkestone you see, but then, when we moved to Plungar in nineteen twenty-nine, we had to walk to Barkestone school every day then, in the morning and then back in the afternoon [laughs]. I played all sorts of games, but er, it was a nice little school it was, yeh.
CB: Was your family in farming then?
DK: Yep, yeh, well the family started farming in about seventeen ninety [laughs] but, I didn’t want to be a farmer, I wanted to be a wheelwright or a butcher, but you did what your parents told you in those days [laughs], you didn’t tell them what you wanted to do [laughs].
CB: They told you, so what did you do after school, you know, after you left school?
DK: Well, I helped the butcher for, at weekends, used to help him deliver two or three, when I left school, and then ‘cos I worked on the farm from then on, yes.
CB: And, war was started, so you’d be about er, twenty, something like that?
DK: I was twenty-one when the plane crashed, yes
CB: Right, and you were in the Home Guard?
DK: Home guard and fire watch, yes.
CB: So, was it because you were in a reserved occupation, that you were into farming?
DK: Yeh, at the time, you could have been called up, but you never, you had the medical but you weren’t called up, you see, but one or two round here were kept because the short of, short of, labour round here at the time, yes.
CB: Did you want to join the forces?
DK: I would have liked to join the forces, yeh, but didn’t have the chance, no [laughs].
CB: So, you did your Home Guard duties?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: And, so, what did that -?
DK: Well, we used to have a, have a, on a Wednesday night, in the, used to do some training there, then every Sunday morning, we either did some training or in this [unclear] hill, had er, had places to jump into pits, and things to climb across [laughs], whether it made any good, I don’t know [laughs]. And then at times they would take us into, up to Eaton, where there was a lot of disused mines, where we used to use a Lewis gun or a Sten gun, but it was interesting a lot of it, but, you mean, you thought you were doing a bit of good for the country, but it was, when we were on the bridge, we never saw a soul at all, we’d just got the guns and rifle there [laughs].
CB: Of course, I’ve got to mention Dads Army, haven’t I, you’ve watched that. Does that bear any resemblance to what you did?
DK: No, [emphasis] no [laughter] But, anyway, we enjoyed the, you had a night out, once, I say, different people, each week, I mean, old people and the young ones as well. This chappie was with me, he weren’t a young chap when playing cards, he were good company [laughs].
CB: So, the, the night that we’re interested in, it was obviously just an ordinary night for you that night?
DK: yeh, well, we’d just walked up the village, we always checked in the village for lights and things, if any lights on.
CB: And this is March the fifth nineteen forty-three?
DK: Nineteen forty-three, yeh.
CB: Yes.
DK: We was just walking down back to the Home Guard hut there, and we heard this plane making a weird sort of a noise. Funny, I can’t describe the noise it made and it just went dead, and the plane just went down there and of course, we expected to find it on the rail track, but when we got down there, there was only a survivor on the rail track.
CB: Did it, was there a loud crash or?
DK: Well, it must have woken all the people up there you see, but it just went straight down.
CB: Right.
DK: And, we got the laddie off the railway line and took him there, and just, then me friend and I were walking down to see the plane and we saw these three men thrown out in a matter of space as this, they must have come out the front of the plane, and then the rear, he was in the turret upside down, but there was two more dead in the plane.
CB: So, you are right up close now?
DK: Say?
CB: You were right up close to this Lancaster?
DK: Oh yes, yes, we walked all round it, you see, yeh.
CB: You didn’t think it was going to explode or anything like that?
DK: No, no, I said, ‘any bombs?’, they said, ‘no, no’, so I think they must have run out of fuel or something.
CB: Who did you ask?
DK: Well, no one said that, but someone said, perhaps a shortage of fuel, in one of the letters, I think it said from -
CB: But, at the time, but at the time, you went up to it, you didn’t know whether it, bombs or anything else?
DK: No, within, within, quarter of an hour, the whole lot of serving aircrew, airmen from Lanc, came running to the plane, you see.
CB: I see.
DK: But then we walked away and left, left it to them because it weren’t our responsibility, you see, no.
CB: So, you could see the bodies, in and around it?
DK: Yeh, yeh, yeh.
CB: And, also, one of the, the crew had been thrown out, you say and landed on the -?
DK: On the railway line, yeh.
CB: And, did you go up to him?
DK: We, we, got him off the rail track and took him to the houses, yeh.
CB: So, did you think he was dead or could you see that he was alive?
DK: He was walking on the railway.
CB: Oh, right.
DK: No, no, we couldn’t see his face, but I think he had a head injury, but what, but what they said didn’t they, Joan?
JK: Someone said he had severe head injuries, but he was, he was, compos mentis, because you said to him, ‘are there any bombs on the plane?’, and he said, ‘no, we, we disposed’, you know, ‘we got rid of them all’.
DK: He was only eighteen, but he, he walked pretty well on the rail track, I mean got him off the rail track and took him to the farmhouse there, so, what happened to them, I said everything was lost until nineteen, until sixty-three years afterwards, when they found this, this chappie found a bit of metal.
CB: Oh, can you tell me about that, who was that, was it er, somebody with a metal detector?
DK: The man in the, who was a metal detector and he, what he said was, he found this bit of metal, that’s in Waltham, Waltham museum, all the details there, and er, he kept it for two years [laughs] in his shed, didn’t know what it was. And another gentleman on this village said, ‘ask Dennis, ‘cos he saw a plane crash there’, but erm, it was very interesting to, no one seemed to know what part of the plane it was, where from the plane it had come off, but, in the end I think someone did sort it out, where, where it, which part of the plane it was.
CB: So, you saw them, you saw the crash and the survivor?
DK: Yeh.
CB: And then they came running from RAF Langar?
DK: Yeh.
CB: To pick up the -
DK: Yeh, ‘cos it was in, if it had gone another half mile, he would have landed, but he wasn’t going the right way, he was going, if you like, would you like to see the memorial or not? [laughs].
CB: Yes, we can have a look later.
DK: He was going, how to explain, he was going straight, he would have gone to Bingham, instead of, at the rate he was going, yeh.
CB: Right, did you think he sort of lost his bearings as to where he was going, or -?
DK: Well, I think, I feel for sure, he’d run out of, he couldn’t go no further, no.
CB: Right.
DK: But, but, he, they say that then or some years or so, will never really know what happened to, until this chappie found this metal, then after that Tim Chamberlin found where three of the crew were buried at Long Bennington, but - [laughs].
CB: So, it had, he’d done a forced landing, hasn’t, hadn’t he?
DK: Yeh, er, yeh.
CB: So, er, with, as you say with little fuel.
DK: Well, if he had gone on that way, he’d have landed on the airfield, he was going, not in the right direction for the airfield, but you see below here is an old airfield from the first World War [laughs], but whether he’d got that on his map I don’t know [laughs].
CB: When did they come and take the rest of the plane away?
DK: I say, we had to work again, it was cleared, it was cleared up the same day, yeh.
CB: Oh.
DK: On one of these long, what do they call them, they used to collect them at [unclear], you see, but this plane weren’t smashed up a lot, no.
CB: No.
DK: No, but it, they say, I’ve read in books about it, flying, the pilot, there was not a spark at all.
CB: No, well no bombs and no fuel, so -
DK: No, no, no, there couldn’t have been any fuel, ‘cos I’m sure it would have caught fire.
CB: So, the, the gentleman with the metal detector has found this, and then research starts on it, on this, on this crash I take it?
DK: Pardon?
CB: Did research start then on to what had happened?
DK: Yeh, it was Chamberlin, Tim Chamberlin, who started it all up, you see, then of course, the village got involved, and then that’s when we did a collection and well. Tim got the, Tim got the whole service involved himself, didn’t he, Joan.
JK: Yes, he found the erm, Padre that retired.
DK: Air Force Padre, yeh.
JK: Air Force Padre to take the service and erm -
DK: No.
CB: Yes, the Venerable Air Vice Marshal, Robin Turner.
JK: He organised the service, for the Lancaster and Spitfire to have a flypast after the service.
CB: Who did the research to find the families of the crew?
JK: Well, we all kind of did a bit. Tim did the Canadians because he had a brother in Canada, erm, I don’t know how we found the Barbadian, erm, I think it was David Webb that found -
DK: He found the Barbadians on the wotsit.
JK: Yes, he found the Barbadian, I think, on the, by doing some research on the internet, and erm, then various people, we found out where they were all, the English people were all buried, and did research into the different areas where they were buried, but of course, why we couldn’t find out, how we couldn’t find out er, about them from that. We put adverts in newspapers and you know, in the local area but er, then you see we found the others, quite a few of them had moved, because the, well, found out that the ones from Tyneside had moved down to Daventry, and the Portsmouth ones had moved to Southampton, so we couldn’t, never occurred to us to find out in the Southampton area or the Daventry area. We did all the research in the local area where they were buried.
CB: So, you had, erm, a dedication of the memorial?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: Erm, to the crew of Lancaster ED 549 of a 100 Squadron, on the twenty second of September twenty twelve.
DK: Yeh.
CB: And, erm, [pause] as you say, the Venerable Air Vice Marshal Robin Turner.
JK: That’s right.
CB: Led the, and did erm, did the survivors?
DK: There’s that, what we found at the start, you can have it [unclear], that’s all we found to start off with, you can have that book as well.
CB: Thank you. So, the survivor, erm, Sergeant Davies, erm, he was, his family, erm, he’d died by this time hadn’t he, died in his fifties?
DK: Oh yes.
JK: Died in his fifties.
CB: So, who, who was, did his, some of his family manage to come to the service?
DK: No, no.
JK: No, because we couldn’t find, we found about them after, oh I think it was in the November, after the service, and it was because he was doing, he was asked to do some, his father was asked to do some, no, his son was asked to do some research when he was living in Cyprus, erm [pause] on Bomber, erm, bomb gunnery instruction and it was through that, that he found out, about the erm, the crash here and er contacted us. And he rang up and just said, ‘I’m the survivor, er, I’m the son of the survivor of the aircraft’, [laughs] so, we were all a bit gobsmacked [laughs].
CB: So, you managed to find -
JK: Because the Air Force didn’t know, couldn’t tell us whether he had actually survived or not.
CB: Oh, so you managed to find the family of the Canadian and er -
JK: Yes, yes.
DK: Yes, we found the Canadian.
CB: And the family from Barbados, but not the, not the English survivor.
JK: That’s what we couldn’t understand. I mean, the one that we found out about after was the Hallet family, er, and Emily Hallet rang us from Southampton, but we got the names of the brothers of the, the man that was killed and we found out where they, where they lived, erm, and I say, one lived in Nottingham, and I searched through all the Nottingham telephone directory and rang every Hallet in the Nottingham telephone directory. One was in Northampton, and I forget where the other one was, there were three brothers and er, but no success at all.
DK: That’s, that’s where the plane crashed though, if you like, we can take you down and see where it is [unclear], it’s quite, it’s a rough road, if you like see where the memorial is, would you like to see it, the memorial?
CB: Yes, we can do that later.
DK: The people, the people, Gills of Newark did the memorial, because they did it for a reasonable price you see, but people all in this village contributed to the cost of that, there’s still a bit left in the kitty, to keep it, and our neighbour he did, did something else with it, where the memorial is, yeh. But Tim, now, the Chairman, is now, is redoing it, a book now about the whole families, at the time he’d only got the Barbados and the Canadian, but he’s doing a new book.
JK: Updating the book.
DK: Updating it, yeh, it’s very interesting [unclear] volunteer, yeh, while you’re talking to me.
JK: He’s an American.
CB: Well, you live quite close to RAF Langar, so, and other, and other airfields round here, so you must have seen other crashes and -?
JK: Well, yes, I said, I saw the one which crashed in Belvoir Woods, that plane flew from Syerston, a trainer plane, that killed them all, then, then, there’s one crash near Belvoir, that was all, just one survivor there, then the one crashed in [unclear] Branston there, and there was, no survivors there, then, then at Barnstone, that little village opposite Langar there, there was one crash in Langar there, no survivors and er -
CB: Did you ever get used to all these crashes then?
DK: Well, you see [laughs], you see the Lancs were flying over regular and you just took it for granted that they’d crash you see, then the one which blew up on the airfield, there was some ones not taking the ones not, the ones not, taking a certain, I don’t know, [unclear] it blew up you see, yeh, but er, no but is was er, you’d see them taking off on the way from Langar there, yeh.
CB: So, you carried, carried on your Home Guard duties until the end of the war?
DK: Yeh, yeh [laughs].
CB: And then you went back to farming, I believe?
DK: Farming, we were farming at the time as well, you see, farming in the daytime, yeh [unclear] [laughs].
CB: Did you find wreckage as you were farming round here or -?
DK: No, no, [unclear] you see, but er, let’s see, in, in [unclear] where was it? They came to bomb, bomb Derby one night during the war, but they diverted to Nottingham and did a lot of damage in Nottingham, then they dropped all the bombs round here.
CB: Right.
DK: And they dug two, time bombs off the farm and we had fifteen craters filled in [laughs], but no one was injured, no one, no one was killed, right from Cropwell Bishop to Plungar, they just scattered the bombs, [laughs] [telephone ringing] but we were lucky really, yeh. But they say you [unclear] the war, but you met a lot of lovely people, and these people who came to the dedication, you couldn’t wish for nicer families. To me, because they had a house at Normanton near the Bottesford airfield and they were very impressed with that, after we had done this function that day. My wife did that in the morning, about thirty from abroad you see, then we had the church service, and so many went back to the village hall, was a meal for everyone, the rest came here [laughs] and er, had a lovely, er, I know it was war, but it was really nice, meeting up with them. And so, then Tim found out, Tim the Chairman, found out about the museum at Waltham, so we visited that then.
CB: Do you think that the people of Plungar, erm, sort of came together?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: With this memorial and finding out, and the ceremony?
DK: Mr David Webb who lived at [unclear], he did a lot towards it and then, I said, he guaranteed to find out as much as he could, and Chamberlin got, but at Bennington, there’s an old chappie still alive, he cares for those graves, for I don’t know how many years until he wasn’t capable of doing it, so someone else has taken over since then, but er, [laughs].
CB: So, it’s been er, it’s been sort of, positive effect?
DK: Yeh.
CB: On the, on the village this, to have this memorial and this event?
DK: Yeh, people who have never set foot in church [laughs], I say, my son was going to play the organ but he got this [unclear], my cousin he played for the service but [unclear], he played for the service, and we had the Reverend [unclear], he took part in the service, and I rang the bell [laughs]. And my wife, she, she put, you know, people into which places they wanted to be and we had the boy there, because as they lined the footpath [laughs] so, it was really nice, I won’t forget it you see, no.
CB: When the erm, crash happened did any official come and interview you or anything like that?
DK: No, no, they sent nothing, never heard a thing from them. I know a chap who went down to have a look at it and they told him to get out, so we left it. When the plane went down, we walked round, and when this drove of crew came from Langar airfield to check on it, we moved away and maybe just forgot [laughs].
CB: So, they picked up the remains of the crew, and also, the survivor and then, took them away?
DK: So, where, where they took the dead people too, you know, I don’t know where they took them, where they took those too, but we, as I say, and this chap we moved away and left it with them. It was their job, yeh, but I’d never seen a dead, a dead man before you see, but they were just in an awful state, so they must have gone out the front of the plane, I don’t know, yeh.
CB: With the force of it, had thrown them out I suppose?
DK: Yeh.
CB: Well, Dennis, that’s -
DK: If there’s anything else to show you while I’m at it then, [background noise] but they were very good to me, weren’t they?
CB: Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Dennis Kirk. One
Creator
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Clare Bennett
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
2015-06-10
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AKirkDJB150610
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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.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Format
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00:22:34 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Dennis Kirk was born in 1920, to farming parents, in the village of Barkestone in Nottinghamshire. He says that he didn’t want to be a farmer but when he left school he had to work on the farm. When the war started he wanted to join up but because farming was a reserved occupation, he couldn’t, so he joined the Home Guard instead. He relates how, on 5 March 1943, whilst on patrol at night, he witnessed the crash of Lancaster ED549, in which six of the seven crew were killed. He tells how he helped the injured survivor to a nearby house before personnel arrived from nearby RAF Langar. He describes how, 63 years later, the discovery, by metal detector, of a part from the aircraft stirred up memories of the crash and prompted research into the event. He tells of how the whole village joined in, collecting for a memorial and trying to locate the relatives of the crew. A memorial ceremony was arranged, presided over by a retired RAF chaplain and a Spitfire flypast. A memorial stone, paid for by the village, and an information board were unveiled at the crash site.
Dennis also goes on to describe two other wartime crashes in the area.
Temporal Coverage
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1943-03-05
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Barkestone
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
civil defence
crash
final resting place
Home Guard
Lancaster
memorial
RAF Langar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/639/8909/AShepherdFH150525.1.mp3
031fe9ea01628bf8d20dbf0d41146e6a
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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Shepherd, Frederick Harold
F H Shepherd
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Shepherd, FH
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Frederick Harold Shepherd (b. 1921, 152660 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 2018 and 15 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Claire Bennett the interviewee is Mr. Frederick Shepherd, the interview is taking place at Mr. Shepherd’s home near Kings Lynn on 25th May 2015.
CB: Good Morning Frederick
AS: Good Morning
CB: Perhaps you could start by saying your date and place of birth please
FS: The date of my birth was 8th March 1921 and I was born at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Manchester
CB: Do you remember very much of your early life
FS: That’s either very detailed or very shallow, I was, put it this way, I was the first child of my mother and father, and my next brother, Douglas, was born in 1926, and my second brother, Ronald was born in 1934, at the moment all my family have departed this world so I am the only one left in the Shepherd family.
CB: And your early life until you joined the air
FS: I was schooled in Manchester and on leaving school I joined the company of South American Shipping Association and stayed with them until I went to the Air Force when I was twenty years of age.
CB: What made you join the Air Force
FS: Er, basic inclination was to fly and in that connection I applied to join the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm but I was assured that entry into the Fleet Air Arm was via the Royal Marines, and no one would give me any indication of the gap period between joining and possibly being transferred to the Naval Airforce so I immediately applied to join the Royal Airforce.
CB: And this would have been 1941 something like that
FS: 1941 yes
CB: So where was your first posting to
FS: Ah, I need to qualify that a little bit, I was accepted by the Royal Air Force, er, took physical and mental examinations at Cardington, er, was sent home on deferred entry and I went to Manchester and Salford University for extra schooling on mathematics, geometry, Royal Air Force Law and the Morse Code technique, and that covered the period of time ‘twixt me being accepted and actually being invited to join in London at my, at um er, for the entrance into the Royal Air Force proper.
CB: How long would that have taken about
FS: Twelve months, the training took twelve months
CB: Right, and then
FS: I went into London for initial training, and then to Newquay for what they called ITW that was the initial training wing, before being selected to go into flying which I did immediately I left Newquay I went into basic flying at place called Clyffe Pypard which is in Wiltshire. I’m curious by the by are we being recorded now?
CB: Yes we are
FS: That happened to be the initial training school for flying happened to be a private training school and one or two of the previous employers at the school were still there until young ex flyers that’s not Bomber Command but Fighter Command came to do the training and they were young men of nineteen, twenty, twenty one, and the next part I would not like recorded its purely of interest but not I don’t think it is for the record, I mean these sorry
CB: Would you like me to pause it
FS: Yes, just for your [pause]. So I was taken under the wing metaphorically of a young man who was nineteen/twenty years of age who obviously shown how good he was a flyer and then been sent on to this training base and I found him excellent as a flyer but virtually useless as a trainer because he had no tolerance of my ineptitude for flying [slight laugh] at all and he got all these various flying techniques slow rolls, shuffles, turns and all the rest of them and I was just clinging to the side of the aircraft hoping I wouldn’t fall out [laughs].
CB: What aircraft were you in
FS: Tiger Moths [laughs]
CB: Tiger Moths I see
FS: You’d sit there next to him doing slow rolls and you’d catch everything that was coming out the cigarette ends and everything else that was in there would hit you in the face you know and you weren’t supposed to hold the sides of the aircraft you were supposed to have your hand on the joystick and I didn’t, that’s all part of the fun [laughs], er um, from then what happened next, er yes, I had um, I was taken off all training because playing rugby I had a scratch on my right eye across the pupil and there was a danger that I might not be able to fly at all, so I was admitted to the hospital at Swindon and I was there for a while and finally I was released unconditionally the repair had been affected as far as my eyes but meanwhile I was taken off the training for weeks on end and I wondered whether I was going to go back again but I did, but of course I lost all the people I was with they were well on their way to Canada, shall we go on now?
CB: Yes yes please
FS: From then we were all posted, all prepared for despatch to Canada because they had set up this empire [?] air training scheme which was part in Canada and the other part in Port Elizabeth in South Africa where all this training for all all aspects of flying all duties were going to be covered and we were sent up to a waiting station in Manchester a placed called Heaton Park where the maximum holding of manpower was for two odd thousand and it built up to ten thousand and we had individuals who actually were finding homes to stay in in proximity to Heaton Park this was all because of the big problems in the Atlantic we were going to be sent off by the Queen Elizabeth first boat and because of the submarines and so forth they were diverted they were slowing everything down for obvious reasons and it came to a point there was a terrific overflow from Manchester and they sent a company of us down to the south coast just to deposit us for a while we had only been there for four days and the Germans had obviously been advised and they sent across a fleet and we had a lot of casualties because they caught one flight coming back from training exercise and we had suspected that when we heard the roar of these aircraft that they were English aircraft when in actual fact they were German aircraft who were attacking us and from there that we had only been there for three days and that night or following morning at about two o’clock in the morning we all paraded we went right along the full length of the promenade on both sides of the promenade to the railway station onto a train and we didn’t get off the train until we got off at Harrogate, and from then on we were there for a short period of time despatched to Scotland and for one night only and then onto the Elizabeth the following day and away to Canada.
CB: How long did it take to get to Canada
FS: Four and a half days.
CB: What were the conditions like on board
FS: What with twenty thousand, we ate twice a day and we heard about when we were going to eat and whatever when we got on the boat by having these tickets and mine said two o’clock in the afternoon and two o’clock in the morning and from two o’clock until six o’clock afternoon and evening I was on special guard duty for the whole trip and we were allotted that sort of guard duty from two until six two until six.
CB: And what did that involve
FS: Parading all round the ship like in the daytime, not so much from two am in the morning until six am in the morning round the decks and that was the job its not everybody who had that sort of assignment but when I got on board I was given that ticket which advised me that I was one of twenty one in the bridal suite and that I had these duties from two until six two until six [laughs].
CB: Were you on your own in this bridal suite
FS: No [emphasis] twenty one I was one of twenty one in the bridal suite.
CB: In the bridal suite
FS: Oh yes, seven three tier bunks.
CB: Oh I see
FS: Great fun [laughs].
CB: So you got to Canada docked at Canada
FS: No no we went into New York, we went into New York and then a train travel [?] the likes of which I had never experienced before on the train for about three days off to Canada and we ate and slept we slept on the luggage racks which you could pull down for luggage but we had to sleep on them we couldn’t sleep at all we went up to Canada a place called Moncton which was the assembly point at the beginning of our trip to Canada we went to several stations in Canada for different aspects of training of course.
CB: So from Moncton you went to
FS: Er, one two three four different stations and then the last station was a place called Ancienne Lorette which was outside Quebec City and from there the majority of them were six of us were commissioned out of the thirty six on the flight six of us all went to Prince Andrews Island for this GR training and the rest of them either went straight away into operations in the Far East, as one or two of my friends and colleagues did and the rest of us went to Prince Edward Island for six weeks and then came home and that was it, we were there for about fifteen months all told.
CB: And you were being trained on
FS: All aspects
CB: And you settled for and you ended up where
FS: I had nothing to do with it you were directed I came back here one of the after that they differentiated with you between your badges I got an observer badge fully qualified afterwards that changed to either air gunner or BA which is bomb aimer or N for navigator they split it.
CB: Just to go back to Canada a minute what was the accommodation and the food like from what you had been used to in the UK
FS: No comparison vastly superior because they had no restrictions there in actual fact and that meant either in the camp or going out into the town for dinner I mean the prices were very realistic and the food was superb because it was free choice so when we went into Quebec City itself in actual fact you could dine for silly prices and you had fantastic meals and that’s what it was.
CB: What aircraft did you learn on
FS: Mainly Ansons, mainly Ansons and we had one or two gunnery [?] trips on Beaufighters which I haven’t mentioned before Ansons and Beaufighter
CB: What did you feel about your time in Canada was it happy memories
FS: Oh it was superb long time we had we worked eight days and then had a day off that was the standard eight days and one day off until we arrived in Prince Edward Island surprise surprise there was a weekend we finished work and we had Friday and Sunday off we used to go oyster fishing off Prince Edward Island [laughs].
CB: What were your other recreations apart from oyster fishing
FS: Gymnasium and squash that was about it and walking of course did a tremendous walking lovely particularly from Quebec one amusing incident we a bunch of us went into Quebec to the cinema and when we came out at the end of the show there had been a five foot fall of snow which meant we couldn’t even get out of the entrance of the theatre there so we ultimately got out and one of us went into the the hotel there which I have got a photograpgh of and booked a room and twelve of us occupied the room for the night then we got back to camp the following day the camp was about fourteen miles so I mean it was either snow shoes or horse drawn sleds took us back the following day but that was one of the amusing incidents.
CB: So happy times in Canada
FS: Oh absolutely in the main yes great fun and then coincidence I suppose we came back on the Elizabeth again
CB: Same sort of routines
FS: Yes not quite as cramped [laughs]
CB: How did you feel going across the Atlantic I mean were you frightened you were going to be torpedoed
FS: I don’t think it entered any of our minds at all we changed course getting slightly technical we changed course every seven minutes on that boat which you could realise in actual fact if you were up on the bridge because you could see this in the water purely as a safeguard and we diverted as well south and then turned back again up into New York.
CB: You were you part of a convoy
FS: Oh no, oh no nothing could keep up with that boat that’s why it was superior to the submarines they ain’t got that speed so we got away with it just changing course every seven minutes which is standard procedure and it can be set up by equipment in those days so every day of courseyou can see it so later on in the day you can see where you are crossing because you had left a stream there purely to indicate you changing course and that was entirely automatic until we got into New York and we were only there for a short time but there again talk about hospitality when we got off the boat we were given a little bunch of cards with names and addresses on and [?] please give us a telephone call and it would be an automatic invite to their houses if they were in proximity to where you were and we used to go out while we were there until everything was ready or the onto the train and up into Canada but that was a very nice experience went to big shows called Sons of Fun at the gardens there and they made fun of us course but it was all lighthearted stuff yes but we were one of the early contingents obviously across there into the states and they made a fuss of us while we were there which we accommodated very well and they did it in Canada in Canada the same arrangement the first Christmas we were there two of us David and I went to stay at a family they called them Driscolls and they lived in Montreal they had three children and we were invited there to stay there as long as we want over Christmas they took us up in the mountains up to the top and had Christmas dinner up in the Laurentian Mountains as part of there hospitality suite it was really good.
CB: Wonderful
FS: Oh yes it was no it was and they were also wonderful they used to send parcels to my family in Manchester the Driscoll’s Mr and Mrs Driscoll used to send parcels to my family in Manchester and saying jumping ahead a lot now on our way back from South America when we landed in Washington on VJ Day imagine what that was like and then we flew on to Montreal and when in Montreal I phoned the Driscolls you’ll never guess within ten minutes they said you’re not staying at the Windsor Hotel they picked me up and took me home I had to have five [unclear] with them of course and that was an indication of the hospitality I phoned them and within minutes they were there with the car and I renewed acquaintance with them after several years in Montreal.
CB: How wonderful
FS: More about that later
CB: So you arrived back in Liverpool
FS: Um, no we arrived back in Scotland.
CB: And then what was the next stage of your
FS: Down to down to Harrogate and then on to – down to Harrogate posting to Dumfries where I did an extensive course of specialised bombing for Pathfinders not that was any indication that we were going to [unclear] but that was specialised in training in Dumfries with a Polish pilot by the by very good we used to do specialised bomb dropping as required in these aircraft which I suppose was a Wellington and then down to, er um, down to pick up my crew, yes that’s where I met Mcfarlane and the rest of my crew before we went into mess halls.
CB: And where did you do your crewing up
FS: At um – Chipping Warden near Banbury.
CB: Right
FS: Yes because then in actual fact we were [unclear] break of through Wellington so before that in actual fact we crewed up at this place called Chipping Warden that was Banbury that was a sub station for Banbury we did our crewing up and then went to Chipping Warden and then started flying on Wellingtons purely training didn’t do any operational flying from there I tell a lie we did one operational flight that was on VJ night we flew over France dropping thousands of leaflets.
CB: Would you like to explain the crewing up
FS: Yes certainly we would assemble there was no assembly you just went into a huge hangar and you just wondered around I suppose so that was in the main the captain of the aircraft and in my case that was Squadron Leader McFarlane and he had met one person of the crew at the railway station at Littleport and on the railway station before they got there the two of them had decided that Captain McFarlane would have this other fella and then we got into this hangar and we wondered around and picked up and are you crewed up would you like to join us and we gathered up the crew the two gunners, and then wireless operator the bomb aimers as was then the navigator and the captain and that’s how we formed up and from there we went on to Wellingtons and then Stirlings and then on to Lancasters.
CB: So you first OTU operational training unit
FS: That was at Chipping Warden yes
CB: And your first training your did you know your first training was it leaflets
FS: First training or first flight the first operational flight
CB: Yes
FS: Was on VJ night and on landing night when we dropped thousands leaflets over France
CB: Right
FS: Then from then onwards we went on to Methwold and then Mildenhall ah I am telling lies we went to – Chedburgh that was on to Stirlings no we did no that’s right we went onto Stirlings but before we did any operational flights on Stirlings we transferred to Lancasters so went to Lancaster Finishing School LFS which was at a place called Feltwell just down the road from here.
CB: What date would this have been
FS: I’ll have to check with my
CB: Roughly
FS: Forty end Forty Three beginning Forty Four as near as makes no difference.
CB: So you went from flying on Wellingtons
FS: Yes only the one trip
CB: Only one trip on Wellingtons
FS: Then we went on flying Stirlings but we never did operational flying then we went on to Lancaster Finishing School at Feltwell and then on to operations at Methwold.
CB: What did you make of flying in the Stirling
FS: We didn’t but we had no choice I mean as far as we were concerned when we went training on Stirlings that was the aircraft we were going to fly in operations it so happened coincidentally happily that the Lancaster was coming in and replacing the Stirlings and whateverother aircraft we got and that was going to be the aircraft in this part of the country as opposed to Halifaxes in the Lincolnshire area which was a different group as you realise here we were 3 Group Lincolnshire were that’s what 4 Group glorious place.
CB: So we are now on to now in Lancasters
FS: Right operational flying the usual now what details would you like then I would have to refer to my flying log book.
CB: Certainly lets know some of the targets you went to.
FS: Shall I get my book
CB: Yes that’s fine, Frederick if we could talk about your start the start of your Bomber Command experiences in the Lancaster, so could you tell us about well your first operation.
FS: Yes now lets just have a look and be precise that’s Lancaster Finishing School 208 Squadron Methwold operation was destination was Boulogne can’t imagine what that was about um daylight visit to Boulogne doesn’t mention anything about bombing at all, um then there was a four and a half flight to Dusseldorf that was a straightforward bombing exercise now that would be the one [unclear] Calais [unclear] Duisburg bomb target so it must have been that trip to Dusseldorf when we came back the following morning that we noticed several technical people were busy standing underneath our aircraft gazing up underneath the right the starboard wing of which there was a hole between the second and third petrol tanks [laughs].
CB: And that had been caused by
FS: That had been caused by a bomb being dropped from one of our aircraft above which had gone straight away through between the two tanks without exploding which it should have done on impact.
CB: Incredible
FS: Absolutely absolutely incredible and then we did several trips and – that’s [unclear] that transfer date [pause] ah there we are yes the transfer date to Mildenhall see how many trips we did there, Stuttgart Essen Volks[?]
CB: So you are bombing the major cities now
FS: Yes that’s up to about October forty four
CB: Were you involved in any of the Berlin raids
FS: No not one no scheduled for but cancelled what had happened in actual fact, [coughs] pardon me oh sorry lets go back please to Methwold again because that was I had been talking about our first bombing raid when we actually arrived at Methwold as a crew the previous night they had sent out twelve Lancaster aircraft and five came back which is a heavy loss for one station and we became part of the quite pathetic exercise of moving into accommodation which had previously been occupied by friends of ours and you know when anybody is lost they have a special committee set up particularly with officers and these officers were doing all their duty work and we were moving in the following day so it wasn’t a very good start as far as we were concerned but still we obviously we accommodated it but that was a heavy loss they sustained that night and then the this was the first operational operational job we came back and found that incident the following morning in our aircraft yes so going on now what more
CB: So you went from Methwold to
FS: So we went from Methwold to Mildenhall I’ll tell you about why there had been a loss at Mildenhall there was a vacancy for a new squadron commander and they appointed my captain Squadron Leader McFarlane and they agreed which was unusual they agreed for him to take his full crew so we all went so we were all transferred our affections to Mildenhall and then onwards
CB: And this was with 218 Squadron
FS: From 218 to 15
CB: Right [unclear]
FS: And here we are 15 Squadron at Mildenhall and when there was a loss our captain was a squadron leader so when there was a loss of a senior officer the group captain no it wasn’t a wing commander over they appointed our captain McFarlane to take over from him as a wing commander so he lost his crew for obvious reasons and that crew was taken over by a Squadron Leader Percy and at that point I was appointed I was taken out of the crew and appointed as bombing leader for 15 Squadron and I also I became squadron adjutant at the same time reporting again to my previous captain McFarlane so I was taken out of my crew at that time.
CB: What does being adjutant involve at that time
FS: All the clerical work on top of which I was the leader of the bombing section so I was actually the bombing leader which you had to have in every squadron he’s the guy who goes to all the early meetings to take advice for onward transmission to the people of what was going to happen that night so that was so I had those two jobs I had still when I was so I was then whipped out of my crew and another individual appointed to the crew which was then being handled by Squadron Leader Percy who had taken over from McFarlane so I lost my crew because of my other involvements and I stayed in that situation until surprise surprise I was advised that I had been selected to accompany Harris now the reason how they did that they obviously they wanted an aircraft and I will show the aircraft that had been modified afterwards they wanted what was I going to say, how they chose who was going to do what they chose 15 Squadron because it was the oldest squadron in the air force to do these flights for Harris and having chosen the aircraft from 15 Squadron they took out the leaders from each department bombing section navigation section [unclear] section and those leaders all were part of the crew that’s the crew I have got in the photograph next door so from that point onwards I was involved in away to Africa America Canada and everything and left the crew behind.
CB: So your operational life stopped
FS: It stopped
CB: How did you feel about seeing your crew going off and having been given these new duties
FS: Well I was immensely proud because I mean it was quite an assignment we were going to go on we had no idea at that time we’d only got the shadow of what was going on we knew he’d been invited I’m talking about Harris because he’d been in Africa before he came to England he was been in South Africa he’d been invited to various places and the South er the Brazilian Government had invited somebody out there to commemorate the arrival of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force which had gone to Italy and not fired a shot and got back home again and they declared a national holiday [laughs] and coincidentally we were due to be arriving in Rio de Janeiro before they arrived back and that was what that was all about.
CB: There must have been a terrific sense of comradery on you know when you were flying with your crew that you had been with such a long time.
FS: [laughs] of course yes but it had to be severed the initial severance was when I was appointed the bombing leader which immediately took me out because only on rare occasions I had one or two rare occasions when a particular crew would be short of a bomber for one reason or another and I stepped right into their jobs that was quite harrowing to be a foreigner so to speak with a crew because you get used to your crew their attitude their application and even their reaction to situations but to go with another crew I found that quite tough going yes I flew with a Canadian crew on one occasion and they’d had several very rough experiences with I’ll mention one a decapitated bomb aimer came back in the aircraft and there were others now the crew in relation to my crew which were far more disciplined but with respect they hadn’t gone through the sort of operation now that crew with whom I flew on their twenty second operation were very little discipline there at all I think they were very concerned about what had happened on their previous operations they bailed out and they had done lots of other things and I flew with them as the air bomber for them and I found that the disciplines were very sadly lacking which was reflected on the chattering that goes on over the telephone the intercom which was fairly evident but still that is by the by and you ride that situation which I did.
CB: Did you just fly the one operation with them
FS: Yes yes yes just the one
CB: And did your crew your original crew did they survive the war
FS: Yes they did yes yes yes they did, no they did yes in spite of all the losses yes yes
CB: So you are now given these new duties and the next thing you hear is that you are going to be flying with Harris
FS: Right
CB: And when did you first see him when did you first meet him
FS: At the first place before we were going to, let’s get the dates – where I finished up [flicking through pages of flying log] – it all started in July Forty Five.
CB: Oh so
FS: Yes July Forty Five it started that’s when I met up with Wing Commander Calder a scots ex dambuster and he came down and I started flying with him as a co-navigator and then that was just before the trip started now the actual trip do you want to go on to when the trip started.
CB: Well if we can go back to Calder what would had been your you know your trip tours after the war in July Forty Five what were you doing with Calder.
FS: He was the captain of the aircraft taking Harris around the world.
CB: I see
FS: Yes.
CB: Right so
FS: Calder was ex bomber no ex Dambuster Squadron yes that’s Wing Commander Calder double DSO double DSC no seriously he was only twenty one brilliant.
CB: Yes so he was the pilot
FS: Yes he was the pilot
CB: So you would be the
FS: I flew with two navigators on this
CB: So you were the navigator on this because obviously we weren’t this wasn’t any hostile flying involved.
FS: None at all
CB: It was just
FS: Hardly, hardly
CB: It was just taking Harris around
FS: Yes quite literally and all that went with it.
CB: So what did you make of Bomber Harris
FS: I found him most of all to if I used the term a gentle person obviously a very strict disciplinarian but in actual fact on a personal basis on the occasion when I was talking to him he was much a very relaxed bearing in mind with what he had to contend as I mentioned before it wasn’t an easy life for him at all he had to virtually fight for possession for his own force and he had the big people in government who were contesting him in many instances I could name names but there is no point until he finally bearing in mind as I mentioned before the junior service the first being the navy the second being the army were very much the junior service and he didn’t find he’d get his own way at all in spite of the plans he had laid and the proposal view put before the big people like Portal and others who didn’t entirely agree with him that getting behind the German war machine by tackling in reducing to ruins their equipment factories that were providing the aircraft and all the aircraft parts was what he wanted to get at he didn’t find it easy until apparently he did get his own way and that’s when the war then moved to the German armoured factories which was part of the beginning of the end so to speak so the rest of that in actual fact is devoted to flying we did the whole of Africa and then started off we should have gone we went to a little aerodrome in the South of France for refuelling then we should have gone to Crete but we got to Crete and they said on no condition that you land because we have got a fever that is sweeping through Crete which could be dangerous so we didn’t drop off at Crete at all our next port of call was Egypt and then we went right the way down Africa staying at various places until we got to Cape Town.
CB: What was the purpose of Harris’ travels
FS: There was really no purpose these were just invitations from these people overseas to express their appreciation of what he’d done for Bomber Command and in the longer term what he had done in the country in terms of accelerating the close of the war and I suppose a thank you for the fifty five thousand who died during the war because this came out in all his little addresses that he gave in actual fact he was conscious of that fifty five thousand he dropped it in quite loosely everywhere so that was the trip and we came back only for a short period of time and then went on to the South American trip flying down the west coast of Africa to a place called Bathurst and then flying across from Bathurst to North Brazil and down to Rio de Janeiro and then all the way back calling in at various places British Guyana etcetera etcetera etcetera up over Florida and landing on VJ Day in Washington for the big celebrations which we joined in and at that time met big people like General Arnold and General Eaker with whom he Harris had been negotiating years before for the Americans to come into the European war instead of devoting their care and attention to the Japanese which was arguably their main drive force in actual fact he was one of the individuals we had dispatched to America to talk it over and in fact these two individuals were present when we landed in Washington so it was quite a gathering quite a gathering yes.
CB: Do you know if Harris knew that they were going to drop the atomic bomb in August
FS: Oh yes
CB: He knew so was it timed that he would be in Washington at that
FS: No
CB: No
FS: He didn’t we did our trip across South America Rio de Janeiro Sao Paulo addressed the British community in Sao Paulo this is where the fifty five thousand came up again and purely by coincidence I met a young man there an Englishman who had completed his course at [unclear] university when I went there and he had transferred his affections to the equivalent of our administration organisation and he had joined that in Sao Paulo and as he mentioned he said if you ever thinking about coming over here do get in contact with me and we will see what we could do this was in Sao Paulo South America and we had that closeness in that part of our education of being in the same place at slightly different times we got round to discussion this and he said well wait a minute I was there too when were you there and I realised I had gone there when he’d left in Manchester quite astounding yes quite astounding [laugh] we kept in a bit of correspondence for a while but I had no intention of going to South America in actual fact at that time well by that time I had left [unclear] and was working in Mareham I had met the lady who was going to be my future wife who’d had a little girl whose husband had died and any thoughts of going out of England had gone she came from Kings Lynn in actual fact.
CB: So how long was this flight with Harris
FS: Oh right –
CB: Right Frederick so you have started with going around Africa and so on in July Forty Five and you actually came back in August Forty Five so do you look on that time as a pleasurable month did you enjoy doing what you did with Harris
FS: Oh fantastic I mean these places I had never visited before I’d never been to Africa before and we I say we just went to these various places in Africa stopping for two or three days and at each place from Cairo to Cayga [?] I mean as far as I was concerned that was fantastic we did all these wonderful things in the Sahara into the jungle at night time you name it we did it of all the places to stay in Nairobi we stayed at the Norfolk Hotel in that location and to things like seeing all the African workers sitting on the steps making things like I’ve got those forks knives and forks actually making them and selling them to us in actual that was a new experience going out on night time safaris going out on night time sing songs in the jungle and all that sort of thing we did going to moth and butterfly museums quite absolutely incredible.
CB: Did Harris join you for any recreations
FS: No, for some but mostly he was at a much higher level than we were and were concerned with our I mean we went to Mombasa we went down we did the big things like going down a gold mine for instance going down a gold mine and you go down a gold mine instead of going straight down there you go about seventy five degrees and six of you go down at a time two two two and you go down at a fantastic speed at about that angle that was the Wanderer Gold Mine and I’ve still got specimens I joke not I’ve got specimens of gold that they gave us at the gold mine fifty sixty years ago I’ve still got them I don’t know what they are worth but these are specimens inside that you see petrite [?] it’s called inside the petrite[?] is pure gold.
CB: Gold that would be worth now these days
FS: Oh bound to I might take it to see that fellow who does gold in Lynn he’d say oh thank you I’ll have this bit its worth a couple of pounds couple of pounds sorry I joke but no it showed I had a fantastic experience in those places we went to a place in Bathurst on the West Coast of Africa from which we flew to South America and we went they took us down to a cellar where the native bunch were all sitting on the floor making filigree and we could buy it and we could buy it for ridiculous prices I mean low low prices and we all bought our specimen as few of but actually to sit there and watch it being made that was a fantastic experience that followed not quite such a fantastic experience when we were landing in Bathurst a place called Halfdie [?] which has taken its name from the fact that they had a plague which wiped out fifty percent of it and thereafter named it Halfdie [?] and the last few hundred yards in we encountered a terrific sandstorm and we couldn’t see a thing out of the aircraft it was kind of landing by instinct and we got out of the aircraft and it was torrenting down and we were absolutely saturated and they persuaded us to strip off and put clothes on and they put all our clothes on to fast heaters so we went in there was a crisp uniform standing up in the corner which you had to break to get it on [laughs] like this crack crack crack it was quite ridiculous and we had a function an important function that night and there was our stuff we had to wear everything shirt vest and pants was rock hard [laughs].
CB: I assume Harris’ stuff wasn’t
FS: No he had six spare uniforms in his luggage that was incredible we had that photo they had just taken all our clothes away and woosh we’ll dry these for you [laughs]
CB: Now after the war if we can just conclude with Harris he didn’t wasn’t treated very well
FS: No no he wasn’t
CB: Nor was Bomber Command for that matter
FS: No no no
CB: Did you have sympathy with Harris at this time about how he was treated
FS: Oh yes I think we all did I yes I suppose even then the realisation of what sort of if I can put the wording in the battering he had to get his own way and the fact and even the fact that it was proven beyond any doubt that what that the plans he had put forward and etcetera which had met so much opposition at one time and then finally he got his own way and got the power behind his throne that he wanted to do what he wanted to do with Germany in spite of [unclear] and all that I suppose we all had a tremendous amount of sympathy and a tremendous amount of respect for his dogmatic approach in actual fact to get not his own way for words sake for getting his own way for the benefit which would be derived in him getting permission to do what he wanted to do and the result was the war came to an end so I suppose at that time we thought a great deal of him.
CB: And did you all think you know a great deal of him during the war when he was he had this programme
FS: Yes that was the general the general sentiment yes he didn’t mean admire he wouldn’t expect to meet any opposition at that it was patently obviously what we had to do and one was certainly not send the trained crews to handle the Atlantic war in spite of how vital that was I mean we talking about hundreds of thousands and when you look at the figures of what was going down ‘twixt and ‘tween American and where they were delivering the goods to place like Archangel and Murmansk North of Russia and then there was all those goods coming through Russia into the European war in spite of all that and the tremendous demands which were made upon him by as I say the Navy to send to have some trained forces so they could handle the Atlantic war well of course that wasn’t realistic in anyway there was nothing that we were doing in Germany to identify with anything to do with the Atlantic war that was something quite different admittedly they wanted the aircraft and unless they could have the aircraft and they could have the armaments to be able to drop bombs on submarines which was a bit wild gesture anyway that might have been might have made a contribution towards the more positive influence of all the shipping that was coming across the Atlantic than it did because we wouldn’t I remember the speeches in parliament by Churchill ex hundreds and thousands and thousands of tons of zinc had gone down and then the humanitarian aspect of how many they had lost at sea I don’t suppose any of us could identify that with sending trained Royal Air Force crews into the Navy to do what you know one of the things you were supposed to do to have a fleet of aircraft over the Atlantic dropping bombs on U-boats bearing in mind we had U-boats out there trying to blow the air out of the Germans anyway but that was I suppose that could have taken a different more important role entirely had that shipping gone down a more I mean with these vital elements that were arriving from America in Russia well it was a contributory factor obviously and hundreds of thousand tons going down in the Atlantic meant nothing at all to that building up that war coming down from Russia through Germany etcetera so we had a great deal of respect for him and he was a person who you had a great deal of respect for anyway not because of his position and his number of stripes in actual fact his dogged determination to get his own way for the benefit of not he for the benefit of the war.
CB: Well
FS: Sorry to interrupt but this came out in his speeches that he gave overseas in South America and the particular one we all attended in in Rio to the British contingent he was quite emotional about [unclear] the losses that had been sustained doing what he wanted to do.
CB: Of course Churchill after the war distanced himself from Harris.
FS: Oh yes yes
CB: His strategy and Bomber Command what do you feel about that
FS: We had a very strong feeling extremely strong feelings the war was over then we could say but wait a minute we succeeded but it wasn’t that easy in actual feel there was a tremendous amount of ‘oppo’ of course a lot was caused by the Dresden business that manifested itself too I remember that we haven’t touched on it yet Joy and I were specially invited to the memorial service the unveiling service for the house you’ve got all the details for that
CB: Yes
FS: Because I’ve got all the details just digressing for a moment only because of my association close association for a short period of time I had special dispensation to attend the church we had seats you had to pay for them but we had seats reserved at the church for the unveiling ceremony which was the Queen Mother of course.
CB: Yes
FS: And that was sorry to be digressing just for a moment and when we got the invitation it was a question of where it was so forth how you get there so forth and I said ‘oh there’s no point taking a car there’s thousands going there’ having a contact at The Savoy I phoned my contact and got a reservation in their garage for my car and again realised you come out The Savoy turn right and there’s the church so Joy and I went up there I was in full regalia medals and all chat chat chat[?] and went in there and had breakfast in The Savoy [laughs] there were people coming up and whats going on oh yes we’ve got something special going on down the road and then walked out the front and walked out and there was the church and we had reserved seats that was packed to capacity as of course the Queen Mother was there of course she performed the unveiling ceremony and again there was a terrific uproar in the background on her lefthandside at the back it was subdued but in actual fact it started off being very very rowdy and she continued on with her little citation for the opening and it came very interesting from Joy and I point of view my group captain from Mildenhall was then the chairman of the Bomber Command Association and his duty on that particular day was to escort the Queen Mother round and into the law courts where we were having [unclear] or teas coffee whatever I mean so he took and upside in his wheelchair was Cheshire so we could shake hands with Cheshire that’s purely by the by and we got inside and we wondering how difficult this is you’ve got two hands a cup in one hand a plate in the other one said help yourself and we were in this sort of situation and a voice boomed out it was my group captain ‘Shepherd would you bring your good lady over’ and we were introduced to the Queen Mother as spontaneous as that no preparation at all so Joy went across and was presented on the spot that was a lovely instance and that was my group captain.
CB: Yes
FS: From Mildenhall so where have we got to as far as your concerned
CB: I know that you were involved even on a slight degree with Operation Manna
FS: Oh yes on experimentation that’s right
CB: So how did you come to be involved in that
FS: There wasn’t much and I signed on for an extra six months no I’m getting things out of timing I came back to Mildenhall and everybody had gone all the bodies had gone all disappeared and there was [unclear] bombing leader who would need a bombing leader after the war [?]
CB: This is April Forty Five Right
FS: That’s absolutely right and I had come back I had finished full of my trips overseas America and everything else and that was excitement at the tail end of when we arrived in Washington of course it was madness and from there we flew up to Duval which is Montreal in the Lancaster of course in preparatory for coming home and we flew off from there and landed in Newfoundland and took off for the trip back to Prestwick which the navigator and I the two of us that was going to be an entirely star navigation back home as an experiment two three thousand miles so we dropped all the mechanics we concentrated on star shooting with our cameras and moon charts and we got a freak tuning from Prestwick two thousand three hundred miles from Prestwick so that pointer came there and we had a beam it up so that we could tell exactly where we were coming over the county it was fine we had a fire on the outboard engine on the starboard side of the aircraft a fire no problem just press the button to extinguish it, press the button to extinguish it, nothing happened so we had a fire in the starboard engine so the only think that Calder could do we were probably about twelve fourteen thousand feet high was to put the aircraft into a very steep dive and it worked it blew the fire out the engine so on investigation we found that when we dropped into Duval for final check up they had not put the fuses back into the system so [sighs] it was a toss up shall we turn back into Newfoundland rather than risk anything and that’s where they confirmed there were no fuses in the fire system whatsoever so we thought we’d choose this got airborne and came back to Prestwick [laughs heartily] but these things what happen we could have gone down there and had no well they wouldn’t know well they would have had a rough idea of where we’d gone down but fat lot of good that does [laughs] well yes that was the spot yes you can see it no can’t see any bubbles a simple thing like that happen yes and that was on the return flight. So back now Manna
CB: Right Manna
FS: So when I came back to Mildenhall there was no job for yours truly but they had a vacancy up the road in Mareham in the experimental unit for Manna and not much alternative I had my service to do and I wanted a job so I was posted in actual fact to take over this Manna thing now that involved researched into a sort of canister that we were handling that had to go on board laden with goods and lifted up into the bomb bay and writing up a report and making recommendations and so forth and on one could be tragic as far as I was concerned we got everything ready we got a pannier fixed inbetween these two containers with whatever to make weight and upstairs one of the armament people was controlling the hoist and halfway up the hoist gives way and I am standing with my hands on the edge of the thing and I took my hand and the whole of the thing crashed down into the pannier it would have just taken it off at the wrist and we looked at the hoisting gear it was clearly marked ‘US’ and they had used it oh there was a terrific stink because the person actually totally responsible was the person doing the mechanical winding upstairs was clearly marked anyway but that’s the time I could have easily lost my two wrists so I continued on my balance on my extra six months writing up reports and so forth and then I left the Air Force.
CB: So for Operation Manna the supplies couldn’t be dropped by parachute so they were in these cannisters.
FS: Yes they were an oblong framework and supported with release gear [unclear] by the pound in actual fact these are the continued developments experiments if you like that we were conducting and it was changing fairly rapidly what was being called for because we were getting reports back from Holland and Belgium on how things were landing and what sort of degree of damage occurred etcetera and what was the ideal height for dropping and they were putting up these tremendous haystacks I suppose you could call in actual fact them to cushion the thing and they worked then I came away from the operation so they built these fields with twenty foot haystacks totally soft so they cushioned everything so the percentage of damage incurred by the contents was minimalised and that was when I came away came out.
CB: So you really finished with the war with Operation Manna and taking Harris out two positive ways to finish the war.
FS: Oh very much no question about that I assure you
CB: Rather than finishing it off on a bombing mission
FS: Yes yes absolutely
CB: And how did you feel when you you know
FS: Well tail end of course the humanitarian thing came in and it was the most simple thing in the world in Kings Lynn at the Dukes Head throughout the war every weekend every Saturday evening throughout the war they had an officers invitation dance at the Dukes Head Hotel and they meant officers and it was at one of these occasions at the officers dance I went along there and surprise surprise I met Joy who was on about her second time out having lost her husband who was a bomber pilot university bomber pilot straight from university straight in.
CB: They had their own squadrons didn’t they
FS: Absolutely yes he did complete his first tour of thirty trips came out unscathed was sent to train pilots who were going to be involved in the dropping of a bridge too far sort of thing he did all his training and he was called back to do his second tour of operation and on his second trip on his second tour went down coming back from Cologne and left Joy with a little girl she was then three and I met her and got married.
CB: What did you do after the war
FS: I worked for a company called Nestle on the sales side and I became responsible for recruitment and training and development for the whole organisation I was with them for thirty years wonderful company international of course head office in a lovely place called Vevay in Switzerland on the banks of the lake and I was with them for
CB: Did you live out there
FS: No went but no lived in England moved about England when Nestle moved their head office into Croydon and had this twenty two storey block the first one they had seen in Croydon and they occupied the whole of the building because they brought in all the associated companies into one building the associated companies being the likes of Kieler, Crosse & Blackwell, Toblerone, Findus all the associated companies which were dotted around that all came into the head office twenty two storey block in Croydon so I was there until I retired and then I started work.
CB: How would you sum up your time in the Second World War and Bomber Command
FS: Well it’s tough I mean apart from being revolutionary of course which it is to my mind I don’t know what would have happened if I had stayed with the South American Shipping Association which was involved obviously in shipping goods to South America and that came to an[unclear] end at the start of the war because you couldn’t expect boats to go out there so there was no job so that’s a bypass so answering your question because it’s obviously so revolutionary and so different to what it would have been and I couldn’t imagine what I would have done had I not gone into the Air Force well I suppose life would have been fairly steady progressing with an organisation and at some stage deciding I wasn’t going far enough fast enough and getting out but I mean that was wiped off by going into the Royal Air Force.
CB: So you obviously had to volunteer so did you
FS: Ah you can’t go into the Air Force Royal Air Force without being a volunteer.
CB: No
FS: As you know
CB: Yes
FS: So I had to volunteer I had to go into the Air Force after I had tried to go into the Navy fortunately the Air Force they said yes please thank you rather than the Navy did no no no [laughs].
CB: So well a time really of excitement danger new experiences
FS: A mixture of all of those I mean the new experiences were embodied in the African trips and so forth and at the end when we were coming home from Africa we spent some time in Greece in Italy on the way back so it was really a very comprehensive trip and whilst we down in particularly Rio de Janeiro that was absolutely fantastic I mean you have seen pictures of it Copacabana Beach but we went out to place called Quichaninnia [?] about seventy miles out we had never ever I had never in my life seen a hotel like that out there it had its own everything I mean I mentioned things seventy pianos for a concert seventy pianos indoor and outdoor ballroom indoor and outdoor swimming pools and it was situated actually on the banks of a river so you could get out at night time and go right the way up the river which were all lit from this Quichaninnia [?] Hotel all lit right up into the hills fantastic place.
CB: So these are all experiences that you wouldn’t have had.
FS: I could have afforded it we were honorary members of everything when we arrived there golfing club swimming club the lot they’d opened everything and across the bay from the statue you know it’s the English quarter and that was fantastic a bit of England on the opposite shores of Rio de Janeiro.
CB: Wonderful it’s been fantastic and interesting to hear all your experiences so thank you very much Frederick.
FS: It has if it identifies with what you are looking for fine yes.
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 Frederick Harold Shepherd
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Clare Bennett
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
2015-05-25
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AShepherdFH150525
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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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01:11:50 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Frederick joined the Royal Air Forcein 1941. After going to Cardington, he was given deferred entry and studied for a year at university. He was invited to London for initial training, followed by the Initial Training Wing at RAF Newquay. He did basic flying in Tiger Moths at RAF Clyffe Pypard before going for 15 months to different stations in Canada. He trained mainly on Ansons.
On his return, he went to Harrogate and was then posted to RAF Dumfries where he did a specialised bomb dropping course for Pathfinders. Frederick crewed up at RAF Chipping Warden and trained on Wellingtons. He did one operation, dropping leaflets over France.
Frederick then went onto Stirlings at RAF Chedburgh before Lancasters at the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Feltwell. He carried out several operations with 218 Squadron at RAF Methwold. Frederick then moved with his captain to RAF Mildenhall when the latter was promoted. He carried out several operations on major cities. Frederick was appointed as bombing leader for 15 Squadron as well as the squadron adjutant.
Frederick was chosen to accompany Arthur Harris, flying with Charles Calder as a co-navigator. The crew were all section leaders. Frederick describes Harris’s personality and the leadership challenges he faced, expressing his sympathy and respect. Having refuelled in the south of France, they went through Africa and on to South America and the United States, arriving in Washington on VJ Day.
Frederick signed on for another six months and went to RAF Marham in the experimental unit for Manna before leaving the RAF.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Manchester
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
United States
Washington (D.C.)
Canada
France
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-08-14
15 Squadron
218 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bomb struck
Flying Training School
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
propaganda
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Clyffe Pypard
RAF Dumfries
RAF Feltwell
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Marham
RAF Methwold
RAF Mildenhall
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/19/43/PAutonJ1503.1.jpg
fcd84ad8b587a4e098652670dd63b4c8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/19/43/AAutonJF150608.2.mp3
6ee59b7c7d75a4b3e1001264485de6ae
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
Auton, Jim
J Auton
Description
An account of the resource
26 items. The collection relates to Sergeant Jim Auton MBE (1924 - 2020). He was badly injured when his 178 Squadron B-24 was hit by anti-aircraft fire during an operation from Italy. The collection contains an oral history interview and ten photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jim Auton and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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. 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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-30
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Auton, J
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Well Jim, perhaps we could start with your date and place of birth please?
JA: Yes I was born at Henlow, my father was an officer in the RAF and he happened to be stationed at Henlow when I happened to be born.
CB: And what date was that?
JA: That was the 13th of April, 1924
CB: And what do you remember about your childhood?
JA: I remember when he was transferred to Cranwell, I started infant school at Cranwell and we had to walk across the aerodrome to school, and there were about twenty of us and we were told to walk in groups together and if you see an aeroplane coming in, stand still [emphasis] so he can avoid you and we used to see aeroplanes coming in to land on the grass field, they were bi-planes of course and we’d wave to the pilot and if he waved back to us that made our day because pilots were our heroes and we all wanted to be like daddy and join the RAF when we were old enough and next to the school playground there was an aircraft dump, old fuselages, they’d taken the engines out and the instruments but we’d climb into the cockpits and stand there and go ‘dud dud du du’, we were shooting down Germans when we were five years old, we knew the Germans were the enemy, I don’t think our government knew at the time.
CB: So you have happy memories of your childhood in Cranwell?
JA: Yes, and then of course we, he was stationed at Manston and we could go in the workshop and see the fitters working on the planes, they never told us to shove off, and we liked the smell of dope on the aircraft on the canvas and, but when they took an aircraft to the butts to synchronise the guns, they’d jack up the tails to get the plane horizontal and we’d stand around with our fingers in their ears while they were shooting into the pile of sand in the butts, and then when an aircraft broke down we used to rush out across the aerodrome to help the man, help the men push it and for kids it was marvellous, we loved aeroplanes.
CB: So do you think that’s what started your desire to join the air force later on?
JA: Well you see I was brought up on RAF stations, RAF camps and I didn’t know any other life, we were isolated from the outside community, we had free medical treatment, free dental treatment, we were in married quarters most of the time where even the crockery was provided, all the linen and everything, so our whole life was in the air force until we were adults, so naturally we all wanted to be pilots when we grew up, and when the war was announced I thought ‘oh good they’ll need more pilots now’ [slight laugh]
CB: So off you went to volunteer.
JA: Well when I was seventeen I couldn’t wait, I went to join up, and I registered as a pilot but I found later they put me down pilot navigator or rather pilot observer as it was in those days so they could change me any time they wanted, and I started flying training as a pilot and then when they introduced the four engine bombers they didn’t need two pilots, so they would have a pilot and a bomb airman who had done some flying training and he in an emergency would be able to take over from the first pilot so the bomber was a second pilot, but and [slight pause] I started flying in England but the German intruders flying over us, over England were shooting us down in our training planes, so the Government opened the Empire Air Training scheme.
CB: Where did you do your initial training?
JA: At Ansty near Coventry and then after much delay because flying schools were all full and there was a waiting time, I was sent to South Africa as a navigator and I trained there as a navigator, but I wasn’t very keen on being a navigator so I also trained as an air bomber, because I knew air bombers would be allowed to pilot the plane, in an emergency, and even during training the staff pilots would allow me to take out over and fly the Oxfords and Ansons because that’s all I wanted to do really and so I trained as a navigator and a bomb airman.
CB: What about your journey down to South Africa?
JA: That was marvellous, hundreds and hundreds of them on a small Liberty ship. We were told you mustn’t be below decks during daylight, so we had to stay on the top deck in all weathers and there wasn’t room for everybody to sit down, so if somebody stood up you immediately sat in that place and some of the troops perched on the ship’s rails until they broadcast anybody falling over will drown because the ship will not stop to pick anybody up, so we couldn’t sit on the rails so we had to stand up sometimes for ten, nine or ten hours, during the day, we were fed twice a day, seven in the morning and seven in the evening and the food was like an airways meal on a tray and it wasn’t enough to keep us alive and I asked the crew, it was an American Liberty ship and the crew were Filipinos and Negroes and I asked them ‘do you have this terrible food that we have?’ and they said ‘no we’ve got plenty of food’, they said ‘if you come and work in the kitchen for us, we’ll let you have our food’, so I spent couple of weeks washing up dirty dishes until the heat got too bad and I went back on the troop deck again, but during my time in the kitchen I was allowed to sneak some food out for my friends [slight laugh] who didn’t work in the kitchen, that was all unofficial of course.
CB: Was it better food in the kitchen or just more of it?
JA: More of it and better.
CB: So they were keeping you on starving rations basically?
JA: Yes, yes, eventually the doctor said I was suffering from severe physical debility but that was much later, we were on this ship for six weeks and they warned us we were in shark infested waters and the ship wouldn’t stop for anybody falling over board, but it was quite an interesting voyage except the sun was dreadful in the tropics and there was no shade, and the officer in charge of troops thought that we were cadet officers because we wore a white flash in our caps but we weren’t and when we got to Sierra Leone Freetown somebody must have told him we were not potential officers and he said ‘right, you’ll have to do all the duties’, fire picket, fatigues, peeling potatoes and all sort of things like that and guard duty for the rest of the voyage, another three weeks and my name beginning with an A, I was one of the first to be chosen for guard duty and it was a stinking hot day and we were anchored off Freetown to re-fuel and I found a hatchway and a collapsible chair and I sat in that hatchway and dozed off because I’d had no sleep, we couldn’t sleep on the deck as it was too hot and the smell of the engine oil, and I dozed off and suddenly I was awoken when the ship’s officer came round on his inspection with the ships warrant officer and they bellowed at me ‘what are you on? sleeping duty?’ and I said ‘yes, sir’ because I didn’t like to say no to anybody in authority and they said ‘you’re under arrest in five minutes’, ‘oh dear’ I thought ‘I’ll be all on my own in prison’, the brig, the ship’s prison was below the water line, it was nice and cool and I wasn’t on my own, there were eleven other air crew cadets in there with me and the police who looked after us took us round for dinner wearing their caps and then they said ‘you keep your mouths shut and we’ll go round again’ and they took their caps off and we had a second dinner, so being in the brig wasn’t so bad, except we were locked in and we were below the water line and there were submarines about, so we thought if, if a submarine hit we’ll certainly drown like rats in a trap but it didn’t happen of course.
CB: It must have been quite a relief to get to South Africa after all that?
JA: We anchored off in Table Bay about quarter of a mile from land and the dock workers had a big lump of rusty steel plate and they wrote on it in chalk: ‘plenty of food, plenty of women, plenty of booze’ [laughs] and the next day we docked in the harbour and we were told you will be discharged tomorrow, and there was nearly a riot because we’d been cooped up for six weeks and eventually they said ‘Ok, you can go into town but you must be back at midnight so we all went into town, it was paradise, things we hadn’t seen for years like pineapples and peaches and plenty of food and so we goaded a kind of a restaurant run by volunteers for service men and some old ladies served dinner, so we had a three course dinner and when we finished they said ‘would you like anything else’, and we said ‘could we have it again please?’, so we had another three course dinner, then we had half a dozen bananas on the way back to the ship [laughs] and we brought a coconut, it was paradise, but at flying school wasn’t so funny, the day we arrived we were told that five aircraft had crashed and twenty five air crew had been killed, that’s five pilots and two navigators in each plane and two bomber men in each plane, five men in each plane and the reason was the staff pilots had been low flying round a hospital where somebody’s wife was working and all five crashed (these would be Ansons?) they were Ansons and they, we were told report those pilots for low flying in future but we didn’t do that because we liked low flying because stooging about high up isn’t much fun, but low flying is exciting [clears throat].
So after training in South Africa [coughs] for nearly a year we went up by stages through central Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, the Sudan to Egypt where we found we were going to live in the Heliopolis Palace Hotel, marvellous [emphasis] but when we entered we found there were no beds, no furniture of any description and we had to sleep on the marble floors and our kit had been left behind in South Africa so we only had the clothes we were standing up in, so I wrapped my shoes in a towel to use as a pillow and lay my uniform down on the marble floor and slept on that, I found that I had to sleep on my back otherwise my hip stuck into the marble and it hurt [slight laugh] and then, I was then sent to Palestine where there was a war, the Jews and the Arabs were fighting each other and both sides were fighting the British Palestine police and while I was there they blew up the radio station and they blew up hotels, and people were fighting in the streets and I thought ‘I haven’t got into the war yet but I’m going to get shot by our own police’, and they had said to us, because we each had a revolver, ‘hand in the revolvers in the armoury, so I went down to the armoury which was in the cellar of the hotel and I handed my revolver in, and I saw the men there were mounting twin machine guns on a platform to be carried on a lorry, so it was a war, but then we were then transferred to Lidder, after going back to Egypt and wasting some more time sleeping in the western dessert on the sand, we had to empty our shoes thoroughly because there was scorpions in the dessert and the sand was almost too hot to walk on and the authorities had laid a tarmac path but it never hardens and it was like sticky toffee so we couldn’t walk on that [slight laugh]
CB: And this was part of your flying training or were they just moving you from place to place?
JA: Moving us around, and then we went to Lidder for a conversion course, onto Liberators, about a five week course.
CB: Were you expecting Liberators?
JA: No, when we saw that we were going to fly Liberators, we thought ‘they are American planes, why haven’t we got Lancasters?’, ‘cause we knew about Lancasters we thought they were marvellous, Liberators were unknown and didn’t even know that the RAF had Liberators and we thought they’re gonna send us to Japan because the Americans had Liberators so we were a little bit frightened of that, because we thought we should be helping defend Britain, we thought the war in Japan is an American affair and we shouldn’t be anything to do with that, but after we’d been shuttled around in Egypt to Palestine for a bit we went to Algiers by air, nine hours, and we thought we were on our way to Italy, when we got off the plane we saw a French flag and we said ‘what’s this place?’ and a French airman said ‘it’s Algeria’ or at least he said ‘it’s Maison Blanche’, we said ‘where’s that?’ he said ‘it’s Algeria, it’s North Africa’ and we said we’re supposed to be in Italy but there was nobody to ask, we could ask any questions and he said ‘you can go to a hotel here and sleep in huts in the grounds’, and then you should go to Algiers’s downtown about twenty miles and report to the RTO, transport officer, we went to see him the next day and he said ‘oh bomber crews, you’ll be here for ages, you’re low priority’, he said ‘only fighter pilots are priority one’ and our navigator said to me ‘we are priority one, I’ve read the documents’ but I said ‘shut up, it’s nice here’ so I said to him ‘the French people don’t seem very friendly’ and one of the gunners said ‘no wonder, we’ve just sunk the French fleet in Iran, so [slight laugh] after three weeks we said to the corporal in the RTO’s office, ‘I think you ought to have another look at our documents’ and he stood and talked on the telephone for a few minutes, kept us waiting because we were so insignificant, a low priority, then he looked at the documents and nearly had a fit, he said ‘you’re priority one, you should have left the same day’ he said, ‘you’ll be on a plane this afternoon’, so we fly to Italy in a freight plane with a load of boxes and an aircraft wheel that wasn’t properly strapped down, it kept shuffling around and nearly run us over, we were sitting on the floor and when we got to Italy, no customs, no immigration, nothing at all, nobody to tell us where to go or what to do, so we, first thing a service man does when he goes somewhere new is look for a tea and a bun [laughing] or what’s called a ‘shy and a wad’ and there was a little sort of canteen with Italian girls serving and they were laughing and joking, I expected Italians to be hostile like the French but they were so friendly, I thought we’re gonna like it in Italy and they kept saying ‘capiche, capiche’, and I said ‘no, no cabbage thank you, just tea and a bun’ and they said they were saying ‘do you understand?, capiche’ but we didn’t know that, but we thought they seemed nice [laughs] hope there are going to be some women where we’re going.
CB: Is this around about Naples was it?
JA: It was in Naples, and then we were transferred to Portici to a, to a holding centre, and there were people there who’d done a tour of operations and they were going on a rest period, and they were so dejected, haggard and ill looking, and they wouldn’t talk to anybody and we thought it must be terrible on a squadron, that it was demoralising to see them, anyway we stayed there a few weeks and then we were sent to Foggia by train, and you understood that Foggia is a big aircraft base, there were thousands and thousands of Americans there, with Liberators and Flying Fortresses, B24s and B17s, and we had liberators but other squadrons, some of them had clapped out wellingtons obsolete or obsolesce wellingtons so the liberators were a bit better except they weren’t new machines, they were machines that had been damaged and done a tour in the American Air Force and were now in a sort of scrap yard called a maintenance unit, and the pilots would go and ferry them to our squadron and if we were lucky we’d get the one in reasonable condition but most of them had got terrible faults, some of them had even got twisted airframes, and engine troubles common, and our fitters worked in the open air, there were no hangars, and sometimes they worked through the night in all weathers, and we were reliant on them to keep us alive.
CB: Now your crew, there was the seven of you as in a Lancaster but in this Liberator is that right?
JA: Yes, when I talk about how when I won the war I always say ‘I didn’t do it alone, there was seven of us’, and three of them were Scotsmen, one was from the Shetlands, and it took me a few, few days to learn to understand them on the intercom, because the intercom system is not very clear, it’s like a poor telephone system, and their Scottish accents were very guttural and I knew my life depends on these fellas, so I had to learn [slight laugh] to understand them and the skipper was very pleased when I joined the crew because up till then he was the youngest member, he was twenty-one and I was twenty and of course as I trained as a navigator and as an pupil pilot I was a useful member of the crew, and I’d done a gunnery course so I could do anything if anybody was killed or injured, I could take over from them, I couldn’t land a Liberator of course but I could keep it in the air long enough for the others to jump out and I said, I think I was bombing I think it was Budapest and the flak was so thick I thought we couldn’t get through it without being hit, and I looked over the side and it was like black velvet, the sky was so dark and I thought I’d jump out if I dared but I had no faith in my parachute and as I said to a Polish pilot I knew, he had parachuted safely and I said ‘ I think I’d jump out if I dared, but I’d be scared’ and he said ‘you wouldn’t hesitate if your arse was on fire’ and he was speaking from personal experience.
CB; So, you were with this very close-knit group, you were a good team, a good cohesive team?
JA: Yes, yes, you see when we arrived on the squadron nobody would talk to us because they couldn’t be bothered with new boys and when we became senior crew, we couldn’t be bothered to talk to new crews because on average they were only doing seven trips before they got shot down, and it was bad enough if our friends got shot down, but we didn’t care much about strangers being shot down so we didn’t really want to make any friends, because it would be traumatic when they died.
CB: And what were the conditions like at Foggia?
JA: The conditions were absolutely terrible, we were in a field, there were no gates, no fence, we were in a field with one solitary brick building, and that was the orderly room, the medical offices office and something the commanding officer used, he lived in a caravan, we lived in little four man tents, bivouac tents, you couldn’t stand up in them and we had no beds, we had to make our own beds out of bits of packing cases, and I had the side of a packing case with a strut across the middle, in the middle of my back, most uncomfortable, covered in cardboard, the mid-upper gunner, had a sheet of corrugated iron, I said ‘that’s why, that’s why he walks so funny’ [laugh]
CB: But you’d have the heat, you’d have the rain, it must have been terrible.
JA: It was, we’d have the side of the tents rolled up and the end flaps were open because the heat was so intense and we’d get a couple of hours sleep at night, but we couldn’t sleep more than a couple of hours so we’d get up and walk around, and when the sun came up it was unbearable and there was no shade anywhere, there was a place that we called the dining room and it was a roof on six poles with no sides and we sat on forms at trestle tables, and the cook, had an outside kitchen arrangement made out of oil drums, and the first thing I noticed was his black arms and white hands, he was twenty-one, he never wanted to be a cook, we called him Gladys because he was a nice boy.
CB: And was the food any better?
JA: The food was terrible, you see sometimes the food didn’t arrive, the food was brought to us by a lorry from somewhere distant each day, only enough for one day and after everybody had had a bit of it on the way there wasn’t much left for us, and there was hardly enough to keep us alive and sometimes the food didn’t arrive at all and we’d have nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and one day we said to Gladys our cook ‘ God for Christ’s sake Gladys, find something, there must be something left over’ and he scratched around and he found an onion, a raw onion each and a mug of tea, and that’s what we had and we had to do a nine hour flight, on an empty stomach and of course I smoked twenty cigarettes on every trip because it took away the hunger pangs, and then the medical officer discovered that the cook was using some sort of cans of meat and vegetable stew that had blown, and most of us got severe enteritis and people couldn’t control their bowels and there were no toilet facilities in the air, so people were doing it in their trousers, and sitting there on it for the rest of the trip, and some of the crews were yellow with jaundice, we didn’t know if it’s contagious or what caused it but we were living in what they called a malarias area, there were boards around the perimeter of the field we lived in, saying ‘caution, malarias area, malarias area, area’ and everyday a bowser arrived, a tanker of water but we couldn’t drink the water, it tasted of chlorine it was terribly strong, so we could only use it for washing ourselves and trying to wash clothes but we had no washing powder, we’d save little scraps of soap and put a shirt in a tub and leave it for three weeks to soak [slight laugh] and then rub it, and then rinse it and lie it in the sun, and in the hot sun it was dry in about an hour and we had nothing to eat except a mug of tea twice a day, and when we came back from operations we went to the debriefing tent, and there was a billy can full of lukewarm tea there and half a dozen mugs, they were never washed they were just recycled, we dipped them in the lukewarm tea, but if we were gone for more than five hours on a trip, we were given five boiled sweets which we promptly ate on the ground before we took off, and we were given a gallon of tea between seven of us, in a thermos jug, but that got cold, we’d saved it for the return trip and Jock the wireless operator used to bring the tea round for us cold, cold as ice, and about once a month we got what we called a tuppenny bar of chocolate but it was tropical chocolate and it never melted and in the air, I would put a piece of chocolate in my mouth and chew it and it became like gravel and then it became like dust and then I swallowed it but it never did melt, and one day some, some things arrived at the cook house, we thought they were bails of straw but they were dehydrated cabbage and that’s the worst thing you can have when you’re flying because our stomachs swelled up and we had to loosen our belts and our flying clothes because our stomachs were expanded enormously and we farted furiously throughout the trip.
CB: Did you have proper flying clothes in all this?
JA: We had flying clothing, we just recycled, the only ordinary clothing we had were ones left behind by casualties and of course lots of it was very old and our kit bags were still somewhere in Egypt or South Africa, following on about three months later and when I was in South Africa, I brought thirty oranges for a shilling, no for three pence, you couldn’t buy less because they were in a net, thirty for a ticky it was called, a threepnee bit [sic], and my kit bag wasn’t quite full so I put thirty oranges in there thinking the kit bag would come with me but it followed on three months later and the oranges were well ripe by that time [laughs] they were putrid, and we were allowed to wear civilian clothes in South Africa, provided we wore our service cap, we could buy bush shirts and nice clothing in the gents’ outfitters, so if we took our caps off we looked like civilians, and that was good quality stuff and when that eventually arrived in Italy we were very pleased because we’d been dressed like scarecrows up until then with all sorts, I had a brown battle dress, it wasn’t khaki it was brown, a sort of teddy bear material, I don’t know what air force or army that was from, maybe Greek or something, and it was a bit big for me so I could wear two battle dress blouses, two pairs of trousers, two shirts, two vests and three pullovers, because sometimes it was twenty below in the air and then I’d wear my flying suit, going to the toilet to urinate was a bit difficult because I had so many clothes on, I couldn’t stretch my penis long enough in the cold air to have a pee in the pee tube, which was on the side of the fuselage with a tube leading out of the aircraft but usually they were blocked up with cigarette ends [laughs]. The Americans had had ashtrays in their Liberators, they smoked in the air, smoked cigars in fact but the RAF took the ash trays out so of course we smoked in the air, nobody knew and I would smoke twenty cigarettes during a trip and now and again I’d feel like another cigarette but I’d already got one alight and then I’d think, ‘what did I do with the last cigarette end, did I stamp on it? did I drop it?’ and I’d switch a torch on which had a bit of brown paper over the glass, inside the glass because that was regulation and try and find the cigarette end on the floor somewhere and, once we took a fitter with us to another airfield and he nearly had a fit when he saw me light a cigarette because you are not allowed to smoke within so many yards of an aircraft but it was alright, it was, smoking was less of a hazard than the flak, we were carrying a ten thousand pounds of bombs and thousands of gallons of fuel, petrol and oil and pyrotechnics, photo flashes, incendiary bombs so –
CB: A cigarette was the least of your problems –
JA: A cigarette was minor.
CB: What did you make of the Liberator as a plane?
JA: Well when I flew it, because I could fly it when the automatic pilot backed and the skipper said to me ‘you can take over if you like’, it was like, it was like steering the Queen Mary, if you wanted to change course you had a wheel instead of a joystick and you’d turn the wheel and wait and nothing happens for a few seconds and then suddenly it moves, and if you don’t turn the wheel back quick enough its gone too far, so it’s too sluggish and, of course my instrument flying, I only took over at night, my instrument flying wasn’t good enough, most of my instrument flying was in the link trainer under the hood, and instrument flying was tedious and I could only stand about half an hour at a time, then I was glad when the skipper came back and took over, we were all sergeants, we liked that, because it was awkward sometimes when there was officers in the crew, in one crew the tail gunner was an officer well that seemed silly because a sergeant in that crew was a skipper and he was in charge in the air but he had to salute the tail gunner on the ground, well he should have done if they hadn’t abandoned saluting, but there was so many American officers because all of their bomb aimers or bombardiers were commissioned and the navigators and the pilots, so they always, when they talked to me they always addressed me as lieutenant because they thought I must be an officer being a bomb aimer, bombardier, and I would say ‘no we’re not one, we’re sergeants’, but you see we didn’t wear rank badges because we hadn’t got any, when we qualified at flying school, they didn’t give us any sergeant strips and when we got to the squadron nobody was wearing any rank and the commanding officer said ‘you should wear rank badges’, we said ‘we haven’t got any’ he said ‘chalk them on’, chalk them on, well that seemed so silly we didn’t bother, we said ‘we can get some from the Americans’ he said ‘you’re not allowed to wear those’, so we didn’t wear anything.
CB: Did you get on well with the Americans?
JA: Yes, oh yeah they were lovely fellows, we went to a, about twenty miles away to Foggia, was a ruined town, it had been bombed by the Germans, the Italians, the British and the Americans so there wasn’t much left of it, but there was a bath house where they had shower baths, and when we had a day off we’d hitch a ride on a lorry, lorries were conveying chalk from the quarries and we’d hitch a ride on the back of a lorry carrying limestone, and then we’d get very dusty on there, the drivers were all American Negroes and they’d say ‘where you going, down town Foggia?’ and we’d say ‘yes’, ‘get aboard’, so we’d climb up on the limestone and go to the bathhouse which was a small with half a dozen cubicles which were meant for one or two people but there were always four or six people pushing in trying to get wet, under the water, and we’d be sitting there waiting to go in with our towels and our soap, all naked, and soon as someone came out we’d push our way in and try and get some water, and after the war I was invited by the Hungarian government to go, go to a meeting in Budapest, they’d invited all available flyers of every air force that was active over Hungary during the war, well Hungary was allied with Germany and I’d bombed Hungary but the Hungarian air force was very kind to us, they took us flying, you know in their aeroplanes and there were five Americans standing there, there were only two of us they could find from England, but I said to one of the Americans ‘do you remember the shower baths in Foggia?’ he said ‘yeah I must have seen you there’ but he said ‘I didn’t recognise you there with your clothes on’[laughing].
CB: So let’s turn to your missions, your operations, what were you involved in while you were there on your long range bomber?
JA: Well we could put most eighty aircraft in the air, RAF, Liberators and Wellingtons but the Americans could put up six hundred, or nearly a thousand, they flew during the day, we flew to the same time at night and of course we had the same opposition say for sixty planes as they had when they flew six hundred so our casualties were much higher than Americans but I liked the Americans, we got on well with them, they had a camp in a field not far from us and we went to visit them once, to compare their facilities with ours and they had tents with wooden floors and wooden walls and they had stoves, we had nothing like that, we didn’t have running water, they did, they had electric light, we didn’t, they had decent food, we didn’t, they had flak jackets to protect them when they were flying, we didn’t, they had an ice cream plant for making ice cream and when the weather was very hot, they used to take the ice cream up to about fifteen thousand feet to freeze it and they had a cinema on their site, we didn’t, so we felt really rather ashamed of our conditions compared with theirs ‘cause they didn’t know how bad ours were –
CB: I’m surprised there wasn’t mutiny but I suppose –
JA: Well we had some desertions, we didn’t, we felt mutinous but we didn’t actually mutiny, and our attitude was we want to get this bloody war over and beat the Germans, and get home, but after forty operations we should have six months instructing or some other job and then come back and do another forty so not many people getting through the first forty and by the time we’d done twenty we knew we wouldn’t survive, we were the most senior crew on the squadron, we lost the flight commander and all the senior people off the squadron and when people much more experienced than us were failing to come back, we thought ‘we haven’t got much chance’, and so we reconciled ourselves to the fact that we will die but everybody’s got to die sooner or later and we thought ‘we are gonna die now instead of when we are ninety-nine’ so that cheered us up the fact that everybody has got to go sooner or later anyway but what did worry us, is the thought that we’d be severely wounded and blinded and badly burned, that sort of thing and having to live with that from the age of twenty for the rest of our lives, we didn’t like that, we had been stationed in Torquey as raw recruits, and there was a hospital there for burned air crews, air crews that had had their faces burned off and they were disgusting to look at, and horrifying, and we didn’t want that to happen to us, it was very demoralising and it was happening to other men, it never happened to us, you know, we couldn’t understand how we keep getting away with it, the plane was hit, engines were knocked out, we were landing on one wheel and two engines and all sorts of things like that, but none of us were hit yet and we went on to, the skipper had done one air experience trip, before we started operating, so he was one ahead of us he’d flown with another crew for experience, we didn’t like that ‘cause we thought ‘if he gets bumped off we’ll have a strange pilot’, and anyway we went on, watching other people dropping like flies until our, until my, my thirty-seventh trip, and I was bombing German troops in Serbia, they were evacuating from Greece and the Greek islands, back through Yugoslavia, back to the home land, to defend Germany, and we were stopping them, and no matter how much we bombed them they never really took to it and they hit me, filled me full of shrapnel.
CB: Before we get to that Jim, your first operation I believe were against oil plants in Bucharest, is that right?
JA: The first one was an oil refinery in Fiume, that was an Italian port which is now Rijeka which Fiume and Rijeka mean river, and it’s now Yugoslav, Croatia now, and I know that oil refinery well, and I know a woman who used to go to school across the bay when I was bombing that oil refinery and I thought what a terrible thing it was she lived nearby and when I went past on the bus sometimes after the war and I thought I could’ve killed her and I would’ve hated to kill her she was such a nice person and, after the war I knew a lot of Germans, the German airmen, pilots, ‘cause I speak fluent German and they always thought I was German, they used to say ‘but your father’s German?’, and ‘no, no he’s English’, well your mother is German ‘no no’, ‘well where did you learn English?’, I was the head of the German department of import export firm for years and I had to learn German at school anyway, and I had a private tutors for languages after the war and, I even spoke Italian during the war, fifteen years after the war I opened an office in Milan, and I put a man there who was a Venetian, rather posh Italian, superior you know, and I said ‘hey Franco, have you changed the language?’ and he said ‘why?’ I said ‘well during the war we used to speak differently’ and he said ‘no we haven’t changed anything’ well he said ‘after Mussolini, we didn’t call people voy we said lay’ and I said ‘no it’s not that’ I said, I only speak these days when I’m on my monthly trip to Italy, to supervise the office, I only speak to bus conductors and waiters and people like that but they speak differently to the way I spoke, so I started talking to him in Italian and he said ‘for God’s sake don’t talk to the directors of Fiat, what you speak is Neapolitan dialect’, well I didn’t know that and I thought well if it was good enough for the girls in Sorrento, it’ll have to be good enough for the rest of the Italians, he said ‘you speak like those little black fellas down in the south’, ‘cause you know there was snobbishness between the north and the south but I liked the southern Italians, they were all nice jolly people you know, I’ve even got some distant relatives that are Italian, my, my grandmother’s sister married an Italian during the first war when the Italians were on our side, and they settled in England and had a multitude of children and I knew them all.
CB: So the operations, some of which were in Ploiesti in Romania, and they had a fearful reputation.
JA: It was the most heavily defended target in the world.
CB: You were bombing these oil plants, especially the one at Ploiesti at night obviously?
JA: Yes, yes it had tremendous defences you know, because it was the oil that was vital, what really finished the war was lack of petrol, they got, they’d run out of fuel for the tanks and the aircraft so all the war we should have only really been concentrating on oil refineries, oil fields.
CB: So the operation in October to do gardening or mine laying as it was properly known, mine laying in the Danube of which you reported was the most frightening episode that you’d ever been.
JA: Well the first time that we dropped mines in the Danube, we’d been told they are secret and you must make sure you drop them in the main stream, the Germans must not get the secret of the mines, they lie dormant for three weeks and they don’t go off until the second ship passes over them, so they are virtually un-sweep able, the Germans used to fly over them with special aircraft with a big magnetic ring on it to try and explode them, they’d gun barges adrift to go over them and nothing, they couldn’t sweep them and, within a few months we’d stopped a hundred percent shipping on the Danube, which was conveying oil from Ploiesti back to the German forces, so it was a very important thing and the fighter defences were enormous, we’d seen planes shot down every few minutes and that was a bit frightening, I used to think ‘I hope there’s not somebody I know in it’, because a plane would fly along beside us for seconds, it seemed like ages, on fire, and slowly descend in a curve and explode on the ground, and we were told, ‘don’t be distracted by crashes’ but you can’t stop looking at them, wondering ‘whose that?’ and thinking ‘why don’t they get out, don’t see any parachutes’, what we didn’t know was that the Germans had upward firing guns, and they’d creep underneath the plane in the dark and fire into the belly of the plane and nobody would see them, so the gunners didn’t open fire and wondered ‘why didn’t the gunners open fire on that?’, nobody told us about it, this was the secret.
CB: No, they were doing this to Liberators? They were certainly doing it to Lancasters weren’t they, they were doing this to Liberators as well?
JA: Yeah and you see we had no ball turret underneath, the RAF took out that bull turret, we hadn’t got a gunner for it anyway and then we had a gun turret in the nose but they took all the guts out of that, to decrease the weight, so we had no guns in the front turret, we had no gun underneath that could’ve seen these upward firing guns and we didn’t carry a lot of ammunition, mining the Danube we would use all our ammunition, immediately I’d drop the bombs, I would rush back to the beam position where I’d got two machine guns, one on either side, there was no gunner for those so in the event of an attack I would use those or when we were mining the Danube, I’d drop the mines, rush back there and use those guns to strafe the shipping on the water or any insulations on the banks, the banks were two hundred feet high, and the Germans used to stretch cables from bank to bank so we had to fly below two hundred feet so we normally went to a hundred feet in the dark above the water, and then we thought we’d be safe, except there was flak barges with barrow balloons and we couldn’t see the cables from those because the barrage ruins were too high up above us and you can’t see a cable in the dark, we were going too fast anyway and, I remember one time there was a man on a barge firing at me with an automatic rifle and I gave him a quick skirt, squirt from the machine gun as I went by, I would’ve like to have met him after the war if you lived to discuss that, you know I didn’t mean it really you know, I’d say ‘I’ve got nothing against you personally’.
CB: But if you’re going to fire at me, I’m firing at you, what was your bomb load on something like this?
JA: Ten thousand pounds, you see we couldn’t carry a big bomb like the Lancaster because we’d got the cat walk going down the centre of the plane, so the bombs had to be hung in rows one above the other on either side of the cat walk, so the biggest bomb we could carry was a thousand pounds, so we carried ten of those, ten thousand pounds, which is plenty anyway and we’d carry pyrotechnics, lots of incendiaries as well.
CB: And what was your job if there was a hang up, and the bomb hadn’t been released?
JA: I had to go along the cat walk, in the dark, with no parachute, and no oxygen, and holding onto the railings in the roof and skidding about on the ten inch wide cat walk, with the, the slipstream would take away my weight so I had a job to keep on my feet and when I got to the bomb which was usually the one right to the back, I would stand on the cat walk with one leg and kick it and it would never fall off, so I had to swing then holding onto the hydraulic pipes, which were not meant to be swung from they are only about an inch diameter, I’d hold them with two hands, my wrists would go like jelly, you know, I’d swing and kick with both feet and when the bomb eventually fell off it was like my stomach went off with it, ‘cause there was always lights twinkling on the ground and thousands of feet below, and one slip and I’m off to the ground you know, seconds to live, that was terrifying. The only other terrifying thing was throwing grenades when I went on an infantry tactics course during training and, swinging propellers, on tiger moths, on a wet windy and muddy day, I thought I’ll swing in to the propeller and get my head cut off, but when I was in South Africa a chap did walk into a propeller, a navigator, and it threw his head over the hangar, so propellers were a danger, you couldn’t see them rotating, they were invisible.
CB: So now you were also involved in what was known as the Warsaw uprising or the support of that, that’s right isn’t it Jim?
JA: Yes but to go back to the mining of the Danube, the first time we mined the Danube, I said to the skipper ‘we’re too low, we’re much too low’ and he said ‘we’re at a hundred feet’ and I thought ‘we’re bloody not’, I could tell by the droplets of water we’re not at a hundred feet, when we got back to base the compass was, the radio compass was checked and we’d been at thirty feet in the dark, if we’d touched the water we’d have been gone, so that, it was terrifying yet there was no, there was no pay off, if you dropped the bombs you’d see the explosions and things, you’ve done something but you dropped mines that are not going to go off for three weeks or more then there’s no, the stress is there, there’s no release from the stress except machine gunning like mad, and then of course on the way back you would get attacked by fighters so then I was stay by the beam guns or as the Americans call them the waist guns, and that was quite exciting really firing those, but the reflector sides illuminated, were too bright, they were meant to be used during the day and I couldn’t see through them at night so I switched them off and I fired watching where the trace goes ‘cause every fifth bullet it was a tracer, so I fired a gun like squirting a hose, and they’d burn out about I don’t know whether it was six hundred yards but up to that time I could see where they were going, firing like watering the garden it was, with a hose pipe [laughing] anyway you were asking me about?
CB: Supporting the Warsaw uprising, dropping the supplies?
JA: Yeah, I’d bombed a place in Hungary, we were pretty tired, it was the second of two nights we’d been in the air, and we eventually got back in the tent to go to bed and within three hours a runner, a runner arrived from the orderly room and he said ‘you’ve got to report for briefing’, we’ve only been in the tent for three hours and we were told you’re going on a secret operation, fly down to Brindisi, we didn’t know what it was all about, and in Brindisi we went into a hut and there was a big map on the end wall and it showed a tape going from Brindisi to Warsaw, we thought well it’s nothing to do with us, the Poles are on our side we’re not going to bomb Warsaw, but then we were briefed and told we’re not going to bomb, we’re going to drop supplies of explosives and ammunition and guns for the underground resistance fighters who were fighting in the city against the Germans and, they were expecting the Russians to arrive any minute so on the 1st of August they’d started to fight, and they were doing well for a few days, and the Russians stopped their advance so the Poles were on their own so they appealed for help, apparently Winston Churchill was in Italy checking the arrangements for the south of France invasion which was imminent and he said, ‘we must help the Poles, we went to join the war on their account, we can’t stand idly by’, our air officer commander told us this later and, so he said we should go with the special duty squadrons, there was an Polish squadron and an RAF squadron dropping supplies but they’d lost so many men so they couldn’t continue so three liberator bomber squadrons were called in to do the supply dropping, they said ‘you must, you must drop from below six hundred feet and the poles said ‘two hundred, otherwise the parachute containers will drift away’ and they said ‘we’ve been there, it’s safer at a hundred feet because then the Germans can’t bring the guns to there because at a hundred feet you’ve come and gone quickly’, but they said ‘there’s one building still standing and that’s sixty meters high, so don’t fly into that in the middle of the night’, when we got to Warsaw, the whole city was on fire, gun fire and everything was burning and we’d been told a particular street and squares where we were to drop the supplies but nothing was recognisable so I remembered them saying, Zoliborz, a district of Warsaw is still in the hands of the insurgents, well that was a few days ago and I thought there doesn’t seem to be any fires, or no fighting going on as far as I could see, we fly around for fifty minutes and planes were getting shot down all around us and I’d eventually counting the bridges, I knew where Zoliborz was, I dropped the supplies there and I said to the wireless operator, ‘we must be bloody mad you know flying around fifty minutes’ and he said ‘well we’re not going all that way to drop them in the wrong bloody place’, I thought we’re all crazy, the psychiatrist reported that we were crazy, in their official reports, which I read after the war, ‘they must be crazy and they all think it won’t happen to them’, it’s insulting, we knew it was going to happen to us sooner or later, why shouldn’t it happen to us, it did happen to me in the end, fortunately it wasn’t quite fatal [laughing] .
CB: Glad to hear it, so that was your philosophy really to imagine that you had been killed already basically?
JA: Well we knew that we would die eventually anyway, so it’s like people ask you ‘when did you have your holidays?’, when you’ve had it, doesn’t matter if it was June or September, its gone, so doesn’t matter when you die really, if you’ve got to die anyway what’s the date matter, we had to tell ourselves that sort of thing, but we had superstitions, we had lots of superstitions, my friend Deakey (?) the navigator, he had a lucky shirt and he couldn’t fly without his lucky shirt and if it was dirty he had to wash and dry it quickly ready for flying that night, we only fly once without his lucky shirt and we got lost, and that was on the way back from Warsaw, we went twice to Warsaw and each night we lost thirty percent and by the third night we’d lost ninety percent, ninety, the air force pretended it was seventeen percent but everybody knows it was ninety percent and there are plenty of documents saying it was ninety percent and our air officer commanding Sir John Slessor wrote a book in which he [said] the time of the Warsaw uprising was the worst time of his career and he mentioned it was ninety percent but after the war, Stalin had to be appeased so we didn’t want to tell, didn’t want to emphasize anything we did that he didn’t agree with, ‘cause Stalin was anti-Poles and he’d stopped his army to allow the Germans to polish off Warsaw, and Hitler said eradicate Warsaw, it was to be razed to the ground and he gave an order ‘all inhabitants to be killed’ and the new German commander who wrote a book after the war, he said ‘you don’t mean women and children?’ and he was told ‘yes’ [emphasis], the whole population is to be killed, that’s what was going on when we were flying over there, and we were told ‘if you get shot down near the Russian lines, they will shoot you, especially if you are dressed in blue’, well of course we were dressed in blue we were in the Air Force, so it was a bit late to tell us that now and, while we were flying to Warsaw we were being shot at by the Russians and the Germans because they didn’t agree with us helping the Poles, the Poles got a medal, the Germans got a special badge, the Russians got a medal, I’ve got one of them as a souvenir, and we got nothing, we got no recognition.
CB: Andy your pilot comes over as very calm.
JA: Yes, he was very determined, he was very stubborn and of course he was the skipper, he was in charge but I always felt that I was in charge you see and when we were lost on the way back from Warsaw, Deakey the navigator called me up and said ‘Jimmy can I have a word with you’, well I thought there’s something wrong and I just asked him a little while ago, ‘do you want a pinpoint?’ ‘cause I would navigate by map reading all the way there and back you see, but I hadn’t bothered because he, I said ‘do you want a pinpoint?’ and he said ‘no, no I’m alright’ now he says ‘can I have a word with you?’, so I scrambled up the front to the nose compartment and the tears were dripping off his chin and he said ‘I don’t know what country we’re over’, I said ‘give me the typographical maps, I’m shit hot at map reading, I could tell you in a few seconds where you are’ and I said ‘we’ve got no maps for this place whatever it is’, when we should be over the sea, we’re over land and when we should be over land we were over the sea of course we were over the Greek islands, they’re all messy you know, the little bits and we’ve got no map for that place and I didn’t know until after the way why we hadn’t got a map, the reason was he’d got diarrhoea and he’d used the map because there wasn’t any toilet in plane, and he wrapped it up and chucked it out down the flare shoot, that’s where the map was the Germans had got it, bit messy, and the plane had been on fire, the wireless operator had the wireless set in pieces and he was in his element putting it together, you know mending it, he was busy and I, went up the front to have a chat to the skipper with Andy, and I said to the flight engineer, he pushed past me to look at the fuel gauges, they were like a gauge on an oil tank, like a domestic oil tank, visual gauge with a bubble in tubes, I said ‘how we’re doing?’ he said ‘empty’, I said ‘we can’t be empty we’re still flying’ he said ‘yeah but I don’t know how long for’, we’re flying over aerodromes with German planes with black crosses on, they’re freight planes but we daren’t try and land there otherwise the you know the ground defences open up on us, so I said to Andy ‘we’re heading to the mountains’ and I said to him ‘land on this road’ I said ‘these strong, straight roads’ I said ‘we’re just flying over one now, look you can land here, that’s what I would do if I were you’ and he said ‘I think we’ll press on’, I thought ‘you’re mad, press on, [emphasis] we’re flying into the mountains and we’re out of fuel, and in any minute all the engines are going to cut out’, anyway he was right and we did press on and we got eventually over the sea and the radio operator had got the wireless together again and he always used to stand up and point when he was listening on the radio and he started waving his arms about and pointing and he said its Brindisi and we were facing the runway, we running up to Brindisi and we went straight in, if there had been anybody in the way we couldn’t have done round the circuit because when we got to the end of the runway the, all engines cut out, out of fuel, so we told the duty pilot where we were and that we were out of fuel, so they put some fuel in and flew back to Amendola near Foggia, of course we’d been gone so long we couldn’t still be in the air, our trip was eleven hours and forty minutes plus over an hour going to Brindisi over an hour coming back so we were so tired, I’d already dropped off to sleep for the last half an hour and when the plane landed I was still asleep and the ground crew got in and stirred me with a foot to wake me up, I was just dead tired, I’d been in the air longer than I’d been on the ground for about three days and no sleep at all you know (tired, hungry?) yeah but we were always hungry.
CB: And then you’d have to have the debriefing?
JA: Yes, that didn’t take long because we were always a bit impatient at debriefing, we’d answer questions, we didn’t volunteer any information and always something had gone wrong with the plane, like the guns didn’t fire, the oxygen cylinders were empty, all sorts of things, one engine cut out, two engines cut out and the ground crew would run out to us soon as we landed and they’d shout ‘any snags, any snags?’ and we’d swear and shout and say ‘this went wrong and that went wrong’ using lots of ‘f’ words but then we’d never report the snags, because we relied on those lads and it wasn’t their fault, the planes were clapped out anyway and they’d work through the night perhaps maintenance and they couldn’t get spares and some of the things they did were, were fatal, and they couldn’t help it, one of them said to me, ‘I don’t get very close to the air crews, I don’t make friends with them because’ he said ‘if a plane goes missing I’d wonder if I did something wrong or whether I’d forgot to do something’ and he said ‘I’ve been on a squadron a long time and lots of planes have gone missing and I always feel it might be my fault’ so he said ‘I don’t like to get friendly with air crews’, I can understand that, when I used to go to the, we weren’t allowed to take anything with us like a bus ticket or money or anything like that, and so I had a little wallet and I used to hand it to the sergeant fitter, ground crew fitter and I’d say ‘take that Jake and if I don’t come back you can keep it’, and he’d take it but he didn’t like touching it really and when I got back he’d shove it at me as soon as he could ‘cause he didn’t want anything to do with dead men’s property and I can understand that you know, he was squeamish and when I got wounded he was the chap who lifted me up and carried me out of the plane.
CB: So what happened on that your final operation obviously, what was it the thirty-seventh out of forty?
JA: Yes
CB: And what happened Jim?
JA: When we were told the target would be undefended, and for the first time ever you can bomb anywhere in the town, it’s just full of Germans, so I dropped a stick of bombs at predetermined intervals, and I hit about two or three blocks of flats right in the middle, the next one between two blocks of flats, the next one a road and rail junction, and then I said to the skipper, ‘hold this course for half a minute because we’re going into mountains now’, and we were low you see because the visibility you had to come down very low, ‘cause of the cloud, and just as I said that the tail gunner said ‘it’s flak, it’s stern’ and WOOF [emphasis to express being hit], and it’s a sensation like if you’re playing football and the football is wet and heavy and somebody kicks it and it hits you straight in the face, it’s a numb sensation at first and then comes the pain, well this was like a puff of wind, like being hit with something but no pain what so ever and then floods of blood, I seemed to be bleeding to death, and I felt for my parachute pack because I thought we were getting shot down but I was the only one hit actually, we were hit in one engine and me and the navigator wrote in his diary; ‘Jim’s eyeball is hanging out on his cheek’ [laughs] actually it wasn’t, I’d got a lump of Perspex because all the Perspex had become shrapnel, and there was a piece about four inches long stuck in my eyeball and of course all the blood was running down my face because I was hit in the head and the face and everywhere and the blood running down this Perspex made it look as though my eye was hanging out you see so he couldn’t look at me, so he tapped me on the head and I could see he was talking, we had throat microphones, American throat microphones, it were very efficient and he was telling the crew I’d been hit, I crawled under the flight deck and when I stood up in the well, the back of the flight deck, the wireless operator had got all the first aid kits open and he wanted to put one on my face but he was hesitant to do it and I thought ‘do it, do it’, but of course there was this four inch long piece of shrapnel stuck in my eye, and it wasn’t until it fell out that he could put bandages on and then he bandaged everything that was bloody including my right arm which was badly damaged and my left arm which I’d used to investigate my other wounds and that wasn’t damaged but it was very bloody so he bandaged that as well, he bandaged everything and then he said ‘I’ll give you a shot of morphine’, I said ‘I’m not in pain’, I had no pain what so ever and that frightened me because I thought, if you get your legs chopped off you don’t feel any pain, because the body reacts as though you get shock but you don’t feel pain and I thought I’m dying, I must be dying and I said ‘I’m not in any pain I don’t need morphine’ and he got some out the first aid thing and I’d got my eyes shut and he stuck the thing in my arm and the morphine came like a marble, raised up, it didn’t disperse and when we landed he said to the ground crew ‘I’ve tied a label on him saying I gave him morphine at twelve o’clock, but I know now that I shouldn’t do that because he’s got a head wound’ and ‘oh Christ he’s killed me instead of the Germans’ [laughing].
But anyway, all we did all the time was sing and tell jokes, and it was like a rugby club –
CB: In the military hospital?
JA: No on the squadron, we weren’t morose and we weren’t miserable, in fact everything was hilarious and because we had to keep flying it didn’t matter what we did, hooliganism didn’t matter, drunkenness, it didn’t matter, because we were either up in the air or we had a group stand down when we’d have two of three days off due to so many casualties, waiting for new crews and new aeroplanes, and we’d get drunk and forget everything you see, and if, if unexpectedly we had to fly after a night a free night in the mess and drunkenness, we’d have a headache like you’ve never experienced and I went to the medical officers little cubby hole and there was a youth leaning up the doorpost and I pushed past him and I was opening boxes and things looking for an aspirin and I said to this fella, ‘do you know where they keep the aspirins?’ and he said ‘yeah’ and he told me and I said ‘you know your way around?’ and he said ‘yeah I’m the medical officer’ [laughs]
CB: So you found yourself in this hospital?
JA: Yeah when, after we landed, I was put on a stretcher, propped up in a sitting position on some blankets, some blankets behind me and it seemed to take ages and the flight engineer said ‘what’s the bloody delay? Get him to hospital’ and they said ‘we’re checking the first aid kits’ which all had been opened and used and they said ‘there’s a pair of scissors missing’ and that’s why they were delaying and he said ‘if you don’t get him to hospital right away I’m gonna bloody do the lot of ya’, and he was a tough Shetlander and that made them pull their socks up, and they put me in the ambulance to go seven miles, no twenty miles into Foggia to the general hospital, military hospital, and the skipper said ‘I’ll come with you’, well he shouldn’t have, he should’ve gone back to be debriefed but I was glad he came with me, ‘cause I didn’t know what I looked like, I didn’t know if my ear had been chopped off or whether I’d got a complete nose ‘cause I knew a piece of shrapnel had creased the top of my nose and the bottom, I didn’t know how bad things were and he said I can show you and he and he got a little stainless steel or chrome mirror in his pocket and he showed me but that’s very distorting and I thought ‘bloody hell look at that’, and I heard the nurses talking and they were talking as though I was already dead and one of them said ‘he must have been a good looking boy’, he must have been? [emphasis] I’m still here, you know, and they stripped me, cut all me clothes off and I felt a bit embarrassed because I’d borrowed a pair of long johns from the tail gunner and I was stripped down to my long johns and I felt that was a bit embarrassing because long johns were a bit silly aren’t they, and then the skipper went back then but he had to hitch hike back and he was in his flying kit you know, and when he got back he got a bollock-ing ‘cause he should have gone straight back not gone to the hospital with me, and anyway he got over that and they decided as he’d done one more trip than me anyway and they couldn’t manage without me and they hadn’t got anyone to replace me, the crew could stop now and go for a rest period, and after a few days they did go, and so there I was in hospital four and a half hours, and a chap from the squadron had sprained his wrist or something and he called at the hospital, to see the medical officer at the hospital and he said, the medical officer said ‘we’ve got a chap from your squadron in here’ and he said ‘oh I’d like to go and see him’ and he said ‘no you better not he’s just recovering from four and a half hours on the operating table so you won’t be able to talk to him yet’, and I came round and it was evening but I couldn’t see and I was bound up like an invisible man, just all bandages and I could see a white apparition by the bed and I thought ‘I’m alive’, surprisingly and I muttered, [clears throat] ‘could you tell me if they’ve taken my ear off?’ and this thing said ‘what are you here for?’, and I said ‘I’ve been wounded’, and she said ‘well you’re have to wait until the day staff comes on, I don’t know anything about you’ so I had to wait the rest of the night to find out whether I’d got a nose and whether I had only got one ear and that worried my because in the day of short haircuts I thought I’d look a fool with only one ear [slight laugh] isn’t that silly and, of course I was blind in one eye and the, every hour they dropped penicillin in my eye, it was icy cold, they said ‘you’re lucky, you’re being treated with this new penicillin, new’, I’d never even heard of it and I said ‘can you warm it up, it’s cold’ they said ‘we keep it in the refrigerator’ [slight laugh], anyway, after a few days I was totally blind because my left, my left eye had been alright, well reasonable but then I was totally blind in both eyes and I heard them muttering about cross infection in the ward and I had to lie flat on my back for a month, thirty days I wasn’t allowed to sit up or move due to the eye treatment, they said ‘we’ve healed eyes before but usually they get an infection in the end and we have to remove them’ and I thought well if I can’t see with it it doesn’t matter, I might look alright with an eye patch, a talking point and they transferred me to another ward, they lifted me up flat, put me on a stretcher, wheeled me away, and all the others in the ward had thought I’d died and I said well nobody talked to me anyway, they said, ‘well when your eyes were bound up we didn’t know whether you were awake or asleep’, well I didn’t know what time it was or what date it was or anything and I used to doze off and come back to consciousness again all the time and I never knew whether it was morning or afternoon or evening and I used to listen to what was going on, are these night time sounds or day time sounds, very difficult to tell. Anyway I then after a while when I’d recovered a bit I had more operations on my eye under local anaesthetic, terribly painful, they picked out bits of steel, bits of Perspex and a piece of wood and the chap said to me, ‘what wood was there in the air craft?’ I said ‘well it was made of aluminium’ he said ‘well you’ve got a piece of wood in your eye, a tiny piece’, then I remembered, there was an air blower near the bomb airmen’s position and it would blow in my face so I used to put map over it and stand the astro compass box up against it and it was made of wood and of course that had been shattered and a piece of wood obviously went in my eye, and when they cut my clothes off in the hospital I’d got three pullovers on, lots of clothes you know, multiples of everything and two of the pullovers were air force issue but one I’d brought at Marks and Spencer’s before I joined up and I thought ‘steady on that’s my pullover they cut in half’ you know and that watch that got took off I brought that you know, got no compensation, but anyway it was terrible in the hospital because nobody had any time for me, I don’t know whether they were opposed to the bomber offensive or what it was.
CB: So what nationality were they, the nursing staff?
JA: British, in that hospital they were British, in a second hospital they had Italian nurses that was a bit better but the British nurses were quite cruel really and, except for one, she used to be on night duty and she’d come and sit on the bed and talk to me at night and bring me a cup of tea, I think she fancied me [laughing] and anyway when I could stand up, because I felt very dizzy, it was very difficult to stand up after being about six weeks in bed and I’d only got blood stained clothes on, ‘cause one battle dress was though the rats had eaten it, it just fell open, as I’d got more than one battle dress on, one of them weren’t too bad and, but it was all blood stained and my flying boots were all caped with blood and I felt stupid you know I wanted to have proper clothes, and I felt very truculent and resentful, and the nurse came round and she said ‘lie to attention’ [emphasis] and I said ‘what does that mean?’, she said ‘both arms above the sheets down by your sides, feet together, head straight’, [coughs] I said ‘I can’t do it’, can we wait a minute [pauses] and then got it up gradually from twenty to eighty percent.
CB: So you’re still in the hospital, how long were you in the hospital?
JA: Three months and I was transferred then to a place called Torre del Greco to another hospital, and we’d got Italian nurses there, very pretty, black hair and uniforms, white dresses with a red cross on their chest and their English was a bit faulty and they’d come round every day and ask me ‘lavatory?’ [puts on an accent] and I’d say ‘what’s that?’, ‘lavatory?’ [in accent again], that’s all they could say and I’d say ‘I don’t understand’, and then they’d write something down and go away and I was there for a month and then I was discharged and told you’re on twenty four hour stand by to go back to England wounded, never happened, after a few weeks, they put red crosses on my kit bags and loaded them on board a ship, I had a two week visit, sorry a two week voyage back to England through the, past Gibraltar, through the Bay of Biscay, submarine alert all the time, no beds no chairs and I sat on a form leaning on a table for two weeks.
CB: Still of course not a hundred percent?
JA: No I was ill, very ill and every now and then submarine alert and I’d got to scramble up on deck in a life vest and over coat and have to stand there in the drizzle and rain until the submarine alert was over, and I wasn’t treated as an invalid at all, I was just with the other troops, nobody had a bed, nobody had a chair, if some of them if they were lucky they could climb on the table and sleep on the table but I couldn’t get on the table so I had to sit on the form and lean forward on the table all night, and we put into Liverpool and we spent twenty four hours in the docks while the customs went thoroughly through the ship examining everything, I thought some people have been abroad for several years, what the hell are they looking for? and we’re all British anyway, and then I got off the boat and I had to carry two kit bags with the red crosses on, all to the station put them on the train unaided, I thought ‘what they hell are the red crosses for?’, and I reported to the Air Ministry with me two kit bags and they said ‘you’ve been sent back because they haven’t got the right facilities for treating you in Italy’, so I expected to go back into hospital again but they gave me five weeks leave, didn’t give me any money, they didn’t ask me where will you go on your five weeks leave but they said ‘every week report here again’, well my, fortunately my father was at an Air Ministry unit at Harrow and my parents lived in Hillingdon on the outskirts of London, so I could live with them, the morning after I arrived there, in my funny garb of odds and sods and I hadn’t got a proper uniform, I heard the first time of Doodlebug what we called pilotless planes (B1) I had heard about them, didn’t realise they were so noisy, I knew when the motor cut out they’d come down and one came over and the motor stopped and I said to my mother ‘what do you do?’ she said ‘don’t do anything’ and she went outside to peg some washing on the line and it just dropped at Greenford, which was not very far away from [pauses] not very far away from where we were living and then the rockets came and they were terrifying, the V2s, the rockets, because you’d hear terrible explosion and then hear them coming and in the newspapers and on the radio it was saying ‘gas mains exploding all over London’, well that was a lie, my father knew what they were and he was told ‘don’t evacuate your family as it will cause panic’ so he had to stay there, couldn’t tell his family the danger, it was quite silly during the war because when the Germans bombed a town we weren’t allowed to know which town it was, on the radio it would say ‘bombs were dropped at random’ and we thought ‘Random must be totally destroyed by now because its bombed every night’ [laughs], anyway my father said ‘haven’t you got a proper uniform’, I’d got this brown battle dress which I wore with a blue shirt and a black tie and a hat that had collapsed with a badge I had brought in a bazaar in Egypt which wasn’t a regulation badge, an air force badge it was sort of a souvenir thing bought in a bazaar ‘cause someone had stolen my badge and, he sized me up and brought me a tunic anyway but I was wearing a flying badge and strips on this brown thing and I was hoping people would ask me ‘what the hell are you?’ but nobody ever asked and I was passing military policemen, they should have said ‘excuse me, what air force are you in?’, nobody ever asked because there was so many foreigners in London of different armies and air forces that everybody looked different, anyway I realised I wasn’t, on my weekly visits to the Air Ministry, I wasn’t seen by what I would call proper doctors, I was seeing men in white coats, now psychiatry was in this infantry or psycho analysis and we were prime subjects for it because we were all bloody crackers, you see, so they asked me all sorts of questions, not about my injuries, no medical treatment but things like ‘do you like girls? What sort of girls do you like? Do you dream? What do you dream about?’ so I made things up, course the chap was writing things all down in long hand, ‘what sort of girls do you like?’ I said ‘girls with red hair’, well I had only known one girl with red hair, I nearly said to him girls who do or girls who say yes [laughing] but ‘what do you dream about’ so I made it up a dream and told him and it would amuse me to see him scribbling it all down, no medical treatment what so ever then I got a telegram, report to Innsworth, and I said to my father who’d worked his way up you see from being a corporal in the first world war to being a squadron leader, acting wing commander and he knew all the ropes, I said to him ‘god I could do with a few more days leave’ and he said ‘well send them a telegram’, I said what will I say?’ he said ‘wedding’, so I thought telegram style is quite ambiguous you see, and instead of saying ‘I request extension of leave for my wedding’ I just said ‘for wedding’, so it could be anybody’s wedding, they said forty eight hours granted and report to Manby in Lincolnshire, well I still hadn’t got proper uniform and everything, just one tunic my father had given me, this funny cap and other odd things you know, and I had to buy everything I needed to make it up, you should have three of everything, three pairs of trousers, three tunics etc. I had to buy it from the stores and a 664B which it the payment on clothing on repayment form, I can remember even the name of the form, form 664B, and I had it stopped out of my pay, so I was looking for a job, nobody knew what I was there for, there were people on a course, officers training courses and I said, they said ‘are you an instructor’ I said ‘I don’t know, can I look at your books?’ they showed me the books and I said ‘no I don’t know any of this stuff, it’s all up to date, you know I don’t know it so I can’t be an instructor’, ‘are you a pupil?’ I said ‘no I’m off flying so I can’t be a pupil’, I got pally with the armourist officer and I said ‘I’m sick of just hanging about, three weeks and nothing to do and have you got anything I can do?’ and he said ‘well we need someone to take charge of the low level bombing range but it’s night work’, I said ‘well I’ve got nothing to do during the day or during the night so I might as well be working at night, sleeping in the day’, so he gave me a squad of blokes and WAAFs and I was in charge of bombing range so after another three or four weeks he said ‘guess what, your documents have come through and you are attached to my section anyway, what would you like to do?’, I said ‘well what is there?’, he gave me two or three options and said ‘there’s a detachment on the coast with three bombing ranges, have a ride out there on the ration lorry, see if you like it, you can take charge of one of the ranges’, so I thought well anything to get away from the real air force, get away on a detachment.
CB: Your eyes were alright now were they?
JA: No, no I still couldn’t see out of my right eye, but they said, they introduced peace time regulations and things you see after the war had ended, and they said annual musketry, everybody must attend so I went to the rifle range and I fired off so many rounds and I didn’t get any bullets on the target at all, so they said ‘something must be wrong there, will you do it again?’, well I couldn’t see the target never mind hit it, and I was trying to use my left eye with the rifle on the right side you see and that’s impossible, anyway I was in charge of the bombing range for a year or two and I was sent for by the commanding officer, he was an air commodore and he said ‘air crews are allowed to take trade training’, and I said ‘well I don’t need any because I’ll be demobbed in about six months, demobilised, don’t need any trade training’, I said ‘what is there anyway?’, he said you’re only allowed to take group one or group two trades and I said ‘what are the group one’s and group two’s?’ he said ‘there aren’t any’, I said ‘well what is there then?’ he said ‘well if don’t volunteer for one of these I’ll damn well send you on one’ he said ‘there’s plenty of openings for cooks’, I said ‘oh I’d like to be a cook’, I thought you’re in the warm and you can get plenty to eat if you’re in the cook house, I said ‘I’d like to train as a cook’ and he was furious, he said ‘that’s a group five trade, you’re not allowed to take a low trade’ well I thought well it’d be nice you know in the winter in the cook house [laughing] so he said ‘I’m sending you on a photographic course’, so all the other people, I was in charge of the course of twenty five men because I was a senior man, and the others were people who had joined up to fly but before they could start training the war had finished so they got to go onto ground jobs, and the ones on the course were amateur photographers and they knew everything, well all I knew was you point a camera and press the thing and you send it off to Boots, and when it comes back it’s prints and how they do it I don’t care, but now I had to learn all about it, take photographs of things moving and you know all sorts, people walking, cycling, aeroplanes taking off and all that, I learned quite a bit actually and then I was transferred to Benson, near Oxford and I was put in charge of the photographic section, well I was the most naive photographer in the world because I wasn’t even interested, but I was put in charge and they were doing an air survey of the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, and doing hundreds of feet of film and it was all going through machines and it was all automatic, well I’d never seen such machinery and the photographic officer was always sliding off somewhere and he’d put me in charge and disappear and when he came back he’d say ‘hundreds of yards of film have been ruined’ and ‘how did that happen?’ and he said ‘you didn’t make them clean the film’ well I didn’t know they had to clean the film [slight laugh], so it wasn’t too bad because there was a lot of women there, WAAFs, they were quite jolly and I used to open the section at nine o’clock in the morning and they’d say ‘right we’re go off to breakfast now’ and we’d go down by the river, the Thames and have bacon and eggs and stroll back when we felt like it, and I hadn’t got the faintest idea, some of the people knew what they were doing and some didn’t you see, I didn’t know at all [laughs], so eventually I was demobilised from there and it took place at Uxbridge and I was given a chalk striped suit, like Max Miller I felt, and a hat, I’d never worn a trilby hat and we looked in mirrors in our civilian clothes and laughed like hell because we’d never worn anything like that before and when we come out the demobilisation centre there were chaps hanging around offering you two quid for the box of clothing, I offered them the hat, they didn’t want that, they wanted coats and trousers, ‘cause clothing was rationed you see, and the thing I would have really like to keep was an over coat because they had good overcoats in the air force and I hadn’t worn an overcoat you see, so I went to a market and they were selling second hand clothes which weren’t rationed and I brought a sailor’s overcoat [laughs].
CB: Did you keep in touch with your crew after the war?
JA: Up until the time they died, yes, except the one from the Shetlands who emigrated to New Zealand so we lost touch with him, but the rest of us stayed in touch until they all died, one at a time, not all together but they got heart attacks and cancer and things and I think that was through the stress they had during the war.
CB: You became a very successful international businessman after the war.
JA: I did, yes, I devoted all my time to educating myself, I attended a technical school, it was a commercial and technical school, they had commercial boys who did short hand typing and book keeping and technical boys, I was one, we did metal work and wood work and higher mathematics’ and science, advance subjects you know, we didn’t do the nice subjects like art anymore and scripture and things you know, easy subjects, we didn’t do that.
CB: There is one point I wanted to ask you, you were awarded the DFM, the Distinguished Flying Medal –
JA: Yes.
CB: Did you accept it?
JA: No I didn’t, I got a message, chaps used to come into town, my old friends who’d trained with me and were still on the squadron and they’d come in they said, one of them said, ‘see you got a gong then?’ and I said ‘I don’t know anything about it’, he said it was on DROs, daily routine orders, I did know about it because an officer appeared one day in the hospital and he sat on the bed next to me and I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t recognise him properly, because my eyes were badly affected and he said, in a very pompous way he said, ‘I have honour to inform you, that you have been awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal’ and it was as though I could hear a radio on in the background, it didn’t sound like me at all, and I heard myself saying ‘tell them to stick it up their arse, I don’t want a bloody medal, I want some clothes, I want a shirt and a tunic, and some trousers, I want some shoes’, because they hadn’t provided me with anything and another thing that upset me was a bitch had had puppies on the squadron, in the tent lines, and I’d got one of these puppies and that was the only thing I’d got in the world, I’d got the rest of the crew but I didn’t own them and the only thing I owned was this little Italian dog, he was a kind of Labrador and I used to save a bit on my plate from dinner or breakfast and bring it back for him, put it on the ground and he’d lick the plate clean, and the next morning I’d go to breakfast, forget to wash the plate and I’d remember later ‘oh god I forgot to wash the plate’, because it was always so clean, you see he’d licked it clean, and the lads came to the hospital and they said ‘the CO’s had all the dogs shot’, ‘what, why’d he do that, shot all the dogs?’, ‘cause they were good for morale those dogs and I used to look forward to my little dog you know when I came back from my trips, it might be the last day of my life, and he shot it, and that’s why I didn’t take the DFM, why I told them to stick it up their arse, now years after the war when I moved to Lincolnshire from London, where I live now, I was in Lincoln when I met somebody who turned out to be a flight commander from the squadron, and he was not the same flight I was in, we had A flight and B flight, he was the other flight and he said, I didn’t know him on the squadron ‘cause he came after I’d you know done most of my trips, he was the new boy, and he said ‘do you know the CO is still alive, he lives in Norfolk’ I said ‘no, I didn’t know that’ he said ‘I’ll give you his details, his telephone number and address’, so I phoned him and I said ‘I’d like to come and check a few things with you ‘cause I’m writing a manuscript for a book and the sort of things I’ve heard, I heard that you were a group captain dropped down to wing commander because you wanted what the Americans called some combat time, we thought you must be bloody potty,’ because he was non-compassionate at that time you see, I said ‘there’s certain things I’d like to check with you whether it’s true or not’, I went to see him, I said you never talked to us on the squadron because we were sergeants, he said ‘well I couldn’t because you were so much more experienced than me’ he said ‘I kept a low profile’ and I said ‘well you won’t remember me but I’ll tell you something now and it’ll remind you who I am’ and I told him about the DFM and where it should be stuck and he was flabbergasted, I had come back from dead you know to haunt him and he’d got a couple of dogs there you know, young two dogs, and how would he feel now if I shot his dogs –
CB: Did you mention that to him?
JA: I didn’t no, I just told him I was so embittered and outraged that I didn’t want the bloody medal but of course it was a mistake, looking at the Antiques Roadshow one day, I saw a few ordinary medals being auctioned and a DFM, and the DFM made about six thousand pounds or something put together with the other medals and I said to my wife what a fool I was I should’ve taken it, but it was involuntary you know when I said it, it was as though I wasn’t speaking, I was listening to somebody saying it, and I was in a bad way of course, I’d got no short term memory, for many months, I didn’t dare tell anybody because I wanted to get back on to flying you see, I thought you can fly with one eye, I’m not interested in anything else only flying, they wouldn’t have it, and [pauses] I was eventually, I was on this photographic course and coming out of a darkroom into the sunlight I couldn’t see I was blinded, my eyes are streaming, so I was sent to an army doctor in Aldershot, and he said to me ‘you’re up to British army standards’ and I said ‘maybe I am because you’re calling up people with one eye now’, they were towards the end of the war they called up people to serve with one eye. And I went back to my unit, one day I was called for by the medical officer and he said ‘you should have had a medical board last year’, I said ‘I did have one’ and he said ‘why do you say that? Nothing in your records about it’, I said ‘I went to Watchfield and I had a railway warrant for myself and a party of airmen and I was in charge, ‘and what do alleged happened?’, I said ‘well the medical officer who gave me a board he said ‘what’s your condition?’ and I said ‘about the same’ and he said ‘right we’ll leave it at that then, same’ and he said ‘I can’t understand you saying that’, and I said, he was flicking over pages in a file, I said, the pages are numbered, I said to him ‘there’s one page missing’ he said ‘it’s nothing to do with you’, I said ‘well it’s my records it’s something to do with me, that’s the page that gives you know, details of my last medical board’, he said ‘I’m a squadron leader, I’m competent to conduct medical boards, you are A1’, and I thought I can’t be A1, what’s their game, I thought, well they don’t want to pay me a pension for not being A1, so nothing I can do about it, I left the Air Force and I signed on with a panel doctor just before the National Health Service came into being, and he said I’ll just check you over while you’re here and he said ‘good God man you’re in a terrible state, what the hell has happened to you?’ I said ‘I was wounded when I was flying in the Air Force’, he said ‘well you should get a pension’ and I said ‘I can’t get a pension, I’m A1’ [laughs] he said ‘the bastards’ he said, ‘they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it’, he said ‘I’ll get some British Legion forms and fill them in for you, you sign it and send them off’, so that happened, I took a day off, I thought this is a waste of time and they said ‘yes you are due for compensation’, gave me nine shillings a week, nine shillings, I didn’t need nine shillings anyway within two years I was an armour men’s designer working for the Ministry of Defence and from there I progressed upwards until I was managing director or chairman of three companies at the same time and I was making an awful lot of money.
CB: How do you look back at your time in the RAF? is it with –
JA: With disgust, you see when I was a child, daddy was in the Air Force, all his friends were in the Air Force, they were my heroes, we were, Douglas Bader was stationed on there and he used to come to my father’s house and I saw Lord Trenchard, he was going by in his car on the aerodrome and people who became very famous later and I admired them, they were all my heroes, Amy Johnson and Jim Mollison, all those people you know, civilian pilots, I didn’t know any other life so naturally I joined the Royal Air Force and when we were living at Cranwell, that time 1929 and then again just before the war, the Royal Air Force was known as the world’s finest flying club, it wasn’t very big, only about thirty thousand men in the RAF, they would join with no rank and they’d go out in seven years with no rank, there was no promotion, you see there’s no expansion until late 1930’s and everybody seemed to know everybody, my father knew every commanding officer throughout the world, and he was well known, when I was in the RAF people remembered him you know and they’d look at my name and they’d say ‘have you got any relations in the service?’, and my brother was in the RAF and he said ‘I always say no, ‘cause we don’t want to let the old man down’, ‘cause he was a bit of a scallywag, and anyway, I used to forget to draw my pension of nine shillings a week, forty five pence nowadays and it would go on for about three months and I had to write away for it, and I let things slide ‘cause I was making an awful lot of money, I was eating in the best restaurants in the West End and hotels all over the world, staying in the best hotels.
CB: What do you think you would’ve done if you hadn’t gone in the RAF?
JA: God knows
CB; Do you think you would have just brought your success as a businessman you just have brought that forward as it were and you would’ve started it straight away?
JA: I don’t know.
CB: Or did you need your time in the RAF to form and develop?
JA: I think the RAF made me very aggressive and when I went for a job after ready for coming out of the RAF, I was in uniform and I had an interview with the personnel manager of an engineering firm and he said ‘what were you doing in the Air Force?’ no ‘what were you doing in the war?’, well I was dressed in uniform, I’d got a flying badge and medal ribbons, I thought it was pretty obvious what I was doing, I said ‘I was flying in the Royal Air Force’ ‘oh’ he said ‘not much use to us is it?’, I was very aggressive at that time, the war had made me a bit loopy, and I felt like I wanted to knock his head off but I thought just a minute he’s right, I’ve learnt how to fly an aeroplane, how to drop bombs, how to blow people up, how to shoot people, I’ve learnt nothing that’s of any use to a civilian employer, he’s right I’ve completely wasted my time, if I been a cook or a lorry driver I would have something to contribute, but that made me determined to overtake all the people who hadn’t served in the war so I started at the bottom in a factory, and I went to evening classes and I had private tutors, I spent all my money on tuition, I got language teachers, I leaned Latin, I learned Russian, and I perfected my German and within two years I was head of the German department in import export firm with only Germans working for me, because I was an engineer and a German speaking Englishman, so I’d got an advantage there, and the cold war had started, and I thought either there’s going to be a war with Russia or eventually the Soviet empire is so big there will be a demand for things –
CB: that’s where you did most of your trade –
JA: So I learnt Russian so I could negotiate contracts in Moscow in Russian –
CB: Tenacious, determined.
JA: Well I was determined to do better than everybody, I went for an interview ,when I first came out of the Air Force, because I understand the government were giving grants to ex-service men, and I went for an interview and they said ‘what were you doing before you joined the Royal Air Force?’ and I said ‘well I was in school until just before’, they said ‘were you not studying for a profession?’, I said ‘I was only seventeen when I joined the air force, I was studying higher mathematics and subjects that would get me through the selection board to be a pilot’, I said ‘the town was being bombed and I thought by joining the Air Force I could help to stop that’, they looked at me, they were thinking you simpleton, they said ‘we only give grants to professional people’, so few weeks later I made another application and the attitude to me was humiliating or intended to be humiliating, so I got, I was fed up with being humiliated so I told the interviewee off, I really told him off, in words, you’ve never heard before and the second man who was sitting with him, when I left, rushed out with me and jumped in the lift and he said ‘thank you for doing that’, he said ‘that was wonderful the way you told him off, I’ve had to sit there for weeks listening to his rudeness’ he said ‘you really fixed him’. When I got a job as an armours designer, because I’d been in the Air Force and been shot, not because I knew anything about designing [slight pause], all the other people in the department had gone straight from school, into the ministry and they’d all got a free education and got a higher national certificate which is what I wanted to do you see, so I thought they’ve never been in the service and they’re the same age as me and they’re well ahead of me, got their qualifications, I’ll beat them, I’ve got to be better than them, so that’s what drove me on, I was inferior and I became superior ‘cause I had to, I had to do it, I spent all my money on studying, spent all my time on studying.
CB: Well that’s been a fantastic story Jim, thank you very much indeed.
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 Jim Auton
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Jim Auton grew up on Royal Air Force stations and joined the Royal Air Force at seventeen. He trained as a pilot navigator and bomber at RAF Ansty near Coventry, then in South Africa under the Empire Air Training Scheme. He trained on B-24s at Lidder and after travelling up through Africa was stationed at Foggia in Italy, where he started his operations. He describes the tough conditions there, as well as the operations in which he participated, such as targeting an oil refinery in Fiume, now known as Rijeka in Croatia and Ploiesti in Romania. He took part in mining operations in the Danube as well as secret operations to drop supplies in Warsaw to support the uprising. Whilst on his thirty-seventh operation, he was injured and describes his time in hospital, the journey home and his ground jobs in the Royal Air Force after the war. He also relates why he turned down a Distinguished Flying Medal, and recounts his post-war career as a businessman.
Creator
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Clare Bennett
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
2015-06-08
Contributor
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Emma Bonson
Heather Hughes
Language
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eng
Identifier
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AAutonJF150608
Format
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02:13:37 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Warwickshire
Croatia--Rijeka
Danube River
Egypt
Italy--Foggia
Poland--Warsaw
Italy
Poland
Romania--Ploiești
Croatia
Romania
Danube River
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.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
animal
B-24
bombing
coping mechanism
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Medal
fear
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
RAF Ansty
RAF Benson
sanitation
superstition
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Warsaw airlift (4 August - 28 September 1944)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/152/2146/AHemsworthR150729.1.mp3
da4b01008a71d120fe27835be4e272cc
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
Hemsworth, Ron
Ron Hemsworth
R Hemsworth
Description
An account of the resource
266 items. The collection consists of one oral history interview with Ron Hemsworth (1472158 Royal Air Force) and 265 photographs, mostly taken at Dulag Luft, Stalag Luft 1 and Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camps
The photographs have been organised according the initial letters of the caption.
A consists of 19 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1942. They cover the non commissioned officers’ arts & crafts exhibition: some models are for display and others are for use; there are also paintings and jewellery.
B of 54 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 1 and Dulag Luft, covering sporting, theatrical, musical and model making activities. The funeral of Sergeant J C Shaw, who was shot whilst attempting to escape is covered with several photographs.
C consists of 42 photographs taken at the sports day at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1942. Activities include rugby, running, high jumping, long jumping, long distance walking, shot putting, discus throwing and basketball. Betting on the events was carried on.
D consists of 42 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in 1942 and 1943. They cover theatrical, musical and model activities. The plays were written or adapted by the airmen. Some of the models seen in section A are being sailed or steamed on the camp pond.
E consists of 39 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in March and April 1943. They cover three plays written or adapted by the airmen.
F consists of 28 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3, Stalag Luft 1 and Dulag Luft prisoner of war camps. They cover two plays written or adapted by the airmen. Also shown are views of the camp, four recaptured escapees, a sentry in his box, the NCOs rugby team and Christmas dinner 1940.
G consists of 38 photographs taken at the Flieger Jockey Club Gala Day at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1943. There are many varied fancy dress themes in addition to jockeys - an American cheerleader and an Uncle Sam, cowboys and Indians, a Welsh and a Scottish section, Indian (Asian) marching band, Maoris, Highland dancing, a lot of men dressed as women, bands, top hatted 'toffs'. Betting activities were carried out on the results of the hobby horse type races shown.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ron Hemsworth and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hemsworth, R
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-04
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Clare Bennett. The interviewee is Mr Ron Hemsworth. The interview is taking place at Mr Hemsworth’s home near Bourne on the 29th of July 2015. Well, Ron, lets first of all talk about your early childhood if we may. You were born in Peterborough.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Ninety three years ago. Do you remember much of your early childhood?
RH: Not a lot. Not a lot. [laughs] I remember when I was about five I’d had enough of school so I climbed over the gates and went to the recreation ground and played on the swings with another boy and all the while we were there, ‘Is there anybody after us?’ [laughs] I can’t remember much but as I got older I, me and another friend started the Peterborough Model Flying Club and we, I stayed in that until even after the war so we was always mad on aircraft and where I lived at that time was close to what was called Westwood Aerodrome and the aircraft always, well, nine times out of ten landed over our house and they were so low you could see who the pilot was practically. Hawker Harts. Funnily enough a friend of mine when he had to join up that’s where he went to and another friend of mine was at the same place and I think he stayed there most of the war. He used to go up and take the met report. He had a nice cushy job. And of course we used to get all these air displays. I can’t remember the name of the most prolific one. Used to do all sorts of stupid things but we always used to go to those. We couldn’t stay away. And when it come to joining up I decided that I would volunteer for air crew which was the way that you could get in and they said if you was in a model flying club you stood a pretty good chance of being air crew. Whether there was any truth in it I don’t know but anyway we got in and I joined up on the 1st of January. I started the year right. That would have been 1941.
CB: What did your parents, your parents were around at this time.
RH: Oh yes. Oh yes.
CB: And did they, were they happy for you to join up?
RH: Well I don’t suppose so. We never, we never mentioned it. [laughs]
CB: But it was what you’d set your heart on.
RH: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Did you have a particular crew position you wanted to do?
RH: Well everybody wanted to be a pilot didn’t they?
CB: Including you?
RH: Yes. Everybody. Everybody wanted to be a fighter pilot. I don‘t know why. Well I suppose probably safer than a bomber pilot, I don’t know, and actually I went in the first place as a W/Op AG.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Wireless operator/AG. But I failed the Morse code on sixteen words a minute. That was enough to drive you mad.
CB: Where was this at?
RH: At Blackpool.
CB: Oh yeah.
RH: I said I’d never go back and I never went back. You can imagine what Blackpool was like in the middle of winter. It was terrible. And the RAF took over, well all the places really. You know. And –
CB: Were you in a hotel or a guest room?
RH: Oh no. We were in guest house.
CB: Ah.
RH: And some of them were very good to us actually and some of them weren’t. And one we was at, one of the men, he was a friend of Charlie Kunz, the pianist and he used to give us, he used to give us a tune every night you know. That was alright. We were there having a tune one night and the boss came in with a dead cat and put it on the fire. Well everybody was up in arms. We went and reported it but nobody wanted to know.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: He said, ‘Well I’ve got nowhere else to,’ he said, ‘I can’t bury it ‘cause all I’ve got is concrete around the back.’ Every, everybody vacated the room quickly. And then when I failed that course I went on, I went in to the stores for a while while I was waiting for an air gunner course which, in those days you had to wait quite a while to get on one. Anyway, eventually I was posted to [pause] on the Fosse Way.
CB: Swinderby.
RH: Swinderby. Swinderby. Yeah. I went to Swinderby and of course everybody said, ‘Oh you’ll be here for years.’ Nobody, everybody was waiting. And I was only there a month or two and I got a course.
CB: How were things at Swinderby?
RH: Oh quite ok. Yeah. I went into the stores there as well. Oh, that, that was alright. But from there, after about a month I went into flying control. Now that that was a lovely job that was. I was in charge of keeping the availability of aircraft, of aerodromes. It was a huge book with every aerodrome in England on it and we used to get phone calls through such and such an aerodrome is not available, there’s a crash on such and such a runway and all that. All that had to be put down in the book. Yeah. So I was there for quite a while. There was only three of us in there. You wouldn’t run one of them for, with three people would you? Not today. And I mean I didn’t know anything about anything anyway and the one who was in charge was a sergeant pilot that had been, he’d been in a crash and he was sort of resting but I mean we didn’t know anything. Nothing in particular really. There were and there was, there was him, myself and a WAAF on the radio. That’s all there was. Anyway, from there on I went to, I can’t remember, oh I went to air gunnery school at [pause] up on the east coast near Scarborough. Bridlington.
CB: Ah.
RH: I can’t remember what number that was.
CB: No. Don’t worry.
RH: But from there we went to Morpeth and that’s when we did our air gunnery. And that was spectacular. We had Polish pilots and they were absolutely mad.
CB: What sort of planes would this be at this time?
RH: Do you know I was trying to tell somebody the other day? They were aircraft that nobody else wanted actually. They were supposed to have been torpedo bombers for the navy but they weren’t successful at all so they dumped them all at the –
CB: Albacores?
RH: No. They weren’t Albacores. No.
CB: Not to worry. Doesn’t matter.
RH: Yeah.
CB: So you, did you get on with these Polish pilots? They were -
RH: We got on fine with them. In fact, after the war one of them was a friend of mine for years but you know they’d do things like, ‘They say this aircraft won’t fly on one engine. Well it will. I’ll show you,’ and then switch one off you know. Absolutely mad. Yeah. I can remember while we was at Bridlington we were doing PT on the, on the beach and two Spitfires came over and they shot us up on the beach at about nought feet. Well everybody fell flat on the sand and then these two Spitfires went out to sea. They were so low one of their wings caught the sea. He did about ten cartwheels and burst into flames.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: Yeah. And they were both Polish pilots. The other one shot up to about twenty thousand feet. I don’t know what he told them when he got back. [laughs] Anyway, that was, after air gunnery school then we went to Honeybourne. Honeybourne was next. Cow Honeybourne and -
CB: This would be your OTU. Your -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Operational Training Unit.
RH: And we weren’t crewed up or anything then.
CB: No.
RH: We were all this and that. And I know it was a terrible day when we got there about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and there was about twenty people got off the train and everybody was saying, ‘I suppose we wait for transport,’ you know so we were hanging about and this Aussie came up. He said, ‘What’s everybody doing?’ So we said, ‘Well, we don’t know. We’re just waiting.’ ‘Where’s the telephone?’ So he got on the telephone. He said, ‘There’s about twenty of us here waiting at the station for transport. Get it down here quick.’
CB: Was he an officer or just a, just -
RH: No. He was only a sergeant. I thought he’d be alright, you know. He was a pilot. Anyway, after we’d soon got to Honeybourne we had to crew up. Well I suppose everybody knows how we crewed up. Everybody in a room. Just walk around and find who you want you know and I got Bruce. The one that said, ‘Send somebody down’. I got Bruce. He were brilliant. He really was. Yeah. He looked a bit like Churchill and he was more or less his build. Quite fat you know. Yeah. And we went on a, on a course while we was there. Escape course and that. And we had to do everything at the double. It was an army place we went to. Even when you went for your meal you had to go at the double. So we passed Bruce on the way, walking. He said, ‘If you pomme goers want to run,’ he said, ‘You run.’ he said, ‘I’m walking.’ And he never did run [laughs]. He walked everywhere. It was when we were, had to climb over this wall and the rest of the crew trying to push him over this wall [laughs]. It was hilarious really. He always said, ‘If anything happened to the aircraft I’ll never get out.’ Of course poor old Bruce never did. No. Anyway –
CB: So you, you’re a crew now of seven.
RH: No. Six.
CB: Six of you.
RH: Six. Yeah.
CB: And you gelled quite -
RH: We was on Whitleys.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And you gelled well. You all got on.
RH: Oh yeah. Yeah, we got on well. Yeah. [laughs] The bomb aimer was about twenty seven so we called him the old man. [laughs].
CB: So you were on Whitleys for a while.
RH: We were on Whitleys. I did, I suppose I did about a hundred hours on Whitleys but you see you do what you call circuits and bumps getting used to landings and take-offs and the only people on it was the skipper and me in the back. To balance it out I suppose [laughs]. I was only a balance really.
CB: What did you think of the Whitley as a plane to fly?
RH: I liked it. Oh she was a steady old thing you know and Bruce used to say that if you, if you banked to the left if you didn’t bring the stick back again straight away she carried on going over [laughs]. Anyway, it was a steady old bus and I think it could have taken a lot of punishment as well. Big old thing. You could actually, from the inside, crawl into the wings. There was an opening where you could crawl into the wings and get to the back of the engine because it was quite a -
CB: Yeah.
RH: Wing root. You know. Anyway, from there we went to multi engines. I can’t remember the name of that place.
CB: Did you say it was near York?
RH: Yeah.
CB: And you don’t think it was Elvington though.
RH: No. No. It was only for getting used to multi aircraft. I’ve got a relation lives there now. I can’t even think of the name of the place. That’s the trouble you know. Your brain goes.
CB: No. Not to worry. It might come to you. So you then went to this place.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Went on to the Halifax.
RH: Yeah. And from there we went to Linton on Ouse which was 76 squadron.
CB: How would you compare the Halifax with the Whitley as a plane to be -
RH: Well of course it was completely different really. Faster, and could carry more and it had even got two beds in it. I liked the Halifax. We called it the Halibag actually. And I thought it was good but I mean they did have trouble with the, with the first few marks until they got it right. I think they got it right in about 1944 and they even changed the Merlins for some radial engines which were a lot better and more powerful but I don’t know about that. Anyway, we were there. We did, we only did four ops. The first one we had to come back. The intercom went. Then we went to Stettin and that was low level Stettin was. That was exhilarating. Quite interesting that was. We were low, we were lower than the land at one time over the water, over the Baltic and all the Dutch people were opening their doors, showing their lights you know and waving.
CB: What did you feel when you saw that?
RH: Pardon?
CB: It must have been moving to see that.
RH: Oh moving yeah and I mean we could see people on bicycles and all lit and everybody waved. It was lovely really. Until we got to the flak ships. It’s wasn’t very nice then. [laughs] Anyway, we did Stettin. I thought it was an easy op actually but a lot of people said it was, it was a bad one. I don’t think so. And then there was Duisburg. That was a horrible. Happy Valley was a Happy Valley. You know we called, [pause] Happy Valley, yeah. And mind you we were attacked at one moment but I gave instructions to slip him away because the idea was if you could get away without firing the rest of the fighters wouldn’t say, ‘Ah there’s one there,’ you know. Actually, you give the game away once you’d started firing. So I thought until he’s getting, you know, so he’s dangerous I won’t open fire. So we didn’t.
CB: You could seem him actually following you.
RH: He was just turning on to us.
CB: Oh.
RH: Yeah. I think it was a JU88 actually. And what was the next one? Oh the next one. That was a dead loss. We were doing a gardening trip. You know what gardening is?
CB: Mine laying.
RH: Mines. Yeah. And soon after we got off the ground the intercom went so we had to stooge around for five hours getting rid of the petrol. And then we had to come in with the mines still on board you know.
CB: Five hours.
RH: Sticking out the bottom as well, you know. The horns on them sticking out.
CB: Yes.
RH: A bit dodgy. Held your breath a bit.
CB: How did you feel when you were, you know, due for an op? You knew that your name was on the list. What did you feel?
RH: I can’t remember feeling particularly scared or anything. I think, I think you were so sort of tied up in it that you didn’t think about that aspect really.
CB: The morale was good with your crew.
RH: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Except my navigator. When we was at, we went to Duisburg. That was the Duisburg one and we were just coming up to the markers that the whatsitsnames had dropped and he said, ‘Skipper, can I go up front and have a look?’ He said, ‘I’ve never seen the target.’ He said, ‘Yeah Ted, you go up and have a look.’ We heard him unplug his, about two minutes later he plugged in, ‘I’m not going to bloody well look at that anymore.’ So he said, ‘We’re not going through that are we?’ He said, ‘Yeah. And it’ll be straight and level.’ ‘God,’ he said,’ I don’t want to look again.’
CB: So they’d dropped the target indicators.
RH: He, he -
CB: The target indicators had been dropped.
RH: They had been dropped. Yeah.
CB: And you were heading for the -
RH: And we were on the run in. You know.
CB: So you’d have all the colours and -
RH: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. All the colours. Yeah.
CB: But could you see them? Had he gone through them, sort of thing?
RH: Yeah.
CB: You saw them from the back.
RH: Oh I got a better view than anybody.
CB: So, what, tell me about the conditions in the back with you being the rear gunner. It’s always thought of as the worst position in -
RH: Quite tight.
CB: At five foot eleven and a half I expect it was.
RH: Yeah. And of course when you got your full flying kit on everybody else wore sids, what they called sidcots but I had full ervins on, trousers as well you see and you couldn’t move about. I tried to do this once or twice. Well you can’t. You can’t do it. The guns get in the way or your knuckles get bruised.
CB: Did you remove the panel from the turret like -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Some of them did.
CB: Yeah.
RH: To have a better view.
CB: Yeah.
RH: You did that ‘cause that obviously made it very cold.
RH: That’s right. Very cold. We used to get, they used to pack us sandwiches and some silly fool packed salmon sandwiches one day and of course they froze didn’t they. Couldn’t get your teeth into them [laughs]
CB: I hate to mention a Lancaster but I’ve got to. Was your, the parachutes like behind the, the doors. It wasn’t -
RH: Behind the turret.
CB: Yes.
RH: Yeah. And then -
CB: So you had to swing around to get to it when you needed it.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah. And the Lanc was the same. Must have been.
CB: Yes. It was.
RH: ‘Cause you can’t wear your parachute in the turret.
CB: There wasn’t room for much.
RH: No.
CB: At all.
RH: And then you had to go, about that far from the turret was a door with a handle on it and that’s what I caught the parachute on which opened it and I didn’t know.
CB: So you’d done, you’d done one, you had to come back on and Stettin and Duisburg and then your, your gardening so was that you being shot down on the fifth or was that a bit later?
RH: No. Now that would have been if everything would have gone right which of course as I say we had to go back on two of them that would have been our fourth trip.
CB: Right.
RH: And at that time everybody, it worked, well they’d worked it out that the average that people did was four. You didn’t last any longer than four so we nearly did it. Yeah. I mean people who did thirty, God knows how. I mean I was reading a book earlier that somebody did thirty and they never fired their guns. They were never attacked. Well they must have been damned lucky. Must have been lucky ‘cause I mean the night fighters there would be sixty or seventy up a night. All around you, you know. And you’d see aircraft exploding all around you when they were hit. You see what they used to do they had to come up underneath and they had a gun, or two guns protruding upwards so all they’d got to do was come underneath and just pull the trigger and you couldn’t see it.
CB: Sneaky.
RH: Couldn’t see it happening and they didn’t seem to do anything about it.
CB: You were told that the operations you know that it was about four before, you know, trouble or whatever. Did that put you off making friends with others or did you just keep to your, your crew and -
RH: Oh no. No. As a matter of fact I had, I had a friend on the same squadron who worked with me before the war who I knew very well and he, he baled out and his chute caught on the tale wheel. Bob Cadmore and he went down with the aircraft. Yeah. [pause] No. No. No. We all mixed up alright together. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Was it a good station? Linton on Ouse.
RH: I thought so. I thought it was very nice and of course we was at a famous hall about a mile away was where we were.
CB: Billeted. Yes.
RH: Where our mess was and our billet was and there was food on all day long there. You could just walk in and huge table with everything on it. It was a lovely place really and I’ve been back there since and we were in a particular room called the oak panelled room and when I went I went to that room and I thought I’d take a photograph, you know, just the same. There were nothing in it. Just the bare room and the panels ‘cause my, when we walked in my navigator said, ‘I wonder which one with the secret door is.’ You know. I always remember that. Anyway, this woman came along and she said, ‘You can’t take photographs in here.’ I said, ‘Oh what a shame.’ I said, ‘I lived in this room for a while in 1943.’ ‘Ahh take as many as you want.’ And I did take some.
CB: Good.
RH: Yeah. Anyway, that was, where did we get to?
CB: We’re on now, I think on this -
RH: 76 squadron.
CB: Yes.
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Which was Cheshire’s.
CB: Yes.
RH: Not at that time. He’d just moved on. Although he was around because I remember standing to attention as he walked in front of me once. Lovely bloke though. Yeah. Everybody liked him.
CB: Yes. I heard.
RH: Yeah. So there.
CB: So we, can we talk about the operation that was -
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Alright.
CB: The final one.
RH: Well it was dusk, duskish when we were taking off and everybody got in the aircraft and my navigator was still standing there. I said, ‘Come on Ted. Get in.’ He said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I’m just taking a last look around,’ he said. ‘I’m not coming back.’ ‘Don’t be so stupid.’ He said, ‘I know I’m not coming back.’ And of course he didn’t. Anyway, I bundled him in and so we took off but we had problems right from the start and this was a brand new aircraft actually. Went for a burton on the first night.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: Another fifty thousand quid gone. And Ted was, he gave the wrong instructions as navigator and Bruce was questioning it. ‘I don’t think you’ve got that right, Ted.’ Anyway, somebody went to him and his oxygen pipe had come undone and he didn’t know quite what he were doing, you know.
CB: Oh.
RH: Anyway we got back on course and as I say as we saw the red markers go down they hit us just as we were turning on to the markers. Yeah. And of course the flames went back about fifty to a hundred yards. You could see everything like daylight and the side of the turret was melting. It was pretty horrendous really. So I got out quick. Forgot I’d got my helmet on and -
CB: When you say you got out quick you mean you turned the turret around.
RH: Turned the turret.
CB: And got into the aircraft.
RH: Well, I was facing that way anyway.
CB: Oh right.
RH: Yeah. Opened the doors. You know.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Got out, threw my flying helmet and picked up the parachute two hooks not knowing I’d only got one on and I went up to the escape hatch and my mid upper gunner was arguing with my engineer. I could see them arguing. I could see that he hadn’t got his parachute and he was trying to make him go, ‘Get back for your parachute,’ you know, and in the end, to save himself he went you know and I’ve forgotten his name now he jumped [without] his parachute. Panicked I suppose, you know, yeah and so we were the only three that went out there. My bomb aimer remembers the aircraft being hit. He don’t remember any more but he woke up on the ground with his parachute at the side of him and he said he don’t know, ‘Who put it on or who pushed me out.’ Somebody must have done. And that’s was how we, that was the end of our trip.
CB: It must have been, we’re talking about seconds here aren’t we in-between being -
RH: Must have been.
CB: Shot and -
RH: I mean I went to jump out the escape hatch, took a last look around and the parachute was all up against the door where I’d just come out of.
CB: You’d got it caught and it had come out.
RH: Yeah. I’d pulled the rip cord. Yeah. And I thought well that’s it. I’ll go and sit with the skipper. I made a move to go and sit up front with the skipper knowing I’d had it you know but something seemed to tell me to gather it up and try.
CB: What was the plane doing at this time? Was it just -
RH: Going down.
CB: Steadily going down.
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Steadily going down. And we’d still got all the bombs on and everything and they’d hit the petrol tank and the incendiaries so you could tell the starboard wing was well on fire. Where did I get to?
CB: You just -
RH: Anyway, I fell out.
CB: Yeah.
RH: I can see it now as plain as anything the tail was that about far from me, zipped over me like that as I was going backwards you know and the tail wheel fortunately never caught on the [?] on the tail pump, the parachute never caught on the tail wheel which a lot of people had that. They made it a retractable tail wheel in the end. Anyway, it opened but it was spilling air all the because it was only on, and I tried to get the other one but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. So I was going down pretty fast but it weren’t half quiet. You can’t, you know, once you baled you’ve been sitting there for about three hours with all that noise and suddenly silence and you think to yourself, ‘Where the hell am I?’ And I didn’t really know exactly where I was to be honest. And then I could see this house coming up. I thought well I can’t steer clear of it and there was such a crash and I went through the roof up to there. I made a lovely mess of the roof.
CB: Good.
RH: Do you know that’s what, that’s funny that’s what crosses your mind. To think that’s buggered the roof up [laughs]. Sorry.
CB: No. That’s quite alright.
RH: And the next thing I was worried about was the parachute. I thought well the parachute’s alright. They’ll use it. What can I do about it? Nothing. But one of the Germans that come up he cut all the cords off me. I thought, good he’s ruined the parachute too. Aint it daft what you think about? It took them about half an hour to get me off the roof but they were very good. They were very good.
CB: It sounds as if they arrived pretty quickly.
RH: Yeah. As soon as I hit the roof I could hear voices. Well I made enough noise.
CB: And where was -
RH: Every time I tried to move clatter clatter clatter clatter you know.
CB: So this would be -
RH: In other words, ‘Come over here. I’m over here.’ [laughs]
CB: I think it’s in the book where you, do you remember the town or the place where you landed so gracefully?
RH: I can’t remember it.
CB: It is in the book over there.
RH: I don’t think it’s very far from Munster because they took me to Munster Hospital. The Luftwaffe picked me up. No, first of all I went to a little hospital which must have been close to hand and I’d dislocated my leg and they tried to put it in with chloroform but the chloroform wasn’t any good. I could feel everything you know so they packed it up and then the Luftwaffe came and they put me in this Mercedes. I remember it was a Mercedes because I remember that bit on the front, you know and inside it was my mid upper gunner. I said, ‘Where’d you come from.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I did a bit of walking but they soon picked me up.’ And they took me to this aerodrome and they dropped him off at this aerodrome. I can always remember this there was FW190s there. We were quite close to them. Then they took me to Munster Hospital and they were, they were marvellous. They really looked after me.
CB: A civilian hospital.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Was it? Yes.
RH: Big hospital. I had a room to myself and when I was getting better, I was there a month, I mean I needn’t have been there a month really. I could wander where I wanted. Go outside. Do what I wanted. And there were nuns. A lot of the nurses were nuns and they were lovely. ‘Anything you want you tell me. I’ll get it for you.’ You know. And there was a picture of Hitler on the wall like that, about as big as that and the first thing I did I turned it around face to the wall you see and she came in she said, ‘You mustn’t do that. You can’t do that in Germany. You mustn’t do that. ‘And she put it back. When she went out I turned it back again. I was doing that backwards and forwards.
CB: Were they German nuns? Yeah.
RH: In Munster.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Anyway, I had a good month there really. There was a lot of French kreigies as we call POWs. There was a lot of French kreigies there and they kept coming in and bringing me some of their food and, although I got plenty of food, and there was a few Russians as well and they stole some neat alcohol and they were drinking this stuff. They wanted me to have some. I said, ‘Not likely. I’m not touching that stuff.’ Anyway, I’d been there about three weeks, no, perhaps about a fortnight, about a fortnight when they did the dams raid. They did the dams raid on the 16th and they brought this other fellow in and he was off my squadron. He was off 76 squadron as well, and he’d got five bullets in him so the doctor there who was a General actually, red stripe down his trousers, you know, he said, ‘We want you to come and hold him down.’ I said, ‘Hold him down?’ ‘We’re not giving him - ’
CB: Chloroform.
RH: ‘Chloroform or anything because we need it for ourselves.’ He said, ‘You’ll just have to hold him down.’ I thought this is going to be fine. Anyway, I went in the operating theatre and held him down while they started taking them out. It’s horrible really and eventually well pretty early on he passed out anyway which was the best you know but he’d got one in his back that was close to his heart. He’d been shot in the back and they went in like that about that far around, took the meat out, took the bullet out, put some stuff around it and put it back. Do you know in a month you couldn’t tell it had been done? He were running around. Tommy Thompson. Yeah. So anyway, we, we got over our little problems and they decided to send us to Dulag Luft. I suppose you’ve heard of Dulag Luft.
CB: Near Frankfurt.
RH: At Frankfurt yeah. So they sent these three Germans to pick us up. The two of us. Well one of them was a fighter pilot who was on a rest and he were lovely. He really was and then there was two more. He was in charge of the other two. So he said, ‘Well before we go to the station,’ he said, ‘If you don’t mind, if you don’t mind, I’m going to see my girlfriend who lives in Munster,’ he said, ‘And you can come along with us. And we went in this house, met his girlfriend and her parents, we had a cup of coffee and then we left to go to the station and all the stations were under water from the dams raid. All the platforms were under water. It was alright at Munster but some of the smaller ones were. Anyway, we had a compartment on our own and he took off his gun belt and threw it on the luggage rack and said, ‘We don’t need that today. We’re all friends.’
CB: You wouldn’t have known that the flooding was due to the dams raid.
RH: No. I didn’t -
CB: Obviously.
RH: Know about that.
CB: Did they mention why it was flooded?
RH: No.
CB: In any way.
RH: No. No. I didn’t find out till afterwards.
CB: Oh.
RH: I wondered what all the water was about, you know. But I mean people say, ‘Oh they didn’t do any good,’ you know. Believe you me they did. Anyway, we had to go down the Rhine and we had to change at Cologne. Change trains at Cologne and as we were changing, no before that, I won’t go too far ahead, when we got to Cologne we had to wait for the train so he took us into a restaurant and we had a meal in the restaurant. There was all German officers and that around. Nobody took any notice. No. Yeah. It was alright. I’d got my cap, no my gloves stuck in my epaulets. He said, ‘Would you mind taking them out? We don’t do that in Germany.’ He said, ‘It looks bad.’ So I stuffed it in my blouse you know. So after we’d had the meal he said, ‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘We’re going for a walk along the Rhine so I’ll take you in Cologne Cathedral. So we went into Cologne Cathedral and had photographs, well he took photographs of us together you know and we come back caught the train, well we got onto the platform and there was a little Canadian air gunner who were being escorted by a German Wehrmacht and he were knocking him about. So this pilot said, he said, ‘Look at him,’ he said ‘A hundred and fifty percent national socialist.’ So he weren’t for Hitler evidently.
CB: No. Well you were going through, you know you were travelling through Germany.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And we’d given it, particularly Cologne, quite a pasting.
RH: Yeah, this was, this was on –
CB: Did you see any of the devastation that –
RH: No. I didn’t.
CB: We’d caused.
RH: I can’t say as I did actually. No. I think we must have missed it. [laughs]
CB: [laughs] So the thousand bomber raid was a bit of a waste of time [laughs]
RH: I will admit that the nurses kept saying, ‘You don’t think they’ll bomb us again will you?’
CB: Ah.
RH: You know. I said, ‘No. I wouldn’t think so.’ They did though not long afterwards of course. Anyway, we had hours long down the Rhine and they kept pointing the different places out. We had a lovely time really. It was lovely.
CB: What was the food like? I mean they had poor rations themselves didn’t they? What food did they give you?
RH: I can’t remember.
CB: Well if it had been poor I think you’d have probably remembered
RH: Yeah. I don’t think it was. Yeah, it was quite good. Course the cinemas and places like that were closed, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed funny to see people walking about though and -
Other: Passed on the right
RH: On the left.
Other: No right through dear.
RH: Right through on the Rhine.
[machine paused]
CB: Ok Ron. We’ve gone down the Rhine and we’ve arrived now at Dulag Luft
RH: Dulag Luft. We were just deposited at Dulag Luft and they put us in a six foot cell to try to get information. I was in that for about a week. Eventually they let you out and when I got out they lined me up at the end of the room, there were five or six more there. Then they brought another one out, another fella out, stood him at the side of me and he said, ‘I know you.’ I said, ‘Yes. I know you.’ I said, ‘It’s Mr Hands. You used to teach me mathematics didn’t you?’ It was my teacher.
CB: Oh good grief.
RH: Yeah. And we stuck together for the whole two years. Yeah. Yeah. That was interesting. Yeah. Anyway, we got into the main compound and there were Yanks in with us as well and from there on they sent us to Heydekrug but we did have normal coaches but they were wooden seats and I think we were about four days. Oh those seats were hard. I finished up in the luggage rack. More comfortable up there. So we got to Heydekrug and it was a fairly new camp actually at that time and had already brought some of Luft 3 in and gradually the camp filled up. Well, I was there for two years. Well not that one for two years but I was there for a year I suppose. It was quite interesting because we did, well I didn’t but they dug a tunnel and I think we got about thirty odd out and I think two or three got back and it was quite interesting really. We did hear. We got letters from them in code to say, you know, ‘We got back,’ sort of thing and then they took us to, we was in Poland. Thorn in Poland for a while. Can’t remember much about that and then from there we went to 357 and there was a lot of paratroops there because as far as the Germans was concerned paratroops were Luftwaffe.
CB: Yes.
RH: So we all got in together you know and they were from Arnhem. We had a lot of the Arnhem fellas in. But that was quite interesting.
CB: So this would be about September ‘44.
RH: Yeah. That’s right. And of course they moved us out of Heydekrug because the Russians were approaching. That’s why they moved us from there. Anyway, back to, Fallingbostel was 357. I have to think about this. They went out on the long march. Fortunately I didn’t have to go on that because I was in hospital at the time. I can’t remember what was wrong with me. So I got out of that one.
CB: So the conditions weren’t, you didn’t think they were too bad during this prisoner of war time.
RH: No. Not until about the last six months, nine months. Then of course we were coming in from one side and the Russians in from another squeezing them you know. We weren’t getting the parcels through. I mean at first we were getting nearly a parcel a week each but towards the end we weren’t getting much at all. All we were getting was potatoes and soup. Soup. Couldn’t call it soup really but we existed on it and got a parcel here and there from the Red Cross. Don’t know what we would have done without the Red Cross really.
CB: The escape from Stalag Luft 3 in March of ‘44 when the, and the fifty were eventually -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Captured and shot.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Was there anything, you know, recriminations or, you know how did you hear about it?
RH: I think the camp commandant told [pause] our leader. I’ve forgotten his name now.
CB: Shaw?
RH: No. Not Shaw. It weren’t Shaw.
CB: Oh.
RH: You’ve got that wrong. The footballer, well he wasn’t but we called him that for a bit.
CB: Oh Dixie Dean.
RH: Dixie Dean.
CB: Right.
RH: Dixie Dean. I think he told Dixie Dean and Dixie Dean said, ‘How many were just injured?’ Because they said they were trying to escape you see. They’d made a run and tried to escape.
CB: Yes.
RH: So he said, ‘How many were only wounded?’ ‘Oh none. They were all killed.’ He said, ‘That’s not possible.’ He said, ‘If you just fired like that,’ he said, ‘There would have been some that would have survived,’ and of course they couldn’t say anything about that.
CB: No.
RH: So the camp went mad. Took all the shutters off the windows, took them in the middle of the parade ground and set fire to them. That was our –
CB: Protest.
RH: Answer to it. You know. So that’s how we found about this. Of course a lot of the fellas that had come from Luft 3 knew all of these people. I didn’t and a lot of us didn’t but some did so –
CB: Was, was morale damaged or did you –
RH: Well we was pretty damned mad really.
CB: More angry than –
RH: Yeah. Yeah. More angry than anything. Anyway, as I say we got 357 and they went on the march and we were left behind fortunately and all I can think of now is this little armoured car came in the gates. One morning we woke up and there were no guards. Everybody had gone and this little armoured car come in. Of course everyone went mad. They crowded around this armoured car. Eventually some of the army came in as well you know and they were looking after us. The white bread was beautiful.
CB: What sort of thing did you do in the prisoner of war camp for entertainment and to, you know, pass the time?
RH: Well -
CB: What did you do?
RH: Of course, Heydekrug people were studying and you could do. It was all, it had been arranged that you could study and some, some people passed exams. So everybody got something to do if you wanted to and there was a good library. I started Polish. Learning Polish. I give it up. I couldn’t stand that. But people were studying all sorts.
CB: And the camp would put on theatre productions.
RH: Oh yeah well everybody got a bit of a hand in that.
CB: Yes. You didn’t take to the stage yourself.
RH: No. No thank you. No. No. And then we were doing things like making panels in the wall that took out so you could get to the next room. You see there were, the hut, there was like two huts like a semidetached house really and the door, the doors were side by side but you had to go up steps to go in one. Well we worked it out it took them so many seconds to come down the step, just walk across, go up the next steps in the next room so we took a panel out of the wall and made it so that you could, somebody’d slip through and back again and somebody in the next hut was one of the escapees so they took a panel off as the Germans went down the first lot of steps, took the panel off, I whipped through, jumped into his bed at the side, pulled the blanket over as though I was asleep and they’d come around counting you see. Well everybody was there but they weren’t. That were good fun. Yeah.
CB: Were there any tunnels that you knew of that were being dug?
RH: I know there was one from the, from the latrines and you know the latrines were actually about thirty holes so you had quite an interesting time when you went to the latrine. ‘Hello John how are you getting on? What are you doing?’ Are you doing so and so, you know. Everybody was talking [laughs] and so you’d go in there and instead of being there for five minutes you’d be there perhaps an hour talking to two or three other people, you know
CB: Did you ever fancy escaping yourself?
RH: No. I didn’t. I couldn’t get in a tunnel. Oh I couldn’t do that. No. I’d helped. I helped them. I helped. I did belong to tally ho as regards helping out with things. You know. Anyway, I thought it was more sensible to stay where you were. Don’t get shot so easily that way. Hopefully. Anyway, went in to the latrines one day and some bloke was standing there and said, ‘Don’t go in number one. They’re digging a tunnel down there.’ They were down there digging a tunnel. Of all the places to pick. But you see that was the closest to the wire. That’s why they went for that one and they did get about thirty odd out.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah. I don’t know how they smelt but, I think, I bet the Germans picked them up easy [laughs] from their perfume. Oh dear.
CB: So -
RH: Do you know there were people even making model aircraft and flying them? And the only way you could get the glue, you know this sticky brown paper? We never threw, never threw anything away all that was boiled down and finished up as glue at the bottom of the pot you know. And silver paper, you can make things out of silver paper. It was all melted down but you, you needed a pile about half as big as this room to get a little bit of, and then they used to make a mould out of soap and pour it in and you got whatever you wanted so when they were making a German uniform they made the buckle out of silver paper that had been melted down, you know. ‘Cause I mean, we’d got people there that made uniforms and made clothes and all sorts of things because I mean the RAF uniform was almost the same as Luftwaffe. You couldn’t hardly tell the difference. So there was always somebody slaving away on something. Never a dull moment. I mean people, they would say, ‘Well didn’t you get bored?’ We never got bored. Too much to do. Yeah.
CB: Did you know what was happening in Europe war wise at this time?
RH: Oh yeah.
CB: Did you have a radio or -
RH: Yeah we had the radio. Every lunchtime this fella would come in, ‘Right chaps. Watch the windows,’ and somebody’d sit near the window, watching out the windows, see if there’s any moles about. ‘There’s one coming up.’ ‘Hang on a minute.’ ‘Oh sit down. We’ll wait till he’s gone.’ Everybody that walked into that camp, every German that walked in that camp was plotted all the way around. We knew where he was all the while from one mouth to another you know. So and sometimes somebody would say, ‘Ferret.’ We called them ferrets and you see the huts were about this high of the ground and they’d crawl under to make sure that there were no tunnels you see and somebody would say, ‘Ferret.’ ‘Where?’ About ten blokes would get together. They’d stand there, ‘Ready, steady go,’ and everybody would jump up and down. Well all the dirt used to fall like that you know and he’d come scurrying out the other end dirt all down [laughs] Oh we pulled their legs something horrible really. I mean when a, when a guard walked up and down with his rifle over his shoulder there would be about five blokes right on top behind him following him like this you know and then as soon as he turned around they just vanished. One, ‘cause as regards tunnels we had to shore them up with bed boards so eventually everybody had only got about three bed boards left. Head, bottom, feet, you know. Oh it was uncomfortable. And one day they came in, take, they took nearly all the bed boards away on this lorry and there were the German guards standing on top of them with a schmeiser, you know. So when he looking over that end someone were nicking them off the other end. As soon as he swung around they was nicking it off the other end. [Laughs] Whatsisname came around he said, ‘I’m afraid somebody is going to get shot.’ He said, ‘Why don’t they pack it in?’ He said, ‘They’ll get shot.’ Dixie Dean. He said, ‘I’m scared to death somebody’s going to get shot.’ Anyway, nobody ever was.
CB: I think you mentioned that the guards had a peculiar way of searching. They’d search for one thing one day and -
RH: Oh yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. They only took what they were looking for that day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So if they were looking for scissors one day, the next day if they found some they weren’t bothered.
RH: No they weren’t bothered. No. Mad.
CB: What was the relationship between you and the guards? Did you -
RH: Well you got to know one or two of them yeah but don’t forget they were all old people. Not as old as me but they were, they were, some of them had been prisoners of war in England and you might get one that would talk to you, you know but there was always one or two of our people that spoke good German and they’d try and get things. You know. They were kept for getting and once, you know, they’d offer them something big or something that was not much at all but once you’d got him on, under your thumb the answer was well, I want so and so.’ Oh I can’t get that. I can’t get that.’ ‘Well you’d better or else you’ll be on the Eastern Front,’ ‘cause that was always their worry. Eastern front. You know. So they’d get it in the end. Bits for cameras and things like that. Yeah. But we did used to swap things with some of them. I mean I can remember when we were swapping tins of cocoa for a loaf of bread but I mean there was, it were full of sand with a bit of cocoa on the top. [laughs] Oh we were rotten. [laughs] Throwing it over the wire you know.
CB: Did you know when D-Day had happened?
RH: I was home on D-Day.
CB: Oh right.
RH: I was home about a week before D-Day.
CB: Oh.
RH: Yeah. Yeah fortunately because 357 was close to where they signed the -
CB: Oh the -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Armistice.
RH: Can’t remember where that was now but we were close to that. Yeah.
CB: So what was, what happened towards, you know the end of your captivity? How did it come about? The truck arrived. The, and was that the end? Did you -
RH: Yeah. Well they took us out in trucks to this aerodrome. I don’t know what aerodrome it was. I never did find out and we were there all day. There was thousands there you know and the army was in charge. There weren’t many RAF. Not at that moment. They were nearly all army and these Dakotas landed and Lancasters and Halifaxes. They’d pile the army in you know. Well we’d been there all day and one of our blokes said, he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this, they’re not taking all their men.’ He said, ‘We’re the ones, the RAF are taking us back and,’ he said, ‘We’re stuck here.’ He said, ‘I’m going to have a go at this.’ Anyway, the next Dakota came in and he ran across to it and when they put the ladder down he went up and had a word with the pilot, squadron leader somebody. So he said, ‘What’s your problem?’ So he said, ‘They’re taking all the army,’ he said, ‘And just leaving us.’ He said, ‘They’re not bothered about us.’ He said, ‘Well I’ve finished. This was my last flight,’ he said, ‘But I’ll take you. How many of you is there?’ So and so. ‘That’s a couple over what I should do,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘I’ll chance it if you will.’ He said, ‘All of you come across here,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you home.’ So he did an extra flight and brought us back. And when we got to the other end everybody had a WAAF each to look after us.
CB: This was at Cosford.
RH: At Cosford. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Yeah.
CB: What was your feelings when you landed?
RH: What?
CB: What were you feelings after, you know your captivity, all you’d been through?
RH: Well I can remember, I can remember passing and everybody was looking out the window saying, ‘Look the white cliffs of Dover. At last.’ You know. That was a lovely sight that was. And I don’t know where we landed. It wasn’t Cosford ‘cause we had to catch a train to Cosford.
CB: Oh right.
RH: But there was, on the train there was four of us to a compartment. We had the whole train to ourselves, you know.
CB: Did you ever think you weren’t, you wouldn’t make it back?
RH: No. I never thought about it. I thought we would eventually you know. I suppose we were lucky they didn’t shoot all of us really. Yeah.
CB: And you got to Cosford and then -
RH: We were there ‘til they kitted us out and I think I had six weeks leave. Everybody had about six weeks and back pay for two years.
CB: Wow.
RH: And all the Canadians and Americans were saying, every time they jumped out of bed, ‘Another pound in the bank.’ That were marvellous. I’d draw some money out and when you went back the next time there’d some more been put in. As fast as you drew it out they were putting some more in. I’ve never come across that since then though funnily enough. No. Lovely.
CB: So in your six, six weeks off or so and then what happened? Were you -
RH: Went back to Cosford and they didn’t know what to do with us really. We were going into towns where they were having these parties in the, street parties remember and they were taking us to these street parties and then they took us round Austin Motor Works to see that, all that. You know. It was all very interesting but really we were a dead loss to them really. Couldn’t do anything with us. Not many people stayed in. They asked you if you wanted to stay in. Of course my friend Ted did. He said, ‘Yes. I’ll stay’ and he got to squadron leader.
CB: And what did you do?
RH: Came out.
CB: Went home.
RH: I was a bit sorry. The last day I felt a bit sorry really. Still there we are.
CB: You had the camaraderie of your pals you know, even though -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Just for the four tours or whatever.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And then you had the friends you made in the camps and then it was just a sudden stop.
RH: Yeah and I mean we was all going to meet so and so and not many did.
CB: No.
RH: Once you got back into Civvy Street and you got into work again I suppose it all changed didn’t it really? Yeah.
CB: Perhaps some of them just didn’t want to remember what had happened.
RH: I don’t, I mean people say that. I don’t think we were very bothered any of us. I mean and others say they don’t like to talk about it. Well, all the ones I know don’t mind talking about it. Not really.
CB: What work did you do after the war?
RH: I went back to the Co-op.
CB: And you settled into that happily.
RH: Well only for about two years and then my stepfather was a sub postmaster and when he died I got it so I had the post office for thirty two years. Yeah. That was alright. That was a good job.
CB: Do you think your experiences in the war had any effect on you afterwards?
RH: I don’t know. I suppose in a way you got to the point you were frightened of anything anymore. Weren’t frightened of anything anymore. You know, you thought to yourself, ‘Well. I got through that I can get through anything.’ Yeah. I mean we had three raids at the post office.
CB: Oh crikey.
RH: We got rid, well we got rid of it. I didn’t get rid of one. The second one that come in. He pointed a gun at me and said, ‘Money.’ And my wife was in the corner. She said, ‘What’s he want?’ I said, ‘Money.’ She said, ‘Tell him where to go.’ I said, ‘I’m going to.’ I said, ‘Look. There’s the door. Get out of it.’ And then he turned around and walked out. Which was very lucky. I said to her afterwards, ‘He were pointing a ruddy gun at me not at you.’ [laughs]
CB: You never thought ‘Oh my God I’ve fought this war, I’ve been involved and then this happens.’
RH: It makes you wonder doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then there was another man that had been defrauding the post by ordering insurance stamps. Insurance stamps were worth a lot of money in those days and he’d order all these and they’d put them through and he’d say, ‘Oh just a minute. I’ve got a parcel in the car. I’ll go and fetch it.’ He never went back, he never went back with the money. I forget what they called him, they’d given him a name. Two years they tried to catch him and we caught him. He came in and did his usual, you know and the wife was in the corner and she went ‘psst’ you know so I didn’t, I didn’t put the stamps through. I kept them this side you know, he said, ‘Oh I’ve got a parcel. I’ll just go and fetch the parcel.’ I knew he was making a getaway really. He could see I wasn’t going to give and as he went out the postman came in the door and I said, ‘John, get the number of that car, that van for the person who’s just run out.’ ‘Where? Where?’ You know. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You’re too late.’ I got straight on the phone to the, our policing department and the police put road stops up all around Peterborough and when they got to Stanground the woman on the counter of Stanground said, ‘Oh. I think I’ve just served him.’ Just like that you know. They see this bloke coming out the door, they grabbed him and it wasn’t him. [laughs] Anyway, he were further down the road and they caught him before he got in the car. But I think we got two hundred pound for that. Yeah. We had three lots of two hundred pound. Very useful. [laughs]
CB: Well Ron it’s been absolutely wonderful to hear you. Thank you very much for this interview.
RH: Oh it’s alright. You’re quite welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ron Hemsworth
Format
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01:14:17 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AHemsworthR150729
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-29
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Ron joined the Royal Air Force in January 1941. Initially a wireless operator/air gunner, he failed morse code at Blackpool. He was posted to RAF Swinderby and worked in the stores and flying control. Air gunnery school followed at RAF Bridlington and RAF Morpeth. Ron went to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Honeybourne where he crewed up and flew in Whitleys. He went on to multi-engine aircraft near York and flew Halifaxes. Ron joined 76 Squadron at Linton-on-Ouse and flew four operations: Stettin, Duisburg, a mine laying operation and two trips which were not completed because of issues with the intercom.
Ron describes how his aircraft was hit on the starboard wing and what happened to the crew. He had problems with his parachute and landed on a house roof, dislocating his leg. He spent a month in a civilian hospital in Munster. He was transported by a kind German fighter pilot to Dulag Luft, near Frankfurt. Ron was sent to Stalag Luft 6. People could study, and there was a library and entertainment. Ron made model aircraft. Provisions became scarce in the latter months. A tunnel was dug near the latrines and 30 prisoners escaped. The guards abandoned the camp and Ron was taken to an aerodrome and flown home in a Dakota. He went to RAF Cosford, but, with little to do, he came out of the RAF.
Creator
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Clare Bennett
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Lithuania
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Duisburg
Lithuania--Šilutė
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
76 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
C-47
crewing up
Dulag Luft
escaping
fear
Halifax
military service conditions
mine laying
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cosford
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Morpeth
RAF Swinderby
shot down
Stalag Luft 6
superstition
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/542/8782/AHardingV150520.2.mp3
73090ff7946ff4451cdd82def306eea2
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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Harding, Victor
Victor Thomas Harding
V T Harding
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harding, V
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Leading Aircraftsman Victor Harding (1234463, Royal Air Force). He served as an airframe fitter.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-20
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Claire Bennett; the interviewee is Mr Victor Harding. The interview is taking place at Mr Harding’s home in Queen’s Court, Retford, on the 20th of May 2015. Well Vic, would you like to tell us the date and place of your birth?
VH: Er, 05-03-22. We was in Middlesex.
CB: And can you remember your early childhood?
VH: Yes because I was born outta wedlock, and my mother sent me down to a home in Kent, to, to join the forces.
CB: And you stayed in a – you were in a –
VH: I stayed in a home – what you call a home for little [unclear], my daughter knows it ‘cause she took me there. And I was there ‘till I was nineteen ‘till I volunteered, joined the Air Force.
CB: And do you remember much about it? What are your memories of it?
VH: What the home?
CB: Yes.
VH: It was marvellous. It was run by ex-military people and they’re very very good to you. Plenty of discipline and everything, oh yeah. And when I was eighteen, that’s when I volunteered to join the Air Force then.
CB: What –
Other: You learnt, you learnt a trade in the home, didn’t you?
VH: Pardon?
Other: You learnt a trade in the home.
VH: Oh yes, in the – they, after you finish your schooling age, they had different trades there. They had the printing department, a cobblers, carpentry, tailoring department, trades to learn when you’ve finished doing your schooling.
CB: And you went in for –
VH: Tailoring. Because the war broke out, and then I volunteered for the Air Force.
CB: What made you choose the Air Force in particular?
VH: I don’t know really [laughs]. I just fancied it, you know. And they asked me if I wanted to be aircrew or ground staff, so I thought ‘I haven’t got the brains to be aircrew’ so I volunteered to be in the ground staff to maintain the air craft.
CB: You were mechanically minded?
VH: I was flying mechanic air frame lot of the time. Everything by the engines, yeah,
CB: Would you have liked to have flown?
VH: I would have done if I had brains, yeah. [Both laugh]
CB: But nobody said you didn’t have any brains, this is what you perceived. [VH laughing]
VH: Well, I didn’t think I would be qualified for it enough sort of thing.
CB: So where did you start your training? Where did you join up?
VH: I went to Blackpool, and I done my – I can’t remember whether it was six months training at Kirkham for a flight mechanics course. When I passed out, I was sent to Cottesmore to Operational Training Unit.
CB: And what was your training, you know, like? Did you enjoy it?
VH: I did, really enjoyed it.
CB: How did you get to the, the training place? Was it on the train?
VH: No the Air Force took me there, you know. I went to Cottesmore –
CB: Yes.
VH: And I was on old Southampton’s [?]. All the old stuff sort of thing ‘till I was qualified, and then when I was paid, I was put onto Bomber Command then.
CB: But, you would get your posting wouldn’t you, and then you’d have to get to your posting destination –
VH: That’s it, yeah they –
CB: Did you, did you go on the trains during the war?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Did you go the trains during the war?
VH: Trains?
CB: Mm.
VH: No.
CB: No?
VH: No, never went on trains.
CB: So how did you get around? Did the –
VH: The Air Force took me around, you know.
CB: Right.
VH: To different stations, yes.
CB: Right. So, so you’d, a group of you would go perhaps and they’d take you to the stations?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And what was your, you know, your time training? You know, what kind of accommodation did you have?
VH: Well, sometimes I was in Nissan huts, sometimes I was in buildings, you know. All depends where you were stationed sort of thing.
CB: Where was, where do you think your best station was? You enjoyed the most?
VH: Oh, best place was at Lakenheath. It was a brick building, but when the Yanks came and saw it they took it over. So we were putting Nissan huts [laughs].
CB: Well the Nissan huts I think were pretty sparse weren’t they?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And cold, is that your –
VH: That’s it, yeah.
CB: Is that how you remember them, or?
VH: Yeah.
CB: Am I wrong?
VH: That’s it [laughs].
CB: So you went – so your first main posting –
VH: My first posting was at Cottesmore.
CB: Right, and what planes would you be on?
VH: I was on the Anton’s, Oxfords, and just the, all the things to tinkle about with, you know. ‘Till I was posted on Bomber Command.
CB: And the planes, were they easy to maintain, or?
VH: Yeah, they were quite easy really.
CB: You learnt quickly?
VH: Yeah I did, yeah.
CB: Was it good training?
VH: Oh yes, I had six months training at Kirkham.
CB: And what were you –
VH: I was flight mechanic air frames on everything bar the engines.
CB: Right, so you would main – so what would that entail? So, tell me about, you know, all the details of it.
VH: Well, you looked after the runners and the balance and everything, you know.
CB: Right. And then you entered Bomber Command.
VH: That’s it, yeah.
CB: So your first, first job would be, or your first posting rather, would be –
VH: Ah [pause]. Cottesmore was the first one I went to with Operational Training Unit.
CB: Yes.
VH: Yeah.
CB: On OTU?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And, where did you go to after that?
VH: I went to quite a few stations. I went to Bardney for a while, Woodhall Spa, er, Lakenheath, Marham, all different stations you know. With all different squadrons that I went with.
CB: Yes, and what was your work there? Same sort of thing?
VH: Flight mechanic airframe. I done that everything bar the engines.
CB: What planes were you working on?
VH: I worked on Wellingtons, Mosquitos, Lancasters, Hamdy Hamptons [?].
CB: Did you ever go for a flight in these, any of these?
VH: Oh yes. So when they used to do something to the airframe or engines, you used to, we used to go up with them for an air test [emphasis]. Yeah.
CB: So you did you go for any long [emphasis] trips in them?
VH: Not really long trips, no. First I went I think was Peterhead, when we went up there to refuel them.
CB: And did you enjoy the flight? Do you think – did you –
VH: Well I love flying.
CB: Did you regret not going for aircrew?
VH: I don’t, no [laughs]. I think I would have enjoyed it, you know, but I might not be here today [both laugh].
CB: So where was your accommodation, say at Bardney? Where was – were you still in the Nissan huts?
VH: No, I think I was in buildings there, I think, I’m sure it was.
CB: Was it, were you, did you have accommodation with a family. Were you –
VH: No didn’t have it with no family.
CB: It was in an Air Force –
VH: Air Force quarters, yeah.
CB: Air Force quarters.
VH: Yeah.
CB: And what did you do, where did you go for relaxation in Bardney? Do you remember?
VH: Not really. Used to go out with the lads, you know, and have a drink and a smoke [laughs].
CB: Pubs? [VH laughs]. Dare I suggest? Do you remember Bardney at all?
VH: Not a lot, no.
CB: So your, was your life mainly in the, on the camp basically?
VH: It was on the camp, yes.
CB: So, the planes – explain to me how it works. So what would be your typical day?
VH: Well you go out on the dispersal plane [?]. The aircraft was there and you had to test the rudders, the elevators, the wings and everything. Then you had to test your hydraulics, make sure they are working and everything.
CB: And then you’d –
VH: Then you had to sign a form, Form 700, detailing what you had done and everything, and the pilot used to say ‘okay, I know that you’ve checked it.’
CB: And what planes would these be? Would these be –
VH: I used to be on Lancasters, Mosquitos, Hamdy Hamptons [?], Wellingtons –
CB: And what – but what about Bardney? Was it – what was it at Bardney?
VH: Bardney?
CB: Mm.
VH: I think I was on Lancasters there.
CB: Mm.
VH: Yeah.
CB: What did you think about the Lancaster as a plane?
VH: Marvellous aircraft, lovely.
CB: Did you think, you know , when you first saw it, overwhelming really? Like the size of it.
VH: Well, the size of it yeah [emphasis]. I mean, the wheels were bigger than me [both laugh].
CB: But was it a case of just, you know, getting on with the job as it were?
VH: Well it – true, yeah. I enjoyed the job, I did really.
CB: What was the food like that you had there?
VH: Very good there.
CB: And can you remember –
VH: And I met some very nice people, you know. Ground staff and aircrew and everybody and, I got on well with everybody.
CB: So you enjoyed your time there?
VH: I did [emphasis]. If I hadn’t got married I think I would have kept in the Air Force [both laugh].
CB: When did you meet your wife?
VH: In forty, forty-six, yeah.
CB: So after the war?
VH: No, just before I finished the war, yeah.
CB: Oh right. So you – I mean, good food in Bardney –
VH: Oh I had good food all the time I was in the Air Force, I can’t complain.
CB: Well, ‘cause there was rationing on wasn’t there?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Rationing on.
VH: Oh yeah, but we weren’t rationed [laughs].
CB: No?
VH: No.
CB: So you just had your normal food then?
VH: Yes, well, our food was lovely. Very good.
CB: Did you have a bike to go around on, or?
VH: I used to have a bike yeah, ‘cause when I was at Woodhall Spa I used to bike to Boston most nights, you know, if I wasn’t on duty and things.
CB: Right. So, ‘cause these, these airfields were spread out, weren’t they?
VH: Yeah.
CB: A lot of them. And you needed a bike.
VH: Oh yeah.
CB: So you were dealing with Lancasters, and where did you go after Bardney? Can you remember?
VH: No I went to that many. I went to Theddlethorpe [?], Bardney, Lakenheath, quite a few all local. All round Lincolnshire way, you know, most of them.
CB: Mm.
VH: The first I went away was at Marham in Norfolk.
CB: Yes?
VH: Mm.
CB: And what did you make of that? Did you –
VH: Marham?
CB: Mm.
VH: Quite a nice place. That’s where I had my first squadron of Mosquitos there.
CB: Right.
VH: Mm.
CB: So you worked on the Mosquitos there?
VH: Oh yes. I liked them I did [both laugh].
CB: The wooden wonder. [?]
VH: We had the first squadron of Mosquitos and first day we got there at Marham the Germans came along and dropped flares. I thought ‘oh there we’ve had it.’ But we got away with it [laughs].
CB: Is that the first time you’d had any –
VH: We had Mosquitos, yeah.
CB: Is this the first time you’d seen enemy action as it were, dropping bombs?
VH: Well it was, dropping flares over the place yeah. We thought ‘we’re in for it’ that night but we got away with it [both laugh].
CB: Oh dear. And do you remember anybody in particular, you know, friends?
VH: In the Air Force?
CB: Yeah, friends.
VH: Oh yes. Guy Gibson.
CB: If we’re – erm yes, that was at Woodhall Spa.
VH: Yeah.
CB: Did you work with him, or on – well, you were on 627 Squadron.
VH: Yeah. I was with Guy Gibson, I worked with Richard Attenborough, Group Captain Cheshire.
CB: Yes.
VH: Mm.
CB: So at Woodhall Spa, which is – did you finish at Woodhall Spa? Was that your last one before the end of the war?
VH: I think it was. I’m sure it was, yeah.
CB: And you were on 627 Squadron there –
VH: Yeah.
CB: Is that right? Were you, you were with other squadrons. 149 did you say?
VH: Yes, I was, yeah 149 Royal Canadian Air Force –
CB: You worked with the Canadians?
VH: Yeah, and [pause] a Jamaican squadron, I don’t know whether it was 139, I can’t remember what that was but whatever squadron it was I got on well with all of them. Canadian and the Jamaica squadron.
CB: Excellent. So at Woodhall Spa, how did you get there? Did you, did the Air Force take you there?
VH: Air Force. Wherever it was the Air Force took you.
CB: ‘Cause I think –
VH: Transport, you know.
CB: Right, ‘cause I think most people arrived at the station didn’t they?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And then they’d be picked up.
VH: Well I did. One time I was posted to, er, where was it, Oakington was it? Yeah, and I got a transport ticket to Oakham, yeah, I got the wrong place [both laugh]. I don’t think, I made a blunder [?].
CB: Well it can’t have been easy travelling around in the war.
VH: Oh yeah.
CB: You know, on the trains or whatever.
VH: Well it’s true.
CB: So you arrived at Woodhall Spa, and, on Mosqutios?
VH: Yeah.
CB: Did, where did you live at Woodhall Spa? Were you on –
VH: In billets.
CB: Again, what is –
VH: Woodhall Spa.
CB: - what is now Thorpe Camp? Was that where you were?
VH: Where?
Other: Thorpe Camp. You know where they’ve got the museum and that.
VH: Oh yeah.
CB: That’s where you were?
VH: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
CB: What did you make of it, or what did you –
VH: Of Woodhall Spa?
CB: Yes.
VH: I loved it. Nice place.
CB: Did you go into the town very often?
VH: Yeah, I used to walk to Tatteshall and places like that which was nearby.
CB: Did you, you know, how did you relax there at Woodhall Spa? Would the, would the ground crew ever, you know, mix with the aircrew?
VH: Oh yes, quite often, yeah. I had a good mate there, Canadian chap, and I can always remember one night in the – he sat awake, the crew generally get together chatting before they go on a raid, and he was a rear gunner, and he was chatting [?] that night and I went over to him and I says ‘what’s wrong George?’ And he says ‘we’re not coming back tonight,’ I says ‘well don’t talk stupid.’ They didn’t.
CB: Wow.
VH: He had that premonition they weren’t coming back.
CB: Did you ever –
VH: That did upset me, you know, that did.
CB: Did you get that a lot, or was that just one you remember? Do you, you know –
VH: Ooh no, I remember quite a few who didn’t get back.
CB: Mm. But then, did they –
VH: Waited for them, but they never returned.
CB: Did they had the premonition though before they went?
VH: Yeah, one or two did.
CB: And how did you feel about that? It –
CB: Well I felt awful really. When you’re waiting for them and they don’t return, you know, really hits you.
CB: Mm. What was the atmosphere at, in the, on the airfield?
VH: Oh, it was very good really, yeah we all got on well together. The ground staff and the aircrew, you know.
CB: And you would, as you say, you would relax together, and –
VH: Oh yes, I mean, if you had no raids on and everything you’d go out and have a drink with the lads and the aircrew, you know.
CB: Do you remember the, where you would go in Woodhall Spa?
VH: No, I can’t remember, you’re going back –
CB: I think, I think it was the Mucky Duck, wasn’t it?
VH: Oh that, I was gonna say the Mucky Duck! [Other speaks in background but is unclear what is said. VH replies but this is also unclear.]
CB: Yeah, I think that was quite popular there wasn’t it?
VH: It was, yeah [both laugh]. Then I used to cycle sometimes into Boston.
CB: Yes. So you’d cycle into Boston did you say?
VH: Yeah, cycle into Boston, yeah.
CB: Right, that’s a fair way.
VH: Well, it was really, but –
CB: And, on your own, or with your friends?
VH: Yes, with a girl from there.
CB: Oh right [both laugh]. And what would you do in Boston? What did you think of Boston?
VH: I liked Boston I did. Boston Stump and all that. It’s quite changed from what it used to be, but it, I thought it was a lovely place at the time.
CB: And what did you do, where did you go?
VH: Go for a drink [laughs].
CB: Did you go to the glider drome? I think that was a popular place. No? Perhaps for the aircrew.
VH: Was it Withamgate [?]?
CB: Yeah.
VH: We used to go round there, and the Boston Stump and all round that way, hmm.
CB: So you enjoyed that?
VH: I did [laughs].
CB: And what would, ‘cause – there was some famous station commanders, well not, commanding officers at Woodhall Spa. Do you remember Cheshire?
VH: Group Captain Cheshire, yeah.
CB: What do you make –
VH: Guy Gibson.
CB: What did you make of Cheshire? What did you think of him?
VH: I got on well with all of them, yeah.
CB: Can you remember –
VH: They were quite good to us, they were really good to all the ground staff really, you know, ‘cause they relied on us sort of thing to look after them, didn’t they? [Unclear, both laugh].
CB: Indeed they did [VH laughs]. Especially I think, erm, Leonard Cheshire, he was particularly fond of his –
VH: Yeah. Cheshire [unclear] at one time didn’t they?
CB: Yes. And he would come and talk to you at, you know, when you were mending the aircraft?
VH: Yes, I mean, when there was no raids on or anything and things were easier, we used to go out and have a drink with them sort of thing, you know, they were just like talking to anybody. Except when you’re on the parade ground it had to be ‘sir’ sort of thing, you know.
CB: Did you do much parade ground?
VH: Pardon dear?
CB: Were you on the parade ground very much? Did it, was that part of your life?
VH: Playground?
CB: The parade ground.
VH: Oh, we didn’t do a lot on the parade ground, no, because it was mostly time on the, looking after the aircraft, you know.
CB: So you missed some of that out?
VH: Yes, oh yeah, we didn’t have a lot to do on the parade ground really.
CB: What was the discipline like?
VH: Pardon?
CB: What was the –
VH: Discipline? Discipline was quite good, strict, you know. See, see, discipline didn’t really bother me because being in a home was run by all ex-army people, I was disciplined there. I had to march to school and everything, you know. So going in the Air Force, it didn’t really hit me.
CB: So your time in the, the children’s home –
VH: Made me more or less fit for the Air Force really.
CB: So you look back on those as happy days, and –
VH: They were, yeah. That home was very good. ‘Cause my daughter took me up there few years back didn’t you, and it’s not the same place now, it’s been taken over by retirement people, and when they knew I was one of the boys who had been there, ooh they shook my hand didn’t they [CB laughs] made quite a fuss of me.
CB: Were there girls there as well or was it just boys?
VH: No, just boys, yeah.
CB: And you made some good friends there?
VH: Yes I made some good friends there, yeah.
CB: Did you manage to keep in touch with them afterwards?
VH: One or two of them, but when I went with my daughter last time, and I saw one or two of the names in the church who’d been, passed away, and killed and that during the war. That really upset me.
CB: Hmm. So at Woodhall Spa, another CO was Tate. Did you, did you come across Willy Tate very much?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Willy Tate, he was –
VH: Willy Tate? I can’t remember dear.
CB: No.
VH: No. You meet that many people you know, you can’t remember all their names, sorta thing.
CB: No, no of course not.
VH: No.
CB: So tell me what you remember of Guy Gibson.
VH: I found him very very good. Very good to the ground staff. I think he was a bit trick [?] with the aircrew, but to the ground staff he was magnificent.
CB: Well, that’s wonderful. So, you got, did you have a relationship with him? Did he you know help you, or come and chat?
VH: Not really no. Just ‘how are you sir’ and ‘your aircraft’s ready’ and that sorta thing you know.
CB: When the planes came back from their raids, and they were –
VH: That was lovely seeing them come back [laughs].
CB: Yes.
VH: But when you’re waiting, and yours don’t come back you think ‘oh, has it crash landed somewhere’ or ‘has it landed at another airdrome?’ And eventually you hear it hadn’t come back. It really upset you.
CB: Hmm. And then it would be your job to, to mend them. And get them back right?
VH: Yeah.
CB: Hmm. So were there any events that you can remember at Woodhall Spa? You know, things like, I don’t know, collisions, or, you know –
VH: There been one or two crash landings. I seen crash landings, yeah.
CB: What did you – can you remember how you would –
VH: We didn’t do nothing to it, the air, er, the fire engines and everything used to go out to them.
Other: But you remember the – when they were training for the Dambusters don’t you?
VH: Pardon?
Other: When they training for the Dambusters.
VH Oh yeah, when they training for the Dambusters. We wondering what was happening because they was training for about two or three months before they actually done it, and they come over and did what we called hedge-hopping, just come over the hedge, just miss us, you know, and you think ‘what’s going on?’ [CB laughs]. And they kept it a secret right ‘till the night they went. When they came out that night they said ‘this is it,’ so we said, ‘what,’ ‘what we’ve been training for you know when we come back’ [CB and VH laugh].
CB: So they were –
VH: Very secretive, it was.
CB: Yes.
VH: But when they came back they said ‘we done it’ [laughs].
CB: Right [both laugh]. So was – that was at Scampton, were you at Scampton at all?
VH: No that was at, er, Woodhall Spa [emphasis].
CB: Right.
VH: I never went to Scampton. Only went there for my medals didn’t I? That’s all.
CB: Mm. So you – how do you remember your wartime career?
VH: Yes I can do, yeah.
CB: And you, how do you remember it, with –
VH: Well I think it was quite good really because the – I was disobedient at home so going to the Air Force, that was more or less the same, sorta life, sort of thing.
CB: Mm. So [pause] the – I think some of what the personnel, the aircrew at Woodhall Spa, they were, they were known for their pranks, some of them. And I suppose the low flying would have been one of them.
VH: It was, yeah.
CB: Did you have any, many air raids there?
VH: No not really, no.
CB: So you, the Germans didn’t attack you –
VH: No.
CB: At Woodhall Spa? It was [unclear]
VH: No, no, they came over when we were at Marham, Norfolk, when we had the first squadron of Mosquitos. I thought ‘this is it,’ flares came down but as soon as the gun fire opened up they went [both laugh].
CB: So do you remember any time – the time that Guy Gibson took off on the night he was killed? Do you remember anything about that?
VH: Er, he just came out, and he just said ‘I’m gonna take this aircraft’ and that’s it. Just didn’t come back.
CB: No, he was with Warwick –
VH: Mosquitos.
CB: Yes, because he wasn’t too familiar with them, was he?
VH: No.
CB: So –
VH: It could have been that you see.
CB: Yeah. Was he – do you remember what his manner was like, how he –
VH: He was – I found him quite good myself.
CB: But he wanted to get back flying, didn’t he? Do you remember anything about that particular night, as to how he was?
VH: No, he came out that night and says ‘do you mind if I take the, this Mosquito?’ and I said ‘no sir,’ and he just got in it and went.
CB: And what did you feel when he didn’t come back?
VH: Well I felt awful really, you know. I wondered what, if he really knew in his own heart whether he was going to do anything. You don’t know what’s in their mind, do you really?
CB: No, no you don’t. But you, you just thought it was just another, another plane that hadn’t come back.
VH: Yeah.
CB: You didn’t –
VH: That’s true.
CB: Did you know straight away that – I mean he could have landed somewhere else. When did you find out that –
VH: Ah, we didn’t find out for [pause] two, two, three hours after. They must have rung round to see if he’d landed anywhere else, but, he hadn’t, so.
CB: No.
VH: I think over the hills was it, in Kent I think, where he actually crashed, I think.
CB: He crashed in Holland.
VH: Yeah, oh was it Holland?
CB: Yeah.
VH: I knew it was somewhere –
CB: Yeah, coming back from an operation. So, you, you remember it with fondness, the –
VH: Pardon?
CB: You remember it with fondness, your time in Bomber Command –
Other: Fondness, you enjoyed it.
VH: Oh I, I enjoyed all my life [?], I loved Bomber Command.
CB: So –
VH: And everyone I worked with. We all seemed to be like a family, sort of thing, you know, we worked ever so well together, the ground staff and the air crew did.
CB: And you went to Lakenheath. Were the Americans there at Lakenheath when you were there?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Were the Americans at Lakenheath, when you were there?
VH: Was I –
CB: Was the –
Other: Were the Americans there? Were the Americans there?
VH: Americans? Oh yeah, they took over because it was a nice place, you see [CB laughs]. Better than where they were! It was all big buildings and they took over and we were put in Nissan huts! [Both laugh].
CB: What did you make of them? Did you, did you get on well with them?
VH: Well we, yeah they were alright [both laugh].
CB: Did you have better food when they were around?
VH: Oh yes, definitely yes. They got the best off [both laugh].
CB: And where were you? Were you in billets again at Lakenheath?
VH: Yeah.
CB: So erm, did you ever have to, you know, live in, with a family or anything like that, or were you always in billets?
VH: Er, in billets or Nissan huts, you know.
CB: Yes.
VH: Yeah.
CB: So, you’re coming towards the end of the war. How did you feel, you know, we’ve just had VE day. How did you feel? You know, was it a relief, or were you, how did you feel?
VH: Well, I don’t know really. I don’t know whether I was [unclear] in the Air Force, but I’d just got married before I came out, you see so –
CB: Right, so where did you meet your wife?
VH: In Nottingham.
CB: At a dance, or?
VH: Pardon?
CB: Was it at a dance? A dance?
VH: Dance?
Other: Where did you meet Mum?
VH: Oh, I was having a drink [both laugh].
CB: And you obviously looked, saw her, and, you know, liked each other. So how long was it before you got married?
VH: Only about six months I think. Yeah, wasn’t long [both laugh]. And I got lovely daughters and a lovely son, he’s passed away bless him, about three year ago innit?
Other: Hmm.
CB: And did you –
VH: I had two lovely children, they certainly looked after me, they still do [both laugh], don’t you chick? Somebody does.
CB: Do you remember getting married, and the rationing?
VH: Oh yes. I had a double wedding. That’s my wife up there.
CB: Oh, that’s lovely. Where did you get married?
VH: Hyson Green, yeah.
CB: Well, she looks very nice with her dress on. So, the rationing didn’t bother you very much?
VH: No. Said ‘are you gonna get married the usual?’ and I says ‘no.’ [Both laugh.]
CB: And where did you live after you were married?
VH: Nottingham, yeah.
CB: And when did the war – was the war finished by then?
VH: Oh yeah, it had finished, yeah.
CB: So you, you came out of the Air Force in –
VH: Out of the Air Force in 1946.
Other: You made your suit though didn’t you?
VH: Hmm.
Other: You made your suit.
VH: Yeah I made my suit.
CB: Oh wow! You made your own wedding suit, that’s –
VH: Yeah because, in that home where, that I was telling you about, there was all different trades, and I went in the tailoring department. I done four years at, four years apprenticeship before I joined the Air Force, so I made my wedding suit.
CB: You kept the skills going [both laugh]. So what did you do when you came out of the RAF?
VH: Er [pause], I went to the co-op [?], I was only there one day, and then, I went to Boots then and I was there for thirty year.
CB: Worked in Boots the chemists?
VH: Yeah.
CB: Oh, what did you do there?
VH: Making medicines and everything [unclear from Other].
CB: Oh.
VH: And then when they stopped making their own medicines, I went on security, and stuff like that.
CB: So you were there for a long time. In Nottingham all the time?
VH: Oh yes –
CB: You settled there.
VH: Never left Nottingham did I? I was at Boots thirty year I was at Boots.
CB: Did you keep in touch in your, you know, your friends and your comrades in the Air Force?
VH: No, no, never kept in touch with any of them.
CB: Although you had good relationships with them all? You didn’t feel –
VH: But we didn’t, we didn’t keep in touch with each other no.
CB: So, your thirty years, what did you – [unclear] didn’t work in those days did they, do your wife, your wife, didn’t work?
VH: My wife? Yeah she was working, yeah.
CB: Did she work?
VH: What was mum now?
Other: Machinist.
VH: Oh, machinist, that’s it [both laugh].
CB: And then you had your children.
VH: Yeah, two lovely children. And my grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, they’re all marvellous to me they are.
CB: What did you feel about how Bomber Command was treated after the war?
VH: In which way?
CB: Well, when Churchill made his speech, he didn’t, after the war, he didn’t mention Bomber Command.
VH: I know.
CB: Because of all the bombing, and –
VH: Yeah.
CB: How did you feel about that? And you’ve only just had your clasp that you’re entitled to. How did you feel, after the war, and how you were –
VH: I don’t think they treated them as they should have been treated, myself, because they’d done a marvellous job.
CB: And you – you’ve gone down, have you seen the memorial in London? Have you gone –
VH: No I haven’t, no.
CB: But you – have you gone back to any of your stations that you’ve been at, because –
Other: We’ve been to Conningsby, we’ve been to a few with you, I’ve taken you to a few haven’t I?
VH: Yeah.
Other: Woodhall Spa we’ve been to.
VH: Yeah.
Other: We’ve been to Scampton now but –
VH: Been to Scampton –
Other: [unclear] did you?
VH: Hmm.
CB: So you, you went back to Scampton recently, I think, when was that?
VH: Yes, er, that was when I had my [papers shuffling].
CB: Your medal. Your medal.
VH: In that book there. [Papers shuffling, pause].
CB: I think, er [pause] ah. And what did you [pause], how did you hear about this, did they get in touch with you?
VH: No, when I moved to here, to Retford, I lost my medals, so I wrote up to administrative ends [?] explained who I was, when I started and when I, when I got demobbed, and they dealt and sent them back, er, sent me a new lot.
CB: And how did you get to go to Scampton? Did they write to you?
Other: A gentleman from Scampton in the RAF came to us here, and said could they present them to him.
CB: Oh. So what did you feel about that?
VH: It was great, wasn’t it?
Other: It was lovely.
VH: All the family went, it was lovely.
Other: It was a very special day, yeah.
VH: Yeah.
CB: They made a fuss of you?
VH: Yeah [laughs].
CB: Well that’s a lovely, lovely thing to remember, isn’t it.
VH: It is, yeah.
Other: And they also presented medals to these gentlemen, they’d just come back from Afghanistan.
CB: It’s lovely. [Pause]. Right Vic, so –
VH: I went, I went out to get the aircraft ready, prepared because there was a raid on, when the crew came out, I was just sitting there, and I’d got this terrible pain, you know, they says ‘come on we want to go,’ and I says ‘I can’t get out!’ So they lifted me out, and they rushed me to Kings Lynn hospital, I got my appendix [laughs].
CB: Do you remember the hospital you were in?
VH: Er [slight pause], no, er, it was Kings Lynn, but I can’t think of the name of the hospital.
CB: And how long were you in there?
VH: I was only in there a couple of week, if that.
CB: It’s quite a long time these days [both laugh]. And then it says you were transferred to Addenbrookes.
VH: Yeah, yeah I had something wrong with my thumb –
CB: Right.
VH: And the Air Force made a mess of it, so I ended up in Addenbrookes to have me nail took off.
CB: So what do you remember about being in hospital?
VH: Not a lot really, well, when I came out I got a fortnight’s holiday, er, was a camp.
CB: What was the food like?
VH: Good [emphasis, both laugh].
CB: So you, they sorted out your appendix problem –
VH: Oh yes.
CB: And then you, you went back. So it was, [pause], that’s some sort of home, admitted to Stowe, erm, I can’t quite read that. Was it just some sort of home that just was like a convalescent home was it?
VH: Yeah.
CB: And you were in there for a little while.
VH: Hmm yeah, two weeks I think [chuckles].
CB: So they certainly looked after the –
VH: They certainly looked after you, yeah.
CB: [Pause]. So you’ve lived in Retford for, how long now?
VH: Ten years now, innit chick? My daughter got me over here so she can look after me [laughs], don’t you chick.
CB: Do you get involved in any Bomber Command, you know, reunions, or?
VH: Oh no –
Other: You’ve started to now.
VH: Started going to a bit now, haven’t we, yeah. Scampton. We’ve been to one or two dos there haven’t we?
Other: Mm.
VH: Where was it that we went the other week?
Other: Woodhall Spa.
VH: Oh yeah we went to Woodhall Spa the other week, at a reunion day.
Other: Scampton last week, and a Lancaster came over.
VH: Yeah [laughs]. The Red Arrows were there, giving a display weren’t they. Lovely.
CB: Well I think, think that’s about it Vic, that’s been very, very interesting.
VH: Thank you very much.
CB: Thank you.
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Title
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Interview with Victor Harding
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Clare Bennett
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-05-20
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Sound
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AHardingV150520
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Pending review
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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
An oral history interview with Leading Aircraftsman Victor Harding.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:38:26 audio recording
149 Squadron
627 Squadron
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
ground crew
Lancaster
military living conditions
Mosquito
Nissen hut
RAF Bardney
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Kirkham
RAF Marham
RAF Woodhall Spa