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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2643/45573/PThickettG2301.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2643/45573/AThickettG231110.1.mp3
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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
Thickett, Gwendoline
Gwen Thickett
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Gwen Thickett (b. 1930). She grew up in Rotherham and recalls the bombing of Sheffield.
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
2023-11-10
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Thickett, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview for the IBCC Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. I’m interviewing Gwendoline Thickett today. Also in the room is Mary Williams. It is the 10th of November 2023 and we’re in Washingborough. Gwendoline, thank you very much for allowing me in your home to have this conversation with you. Could, could you start by telling me a little bit about your very early life and where you were born and a bit about your childhood please.
GT: Right. Well, I was born at 272 Meadowbank Road, Kimberworth, Rotherham.
DE: Brothers and sisters?
GT: A brother. He went to Australia after the war. After he’d done his service.
DE: Ok.
GT: But he’s died out there but we did go out to see him. My husband and I.
DE: Yeah. What did he, what was, what did he do in war?
GT: He was a soldier. He went abroad. I can’t think of —
DE: It doesn’t matter at all. So tell me a bit about, about your childhood. What was it like growing up in Rotherham?
GT: Rotherham. Yes. I had a very, I was in a very happy home. Place. You know, my mum and dad were wonderful. Yes. And for the time did everything. I started this for the children but [pause] the evolution of washing day.
DE: Ok.
GT: And mending shoes. My father always mended the shoes.
DE: What did your father do for a living? What was his job?
GT: Now, he was at Robert Jenkins who made boilers for ships.
DE: Right.
GT: So he couldn’t go in the forces. He wanted to. He wanted to go in the, to be a sailor but no he was in a Reserved Occupation. My childhood. [pause] I really don’t know what to tell you.
DE: Well, where did you go to school?
GT: At Meadowhall. Meadowhall School. Kimberworth Infant School. Then the middle school was Meadowhall School. Then it was at Kimberworth Senior School. And that’s where, I was there when the war started.
DE: Ok. What, what can you remember about that?
GT: Having the, the playing field that was attached to the, at the school. They dug it up to do, to do shelters and we had to practice going in the shelters. You know, a certain way by the walls and yes. We didn’t have a a place. We had a playground but we didn’t have the field.
DE: Right. Ok. Because it was had been turned into shelters. Did you have, did you have a shelter at home as well?
GT: Yes. Now, that’s a story. My father was at Robert Jenkins who made boilers for ships and he bought from the firm a round tank and he dug into the, into the back garden which had a steep incline and he dug and put this boiler in. And that was our shelter. Now at first there was problems because digging into the ground it used to seep water and so he dug a sump in. And every day when Russell and I came home from school our job was to ladle the water out of this sump. And then he’d put an escape hatch because it was built into the back rockery and he made an escape hatch. You know, because we didn’t know what was going to happen.
DE: Sure.
GT: Then this covered apart from this escape this hatch it was covered in in gardening.
DE: Yeah.
GT: And we had chickens. Russell went to the market and bought three little chickens and that started for the whole of the war we had hens and chickens and black [Menorca] rabbits for food.
DE: Right. Yeah.
GT: And mum was a gardener.
DE: Ok.
GT: So we, we were really well off.
DE: Yeah.
GT: In that way. Not, not monetarily but we were alright.
DE: So as well as the rationing you had chickens and eggs and rabbit meat as well. Yeah.
GT: Yes.
DE: How, how did it feel if, you know because these animals would sometimes be pets.
GT: Yes. Well, that was a problem and dad used to get up sometime during the weekend and kill a hen but he hated killing rabbits. He hated it. But we had to do it.
DE: Yeah.
GT: For food. So my mum and dad were providers.
DE: Yes. Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
DE: So what was it like inside the, inside the shelter that your dad built?
GT: It was just round. The only disadvantage was condensation and when the Blitz came to Sheffield and Rotherham was included do you know Steel, Peech and Tozers? The big steel works.
DE: No. I don’t. but I can look it up.
GT: You can look.
DE: Yeah.
GT: Yes. Well what I was saying?
DE: The Blitz and the steelworks.
GT: Oh yes. With dad not going in the forces he had to be an ARP warden and they built, there were brick shelters for people who were travelling and that. Every so often you’d see a brick shelter and the ARP warden operated from there and so he had to work nights. That was the big disadvantage of him working and [pause] oh he what I was going to say? I was going to say something. I’m getting old.
DE: It was about your father being an ARP warden and working nights.
Yes. So he wasn’t at home when we were going in the shelters at night.
DE: Oh, I see.
GT: Because we at one period we were going in the shelters at 6 o’clock at night or a bit later and it was a routine thing. I had to take the medical case in and we all, we had we each had a coat of mum’s to keep us warm and we’d go in the shelter but when the Blitz came in the Sheffield area —
DE: Yeah.
GT: We had a neighbour come in because most of the men were in the steelworks and so one of our neighbours had a baby and she was quite nervous. So we made room for her in our shelter. And it was a routine. We had to get in to a routine of going because sometimes we used to go at 6 o’clock at night and we’d be there until about twelve. But before the Sheffield Blitz we used to see hundreds of aeroplanes going over at once. You know about that and, but and different places you know were targeted.
DE: Yeah.
GT: At nights. And when we were targeted it happened on my dad’s birthday, the 2nd of December and it was horrendous. My brother could hear the shrapnel outside and wanted to go out and fetch it [laughs] but of course mum wouldn’t let him. And what else can I tell you?
DE: So what was it like on that night of the Blitz?
GT: Terrible. I was very nervous. Well, everybody was nervous. We were living on a knife edge at that time.
MW: The ceiling [pause] the ceiling.
GT: Oh yes. Our house wasn’t bombed.
DE: Right.
GT: But the ceiling. I’ve written that out in here. I think I can, if I can read a bit.
DE: Yeah. Of course.
GT: Yeah. When the all clear sounded eventually dad came from the ARP post to see if we were alright. He went in the house to see the damage. Mum wanted to go. He came to tell us to stay where we were and he went in the house, got the hoover out and hoovered all the soot up from the fire because we had coal fires.
DE: Yeah.
GT: There was two big holes in the ceiling in the front bedroom and my bedroom and mum put Lincrusta, not, not at that time but because of the Corporation people because it was a Corporation house they’d got no men to come to mend. It was, I can’t remember how long but it was a long time before they came and mum put layers of Lincrusta wallpaper to cover the holes. And the tiles on the outside of the roof just all concertinaed and you see it was going into winter so it was [pause] Mum and dad had to use all their ingenuity.
DE: Yeah, to try and keep the place warm and dry. Yes.
GT: Yes. Yes. There were two big holes in them. My dad with him being an ARP warden because with him not going in the forces all the men had to go in the ARP.
DE: Yeah.
GT: Or the Home Guard, you know. And he went around the houses above us mending doors because their doors, their outside doors when they were in the shelters. Somehow, I don’t know why but he went around doing doors. On the Sunday he went to Sheffield to see a friend that they had. He walked to Sheffield to see a friend to see if she was alright. It happened that she was. And Sheffield was devastated. It was ablaze. There was three days, three nights of Blitz and it just took everything. And of course, Steel, Peech and Tozers was the big firm in that area. But there was also old works. Our house looked over. It was called Meadowbank Road and the River Don was at the bottom and then it was all the electric works and and everything. But that’s how it was.
DE: Yeah.
GT: In those days.
DE: So after a night of being an ARP warden and you being in the shelter and I guess not able to sleep then then it was back to work in the steelworks for your dad and back to school for you was it?
GT: Yes. Yes. As far as I remember we didn’t stay off school. I think probably mothers were probably glad to be able to clear up and that.
DE: Yeah.
GT: And of course, we all started gardening at school. There was a patch that we had for growing vegetables. [unclear] Now what can I tell you?
DE: There was never any talk of you being evacuated then.
GT: Oh yes but with dad having his management job we weren’t on the list. But poorer people were you know. There were quite a lot. And there were movements at one time [pause] They came. Eventually I got married and Mum Thicket had eight children of her own and there was a big park at their end of the, of Rotherham and it was full of American soldiers that they’d put there which caused a bit of trouble [laughs] But, but on D-Day, after D-Day our soldiers went to Clifton Park as well. Now they were in a frightful state. They brought them up by train the ones that were still alive and this [pause] they were in a dreadful state and even Mum Thicket with her eight children took two soldiers in.
DE: Right.
GT: Because they asked people around to take two, and she took two soldiers in. I mean she told me this afterwards and they were in a dreadful state. But odd things happened at that period.
DE: Yeah.
GT: I think with them being so tragic those are the ones that have stuck in my mind all the time.
DE: Yeah.
GT: It was a dreadful time.
DE: Was this, was this after D Day or was this after Dunkirk?
GT: I can’t tell you that.
DE: It doesn’t matter. It doesn't matter. So, what, what was it like having lots of Americans in the, in the area then?
GT: A problem.
DE: Go on. You have to say more than that.
GT: A problem and some girls got into trouble you know.
DE: Right. Ok.
GT: And yes, but two that I know I knew then eventually married American soldiers. My cousin, she married an American but it didn’t work out when it was after the war and you know things went wrong so she had to come home. But it was a trying time.
DE: Right. Yeah.
GT: For mums.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine.
GT: Yeah. But they brought nylon stockings and that’s when we had nylon. You know there’s always a bright spot somewhere [laughs] And because we hadn’t had nylon at all and, and of course parachute silk was prized if you could get hold of a bit of parachute silk. Yeah. But what else can I tell you?
[pause]
GT: The bombing on the three nights of the Blitz was terrible but there were towns worse. You know. There was Coventry and all over.
DE: So I guess towards the end of the war you would be what? Fourteen? Fifteen? Did you leave school or did you stay on?
GT: Oh no. I left at fourteen.
DE: So what —
GT: Yeah.
DE: What did you do then?
GT: Office work. Eventually I learned shorthand and I was a secretary but it seems when I think about it now and look at my own great grand daughter it’s at the time when I started school. At fourteen. Yeah. We, we did go. It must have been in the early part of the war we did go on holiday.
DE: Ok.
GT: To Bridlington. That was our favourite place so we continued to go. Take our rations with us you know because it was just boarding house accommodation and I always remember something that stuck, has always stuck is that we went by train and my mum gave an elderly couple a packet of tea. And I remember this because of the rations and they were so grateful. But my mum and dad were providers and they’d just before the war started I didn’t know of course Russell and I didn’t know but mum and dad had started buying things like tea and you know all the essentials. Even a box of Cadbury’s milk chocolate fingers.
DE: Wow.
GT: And we used to have a half a finger each when we went to school.
DE: Wow. Ok.
GT: It’s funny the things that you remember.
DE: Yeah.
GT: But no, they were providers and my dad apparently I learned afterwards from mum had said, ‘You know, we’ve got to prepare for everything.’ And when the, before the Blitz of course the planes used to come over every night and because I was a bit nervous mum used to let me stay up. Russell went to his bed but she used to let me stay up and we’d do jigsaw puzzles. I think it was just to keep calm.
DE: Keep your mind occupied. Yes.
GT: And so it was a dreadful time because it was every night there were, these planes were going over every night.
DE: So you spent, you spent a lot of nights in the shelter even if they weren’t dropping bombs. Just to be safe.
GT: Oh yeah. Well, when the sirens went we were supposed to go and we always went in the shelters.
DE: Yeah.
GT: And our neighbour, her husband of course was in a war job so she was on her own with a baby. They’d got a shelter but of course she was a bit nervous so mum invited her into our shelter.
DE: So there was enough. There was enough room for your mum and you and your brother and the next door neighbour and a baby then.
GT: Yes.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Ok. And what —
GT: And I was getting up, given a torch a little torch to read because I was a bit nervous. Russell went to sleep almost straight away but I was a bit nervous so mum used to let me read.
DE: Yeah.
GT: And I read, “The Three Musketeers.” I remember that. It was a nervous time for everybody and you helped where you could. I’m sure there’s loads I could tell you but I can’t just bring them to mind.
DE: No. That’s, that’s fine.
GT: Have you something.
MW: Perhaps you should tell him how you found out that war was declared initially.
GT: What?
MW: Tell him how you found out that war was declared in church.
GT: Oh yes.
MW: Yeah.
GT: Everyone knew that things were going awry but the war was declared on what not. What?
DE: The 3rd of September it was.
GT: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
GT: And we were in church, in Sunday School and the church warden walked down to the vicar which was very unusual because things were formal in those days. It’s not like now. And the vicar announced that war had been declared. So prayers were said and then we all went home and I went to my grandparents who were astounded that I’d got, that I went every Sunday you see and I was only a child and they packed me off home straightaway. And I remember running all the way home and my mum was waiting at the front gate when I got home, you know. That’s how it started.
DE: That’s really interesting because most people tell the story that they heard it on the wireless.
GT: Oh, yes.
DE: Yeah.
GT: Well, we knew it was coming but it was actually declared on Sunday and we were in church.
DE: Yeah.
GT: As normal.
DE: Did you listen to the radio much?
GT: Oh yes.
DE: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. We had Rediffusion. It was just a box and we paid like something like a shilling and nine pence a week for radio. I can’t just remember.
DE: No. It doesn’t matter. No.
GT: No. We listened to the wireless all the time. Yes.
DE: Yeah.
GT: Yes. [pause] I’m trying to think of interesting things.
DE: What about other entertainment? Did you go to the cinema?
GT: No.
DE: No.
GT: Very rarely in my day. Occasionally. It was a, it would be on mum’s birthday or something like that.
DE: Oh, I see.
GT: Yes. But the news reels there was always a news reel and as the war went on of course that’s how we found things out. So [pause] very different times to now. It was a long time ago.
DE: Oh, it is. Yeah. So yeah. I’m just looking at my notes. I think I’ve asked you everything that I had, had planned. It’s if you have any other stories or or if you’ve got any other prompts.
MW: [unclear]
DE: I’ll just pause for a second.
GT: Yeah.
DE: Ok.
[recording paused]
GT: We all went, had to go to up to school with our mums to have our gas masks which was, you know.
DE: Yeah.
GT: Quite an event. And you know that we had a little square box.
DE: Yeah.
GT: With a gas mask in. And then of course they were our fashion. But I hated the gas mask. And then after about two or three years we all had to take our gas masks back and have an extra thing put on.
DE: Oh ok.
GT: For mustard gas or something like that.
DE: But you never had to use them.
GT: No.
DE: No.
GT: Not [pause] we didn’t use them. Only to keep school you know. We had to practice.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Why didn’t you like them?
GT: Well, just didn’t like them. But some children played in them.
DE: Right.
GT: Their mothers let them play with them.
DE: That must have been a sight. Seeing little children running around wearing those.
GT: Yes [laughs]
MW: And there was a time when you looked out of the school window to see Uncle Russell wasn’t there? What was he doing?
GT: What love?
MW: That time you looked out of the window at school and saw Uncle Russell. What was he doing? Cutting down the —
GT: Oh yes. My brother was a bit, three years older than me and he was apprenticed to a joiner. But in the war they had to do whatever the Corporation wanted doing. And I remember being in school and at playtime going out and seeing my brother and he was cutting down the railings around the perimeters and I used to go and while he was cutting them down I used to go and talk to him. Yeah. There’s all little things like that you know. And of course he went in the Army and went out to where did he go? I’ve forgotten. But my husband I met him and married on his demob leave.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
GT: Yes. He’s there. And eventually we went out and saw Russell and his wife because they went off. You could go to Australia for ten pound.
DE: That’s right. Yes. I’ve heard about that.
GT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So that’s what your brother did was it?
GT: Yes.
DE: Wow.
GT: Eventually Stanley and I went out to see them. We sailed out.
DE: That must have been an adventure.
GT: Oh yes. Nearly everything was an adventure because we, you know we were just an ordinary family.
DE: So how did you meet your husband then?
GT: Dancing.
DE: Ok.
GT: And he was on his demob leave.
DE: Right.
GT: And I met him at a dance class because I used to go to a ballroom dancing class and he came with his friend because his mum had told him to go out on his demob leave. I’ve forgotten how long that was. On his demob leave they were just going out to the pictures and they cycled. He and Ron cycled all over the country just to, just to keep going. But he went back to the firm. Yes. He’d been working just before he went in the forces and the firm took him back. Eventually he moved from there and went to the Halifax Building Society. But he, can you remember anything else, Mary?
MW: Not really. No.
DE: So what’s so you met you met him at a dance. What sort of dancing was it?
GT: Ballroom dancing.
DE: Ballroom dancing.
GT: That was the thing to do. That was the thing to do. I’d been ballroom dancing because my mum thought I wasn’t going out enough. So she encouraged me to go to Harry Buchanan’s dancing. It was a thing to do then.
DE: Ok. Yeah.
GT: It was ballroom dancing. And so Stanley and I used to go to the class on a Thursday night and go to the [Baths] Hall. They covered the swimming pool in Rotherham. We had a lovely swimming pool in Rotherham and they covered it in the winter and made it into a ballroom.
DE: I see. Ok.
GT: We went. We went dancing on Saturday nights after going to see Rotherham United Football. He introduced me to football [laughs] and that was just the life we led. We used to walk home so it would take us longer. I shall think of all kinds of things when you’ve gone.
DE: That’s what always happens. I can pause it again.
[recording paused]
DE: Yeah.
GT: We all had an identity card. I think there’s one around somewhere. But rationing was, food was very bad. Getting hold of food. And the, you just had your rations and mothers made a spread.
DE: What about coal? Was that rationed as well?
GT: I think it was because we had coalmen, you know come with lorries. Bags of coal. In those days. Yeah. Yes, I think it was. There would be some kind of restrict.
DE: Yeah. But you had, you said your family you dug out the garden and planted things.
GT: Oh yes.
DE: What did you grow? What was, what was the, “Dig for Victory.”
GT: Vegetables. All vegetables. But if we hadn’t you know it would have been awful not supplementing the [pause] We, you know about ration books? Yes.
DE: Yeah.
GT: Food was a big problem.
DE: Were you, were you hungry very often then?
GT: No. I can’t say I was because mum was very into it if you know. She, she made things that you’d just, just to keep hunger at bay.
DE: Yeah.
GT: No. No. I had a very nice home with my mum and dad and they were providers and so anything. Dad used to come home with a chicken. But I’m not sure it was [laughs] you know. He’d got it from a friend.
DE: Say no more. Ok. Yes.
GT: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
GT: There was quite a lot of that around.
DE: Yeah. Ok.
GT: But it kept us going.
DE: Yeah.
GT: And of course, we had our own chickens and rabbits. Yeah.
DE: Ok. I’ll press pause again.
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 Gwendoline Thickett
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-11-10
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:45:38 Audio Recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AThickettG231110, PThickettG2301
Description
An account of the resource
Gwendoline Thickett grew up in Rotherham and was a young girl at school when the Second World War began. She was in Sunday School at her local church when the news of the declaration of war was announced. Her parents had already begun to prepare for possible eventualities by storing essentials in readiness. Gwendoline’s brother was an apprentice joiner until he joined the Army. She recalls her father building a shelter from a water tank, the bombing of Sheffield and the American soldiers who came to the area.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Sheffield
England--Rotherham
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2642/45572/PArnettRJ2301.1.jpg
46bd3354d13841af48e8ad4fe0d1818b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2642/45572/AArnettRJ231109.2.mp3
b9c72aad268cf42c50b1cba3405a5fcc
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
Arnett, Rex John
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Rex Arnett (b. 1924, 212651 Royal Canadian Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 223 Squadron from RAF Oulton. His crew was shot down 20/21 February 1945.<br /><br />
<p>Rex grew up in Toronto, Canada, and details his experience in 223 Squadron. He shares his life before training, including the tale of how he met his wife by asking her for a pen. Rex joined the Canadian Air Force in 1942 at age 18 and began training as a wireless operator on the Mosquitos. During training, he undertook a commando course and attended the bombing and gunnery school. He tells of his experience training in the Bahamas on the Liberator Aircraft and his subsequent training in the UK on the Mitchell Bomber. Rex recalls his journey to England and how he was initially unable to join his Squadron, due to eating chocolate bars, and his most memorable flying operations, including his first in July 1944. Following the conclusion of the War, Rex describes his journey home on Christmas Day 1945 and his life after the war. In 1947 he married his wife and worked for an electrical company.</p>
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff <span>with additional contribution by <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/admin/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Cara+Walmsley">Cara Walmsley.</a></span><br /><br /><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW46148947 BCX0">Additional information on his crew </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW46148947 BCX0">is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/227975/">IBCC Losses Database.</a></span>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-11-09
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Arnett, RJ
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: If I could just do a little bit of an introduction and then, then we’ll, then we’ll get started and if, if the time runs out we’ll have to set up another interview very quickly. Another zoom call. Ok. So, this is Dan Ellin for the IBCC Digital Archive. I’m recording an interview with Rex Arnett. He’s in Canada, I’m in the UK and it’s the 9th of November 2023. So, Rex thank you very much for agreeing to, to try to do this. Could you start by telling me a little bit about your early life please?
RA: My early life. Well, I was born in Toronto in 1924. I went to school at St Bridget’s in the East End of Toronto and De La Salle High School which was in downtown Toronto. I wasn’t a great student but —
[recording in progress voiceover]
RA: What was that?
DE: Sorry just carry on. Go ahead Rex.
RA: So, and I did the usual things. Played hockey, baseball and swimming in the summer. You know. Just the usual things. And then when the war came along I was still too young to join up but when I turned eighteen in ’42 I joined the Air Force in Toronto and took various courses in, in Calgary. I got the Wireless School and there was, they wanted to train some fellas for wireless navigators on Mosquitoes, the twin engine bomber and so I was part of that course and, but they cancelled half of it. Some of them went on to that course and some of us went on to Bombing and Gunnery School. So I ended up doing mostly wireless in my crew. We, after I graduated I was sent to an OTU in Nassau in the Bahamas and we crewed up there. It was a kind of a loosey-goosey way of selecting a crew [laughs] You just kind of wandered around in this big room and there was pilots and navigators and gunners and wireless and we kind of chatted. Anyway, I ended up with a crew and I stayed with them right through the war. We went over to England in, to join a squadron after we trained in Nassau. We, we trained on twin engine Mitchells and then graduated to four engine Liberators and, and then in June we went overseas. I got sick on the boat because I was eating a lot of chocolate bars but they thought I had appendicitis so they sent me to a hospital in Glasgow, Hairmyres Hospital and I was the only one there so they treated me like a king. This huge room, it was, must have been fifty beds in it but then the D-Day landing wounded soldiers started to come in and of course I lost my popularity [laughs] So anyway, I, I rejoined the squadron and we started operating in, I think it was July of ’44 and we did, oh the first trip we did was spotting these launching pads for the V-1s and V-2s but that didn’t last long. They scrubbed that and we started doing these jamming exercises jamming the German’s radar for their night fighters and, and their anti-aircraft guns, you know. Sometimes we’d fly on target and jam their equipment. Other nights we did diversionary raids dropping Window. We’d fly out with the main bomber stream and then we’d cut away from them and head for what might be an obvious target and we’d drop this tinsel paper and it made a blip on the German’s radar like a bomber. So theoretically they’d send their night fighters up to intercept us and the mainstream bomber stream would get in to the target relatively night fighter free. So there we are. I don’t know what else to tell you. And I did, I flew twenty missions with various, with my crew and then on the night of February the 21st I’d been flying on the 18th and I had a touch of bronchitis so [pause] are you listening?
DE: Yeah. Sorry, I’m just —
RA: So when we landed I, I was spitting up blood. So they grounded me and the crew was on a mission the following night so another fella took my place and they were shot down and you have their name on your plaque at your institution there. So, so I was lucky I survived and I I flew a couple of more missions with, he was an English lord. Lord Briscoe was his name and I think he became the manager of Heathrow Airport after the war but you could check that you know and just to see if that story is true but but he had some sort of title. He was called Lord Briscoe. He wasn’t a bad guy [laughs] So he was the last. It was his crew I was in just for a couple of trips and the war ended and I went home eventually and here I am.
DE: Ok. So that’s, that’s smashing. So I’d like to go back and ask you a few other questions.
RA: What’s that?
SK: He has a few more questions. He wants to ask you some more questions.
RA: Ok.
DE: Yeah. I just I just wondered before, before we do that very quickly could you tell me what your, how your journey was back home and what you did afterwards?
SK: He wants to know about your journey back home and what you did afterwards.
RA: Oh, my journey back home. Ok. Well, I was held on an OTU down in Torquay from May ‘til, ‘til December of ’45 and, and it was a nice spot and I just cycled around the countryside and I met a friend that I’d gone to school with and we chummed around. He was an ex, he was going through for a brother, a religious order but then he was also a boxer and, and so I challenged him to a bout and it was a bad decision because I never laid a glove on him [laughs] He was pretty good. So then about December the 23rd I was assigned to, I think it was the Queen Elizabeth I came home on and I was on the boat for Christmas Day 1945. I still have a copy of a menu. It was good. And I arrived in Toronto about oh I guess the 28th of December, somewhere in there of 1945 and my dad and my stepmom met me. And there was this girl that I’d been writing to she was there and I was really surprised to see her but glad and and we sort of got going together and eventually I, we were married in 1947 and we had a couple of boys. And, and oh I worked for a small electrical company. We manufactured sports lighting and high voltage electrical equipment. You know, high voltage switches and stuff like that and so my job was travelling around Ontario calling on utilities and trying to sell them our street lighting and our electrical high voltage equipment. So it was a good job. It was a nice part of Ontario down towards Belleville. I don’t know if you know that. You look at a map someday and you’ll see it. It’s a nice area. It’s called the Quinte area and it’s, it’s changed a lot of course with you know building and that but it was quite quaint. And then I retired and I’m still very active. I’m still driving my car and playing a bit of golf and yeah I have some good friends which makes life interesting. So I’ve, I’ve covered a lot of territory in a few words.
DE: Oh yeah. Yeah. I’m just wondering if you could go into a little bit more detail about, about your training. What aircraft were you on for your training?
RA: What was that?
SK: Well, can you give a little bit more detail about your training? What aircraft you were on for your training.
RA: Oh. Training. Well, trained in, in Calgary at the Wireless School and took that navigation course but as I say they kind of split that group up. I went from, and we did various things at Calgary. We took a commando course to see if we were tough I guess. You know, climbing cliffs and ropes and, and I graduated and went to Jarvis Bombing and Gunnery School and we did, oh they had drogues and you’d get, they had a firing machine guns trying to hit the drogue. That was the gunnery part of the course which I never used after that. I did strictly wireless work in the crew. From there —
SK: What about the Bahamas?
RA: Eh?
SK: The Bahamas. The Bahamas.
RA: Oh yeah. I was trained of course. I probably got a little ahead of myself. I went from the OTU in the Bahamas after I graduated was where we trained on the Mitchell bomber and then the, the Liberator. We did what we called, our graduating exercise was called a Kingsley exercise and the exercise was it, we had to intercept a frigate which was a small warship out of Bermuda and they would give us a target to bomb. Like we’d drop a depth charge and, and they’d, it was kind of a navigation exercise, a wireless exercise and, and different crews would intercept this and then they’d, they’d give us a square search around the area and then that was part of the exercise and then we’d go back to Nassau. The day we took the exercise the, there was a crew made up of the gunnery leader, the navigation leader and they had reported to the, the frigate and the frigate gave them a square search but they never heard from them after that. And, and it turned out eventually that they’d ditched and we never did find the crew. We, we did a couple of searches for them but it was, it was a real tragedy because they were, the crew was made up of all the different leaders of the different groups. So, the theory was that the sea was quite calm that day and they figured they might have been doing low flying and it’s hard to judge your height on a calm sea and they figured they maybe dipped a wing and the aircraft went in to the drink as they say. So, and then so well we spent about four months there training and then left for overseas to 223 Squadron and did what we did there as I’ve explained earlier. So is there anything else I can think of?
DE: Well, a couple of things. One, what did it feel like when you realised that you were searching for this other crew during training in the Bahamas?
RA: What was that?
SK: What did it feel like when you were searching for this other crew in the Bahamas?
RA: Well, it’s hard to say. You are hopeful that you’ll find something and it’s like I guess like any when you’re hoping that you’ll find them and you’re trying to spot debris and stuff like that in the ocean. But, and the feeling is I’m just a little hard to describe it but you’re hoping you’re going to find them and they are going to be ok. But you kind of get I think eventually used to the fact that people are going to disappear or get killed so, and emotionally I think you just try to contain your emotions and things like that. So, so we never did find anybody and neither did the other search crews. So [pause] and so and other members of my crew like our navigator was a close friend of the navigation leader so he was, you know quite upset about the fact that he had disappeared. You know, I think his name was [pause] I’m trying to think of his name but I can’t. Anyway, they called him, he was quite tall, I just forget, he had a nickname [laughs] I know it was Daddy Long Legs or something like that. But so, so some of the guys were more upset of course then I was because I didn’t know them personally.
DE: So then, then can you remember the name of the ship that you crossed over to the UK on?
RA: What’s that?
SK: Do you remember the name of the ship that you crossed over to the UK on?
RA: Yes. It was called the Nieuw Amsterdam. It was a regular cruiser ship and was called the Nieuw Amsterdam. And I didn’t really appreciate the food. As I was saying I was eating these Rosebud chocolate bar, chocolates and it upset my stomach and they thought I had appendicitis so they put me down in the hold. And, and then we got to a place, I think it was Gourock where we disembarked in Scotland and they sent, they said, ‘Pick up your kit bag.’ So I did and I’m lugging this kit bag and all of a sudden they put me on a stretcher, you know. So I’m, I’m good enough to carry my kit bag but they put me on a stretcher and take me off the boat and when they were going up the quayside it was kind of steps from the, up the, they kind of slipped and I thought I was going to end up in the bay. But I didn’t and so then we went on to Hairmyres Hospital which was a convalescent hospital during peacetime and as I mentioned before I was the only one there so I got the best of attention. And then the, one morning they said, ‘The doctor wants to see you so take your clothes off and go in this room.’ So I went in and this beautiful woman came in and she said, ‘Get yourself undressed.’ I said, ‘I’ll wait for the doctor if you don’t mind.’ She said, ‘I’m the doctor.’ So [laughs] so anyway [laughs] anyway they checked me out and it turned out I was ok. I didn’t have appendicitis so they discharged me from the hospital and I caught a train and ended up with our squadron. Reported in and, and started doing what we did.
DE: Had, had your crew started ops without you?
RA: Hmmn?
SK: Did your crew start ops without you?
RA: No. No. They did some training exercises and there was a flight lieutenant had taken my spot as the wireless operator but he only flew one trip. It was a kind of a training exercise and then I arrived and so I was back with my crew. But a fella wrote a book, it’s called, “Liberator,” 223 I think, squadron and he lists all the different crew members that were on 223 Squadron and and in the initial listing he shows this flight lieutenant as the wireless operator in my crew. But it didn’t happen but it’s always been listed that way. It should have been me. So anyway, anything else?
DE: What was, what was the Liberator like to fly in?
SK: What was the Liberator like to fly in?
RA: It was a lousy aircraft. A lot of trouble, you know. The, the yeah always engine failure a lot. They were old American aircraft and we were using them but they were equipped with this special equipment. The flight deck was a death trap. There was no way out. You had to, if something happened and you had to evacuate the airplane you had to go down through the bomb bay doors. That was for people on the flight deck. The back of the plane where the two beam gunners and the special operators were there was a hatch and you could jump out and get out. The night they were attacked the story I get was that the fellas on the flight deck were all killed. There was six of them and, and the one beam gunner he was a fella that were never put his harness on. He was warned, you know he should put it on and a friend of mine who was the other beam gunner said, ‘The night we were attacked the last I saw of him he was looking for his harness and unfortunately it cost him his life,’ because my friend, his name was Maxwell he was the other beam gunner he said if he’d just had his harness on because they had chest packs that you could hook on to his harness and you could maybe jump together if he couldn’t find his parachute. So he said he couldn’t even do that because he didn’t have his harness on. So he lost his life. He was found sitting in a field. They thought he was still alive but the back of his head was gone so he must have jumped about, probably the aircraft was practically on the ground, at least parts of it. So he jumped too late. So that was a tragedy and I was pretty close to the guys that got killed. I didn’t know the fellow that took my place. I had never met him so, but the rest of the crew we were pretty close to, you know, we got along good. So there’s as they say there’s a plaque at your place there with their names on them and they were shot down on February the 21st and I think it was they came, they crashed down near a village called Dornheim in the southern part of Germany. There was some correspondence back and forth with my navigator who, he got out because his position in the aircraft was in the, the front wheel compartment so he could kick the wheel door open and bale out that way. So he got out but as I say the people on the, like the mid-upper gunner, the two pilots and the flight engineer didn’t have a chance. And I wouldn’t have had a chance either if I’d have been on the flight. So thank God I was, I was sick. I don’t know what else to say about that.
DE: How long —
RA: Oh, and then after, after that I, my, our pilot’s brother come down to visit and I got to know him and I did a couple of, and I was grounded for a few weeks so they were doing transport stuff on the Dakota. I think they were twin engine Dakotas, the transport planes and they were flying equipment over to the airports that were being established in Europe as the armies advanced, you know. So I flew over to Brussels a couple of times with them just as a passenger. And so I spent time on the squadron for a while trying to recuperate and then I started flying again as I mentioned with Mr Briscoe, or [pause] So anything else?
DE: No. I mean, just what could you, could you go through a little bit what was it like flying in operations? Could you talk me through the day?
SK: What was it like flying in operations? Can you tell him? Like walk him through a day?
RA: What was it like? Well, it was uncomfortable. We had heated suits and some nights they were working. Some nights they didn’t work and it was [laughs] I remember one night I thought, ‘God if I ever get out of this aeroplane I’ll never complain again.’ I was freezing. And of course, then we landed and we had a cigarette and I started complaining right away [laughs] But it was [pause] I operated, my main job was making sure, well they sent, it was always a coded message sent at different intervals during that time of the flight and, and if you, there was and most of the time we were diverted to another airport because of weather conditions or night fighters may be in the area of your, of your landing field. So my main job was to make sure I got that diversion because I didn’t want to land back. One night we did a, it was a flight to Berlin. The raid was in the Berlin area and it was about a six hour flight. It was December the 6th as I recall and, and we started to have engine trouble and as we were coming back we were running low on fuel and we were diverted to Manston. That’s I think somewhere near London. It was an emergency airport and we, we kind of crash landed in to there and the next morning we went to check the aircraft and one of the mechanics said, ‘Guys, you guys were lucky.’ He said, ‘You had about two minutes worth of fuel left or you would have ditched in the Channel.’ So that was a kind of a hairy experience. But generally speaking oh and I had a piece of radar that I operated that showed if there was an aircraft approaching our aircraft you know. Maybe a German night fighter. But some nights it wasn’t working, you know. So it was that type of equipment. It was all kind of not so good as I say. The Liberators were, were old and, and a lot of trouble. We did a lot of what they called half ops. We’d get going, we’d get over Europe and maybe the flame damper on the plane would, would break and you could see a flame coming out of the back of you so you had to come back and so you didn’t get any credit for that although you could have been killed. What else? Oh, generally speaking the flights were just what they are. We were, everybody is pretty calm. You don’t hear much chit chat on the, other than I would report if there was a diversion to the pilot. Let him know. I could also get a fix for the navigator if he got, if his Gee box was jammed or something and he needed some help. I could get a fix from two transmitters. One, I think one was in Scotland and one was in the southern part of England so I could get a fix from just where we were and I could give that to the navigator. I think I only used it once so our navigator was a pretty sharp guy. His [pause] him and his wife were cited by the Queen for their work in education in England after the war. His name was Johnson. Yeah. Ron Johnson. A great guy. He became a headmaster at a school after the war. So, have I given you anything more interesting?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. So, were you, were you a mixed crew then?
SK: Were you a mixed crew?
RA: Oh, a mixed crew. Yeah. There was. Mostly it was. Our flight engineer was English. He was from England. He was in the RAF. Our navigator was in the RAF. The second pilot, he was a sergeant from, he was from Scotland. The beam gunner was a Canadian. The wireless operator was me, a Canadian. Our first pilot was from, he was a Canadian. He was from Calgary. So it was a mixed crew. Yeah. English and Canadian. We had a ball team on our squadron and we had enough guys to play the American 8th Air Force. They invited us for a game. Anyway, we had a great pitcher. He was really good. He used to play in what we called the Beaches League in Toronto. And so we went over to their airfield for, for the game and then we had dinner after in their Mess Hall and what a difference between their Mess Hall and ours [laughs] They had all kinds of nice food and stuff and ours was kind of, you know curried stuff. Food wasn’t great in the RAF. So we played a couple of games with them and we won one, they won one, and there was, our centre fielder was a fella named Wing Commander Burnell. He was a wing commander but he was a Canadian who had gone over to England to play hockey prior to the war. When the war came along he joined the RAF and so, but he was a good head and everybody got along good with him. You could kind of kid him and he didn’t stand on ceremony much like some guys did. So we had a, so we did little things like that between operational trips and so, and it was in a nice area of England. It was near Aylsham or, I don’t know if you know that area. It was just off the Wash in Norfolk and they now have a museum at Blickling Hall which is apparently where Anne Boleyn was born. It’s a national treasure this and they have a museum there which has a lot of information about our squadron and there’s a picture of our crew in this, in this museum. So if you’re in Blickling Hall [laughs] near Aylsham, take a look.
DE: Yeah. I’ve, I’ve not been. I was in Norfolk last, last summer but I’ve not been for a while. The, the recording is saying that we’ve got about seven minutes left. Is it ok if I send another link? Can we do another little bit after this time runs out?
SK: So, there’s seven minutes left on this recording.
RA: Yes.
SK: But we can start again with a new recording if you have time?
[recording stopped - voiceover]
RA: Start again?
SK: No. No. Just continue.
RA: Oh yeah.
SK: Yeah. Yeah. Ok.
RA: Yeah. Ok.
SK: Yeah.
RA: He wants to continue.
SK: Yeah. Like this recording time will run out and then we just have to renew it.
RA: Ok.
SK: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. I’ll, I’ll wait until it does end and then I’ll send another link.
SK: Ok.
DE: And then we can.
SK: So we have about five more minutes on this recording.
RA: Yes.
SK: And then we’ll just pause and start again. More. More recording.
RA: Ok.
SK: Yeah. Ok.
RA: Ok.
DE: Ok. So, what else, what else did you do in England during your, your periods of leave?
RA: What else did I do?
SK: In England during your periods of leave.
RA: Oh. Well, I went on leave. I would visit our navigator’s home down in the, I think they lived in Hounslow which is just outside of London. It’s kind of a suburb. I’d visit there. Went to Glasgow and Edinburgh on leave so, and went, got to know in Scotland there was a group called the Old Contemptibles and they had little private beer halls I guess. They’d meet and so if you had a friend you could get in and enjoy a beer with the Old Contemptibles. Visited different places. After the war ended a chum of mine and I, we, we did a week just hiking around the countryside and some nights we’d live in a barn and then we’d go to the little pubs and, and you know we just generally hung around. I liked the, the countryside around where the squadron was and so on Sundays I’d often take a walk through the, the, there was a kind of a forest surrounding the airport so it was, it was quite a nice spot to be. There was some farmers in the area and the odd time they’d invite some of our, the aircrew guys for dinner and so that was always kind of nice. But and then we’d spend, we’d go down to Aylsham which was about a mile from the airport and there was a pub there and a fish and chip store so we’d have fish and chips and go to the pub. I remember one day we were walking in and this V-1, I could see this V-1 coming across a field. It was farmland all around us and it had a, you could hear the engine. It was a kind of a rough engine and it was flying at about three hundred feet and then all of a sudden the engine stopped and it took a dip down and exploded in the field. That was a V-1. I think they abandoned those eventually and the V-2 was more of a rocket but the V-1 was like a small aircraft with probably an explosive charge in the nose of it. So, so anyway we just generally hung around. Played a bit of cards. Tried to win some money. Never did [laughs] And so [pause] anything? I can’t think of anything else.
SK: How about the Ovaltine story?
RA: Yeah.
SK: The Ovaltine story.
RA: Eh?
SK: The Ovaltine story.
RA: Oh yeah. I remember. When we first, just after we arrived at the squadron we decided to go in to Norwich to see what the town was like. So we put on our dress uniforms myself and our rear gunner and the beam gunner and off we went. We wondered around town and we saw this little tea shop so we thought we’d go in and have a cup of tea or something. So we went in and my two buddies they ordered coffee and I said, ‘You know, I don’t want a coffee. I’d like, I think I’d like an Ovaltine.’ And the waitress said, ‘Ovaltine?’ She said, ‘Listen, don’t you realise there’s a war going on and we can’t get that stuff.’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘No. I’m sorry I didn’t realise that. I’ll have a cup of tea.’ [laughs] That’s quite a little story.
DE: Yeah.
RA: But, and then we would go into Norwich occasionally and have dinner. I remember going to this one restaurant. It was upstairs on the main street as I recall and they had a thing called wiener schnitzel on the menu and I thought that was a hot dog because a wiener was an expression we used for hot dogs in Canada. You know you’d get a wiener in. So I ordered it and, and they bring it and I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I ordered wiener schnitzel.’ I said, ‘This looks likes a piece of veal.’ She said, ‘Well, that’s a wiener schnitzel.’ I don’t know why I remember that.
DE: Great.
RA: So I knew what a wiener schnitzel was after that. We did little things like that most of the time you know.
DE: Ok. So we’ve only got a minute and a half left so I think we’ll, I’ll not ask you another question but what I’ll try and do is is send another, another link through and then we’ll have a few more questions the other, in part two if that’s ok.
SK: Ok. So he’ll, we’ll stop here and we’ll do part two in a few minutes.
RA: Ok.
DE: Ok so I’ll say cheerio for now and hopefully.
RA: Ok.
DE: If the internet is kind I’ll see you again in a few minutes.
SK: Ok. Thank you.
DE: Right. Cheers for now then.
SK: He says cheers for now.
RA: Yeah. Cheerio.
[recording paused]
SK: Now you have to record from my end so let me just do that.
DE: Okey dokey. I’ve hit go as well.
SK: Ok. One second. Ok. I am recording.
DE: Thanks Steve.
SK: Ok.
DE: Thank you. Well, hello again. So, we’ve got another forty minutes. Hopefully that, that will be enough. So thanks for, thanks for coming back for more.
SK: He says thanks for coming back for more.
RA: Oh. You’re welcome, Dan.
DE: It’s great to talk to you. Thank you.
RA: I hope it’s interesting.
DE: Oh definitely. Yes. Yeah. I just wish that I was there in person rather than having to talk like this.
SK: He wishes it were in person. It would be, rather than talking over the screen.
RA: Oh yeah. Well, that’s too bad. I could fly over if you like [laughs] I often thought I’d like to visit the old squadron site you know but it hasn’t happened yet and I’d better do it soon because I’m getting pretty old.
DE: Yeah. Well, I mean if they —
RA: Your, your place is in Lincoln, eh?
DE: That’s right. Yes.
RA: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
RA: Is there any chance of getting a picture of the plaque with my crew’s name on it?
DE: Yes, of course. Yeah. I can do that. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll just make a note. I will. I will sort that out for you.
RA: Yeah. So if you need any, the night they were shot down was February the 21st.
DE: Yeah. No, I can —
RA: And I think, and I know their names.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. No. That’s fine. I can sort that out for you.
RA: Ok.
DE: I’ll email it to you Steve. Yeah.
SK: Ok. Thank you. He’ll send it to me and then I’ll print it for you.
RA: Ok. Thank you.
DE: That’s ok.
RA: Thanks Dan.
DE: I’m going there Tuesday next week so I’ll get that sorted for you.
RA: Ok.
DE: So before the, before we had to stop and start again you were talking about what you did and playing, playing the Americans and the food and things.
RA: What was that?
SK: So you, just before we left you were telling him about some of the things you did on leave. Playing the Americans, then going for fish and chips and that.
RA: Oh yeah.
DE: Did, did you —
RA: Well, the main spot we did for entertainment was down in Aylsham which was about a mile from where we were and on the weekends they’d have a dance for the members of the forces and it was in the Town Hall and it was always kind of a lot of fun. You could have a few beers and you met the odd person. I never got involved really with any women [laughs] while I was there so I wasn’t all that interesting but I had a lot of good friends and we’d chum around and we’d play cards and have a dance and of course the fish and chip store was a popular spot. We’d get a, you know it was all wrapped in newspapers and you could walk around the street kind of eating your fish and chips and I, I think the, there’s the pub. I have some pictures of Aylsham but the pub is still there. It was called the black something. It was a nice spot and the people there were quite friendly, you know. They didn’t seem to resent the, the armed forces guys. It was mostly Air Force personnel from our squadron that visited there anyway because we were pretty close by. So, so that was where we spent some of our off time. In Aylsham. It was a nice little spot.
DE: Did you, did you spend most of the time with your crew or did you associate with the ground personnel at all?
RA: I spent most time with members of my crew. The guys we knew. Didn’t get to know the ground crew personnel that well or the [pause] got to know some of them just sort of a greeting type of situation. ‘Oh, how are you?’ Like the people that worked in the Mess Hall and and complained to them about the food. Didn’t do any good but it kind of helped relieve the, the taste or whatever you want to call it. You felt you were trying to accomplish something and maybe it waited for better but oh and the I remember one of the meals was called the, it was a post-flight and a pre-flight meal and it consisted of a fried egg and some bacon and the egg was as greasy as can be. I can remember our pilot putting jam on it to kind of [laughs] to kind of break the taste up and they used to refer to that as the last supper which was, which was kind of, you know a disturbing [laughs] but and we would chit chat about what we were going to do. And then after the flight we landed. We’d all have a cigarette you know. We’d stand around the aircraft and discuss how things went. And most nights it was sort of quiet. I can remember one night I don’t know why I’d left my position and I was at the beam window with the beam gunner and this aircraft came right under ours and I thought should I say something or just let him go. He can go his way we’ll go our way. Sometimes if you engaged them it becomes deadly so it might have been one of our own aircraft. It was hard to tell at night. But he was so close I could see him in the cockpit. You know it was lit. So [pause] so where am I now?
DE: Oh no. That’s a great story. I’ve, I’ve talked to air gunners who have said they saw night fighters and didn’t open fire because they didn’t want to give their position away.
RA: Eh?
SK: So he talked to air gunners who saw night fighters but didn’t want to engage to give away their position.
RA: Oh, I think —
SK: Yeah.
RA: That probably happened quite a bit you know. You know don’t, don’t disturb anything and probably the guy that you were observing was feeling the same way. So let’s, let’s just get out of here alive. Yeah. Oh, I’m sure it happened quite a bit.
DE: Yeah.
RA: You didn’t start shooting at a guy unless he kind of looked threatening I think. Probably something like that.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. You talked about standing around and having a cigarette after an operation. Did you have any superstitions or rituals that you did before an operation?
RA: Superstitions.
RA: Ahum?
SK: Or rituals eh? Or rituals like what, like before —
RA: No. Not really. We were a pretty conservative crew I think. We didn’t have a lot of that. Some of the guys smoked. Some of them didn’t. I liked, I had a little pack of, they were called wild woodbines. They came five to a pack. It was in a paper package and I’d keep it in my uniform. We were equipped with sidearms. You know, a pistol but I never thought that was a good idea. I thought I’d take chocolate bars and cigarettes and if I get shot down I’ll be able to make friends I hoped because I didn’t think you’d get very far with a six shooter. So that was my thinking.
DE: Ok.
RA: Be friendly [laughs] but fortunately I didn’t have to exercise that but I imagine when our crew was shot down they, you know they probably [pause], I remember my, the beam gunner his name was Maxwell. He said, I met him after the war and he told me a little bit about what happened. He said he was interviewed and the interviewer said, ‘Listen we’ve, we’ve got most of the information from Arnett but we just wanted to confirm things.’ And he said the reason the, he said, ‘I knew they were lying because I had —’ he had borrowed my heated suit and it had my name on it and they found that and they, so they used that as an excuse to try and get information out of my friend Brian Maxwell. And he said, ‘Well, if Arnett’s told you everything. I don’t have much to add.’ [laughs] Of course, I wasn’t even there but they found this heated suit with my name and so [pause] So I remember that. Him telling me that. And they were interviewed and the, the allied forces were forcing the Germans back and they, so the prisoners were on marches all the time heading back maybe towards Germany and our navigator kept a sort of a diary on a cigarette packet. He wrote little notes down to himself and he wrote a book after the war describing his experience which was, well February and the war ended in May so it wasn’t too long but he said it was quite a harrowing experience. The Germans weren’t the nicest guys in the world so that’s, but I never heard from the rest of the crew after that. I kept in touch with our navigator. He, we chatted back and forth on the phone over the years and then he died a couple of years ago and so, and so I think I’m the only member maybe of the squadron that’s still alive. I’m certainly the only member of the crew. I know that for sure.
DE: Yeah. I’m just looking. I’ve got, I’ve got some notes. So you’ve talked a bit about fighters. Did you experience flak?
SK: Did you experience any flak?
RA: Yes. We had a little bit of flak. In fact, the night we came back from the German, the Berlin raid there was some flak that we were hit with but whether it damaged one of the engines or not I don’t know what caused it but when we landed of course we, as I mentioned before the, the mechanic said, ‘You guys were lucky. You had about a teaspoon full of petrol left.’ Or a couple of minutes of flying time. He said, ‘You were lucky you didn’t end up in the Channel.’ So, well, what was, I don’t know what else to say.
DE: I’ve got another couple of questions so one you didn’t go on that, that operation because you had been grounded because you were ill.
RA: Yeah.
DE: How did, how did that happen? Was that the medical officer that stopped you flying or —?
SK: How did that happen? Was it the medical officer that stopped you from flying?
RA: Yeah. It was. It was the station doctor. I wasn’t even going to report it. I was going to stay on and fly the night because we were on the Battle Order in a couple of nights hence. But my crew members said, ‘You’re crazy, you know. It might be something serious, you know.’ So I reported to the doctor about for this. There was, there was always a doctor on the squadron. So he, he said, well I think what happened —
[pause]
SK: Sorry. One second.
RA: The doctor said, ‘I think what happened,’ he said, ‘You’re flying at that altitude with a cough that expanded your lungs and it pops under the blood vessels and that’s what’s causing the bleeding. But — ’ he said, ‘I’m going to ground you and I’m sending you up to Ely—’ where there was a hospital in Ely, ‘And get some x-rays.’ So that’s what happened and consequently it saved my life really. The [pause] and, and so I, I spent a couple of weeks kind of recuperating and as I mentioned before my pilot’s brother had come down to visit and get his brother’s affects you know and so I got to know him and his co-pilot and they invited me to go over. They were going to a station in Wales to pick up some fighter pilot equipment and they were going to fly it over to Brussels and they also had a kit bag full of cigarettes that they were going to sell on the Black Market. And they left them with a guy in Brussels in the hotel and then I went out. We had dinner and then we were going to fly back to England. So anyway, and the guy that was selling the cigarettes they went back to see how things were and they found him all tied up in his room and the cigarettes were gone. So that didn’t work out too good.
DE: That’s a good adventure. Yeah.
RA: Eh?
SK: He said that’s a good adventure.
DE: I’m just, I’ve got a couple of other questions. What was, what was the living accommodation like on the —?
RA: The accommodation.
DE: Yeah.
RA: Well, it was a Quonset hut and there was about oh I’d say six of us in the hut. There was a private room as you came in at one end and a fella named Richard [Tong] he was a wireless op, he was from Vancouver, a little Chinese guy and he, he grabbed the room. So he had his room to himself but the rest of us were in sort of a common area and we just had a cot and a little box for our personal stuff and pictures of our girlfriends if you had one. That type of thing. And there was a coal burning, a little pot-bellied stove in the middle and that provided the heat. And there were all these Quonset huts around the perimeter of the airfield and aircrew personnel lived in them and, and the ground crews were in some sections. The washrooms were kind of not so good, you know. They were kind of open sided and cold so you didn’t spend a lot of time in the them. And there was the shower room as you can, you used to walk from our place up to the Mess Hall and on the way there was a shower room where you could go and have a shower but it was always cold water and and not very comfortable. At least you got clean and the Mess Hall was ok and the food I complained about it but it wasn’t bad. The worst thing was the brussel sprouts. They were just, oh God. They were big and you know kind of bitter is the word. I just hated them and I still hate them. But they used a lot of curry in the food and if they fried something it was as greasy as you could, it’s a wonder we didn’t all have ulcers. So, I don’t know. So that’s, what else was there?
SK: I think that’s what you told me.
RA: Yeah. Anything else.
DE: No. That’s, that’s absolutely wonderful. Unless you can think of any other, any other stories we can, we can wind that up. That’s, that’s brilliant. Thank you.
SK: Rex, what do, what you think about telling him about how you signed up for the Air Force? When you had to borrow a pen. Do you think that’s —
RA: Oh yeah.
SK: I think that’s a good story.
RA: Well, when I was thinking of joining up I was eighteen and I had a chum whose name was Jerry Walsh and we decided to join the Air Force together. But I knew this girl that I eventually married but I didn’t know her that well but I wanted to know her and she worked in the bank. So I thought what the hell can I get? So I had the clever idea I’ll go in and say, I introduced myself and, and said, ‘My friend and I are thinking of joining the Air Force and I wondered, but we don’t have a pen. We have to fill out this form so I wonder if you can loan us a pen.’ And then I said, ‘We’re having a coffee next door if you’d like to come and join us.’ So that was kind of how I got started with my wife. Her name was Jeannie and she was a beaut and [laughs] but we didn’t, I didn’t correspond a lot with her. You know, I sent her the odd picture and she sent me the odd little note you know and a picture of herself which I pinned up above my bed of course. It was a glamourous picture. And so that’s how I got to know her a little bit and I kept up a kind of a casual correspondence during the war. I wasn’t a great letter writer and, but she seemed to, I guess she liked me because anyway she was there to meet me when I arrived and I was very glad to see her and we started going together and we eventually got married so —
DE: Wow.
RA: But I thought it was a clever way of meeting her with asking for the pen.
DE: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Very smooth. Yeah.
SK: And Rex, the other story I thought is you were invited somewhere and you went with your friend who was the boogie woogie.
RA: Who was which?
SK: The boogie, you know you were invited to somebody’s house.
RA: Oh.
[pause]
DE: I need to plug my laptop in. Keep talking. You’re alright.
SK: Oh, he’s just plugging in his computer but you can keep going Rex.
[pause]
RA: Just after, are you listening?
DE: Yeah.
RA: Yeah. Just after we arrived in England I was in Torquay and I met a friend that I’d known. I got to know this guy. He was a, he played the piano. He could really play and they were arranging leaves for us for a while before we joined.
SK: Sorry Rex you can’t touch the computer otherwise it starts to do funny things. There you go. So just hold your hand up.
RA: Anyway, they arranged leave as little visits to people in the area and we were invited to go to visit the MacGregors in Budleigh Salterton. That’s on the south coast. And the MacGregor, apparently MacGregor, Mr MacGregor was a colonel and he was stationed in Gibraltar and we were invited to their home and we stayed over a couple of nights and they were very gracious to us. The daughter was beautiful and she had a boyfriend who was in the Navy. And we went swimming in the sea because it was close to them. And the thing I remember and I don’t know why but they had what they called Pears soap. I thought it was really nice soap. Never seen it in Canada but they sell it here now of course. So and my friend, Bob Pope was his name he played the piano so he played and entertained our people that had invited us you know. He played boogie woogie as they called it in those days. Yeah. He was good so that was a good experience. And the other thing after the war we were, I was in Paignton near, near Torquay and we met an old, my chum and I met an older couple at church one morning and they invited us to come back and visit them so we would go and they were quite elderly so we used to take our ration cards and give them the ration cards and they’d give us a cup of tea and a scone and we kind of had a bit of a relationship with them for a month or two. But it was just one of the social things that happened when you were overseas.
DE: Yeah. I guess it had to. Had to work like that because where else would you, where else would you go when you’re so far away from home?
RA: Hmmn?
SK: It had to work like that because where else would you go when you’re so far away from home?
RA: Oh, well no place. Well, there was a spa there in Torquay. I remember going and I stayed in the sweat room so long I could hardly walk when I come out. I almost fainted and I was in good shape so I never went back to that. But I thought I’d relax and get a nice, you know. So, so the Torquay area was very nice, you know. It’s kind of a, have you ever been down there?
DE: Yeah.
RA: Yeah, it’s kind of a semi-tropical climate you know. There’s palm trees there and what have you. So it was fun cycling around the country while I was waiting to go home and so I did a lot of that and I enjoyed the English countryside. I think it’s beautiful. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. Smashing. So I, unless you have, unless you have any other stories I’ve just got one more question which I sort of ask lots of people. It’s how do you, what do feel about the way Bomber Command has been remembered?
SK: How do you feel about the way that Bomber Command has been remembered?
RA: Well, it’s you hear a lot of negative stuff about it. About, you know maybe it was overkill. But I really think it had to be done because the Germans were a real threat and a, and a terrible philosophy you know of killing off a whole race of people. So I think the war had a cause. Maybe not so much the First World War which was more political but this war was necessary to stop the Germans. We don’t seem to have learned anything by it. You know. We’re still killing each other and it’s just crazy. It doesn’t accomplish anything. When I think of why those, my crew guys lost their lives for what? You know. The flight was kind of meaningless. The war was winding down but it cost them their lives. So, but Bomber Command seems to have a bad name. That we were cruel, you know and I and the bombing was a cruel thing but it was cruel on both sides and the Germans asked for it. And how do you stop them? You can’t be too selective because you just don’t get anything done if you’re trying to protect one part of the population and fight the other part. They’re all kind of mixed in. So, so I think the Bomber Command did a good job and probably helped end the war and didn’t get much credit for it. The casualties in aircrew were the highest of any of the services percentage wise apparently.
DE: Yeah.
RA: So it was not ever a safe job so to speak.
DE: No. Definitely. Yeah.
RA: And I was proud to be part of it actually. I was proud of the guys I flew with. They were great.
DE: Yeah. Thank you. So is, what was it that made you want to join up? I mean apart from impressing your, your then, your wife but —
RA: What was that?
SK: What was it that made you want to join up besides impressing Jean with your —
RA: It was just an adventure. My, my mum had died and my dad was in the hospital and I was kind of at loose ends. So I didn’t have a great patriotic reason. I just wanted to get involved. So I don’t have a great reason for joining other than I wanted a change and I thought it would be a great adventure and it was.
DE: Yeah. So why the Air Force and not the Navy or the Army?
RA: The other services didn’t interest me. I I wanted to be an ace [laughs] I never have. I used to help. We used to do what they called circuits and bumps, you know. We were just checking the aircraft out and the pilot who we were pretty close friends and he would let me take over and help. I could do the approach. He never let me land because I might crash the thing but [laughs] but he’d let me take over and make the approach. So I got a feel for the flying part and I took lessons after I came home from overseas at the airport. An island airport. At a flying school. So I went there for a bit but it got expensive.
DE: Yeah.
RA: So I packed it up.
DE: Ok.
RA: And here I am.
DE: Yeah. Smashing. I think, I think we’ll call it an end to that unless you’ve got any other stories or anything you want to, you want to ask me.
SK: You, so if you have any questions you want to tell him or any stories but I know you brought some paper that you thought he might be interested in.
RA: Well, I just got pictures of our crew. I don’t know if you are interested in those. Do you want to see them?
DE: Yeah. Please.
RA: This is a picture of our crew in England and that’s me there.
SK: Hang on a second, Rex. You’ve got a, sorry I’m just going to have to put it over your face. Right.
RA: Yeah. Sure.
DE: Steve, would you be able to scan these for us?
SK: Yes. Yeah.
DE: Thank you.
RA: That’s the crew in Nassau at the OTU.
SK: Oh, you have to hold it up.
DE: Yeah.
SK: Hold it over your face. Yeah. There you go.
DE: Yeah. Short sleeves. Yeah.
RA: That’s me there.
DE: Wow.
RA: Can you see it ok?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wizard. That’s great.
RA: And that’s a printout of our navigator’s [pause] his book on, it lists the different operational trips and the time it took. So but I don’t know if you’re interested.
DE: I’ll try and get a copy of the book.
SK: He’ll try to get a copy of the book.
RA: Yeah. You can get copies of of all the flights at, at I think it’s at the museum. They have records there of all 223 Squadron’s activities.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. The Operation Record Books. We’ve got access to those so yeah.
RA: Yeah. And the different flights that were taken.
DE: Yeah.
RA: Yeah. And —
DE: Yeah. Well, I’d just like to say thank you very very much for agreeing to talk to me about your experiences. It’s been great to meet you.
RA: Well, I hope it was interesting enough.
DE: Yeah. Definitely.
RA: Nice meeting you Dan.
DE: Yeah.
RA: And you’ll send me a photo of our crew’s plaque eh with their name on it.
DE: I will do. Yes. Yeah.
RA: Thank you very much.
DE: It’ll, it’ll take a couple of days but I’ll, I’ll make sure that the photos get to you definitely.
RA: Ok.
DE: Yeah. Are you, are you happy for me to [pause] to add this interview, this our conversation to, to the Archive?
SK: Are you ok if he adds this conversation to the Archives?
RA: Yeah. No, that’s fine. Yeah. Yeah. There’s nothing secret about it [laughs]
DE: That’s good. Thank you very much. Right. Ok. Well, I’m going to stop. I’m going to recording here then.
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 Rex John Arnett
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-11-09
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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01:06:03 Audio Recording
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AArnettRJ231109, PArnettRJ2301
Description
An account of the resource
Rex was born in Toronto Canada in 1924 and grew up there, at aged 18 in 1942 he joined the RCAF as aircrew. He initially started training as the second member of a Mosquito crew but was later changed to Wireless Operator/Air Gunner and having completed his wireless and gunnery training in Canada he was posted to the No 111 (Coastal) OTU in Nassau, Bahamas to become a member of a crew flying initially the B25 and then the B24. The crew he joined was a mixed RCAF and RAF, the 2nd pilot, navigator and flight engineer were RAF. During their graduation exercise at the OTU Rex relates being involved in a search for an aircraft from the OTU crewed by some of the experienced training staff, unfortunately they were not found.
Having completed their training in the spring of 1944 they crossed to Britain on the New Amsterdam. Due to the quantity of chocolate Rex had consumed on the crossing the medical staff thought that he had an appendicitis and he was admitted to a hospital in Glasgow on arrival at Gourock. The hospital was initially empty so Rex was treated very well but shortly after his arrival the wounded from the D Day invasion started to arrive and Rex was found fit enough to join 223 Squadron at RAF Oulton which were flying the B-24. Rex was not too impressed with the aircraft as they were war weary veterans cast off from the 8th US Army Air Force. Although Rex was trained as a Wireless operator / air gunner he flew all his operations as a wireless operator. Rex remembers that his main duties were to listen out for weather diversions he also remembers that there was a piece of equipment that he had that showed aircraft close to them which was very unreliable, probably Fishpond. In August 1944 223 Squadron became part of 100 Group flying radio countermeasures, jamming the German radar and communications frequencies. Rex relates how the squadron aircraft would sometimes leave the main force bomber stream and head for another potential target dropping Window to divide the fighter defences.
Rex flew 20 operations with his crew and related that on one operation to Berlin they were getting short of fuel so diverted to the crash runway at RAF Manston and the groundcrew told them that they only had enough fuel for two minutes of flight. In February 1945 he developed bronchitis and was grounded by the medical staff. On the next operation that crew were shot down over Germany and all the flight deck crew died the navigator and one of the beam gunners managed to bale out. Rex relates that if he had been on the operation he would have died. He was told by the surviving beam gunner that the second beam gunner never wore his parachute harness on operations and was last seen trying to find his harness.
While he was recuperating his late captain’s brother came to visit the squadron he was flying the C47 transporting equipment to Europe and Rex manage to get himself two flights to Brussels. On his return to flying duties Rex only flew two more operations before the European war ended in May. He comments that his captain for those two flights was a Lord Briscoe.
Rex relates that on one of his leave periods he was walking out in the country and a low flying V-1 passed overhead and the engine stopped and it landed and exploded in a field close by.
Rex did not return to Canada until December 1945 crossing in the Queen Elizabeth. He returned to Toronto married the girl that he was writing to during his time in Great Britain. He worked for a small company manufactured high voltage lighting equipment as a salesman until he retired.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Bahamas
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Bahamas--Nassau
England--Kent
England--Norfolk
Germany--Berlin
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 Canadian Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Trevor Hardcastle
Julie Williams
100 Group
223 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-24
B-25
bombing
crewing up
entertainment
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Manston
RAF Oulton
shot down
training
V-1
V-weapon
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2604/45259/PBrownG2301.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2604/45259/ABrownG231006.1.mp3
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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
Brown, Geoff
G Brown
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Geoff Brown (b. 1923). He grew up in Grimsby and remembers the town being bombed with butterfly bombs. He served as a clerk in the army serving in France and Egypt post war. After demob, he worked as a lorry, coach and taxi driver.
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
2023-10-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brown, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So, this is an interview for the IBCC Digital Archive with Geoff Brown. My name is Dan Ellin. It is the 6th of October 2023 and we’re in Grimsby. Also present in the room is Paul [Thenick] and Geoff’s son, Alan. I’ll just put that there so we can hear your voice. Geoff can we just start a little bit about your early life and where you grew up please?
GB: Well, I grew up where I am living now in Chelmsford Avenue only it was across the road at number 12. So I only moved, so I’m still in the same area I’ve been for ninety three years. Born there. Then when I got married I bought this house and so that my lifetime has been in the same area as when, when we used to go, come out in the morning looking for shrapnel as I told you.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And that’s what we was doing that morning with a friend of mine. She was a girl who lived around, only around the corner in Littlefield Lane but we did it regular. If there had been an air raid the night before and we was in the shelter we would get up to go and look for shrapnel. I don’t know why. I don’t want keeping it or anything. Just a matter of interest, you know. And that was I was doing that on, on the morning they dropped the butterfly bombs. Do you want me to carry on?
DE: Yes, please. Yeah.
GB: And I was walking down Littlefield Lane looking for shrapnel and the sports ground that was there in them days in the hedge was a, was a, as I see was a lump of iron. I wasn’t sure what it was and there was a soldier stood nearby. But I threw a brick at it and nothing happened. I didn’t know ought about butterfly bombs and people being killed that morning and I threw a brick at it. So I picked it up and I gave it to this soldier. I says, ‘Do you know what it is?’ He didn’t know but he did an amazing thing. He opened his army knife, jackknife with the prong and as you’ve just seen what Paul showed you what he’s trying to prise it open. Well, God knows none of us would be here if he’d have succeeded. But he tried and he couldn’t. He couldn’t force it open and he just said to me, ‘You have it. There you are. You have it. You found it. You have it.’ Of course, he didn’t know it was a bomb and I didn’t know it was a bomb so walking back to where I lived which was only across the road and the girl I was with she took it in her house because it couldn’t be far. That was in Littlefield Lane where the bomb was found and her father said, ‘You’re not —' So she came out. She said, ‘My dad don’t, don’t want that in the house.’ Again, nobody is saying it’s a bomb. He hadn’t or any. So she gave it to me. I said, ‘Well I’ll have it then.’ Souvenir. And I walked around the corner and I go in the house. My father is home. He was a fisherman and he says, ‘You’re not having that in the house.’ Again, none of us thinking for one minute it’s a bomb. I’d been kicking it along the road as I’m walking back because it would roll over with a kick like, you know. And anyway, I’ve got it in my hand and I opened the front door and as I opened the front door there was a bomb disposal lorry coming down this avenue which was across the road. Coming down here and an officer walking in front and he was looking which I didn’t know he was looking for these butterfly bombs and he saw me with it in my hand. Now, I’ve had it a good half hour. I’d kicked it and had it. If I’d had known what was going to happen I’d have just walked it across the road to a green. To a patch of green field you know. But he panicked me, ‘Drop it. Drop it.’ I dropped it on the [laughs] well, I didn’t drop it. I put it down on the doorstep and so I I’m out the, I’m really worried at this stage. I don’t know what’s going on and they’re looking for me and it was a butterfly bomb. So they sandbagged it up within a few minutes. Sanded it all up and detonated it about an hour later which blew the windows of, of our house and a neighbour’s house and I think one across the road. The explosion blew the windows in but not the doors. Well, I’m terrified now. I don’t, I think because what happened in them days your father would give you a good hiding you know as punishment. It wasn’t like it is today. He was alright. He never. But if you really misbehaved you got a good hiding and you expected it. You got it at school. You got the cane every time you misbehaved. Your teacher used to bend the cane like that. I don’t know whether, but you expected if you’d done something wrong. Now I’m terrified. I thought well I’m not going. I’m not going in because I’ve seen the damage it’s done like you know. But, but the opposite was the case as it turned out. I didn’t know it at the time but my parents were lucky that I was alive. That I’d picked this bomb up, carried it about and survived. They had to blow it up to do it so, so I didn’t know at the time. I was about, I don’t know roughly about an hour out the house terrified to go back home because I thought I’m going to get a good hiding for this. And anyway, I didn’t. Obviously. I didn’t. That’s as near as I could tell you about it but I did also know at the time the words were going around with people living nearby oh there had been a few on the Castle Market in the town centre. Eighty people. Eighty two I believe. I’m not, but it was said at the time eighty odd people had been killed but it was all in secrecy. Nobody, you know it was never ever mentioned. Mainly the radio in them days. I’m not saying whether telly, I can’t remember if there was telly on or not but not many people did have tellies and if they did they weren’t very good ones. But the radio, we all listened to the radio and it was never mentioned which too me at that age I thought that’s a surprise. Nobody wanted so everything was kept in secrecy. Then a few years later, I haven’t got the paper now, I don’t know what happened but a woman came from Paris researching the butterfly bombs and the council had told them about where I lived. Could have been in the paper, the local paper so they knew. And she come to the house and anyway cut a long story I don’t know what, she went to London to a thing in Trafalgar Square about the, so she said about the butterfly and she come back. She said, ‘I’ll come back at Grimsby and let you know.’ Well, I never did hear from her again. She wrote me a letter where I think I’ve got rid of it. She wrote a letter thanking me for, for what similar to what your knowing. All about the bomb and what I knew about the bomb which wasn’t a lot except that I survived it. So that is pretty near what happened.
DE: Yes. Smashing. Thank you. Did, did you ever see any others?
GB: No. No. I heard of nearby on Cromwell Road not far from here. Another street about a half a mile, a mile away there were several people cycling to work that morning. Railway workers, milk people that early morning work and a lot of them were exploding as soon as they were in the streets early on. But quite a few laid in parks. A cemetery as it was in them days in the town centre. Ainslie Street Cemetery it was called. It’s a park now. But there was quite two or three people killed in there by walking along and touching them. One or two three or four year later so I was told you know. So they were dangerous for a few years afterwards if they laid undetected. But a lot of them fell so I was told I mean fell in the streets and Paul told me that if they dropped as a canister if one fell there would be twenty more nearby.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Which I didn’t know. I mean I was, I wasn’t, I had no information like that at all.
DE: No. Of course not. No.
GB: I just considered myself when all the facts came out how lucky I was that I even kicked it along the road and I’m not being dramatic about it. I did. And taking it home. It’s a canister. Closed like that. But I never thought for one minute all that time that this was a bomb and the soldier certainly didn’t. So if a soldier and people like that didn’t know on the hours with them being dropped you could understand. You know, I understood what was happening.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But the bomb disposal officers just told me to drop it and stood on the, I’m just about to step off the step to get rid of it. Put it, you know because my father, we he said he didn’t want it in the house so I thought well I’ll get rid of it because I’m just thinking it’s shrapnel. It’s to do with that you know. Never in my wildest dream think I was carrying an unexploded bomb about.
DE: So was, was the raid when they dropped those was that any different to any of the other ones that you’d experienced?
GB: No. Not as far as I know. About the air raid? No. Not to my knowledge. We’d had an air raid. We had quite a few of them but they very rare dropped bombs on Grimsby. They did drop bombs but we used to think rightly or wrongly if they were blitzing Hull or they’d gone inland a bit, Sheffield and places like that if they were coming back going back home and they’d got they’d got some bombs. I don’t know whether this be true or not but a lot of people thought it the bombs on Grimsby as far as I know was never a bombing raid on Grimsby. The butterfly bombs was but the real bombs that did a lot of damages to people’s houses and killed people we thought whether that’s true or not we always thought at the time well they’re coming over they’ve got a couple of bombs. I can’t ever think. There was bombs dropped on Grimsby. Of course, there was but nothing compared to what Hull which was only across the river. So whether that was true or not we thought it was true.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But other people would be more accurate and probably say no they did. But I don’t think. We never ever got a blitz or what I call a raid. Several bombs were dropped on the town, a few on the dock but it was never ever and I never thought it was but I weren’t the, I’m only thirteen.
DE: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
GB: My father didn’t think it was. Elderly people didn’t think it was. They just thought well they’re coming over Grimsby on their way home.
DE: And they’ve got a couple left.
GB: Whether it’s true or not.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It might have been. It might not have been but they certainly, they didn’t, they didn’t, I can’t think of anywhere in Grimsby where there was incendiary bombs targeted. Several bombs did fall. I’m not disputing that but it was only one or two or three like. That’s what I was understood at the time and that’s what my father would be telling me and, but yeah I don’t think we were ever targeted as a bombing trip to be bombed. Well, we had nothing here. We was a fishing port. That’s what, that’s what I think. Whether it’s right or not. I mean we had no industries. Not in them days. All the Humber Bank come after the war. All the industrial. There was no shipyards here. They were all in Goole and Hull. You know what I’m saying?
DE: Wasn’t Grimsby one of the biggest fishing fleets in the country?
GB: It was the biggest ever.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I’m not saying that dramatically but you could walk across Grimsby, my dad was a fisherman, he came ashore later on in his life, worked on the dredgers but you could walk across Grimsby dock from one and I’ve done it because he took me down the dock at times. You could, you could walk across hundreds and I mean hundreds. Not exaggerating at that. In them days. ‘50s. ‘50s, ‘60s until the Icelandic War came along and everybody, everybody, I would say nine out of ten people working were connected with the docks in them days. They were either dockers, and I was a taxi driver just as I got older. I come out the army, I took up taxi driving. I used to take loads and loads of people to the, to the docks and visit the boats coming in. There aint any now.
DE: No.
GB: Not one. It all comes from Iceland now. Over land and Alan he —
AB: It does. Yeah.
GB: Alan worked down the dock.
DE: Right.
GB: For a fish merchant for a while.
DE: Can I, can I take you back to the war?
GB: Yeah.
DE: So what was it like when, when you saw Hull being bombed? Did the sirens go in Grimsby?
GB: I can give you our lifestyle at that time.
DE: That would be brilliant. Yeah.
GB: Yeah.
DE: Please.
GB: We had a, my dad built us an Anderson air raid. Everybody had one. Anderson. He made a good job of it. Concreted it. Bunk beds. So when the Germans came over and there was a blitz we would always go in the air raid shelter. Although it wasn’t Grimsby they were but we stayed in it until you got the all clear. Sometimes we slept in it all the time because it meant, it meant not getting out of bed and coming down. In the early days that’s what we did. So, and there was a lot of false alarms in the, by the sirens in the early days. I went to school which was only not too far from here at the top of this avenue and our school days was one in the afternoon one week and one in the mornings the next and then if the sirens went which they often did on our way to school because they were false alarms the majority we had to go back home. So my wartime education wasn’t the best of educations but it was good in other ways. I won’t go into that but didn’t seem to bother me too much. We had, we had a good education of what but it, it was a wartime education and Paul asked me once but it was exciting. I won’t say it was exciting for everybody because it wasn’t but it was for me seeing all these, all these German planes coming over in the early part of the war. Sirens going, guns going off and we’re in an air raid shelter and my grandad’s giving me a running commentary of what’s happening outside because he’s looking out. He’s, he was in his eighties then so you know he wasn’t bothered but my mam and dad was.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And they would be frightened for us in the air raid shelter. But it only ever happened once nearly and this is the truth. They got a plane and the first time I’d ever seen it or heard of it there were all the searchlights and they got a hold of this German plane going over. Of course, all the others zoom in and he’s saying, ‘Oh, they’ve got a German. They’ve got a plane in the searchlights.’ The next thing it’s coming down the searchlight screaming. What it’s going to do? It’s coming on. It’s going to drop on the house. That’s the opinion we got in the shelter. Anyway, he dropped a bomb and it dropped in a field only just up here at the, there’s a little circle of shops here. There was a school there. Chelmsford School isn’t it? And it made a big bomb crater which they turned it into an open air theatre of all things.
AB: [unclear] school.
GB: And, but that’s the nearest personally when I thought it’s going to land on us. It sounded like it was because he come down. He'd what we called in those days dive bombed to get out the, away from every other. He come out and released a bomb that he had and it wasn’t too far away but it found, it sounded like it was coming down on us. So we were lucky in Grimsby compared to –
DE: Yeah.
GB: Hull and industrial places. Everybody knows the cities that got blitzed. Sheffield and that but we were a fishing port. This is my opinion. I was only that, and my father. A fishing port. That wasn’t going to prevent the war effort, you know sinking a few trawlers. I don’t know whether that’s true or not but we didn’t get bombed.
DE: No. I suppose it could have made, made a few people in the country go hungry if they’d, if they’d —
GB: Yeah, because Hull, I used to stand in the street on an evening. You could see the flames in Hull. The sky. Red sky. And we knew that was getting bombed because they were coming over here to get to Hull only across the river.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
GB: But so in the early days of the war I’ll make it as brief as I can we saw a lot of German planes come over and then in my, later in the war we saw all the Lancasters going to bomb because they circled over Grimsby.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Oh, they say they took off from all the, I mean there was hundreds of them. Waltham. I think they had Wellington, it’s a village outside just out three or four miles away isn’t it? I’ve forgot some of them. Kirmington which is Humberside Airport now.
DE: Yeah.
GB: That was a bomber station but I think that had Lancasters. But the biggest one in this area was Binbrook. That was by far the biggest one and then of course you go further and there’s Scampton and them places you know.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But there was Kirkby in Lincolnshire which has got a Lancaster come out on trial. You know, it runs. It doesn’t fly.
DE: Yeah. I know. I’ve seen it. Yeah.
GB: Have you?
DE: Yeah.
GB: Well, I’ve been there. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But that was a station but there was many. I think a lot of the pilots used to go to a Bluebird thing at, a pub just outside Woodhall Spa.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Which I think the Dambusters originated in that area. So I believe. I don’t, but they flew from Scampton.
DE: Yeah. They flew from —
GB: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So I’m telling you something you know. But that, that was my wartime experience. Seeing it change from Germans coming over in their thousands. And on a June night, a summer night ’44 time or whatever and I’ve never seen the sky so full of Lancaster bombers just coming over the rooftops. Those from nearby. And they would circle right high up and then they would all go eight, half past eight at night. And we knew. We were in the air raid shelters because when they were coming back a lot of them were damaged and being followed by German Messerschmitts you know. So they were following the damaged ones in so the sirens would go. So we knew when they went off that the sirens were going to go for the, for them returning.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
GB: I don’t know whether you knew that.
DE: No. I didn’t know it was.
GB: But they did. They certainly did and we knew they would do so we, we prepared ourselves in the air raid shelter rather than wait until two, 3 o’clock in the morning and then because all the guns are going off like you know. But the main thing I was told was the damaged Lancasters and there was many. I met a lot of Australians at that, that time. A bit older. I’m talking a few years after the butterfly when I was fifteen, sixteen because they came in. They were a lot of them at Binbrook. Ever so many.
DE: Yeah.
GB: In fact, the, the local churchyard’s got a full crew of how many died there at Binbrook. That was the nearest one and I used to go to Binbrook a lot because later on I did a I got a PSV and the people at RAF Binbrook would go home on a weekend. I’d take them up to Newcastle and bring them back you know. So Binbrook was our biggest. Biggest one and they were always having dos. There was a film wasn’t there made of American. Yeah. American planes.
DE: They shot the film Memphis Belle at Binbrook.
GB: Memphis Belle. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Well, I knew one or two that got bit parts for it you know. They had to have their hair cut to take part.
DE: Yeah.
GB: A lot of —
DE: I was one of them.
GB: Was you?
DE: Yeah.
GB: Yeah. Well, they come into Grimsby and they were recruiting seventeen eighteen for them parts for it.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I had a couple of blokes going and of course long hair was the fashion in them days. The Beatles type of thing. And they had to have all my hair cut off.
DE: Yeah. That’s right.
GB: You know.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So they could get a part in this film they were making.
DE: So did you go, did you go down the shelters in the winter as well?
GB: Yeah.
DE: What was it like in them because they were –
GB: Well, my dad was pretty good on that thing. He, we had a I forget what kind it, like a heater. Old fashioned type. But we had bunk beds so we had covers. That’s the kids like you know. And then he’d concreted it and he’d put like a thing all on top of the ceiling that absorbed the heat from the the stove. It was like a stove, an old fashioned stove but it generated a lot of heat. That was in the winter of course.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I think, well I forget what he stuck on the top but he’d done a good. He could have grassed it all over and flowers on it you know. He made a good job of it really. We thought it might have still been there but it isn’t. The people who live in the house now said no they got rid of it. So [pause] so that’s it. I saw the worst part of it if you could call it that though Grimsby wasn’t, wasn’t that bad. The worst part of it, the early part and of course the church bells were going to go. We were all frightened there was going to be a bloody, an invasion. Oh, by the way there was barricades right across the road, this road just, just at Chelmsford Place into our doorway right up to our and only had a little gap for cars to get through or transporters.
DE: Yeah.
GB: They used to come and hang lights on it during the evening so you could see it but I don’t know if they didn’t last long but while there was a threat of invasion that’s where they were around several main roads in Grimsby. One on Laceby Road. I can remember that one. But in different parts of the town was these barricades and we thought the Germans were going to come because the church bells were going to ring. You know, if church bells start chiming get in the house quick. It never happened did it?
DE: No. But you say the night that the butterfly bombs dropped there was, there was a soldier on the streets. So was, was there a lot of military people in the town?
GB: No. No. There wasn’t. I was surprised there was one there anyway. I’m not saying but yeah we had a big gun up the road here at a place called Norwich Avenue and it was manned by, I can remember it like yesterday but it fired out to sea. It was on, it was on a swivel. It was down in like a trench you know but a big, not an anti-aircraft for shooting planes.
DE: Oh right.
GB: But to fire out to sea. It wasn’t there long. About, well I’m guessing but it was there maybe a year.
DE: Right.
GB: It was there in the early part of the war and I know it was Scottish that were manning it and it was in a field at the top of this avenue.
DE: Ok.
GB: At the time. So yeah, my wartime experience was a bit limited to what there were. We was a lad and it was exciting. We all, the best way to describe it because it was at school because at school it was all propaganda when I think back now. We was drawing Spitfires and God knows what all to [pause] propaganda.
DE: Yeah.
GB: We’re winning you know.
AB: Raise morale.
GB: When we certainly wasn’t.
AB: To raise morale like.
GB: Yeah. Yeah. But that’s what we, that’s what the teachers gave us.
DE: Yeah. Sure.
GB: I can remember drawing aeroplanes and that in your pastime like you know. Oh, Spitfires are doing this and that. We’re winning the war.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Which we wasn’t.
DE: You’d be saying —
GB: Pardon?
DE: You say you did see a change though. The early part of the war it was —
GB: Yeah.
DE: It was the Luftwaffe coming over and then later on it was the RAF.
GB: Yeah.
DE: Going out.
GB: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Well, I joined the regular Army later on and had another life experience. I was ever so lucky. That was [unclear] I was in Egypt. I’ll come to the point quickly.
DE: Ok.
GB: I was a lucky lucky survivor. More probably lucky than, than the butterfly bomb. In Egypt in the 50s, late 50s. I was in Egypt for three years in a tent in the desert and for latrines, toilets we just dug trenches.
DE: Yeah.
GB: As deep as this and probably as wide as this and it stunk but that was another thing. But when you was filling them up you just shut them, we just covered them over you know, soiled them over and this particular morning, I was in the Signals which we had an office. So I worked in the Signals office typing messages. But they gave you what [pause] anyhow what was it? Fatigues. We got the morning to do something so the sergeant major in the camp said, ‘Dig another trench.’ You know, so that’s what we did. Get to the point. We nearly finished about six feet deep. Well, and I’m there with this other corporal. There were two or three men under me and this corporal said to me, ‘Well, I’ll do it.’ This was six, 7 o’clock in the morning. ‘I’ll, I’ll finish off now here until NAAFI time, then you come and take over from me.’ So I said, ‘Ok,’ you know. I didn’t have far to go. It was only say across the road to my tent. I went back to my tent. I was only just sat in my tent after he’d said it and I heard somebody screaming and running. Oh God. What’s gone on? So I darted off to where they were digging the trench and there was nothing. Just all loose. It could have, it was like sand.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It wasn’t soil. Well, it was a mixture of sand and soil all loose and it had all just nothing there. Sergeant major come running, ‘What’s happened?’ I said, ‘We were just digging that trench.’ And I says, ‘The corporal was at that end and as I walked away the corporal at that end said he would do it and the signalman was at the other end.’ To cut a long story short we all started digging like hell where we thought they were. It took about three or four hours to get to them because when you are digging sand it’s going back in as fast as it's coming out. We’d only got shovels. We weren’t engineers and we should have been. That was the long and the short and tall. It should have been —
DE: Shuttered and stuff.
GB: Yeah. But it wasn’t. We just did that and I had noticed a lot of loose sand at the bottom but that’s all I noticed. I didn’t make no more than I thought well we got as far deep as we should go and anyway we got to the first corporal about four hours and he’d made a jump and his hand was up in the air. Covered in sand. We got around him like and the other corporal about six foot the other way. Not corporal. He was a Signalman. He’d done the opposite. Them few seconds as it had come in encased them. Suffocated them. He’d gone like that. He’d put his head down.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So we took longer to get to him because the corporal had made a jump. But why I’m saying this is that was me within minutes.
DE: Yeah.
GB: If that corporal had have said, ‘Well, you do it Geoff and I’ll come back,’ you know. It was as simple as that. But he said, ‘I’ll do it.’ And I went back to the tent. Two or three minutes later I ran over to where we thought he was. All, all loose so I was lucky there. Probably more lucky than I was with that bomb but about the same.
DE: Crikey.
GB: But if that bomb had have been, had have come down as it should have done and was open I wouldn’t be here. Definitely wouldn’t because I mean when I threw a brick at it it weren’t far away. But I thought it was shrapnel. It was a lump of iron to me. So that’s, that was my wartime.
DE: Yeah. You’ve been lucky. Really lucky twice then.
GB: Yeah. Lucky. The other time I’m only telling you because I was.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Very lucky twice.
DE: Wow.
GB: But I can’t really [pause] its ever so hard for me to explain how I, it was exciting. I mean it was exciting seeing hundreds of planes in the air both ways. Both the Lancasters later in the war and the Germans coming over the other way. Coming over for Grimsby. They were the anti-aircraft guns were having a go at them with the searchlights and then they were going on to wherever they were going. They went much further. I’m just saying Hull —
DE: Yeah.
GB: Hull we could see.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I could, you could see the red sky and so you knew they were getting bombed.
DE: So how close to where you lived were the, were the anti-aircraft guns?
GB: Well, one was quite a way. One was on the Grimsby docks on what, what we call the North Wall. As you come in to the dock there’s a harbour wall where all the trawlers when they’re going back to sea all line up and go out. Well, you come in to the dock into the big bason where the dock tower is.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But the North Wall is a wall. Later on fishermen used to fish off there didn’t they a lot?
AB: That’s right.
GB: People, blokes like him fishing you know.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But the trawlers all berthed up. Some had already landed their catch. The next day one day millionaires weren’t they? Was that the expression wasn’t it?
AB: Yeah.
GB: One day millionaires.
AB: [unclear] really.
GB: They came in, got drunk as hell ninety percent and then the next day they got paid and their wives all went with them you know. It was an environment that was and then they were going back to sea. Hundreds of them.
DE: And was that what your, what your father did then?
GB: Early part of the war. Yeah. Early. I’m not sure if he was just before. He’d come from Yarmouth. He was a fisherman in Yarmouth. He came into Grimsby, met my, met my mother and settled in Grimsby in Alexandra Road and then moved to Chelmsford Avenue.
DE: Right.
GB: And then he stayed as a dredger. He went on the dredgers because the docks was always being dredged.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And he used to take me. I used to enjoy it. I used to walk across all these boats from one instead of going right around you could walk from one over one trawler to the dredger and they had what they called a hopper that they used to take the dredger dropped all the mud into it and then they’d take it out into the Humber.
DE: Yeah.
GB: The hopper, and when they got so far out they just knocked all the pins and the bottom of the boat opened.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I was fascinated why you didn’t sink but you didn’t because it opened up.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It went down and then closed up and then you’d come back. Back to the dredger and start it up.
DE: Start it up again. Yeah.
GB: They don’t do much of that now do they?
DE: No.
GB: Which is amazing to me because it should be done shouldn’t it?
AB: You’d have thought so. Yeah.
GB: Yeah. You would have thought so but it’s all coming up like everything. I won’t go into that. That’s another story. But we, we flooded around here a lot and my wife was really into it wasn’t she? She had the council all at the back here. And I had an opinion it was all dykes. When I was a kid across the road behind the waterways a dyke. A dyke in Littlefield Lane. A dyke here wasn’t there? Everywhere.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Dykes everywhere full of water. And they started filling them in. Building houses. Littlefield Lane. Ever so many. Them dykes all went. Same here. All up there. Building everywhere. But they filled all the dykes in. Now, its elementary to me where does the water go if there isn’t no dykes? Heavy downpour full of rain. The drains don’t, I’m diverting slightly. I hope I’m not putting you off too much.
DE: No, that’s fine.
GB: But the drains don’t get sorted out one hundred percent. Every now and along they come along and steam clean where they used to be cleaned every week. Buckets used to go down.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And the kids used to stand and get rid of all the silt and muck. So now when we get heavy rain the road floods. I’m talking about bad floods.
DE: Yeah.
GB: The floods were coming up to our back door weren’t they Alan?
AB: Yeah.
GB: Up the road there a bit higher up because they were a bit high. A spring was up there. They were flooding bad and we was all protesting getting the councillors to come around. Succeeded in the end but to me it was because they got rid of everything.
DE: Yeah. It’s logical isn’t it? Yeah.
GB: If you walked down Littlefield Lane there was two dykes either, either side. I know because we played in them. To get across the road here at the bottom of Chelmsford Avenue to go to the street there was a bit of green and from the waterworks which is massive now come right along and it was a dyke. We played in it. We jumped over it. You know what I mean? Mainly going after water rats and things like that. You know. A bit of excitement. And of course, they filled them all in. Consequently we flood. I think they’ve sorted it out a bit now haven’t they?
AB: Yeah.
GB: But my wife she was really into it. Big time. She had them coming here regular didn’t they? ‘Oh, my friends are coming.’ I said, ‘They’re not your bloody friends. They get paid for coming.’ They’re coming. Yeah. She was right but she was good wasn’t she Alan?
AB: Yeah.
GB: She got every, all the neighbourhood watch all involved.
DE: Right.
GB: Just about this flooding. Went in to town council. Had the councillor’s coming. But she called them her friends. I said, ‘They’re not your bloody friends. They got paid to come here.’ You know, if you ring, if you phone them because you wanted them to come they’re not coming on a freebie are they? I’m a bit older, you know. A bit. I consider myself.
DE: That’s fine. So when did you leave school?
GB: I left at fourteen.
DE: Ok. So that’s still in the war.
GB: Pardon?
DE: That’s still, would that be ’44 was that?
GB: That would be ’44.
DE: So what did you do then?
GB: I got a little job as an errand boy down Pasture Street. A long way away. And then I became, and then I got a job as an apprentice motor mechanic in a street that’s no longer there. It’s in the town centre in Maude Street. But we were Rolls Royce agents. The two gaffers had two Rolls Royces and I was what they called a grease monkey for a long while because in them days if a Rolls Royce come in for, we had a Rolls Royce man. Rolls Royce trained.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And he just worked on Rolls Royce. We had other cars at the back of the garage but we was mainly a Rolls Royce and I had to go underneath for him to start doing anything there was all little castle nuts with split pins in.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Underneath. You can’t believe it. It wouldn’t be like that today. But underneath a Rolls Royce was all covered and they’d been assembled bit by bit so sometimes if you wanted to quickly turn a clutch you had to cut the chassis to get the bloody gear box out of a Rolls Royce. God. Also. But he was brilliant the mechanic. And because I was what, in them days early days his grease monkey he used to say, ‘Come on. I’ve done it.’ And he used to test the Rolls Royces by putting a threepenny bit on top of the bonnet, turn the engine on and it just purred and he said, ‘Good.’
DE: [Well those —]
GB: He said, ‘I’m going to test it now. I’m going to go to Aylesby.’ I can always remember the route. Aylesby which is a village outside of Grimsby. Five six mile. He said, ‘We’re going to test it,’ and I loved that. It was a thanks for coming and getting these posh Rolls Royces and go for a test run when he’d done whatever he was doing. And I stayed there. I was apprenticed and I didn’t have to go in the Army as a, what do you call it? National Service.
DE: Yeah.
GB: At eighteen. I got that deferred automatically because I was an apprentice motor mechanic but I didn’t like it. I hated it but I had to serve my time.
DE: Right.
GB: And I still had to go in the Army on a low wage at twenty one.
DE: Right.
GB: So nought to do with my parents, I decided. I said, ‘I don’t want to do this I’m going to go in the Army on a decent wage. I don’t want National Service money.’ I said I’ll sign on for five years which I did. Two things happened there. I got the best posting you could ever get at that time was Paris. I got sent to Paris, in the centre of Paris.
DE: Wow.
GB: With all these top Montgomery, Eisenhower, all lived there and in our camp all the chauffeurs. American and British used to drive into Paris to bring them to work. But the NATO headquarters in Paris. I think it moved to Brussels years later. But that’s where I was. In Paris typing messages all the time. Coded. I didn’t know what they were because it was still the end of the war.
DE: Sure.
GB: You know. But in our camp all, all the chauffeurs, American, I got to know American master sergeant and he drove Eisenhower all during the war. his chauffeur. You know, wherever Eisenhower he went.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Of course, he finished up in Paris when the war was, well it was just finished. ’45. So I was in Paris just at the end of the war which was a good place to be because it was, the French was ever so you know and it was packed with Americans. I worked. I’d been trained at, with British GPO Catterick Signals but when I got to Paris it was all American Western Union equipment and so I’m now working with Americans. If you don’t mind me just telling there was officers in the Royal Signals were clueless. They’d done no, no signals training. Absolute pay. Give me your money. I’m trying to get your money. But if ought went wrong in the signal office or ought the Americans were completely different. Officers in there knew Western Union. ‘Have you got a problem?’ Yeah. I’m just saying which we had. I used to type all day long coded messages and my mind used to go. Oh, what am I doing tonight? What am I doing tomorrow? And then we run a tape which we had to because that’s what we was doing and then I’d run the tape on. No mistakes. And I think I haven’t been, I’ve been doing it fingertip because it covers you. You didn’t know what keys. I learned that in Catterick. Sixty words a minute.
DE: Wow.
GB: I learned how to type. And then I went to Egypt. So I went from —
DE: From the best.
GB: The best to probably one of the worst.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It certainly was. Egypt. It was a shithole. I’m not kidding you. It was filthy. They was and but you learned when I first got there I went to the cookhouse for a meal and it was all Sudanese sweating like hell. Black as the ace of spades. I’m not knocking them for that but the bloody food was like camel meat. I’m not kidding you it was not going to do you any harm but you didn’t look like. So I said, ‘Well, I’m going in the NAAFI,’ to my mate, ‘I’m going to have egg and chips.’ Pay for it. And the ones that had been there two or three years in the cookhouse, old sweats they just they got this they called it pomme. It was mash but it came out like bloody chewing gum. It plopped onto the, the Sudanese used to say, ‘Put your plate down there.’ And they’d bang the thing on it and it plopped on your plate. That’s how bad it was. But when you’d been there a few years and there’s nothing else and the meat was terrible so the veterans are there shoving all the Daddy’s sauce on. You know what I mean?
DE: Yeah.
GB: Going down. ‘I can’t eat that. I can’t eat that.’ A week later I was eating it because it wasn’t bad for you even though it was crap. The vitamins. Yeah. Honestly it was vile. But in the end you were just like every bugger else. If you were hungry.
DE: You ate it.
GB: You got hungry and, you know. Anyway, I’m diverting aren’t I?
DE: Well, it’s fine. I’m after, you know all these stories not just not just the butterfly bomb stuff.
GB: Yeah.
DE: So yeah.
GB: And then I got interested, me and my wife got interested in the RAF stations and we started going around. Went to Binbrook, Kirmington, Elsham. I could go on. Kirkby and different ones. I don’t know why we got interested. We got interested in going around the church seeing the survivors. Because I picked up, when I was taxi driving Australian who’d landed, he’d docked at Immingham late on and it was blowing a blizzard and I am not kidding. A blizzard and he said, ‘My father got killed in Lichfield.’ And as Alan would know I’d gone to Birmingham all my life hadn’t I, as a lorry driver taking fish but I’m doing part time taxi driving and it was a snowy night. Snowing like hell. And he said, ‘But the ship is sailing seven, 8 o’clock in the morning from Immingham so I can only go overnight.’ ‘I’m not taking him,’ all of them were saying at the taxi firm which was Coxon’s, a big one at the time. And I was doing a bit of weekend work for them because I didn’t work weekends as a lorry driver. Anyway, I said to him, ‘Well, I’ll take you. I’ll take you,’ because I knew the route like the back of my hand. To cut a long story I got him to Lichfield but we come home in one of the biggest blizzards ever and they gave me the best car they’d got to do the job. It was a Daimler as I remember it but the, I could only just see over the wipers.
DE: Yeah.
GB: The wipers and I’m driving. I’m coming back, coming home. The roads were being kept up, main road by snow ploughs. How bad it was. Anyway, to cut a long story short I got him back about 11 o’clock in the morning. But what a journey that was.
DE: Wow.
GB: Taking him there. Just part of my experience of it but lorry driving and then I got a PSV didn’t I? I got I didn’t work weekends so a local company asked me if I’d do jobs for them and they give me all sorts of jobs. Some of the jobs I really liked but I used to go to Liverpool every Saturday to take people who were going to the Isle of Man and they crossed over on the ferry. I stayed and I met The Isle of Man man he’d come over from there. So he’d picked my passengers up I’d dropped before.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And we all had a meal on the Merseyside and he went back over to the Isle of Man and I come back bringing the people back to Grimsby. It was a Grimsby firm, quite a big one but a big, I’ll tell you what happened there which Alan will know. In the ‘60s firms were buying other firms out and then shutting them.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So a firm from Newcastle bought Granville Tours out which was Grimsby and shut them within weeks and we had busses going everywhere. Scotland. Holidays and you know. Isle of Man. Isle of Wight. All over. All over. Anyway, they shut them. Out of work. But the firm I worked for which my son worked for [unclear] got took over by Ross’s and then I’m cutting this story short I’d been there twenty years hadn’t I? Something like. I got a good, I’d got a good pension coming because what’s the firm? Imperial Tobacco.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Imperial Tobacco had bought Ross’s out to shut them. They didn’t know at the time but I did that the Imperial Tobacco Company bought Ross Group, Ross Foods out so they’re now paying me my pension. They made me redundant. I didn’t mind that because I’m with Imperial Food. So to this day I’m getting a good pension but they keep sending me letters. They’ve packed up. I think they’ve give up on me. Would you like to have a, get your full pension money? So I talked it over with my wife. I said this is dead lucky how I’ve been in this. I said, ‘No. Keep, keep giving me my pension which I get to this day.
DE: Fabulous.
GB: And I’m ninety three now and they’ve been sending it me since I was in my sixties after I retired. Ten years. When you take a lump sum rather than your pension. No. No. Keep sending me my pension.
DE: Brilliant.
GB: And you see I’m ninety three and getting a pension off them that was in the ‘60s, I mean that’s dead lucky. That’s just lucky.
DE: Yeah. Smashing. I think unless you can think of another story to tell me you’ve been talking for fifty minutes so unless you’ve got something else to tell me I’ll say thank you very much and we’ll stop now.
GB: No. No. It’s a brief thing of what I can remember. But I enjoyed the wartime.
[recording paused]
DE: Right. So tell me about being evacuated.
GB: Well, I wasn’t.
DE: No.
GB: I wasn’t evacuated.
DE: Tell me the story.
GB: Right. We were told at school as they were evacuating people from London and different areas weren’t they? All over. Evacuation was going. Anyway, we were told, ‘You’re going to be evacuated to Canada.’ And so we got gas masks, my parents took me down to the big college that’s no longer there, Eleanor Street. Forgot what it’s, swimming pool, college and we’re all lined up there and we were waiting to hear when we were going and how we were going. We’d gone down. We’re all there. My mum and dad took me and it come on the radio that the German submarine had sunk a ship to Canada with schoolkids on. I can’t give you the detail but I know it certainly happened. I can’t tell you what ship and how many but the thing was this ship got sunk with, with evacuees on it outside Canada so we all, we were all told to return home. You’re not going because of this. This. Now, I know it happened but I can’t tell you the ship because I, but it certainly happened and we were waiting to go to Canada. I was waiting outside the school for, to see where we were going, Liverpool or wherever and it got cancelled that morning because of this ship had been sunk off the Canadian coast. It was going to Canada with schoolkids in. I know the casualties were heavy you know but I don’t know. I’m a bit vague on that except I know it did happen.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
GB: That’s all I can tell you.
DE: I’ve heard that story too. Yeah. That must have been horrible to think that you were going to be leaving your family and going all the way over there.
GB: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Well, they took us. I can remember standing, gas mask on standing out with all these other school kids to be processed to see what, what train you were going on and what thing, you know. I mean it was while we were coming, I didn’t hear this like but the authorities heard that the ship had been sunk and a lot of a lot of schoolkids had got killed on that boat.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Drowned on that boat because it was sunk by a submarine. So they decided they weren’t going to do it.
DE: So then it, then it was back home and —
GB: Aye. Well, got to say that. What would it be. I would say, I’m guessing here now ’43 ’44.
DE: Yeah. I think –
GB: Around that time.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Around that time when everything was happening.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It wasn’t later on because it was in the early part of the war.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Maybe ’42.
DE: Well, we can look up. I can’t remember when it, when it was but I know the story.
GB: I think you would. I think if you research it you’ll find what it was and when it was.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But I’m only telling you what we were told.
DE: Yeah.
GB: We were told you’re no longer going. A submarine has sunk an immigrant boat with a lot of casualties.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So we decided you’re not going.
DE: Yeah.
GB: You’re not going to go.
DE: Crikey.
GB: But we were there waiting to go. Waiting to find out where we were going to go. Liverpool I’m assuming. Like Liverpool if you’re going to Canada. Over the other side.
DE: Yeah. Smashing. Thank you.
GB: Ok.
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 Geoff Brown
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-10-06
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:54:56 Audio Recording
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending review
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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ABrownG231006, PBrownG2301
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-06
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Grimsby
France
France--Paris
North Africa
Egypt
Coverage
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Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff grew up in Grimsby and remembers picking a butterfly bomb up and taking it home.
Geoff was born and lived in the same area of Grimsby all his life, at the date of his interview he was 93. The first part of the interview concentrated on his experience of finding a German butterfly bomb close to his home, Geoff described how after an air raid the local children would explore the local area looking for shrapnel. On this particular day when he was about 13, he and a friend found this device which looked different, he asked a soldier what it might be but he didn’t know. His friends father did not want it in their house and Geoff’s father said the same thing although they did not know what it was. Geoff was standing outside their house when a bomb disposal team came by probably looking for the bomblets. They told Geoff to drop it they then surrounded it with sandbags and detonated it with a small explosive charge which blew out some of the house windows. Geoff considered himself to be lucky as although they had mistreated the device it had not exploded, he also made the point that no one knew what they were as the authorities decided not to issue any information about the bomblets. He could not remember any anti aircraft guns locally but did remembers a large gun nearby.
Geoff described how his father a fisherman had build an Anderson air-raid shelter in their back garden and when the sirens alerted them to a raid the whole family gathered there. He described how one night a German aircraft caught in the searchlight beam dived down and dropped their bomb quite close to the house. He made the point that air raids on Grimsby were not that frequent unlike Hull just across the river, although Grimsby at that time was a major fishing port where literally you could cross the harbour stepping from one trawler to the next. Geoff remembered that early in the war the aircraft they saw were German but later on the large formations of Lancasters were evident.
Having left school at 14 he went to work at the local Rolls Royce dealership as an apprentice but disliked the work. Just post the European war conscription was still in place but Geoff volunteered to join the army for five years as you could choose your job and were paid more. He was trained as a signaller, his initial posting was the army headquarters in Paris which as it was just post war Eisenhour and Montgomery were there. Geoff was then posted to Egypt which was very different to Paris, living in tents awful food. Another lucky escape happened there, with a group of soldiers they were digging trenches by hand to be used as latrines, a fellow corporal told Geoff take your troops and go for a break then come back and relieve me, but the trench collapsed and killed them as Geoff and his group were on break.
Having completed his time in the army Geoff became a lorry driver during the week and a taxi driver at the weekend and he remembered the filming of Memphis Belle at RAF Binbrook.
Almost as a postscript Geoff remembered another lucky escape, early in the war in many towns and cities the school children were evacuated to safer areas to escape the German bombers. He remembers being gathered at school expecting to be told that they were being evacuated to Canada but a ship carrying evacuees had been sunk near the Canadian coast so the plan was abandoned.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Trevor Hardcastle
Julie Williams
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
home front
military living conditions
searchlight
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2602/45258/PCookP2301.2.jpg
f3afb748a3c71fd05b9619e10f13b57e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2602/45258/ACookP230912.2.mp3
fce9d606f83781d875a526b7deefb780
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
Cook, Patricia
P Cook
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Patricia Cook. She remembers wartime Lincoln.
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
2023-09-12
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cook, P
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: I’ll just check that’s recording. So, this is an interview for the IBCC Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. The interview is with Patricia Cook. We’re at her home in Lincoln and it’s the 12th of September 2023. Patricia, Pat, thank you for doing the interview with me. Could, could you start by telling me a little bit about your family and your childhood and where you grew up and those sorts of things?
PC: Well, originally I was born in Bracebridge. In Ellison Street. I was the youngest child of eight. And then we went to live at Bracebridge Heath. We had three different houses up there. Move. Move. Move. Oh, they were the old Air Force officer’s [pause] I can’t see it. They were the houses, or they weren’t they bungalows and in the First World War they were built for the officers at the Waddington.
DE: I see. Yeah.
PC: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
PC: And we had one of those. We lived in there. Yeah. Then we moved. Moved down to Melville Street and moved up to Belle Vue Road and that’s when the war started.
DE: Why did you keep moving so much?
PC: My mother. If the war hadn’t have started we’d have been in Canada now. She, she just liked moving.
DE: Oh, I see. Ok.
PC: Poor old dad didn’t.
DE: What did your father do?
PC: He just worked at Ruston’s and Hornsby’s just, you know, a machinist.
DE: And was it, was it brothers or sisters that you had?
PC: You what love?
DE: Brothers or sisters that you had. You said you were the youngest.
PC: Oh, I had Chris, my sister. Charles, Gertrude, George, Nora, Ron, Margaret, me. There was eight of us you see. I spoilt it because I should have been a boy. Because you went girl boy girl boy.
DE: Oh [laughs] yes, because there was a pattern. Yes.
PC: You see, and yeah, we all, we all we used to have to share at least three in a bed.
DE: Really?
PC: Oh yeah. At least. Sometimes four. And being the youngest I used to have to sleep at the bottom of the bed, you know and I used to get into trouble because I was never still. Yeah. Even the men had to share beds and during the war you had if you got a fairly large house, we had four bedrooms you had to take lodgers in, you know. People came to work in Lincoln and you had to take them in as lodgers. A man used to come around and say, ‘Mrs Dickinson you’ve got so many. You’ve got, you’ve got room.’ And sometimes we used to have to share with complete strangers. Had to share a bed.
DE: Wow. Ok.
PC: Yeah. You had. I mean double beds they were and as I say we slept three to a bed and yeah you had to. Oh, that was another thing. We’d, we’d no, no bathroom at all. You just didn’t have bathrooms in those days. You had a tin bath. Have you seen them?
DE: I’ve seen them. Yes.
PC: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Well, you had a tin bath and you had to have a bath in the kitchen and take the water from the, the gas boiler and you just had a screen around you. That was it. I mean my brothers used to be horrible. They used to get cold water and throw it over as you were sat in the bath. Things like that you know. The toilet was, it was a longish kitchen but you had to go out the door, down around the back of it and it was an outside toilet and it was one of those with the wooden seats right across. You had to empty, you know. Empty it afterwards.
DE: I see.
PC: That was my dad’s job. And you had a candle and matches on the side so when you went in you just lit the candle. Oh, and you didn’t have toilet rolls.
DE: No.
PC: You got the, you got the Echo every night and once it was finished dad used to cut it into squares, put some string through and tie it up. Really slidey stuff. It was horrible. Yeah. And as I say that’s the reason we used to get the Echo.
DE: Right. Ok.
PC: So you’d got some toilet paper [laughs] Yeah. So what else do you want to know?
DE: Well, you said you moved from Bracebridge.
PC: Oh.
DE: To Melville Street, was it?
PC: Belle Vue Road.
DE: Belle Vue. Right.
PC: That’s at, do you know where the Lawn is? Yeah. Well, that’s that. That’s Belle Vue Road and we were in the first house there. Anyway, it’d been in the news the war was going to start and we’d got, we’d got gas masks before actually declared. Do you know what I mean?
DE: Yeah.
PC: Anyway, the, they did a kind of a siren. They said we’ll you know, put on the radio because there was no television, we’re going to try the sirens and take you know you’ll know what’s happening. Anyway, the sirens went and mum said, ‘Come on. We’ll all go in the Street. See what’s happening.’ We all walked into the street and people were coming out of the houses and an old couple lived next door and they came out with their gas masks on. ‘Are they bombing us yet?’ Yeah. Yeah, they thought war had started there and then. Yeah. Aye, so anyway it was and then it was call up wasn’t it? Called them up. My eldest brother he went. He went in the Coldstream Guards.
DE: Oh really. Ok.
PC: Well, he was tall. He was like me. He was very tall. And they put him in the Coldstream Guards. He was with Monty’s lot. Can you remember Montgomery?
DE: Yeah. In the desert.
PC: Yeah. Well, he, he was over. Overseas all those years with Monty’s lot. My middle brother didn’t go in. They wouldn’t accept him because he’d got bad varicose veins. And my youngest brother went in the Navy but he was what they called a chief stoker on tank landing craft.
DE: Oh right. Ok. Yeah.
PC: He was on one of those big ones that came right down from the north. Anyway, I remember I’d be about fourteen, I’d started work and it was a Wed, it must have been a Wednesday because we got Wednesday afternoon off and we got a telegram at the door and it said he was missing at sea presumed drowned.
DE: Oh dear.
PC: That killed my mum. Yeah. He, because he was lovely you know. My brother Ron. He was Whistling Rufus. Always used to be whistling and happy and yeah and he was lost at sea and of course —
DE: That’s awful.
PC: They never found him again of course.
DE: No.
PC: You know, there was no closure you see was there?
DE: No.
PC: You didn’t bury a body. And my sister, sister Nora, she was ten years older than me and she was a cripple, you know. She’d, what it was was when she was young she had knock knees. You know, like that.
DE: Yeah.
PC: And this is what mum used to tell us some doctor said, ‘If we break them we can set them straight.’
DE: Right.
PC: They broke both her legs and of course they never. They never mended. So she was in a wheelchair.
DE: Oh dear.
PC: And I would be about ten, nine or ten and I used to take her out and in those days the wheelchairs only had wheels that big.
DE: Yeah.
PC: They weren’t like they are now.
DE: No. They were quite small ones. Yeah.
PC: Like that big and I could just see over the top. I remember once she wanted to go up Bracebridge Heath to visit her friend because we used to live up there you see. And I started pushing her up Cross O’Cliff Hill. Well, I got about halfway up and I couldn’t do it and I thought [pause] and anyway, a young man came and said, ‘Do you want a hand?’ I said, ‘Please.’ And he pushed it up to the top for me.
DE: Yeah. That’s a big long way isn’t it that. Yeah.
PC: Yeah. So anyway, I got her up there but I used to like to going up there you see. On Main Avenue. We lived down, we used to live down there you see and the woman she used to visit her daughter had a little bike and so I I used to take this bike and I taught myself to ride up and down Main Avenue.
DE: Oh crikey.
PC: Yeah. At five years old. I always remember that. Lovely. Yeah. So yeah. Like I say my brother went off and I told you when my brother got lost at sea just a telegram. No closure. No. ‘Don’t write and tell your brother.’ You know. Of course, when my brother came home from Africa he’d lost a sister and a brother, you know.
DE: Oh, what happened to your sister?
PC: Well, my sister Nora, the one with broken knees.
DE: Yeah.
PC: She got kind of a pneumonia.
DE: Oh.
PC: With being an invalid she, she just died of it.
DE: Oh dear.
PC: Yeah. That was another thing. During the war I mean now they’d take you. That’s it. But she was laid in the coffin and it was in the front room on a, on a table and it was there for about, I should say it seemed [pause] it seemed like a week. It might have been five days. But I’ll never forget that smell. If I walked into a house and I smelled that later on, you know in my job I’d have said, ‘Somebody’s dead here.’ Or, ‘Somebody has died here.’
DE: Oh dear. Right.
PC: It’s a funny smell. You can’t describe it unless you smell it. And as I say she was laid out there on the coffin until the funeral. Then she was buried at Bracebridge Church with my relatives. Things like that. Aye.
DE: So, but you didn’t tell your older brother until he came home.
PC: No.
DE: Right.
PC: Mum said, ‘Don’t write and tell, you know, Charles because it will upset him.’ And so when he come home he’d lost a sister and a brother.
DE: Oh dear.
PC: It was terrible that.
DE: Did you, did you manage to write and get letters from him very often then when he was away?
PC: No. No. I can’t remember. Occasionally. Occasionally you would but, but I can’t remember much. I mean, I was still at school, wasn’t I? Yeah. Oh, that’s another thing. At school if the sirens went we had brick built shelters in the playground and you had to go in these shelters you see. We went in these shelters. We were all kind of hoping we’d be in there for an hour because if you were in there an hour the teacher had a jar of sweets. You got a sweet.
DE: Oh right [laughs] ok. Yeah.
PC: We all said, ‘Don’t let the all clear go yet,’ you know because and then she would pass a sweet around to everybody who was in the shelter. Yeah. Daft isn’t it but —
DE: Well —
PC: Yeah. One of those things you [pause] yeah.
DE: And what if the sirens went when you were at home?
PC: Oh, if the sirens went while we were at home we had a, a big table made of iron. They delivered it, you know and it was iron posts and an iron top about, about that thick.
DE: About a half an inch. Yeah.
PC: Yeah. And mum put a couple of mattresses underneath and then if the sirens went she used to call us downstairs and we all went underneath there. But our dog Paddy he would sit there. If we, say we hadn’t gone to bed and suddenly he’d sit up and he’d go under the table on the mattress. Mam used to say, ‘Siren’s going to go.’ A second later sirens went.
DE: Really? Ok.
PC: How did he? He must have sensed something. There must have been something there that set something off in his ears wasn’t there? Then we’d be under there for how long the raid was on. Then suddenly he’d get up, go back and sit in front of the fire again. Mam used to say, ‘All clear’s going. Come on.’ But I could never understand how he, what triggered —
DE: Yeah.
PC: What triggered him. He must have heard just something. A little something just before the sirens started.
DE: Maybe he heard the sirens further away.
PC: Yeah.
DE: I don’t know but yeah.
PC: But he did. And he used to go underneath. Yeah. And we had this as I say this big iron table we all used to have to, mum used to call us down, ‘Come on. Sirens have gone.’ And we used to have to get underneath and try to go back to sleep while the, you know.
DE: Did the whole family fit under there then?
PC: No. Mum and dad didn’t go underneath unless, but it was very rare we heard. I think we got more trouble from our planes dropping. I know we had something in Dixon Street and something in St Mary’s Street but I’m not sure if that was one of our own planes crashing.
DE: Ok.
PC: I can’t remember. It was a long time ago isn’t it? But there was something. But no. Unless, unless you heard it thump, you know you could hear a thump thump but you see we had so many aerodromes hadn’t we?
DE: Yeah. That’s it. Yeah.
PC: We had so many aerodromes around us you know. And that, I think that’s why the Germans you know were coming for us.
DE: That or the factories, I think. Yes.
PC: And the factories. Yes.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Yeah. Dad, dad was working on a Sunday at Ruston Hornsbys and he was walking down Kesteven Street and there used to be brick built shelters in the Streets and they came over and one strafed.
DE: Oh crikey.
PC: Dad dived in to this shelter you see. So when he got home he told mum. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I got strafed.’ She said, ‘Well, they didn’t get you in the First World War. They’re trying now.’ But he got shot in the wrist during the First World War. He was in France, yeah and he got shot through the wrist but, no. But it was weird but as I say at school you just sat there and if the sirens went you’ all used to go out very quietly and you kept thinking I hope it’s over an hour so we get a sweet. Oh.
DE: So you were more worried about that then about bombs dropping or anything.
PC: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Daft wasn’t it but I don’t think at that age you realise how dangerous it was. Yeah. And I, I can remember but I can’t find out if it was true. You know Whitton’s Park?
DE: Yes.
PC: Well, do you know where Queens Crescent is? Queen’s Crescent. Where are we? Go down Yarborough Road and there was like a –
DE: Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah.
PC: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
PC: That was Queen’s Crescent and there was a, like a little pathway from Queen’s Crescent through to the Common.
DE: Yeah.
PC: To the path going down. Right. Down there. I can remember it. There was a dugout shelter there but nobody else can seem to remember it.
DE: Ok.
PC: But it was so black. We used to run from the park if the sirens went and dive into this shelter. We all sat near, near the door. Yeah.
DE: Because it was so dark. Yeah.
PC: Yeah. And I always remember once we were on, we were on the Common or going down. We were near this shelter and there was a woman who lived near us, you know. Used to live near us and she was kind of all [pause] you know all flustered and I said, ‘Hello Mrs Baker.’ Whatever her name was. She said, ‘Hello dear.’ I said, ‘Are you alright?’ You know. She said, ‘No, not really.’ I said, you know, ‘What’s the matter?’ I’m kind of looking around thinking what’s the matter. She said, ‘I don’t like to tell you this but —’ she said, ‘This young teenage boy just run down there.’ She said, ‘He ran up to me, unzipped himself and showed himself.’ She said, luckily she said, I said, ‘Young man I was a midwife all my life and I’ve seen babies with a bigger one than that.’ [laughs] She said, ‘He gave a sob and ran off.’ [laughs]
DE: [laughs] Ok.
PC: Oh dear. I don’t know. It was funny. Another time when I was on the ambulances I got called to Hamilton Street. I don’t know if you know it. Down where Cross O’Cliff starts.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Off Newark Road. Hamilton Street. There was some big houses there and they had great big windows you know and if you look now. Anyway, we got a call out. Of course, I’m on the ambulances now. Got a call out there and there was this, this man and he was, he was like this you see with his hands.
DE: Shaking.
PC: So I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ You know. He said, he said, ‘I was working on that window,’ he was doing something like at the bottom of the window and the sash cord broke. Trapped his fingers. So he said, ‘I’m stood there with my hands trapped. Can’t lift it up.’ Because it’s a big, you know the big windows. Sat there so he said, ‘I’m thinking what the hell.’ A woman walking past and he banged on the window with his head and she looked. He says, ‘Here.’ And he looked down and his fingers were there you see. She went, ‘You dirty man.’ And walked off [laughs] She thought he was —
DE: Yeah.
PC: Anyway, he said a workman came past and he did the same and he came in and lifted the window and we had to take him in then to see if he had broken any of his fingers.
DE: Broken his fingers. Yeah.
PC: Oh God it was funny. She said, ‘You dirty man.’ [laughs]
DE: So —
PC: Yeah.
DE: I do go on.
PC: No, it’s fine. It’s fine. If we, if we can I’d just like to go back, back a little bit. So, you said you got a job when you were fourteen.
DE: Oh yes. In the Co-op offices in Free School Lane and it was called the cheque office. You won’t remember but when you bought from the Co-op there was three layers with that blue paper in between and it gave you a number. You got the top cheque and the second lot of cheques came to the cheque office and they were all broken up into, and we had to, with a big thing like that with all these holes in and you had to sort them out into —
PC: Oh yeah. Into –
DE: Into the cheques.
PC: Into pigeon holes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Then they went upstairs and then they were logged in how much money they’d got and then —
DE: Yeah.
PC: They got a dividend you see of it. Then twice a year we had Free School Lane was opened. You came in with a cheque, you know a cheque and things and then you got your money. Your divvy.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Yeah. My first job at fourteen.
DE: Was that straight from school then?
PC: Yeah. I was fourteen in the December. I started the first week in January. Didn’t get much holiday.
DE: No.
PC: Yeah. Yes. I was there for a while. But [pause] I had some jobs as well. I was always changing. But then the ambulance was the best job. I was thirty years on that.
DE: Yeah. When did, when did you join the ambulance then?
PC: I can’t remember what year it was. They only employed men as I told you. They only employed men. Then they said you’ve got to start employing women. I saw it in the Echo and thought ooh. So put in an application for it and I went in this room absolutely full of women, men and women and so I thought oh God, I don’t stand a chance. But, but in between that you see before that I’d been driving and I took my advanced driving course. I was always trying things out and I took my advanced driving course. I passed it and so I got my advanced driving licence. Yeah. Do you know that was a lot easier than the ordinary one and you went about fifteen miles around Lincoln and you’d say, ‘What was the last signpost we passed?’ ‘What was that lorry?’ ‘What was – ’ so and so. It was all you know, ever so easy. Yeah. But so anyway they advised, advertised in the Echo and I though ooh that sounds a good job. Yeah. So I went to apply for that.
DE: Yeah.
PC: And I got it.
DE: Yeah. Well congratulations. Yeah.
PC: Because I thought oh I’ll not stand a chance. All those men and women there. And I went shopping and when I got home the phone was ringing and I, ‘Hello.’ Yeah. ‘Mrs Cook, we want you to come down to South Park and –‘’
DE: Yeah.
PC: Got it. Oh, that’s another thing. I do go on.
DE: No, that’s fine. That’s what we want you to do is –
PC: We had an ambulance. They were old ambulances don’t forget.
DE: Yeah.
PC: We had an ambulance and two seats were in the front and then there was just a kind of a little slide back window where you could talk to the driver if you were in the back with the patient.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Anyway, I was on one day and there was this young lad had started, you know and so my boss said, ‘Oh, take him. You’ve got to go and pick this body up.’ So I picked this body up and put it in the back. I said, I said, ‘It’s alright. You needn’t stay in the back with him because he’s dead anyway.’ So we went. We had to go when we got to South Park I had to get a paper to take up to County Hospital. So I said to him, I said, ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Go get this paper,’ off the leading, you know ambulance man. So he went in. In between time one of the lads who was sat in the restroom got in and got in the back and when this lad got in and sat down again he opened this little slidey window and tapped this lad on the shoulder [laughs] Well, he just screamed and fell to the floor. He ran out and he wouldn’t come back. Yeah. So my boss said to this other lad, he said, ‘Right, get up to the mortuary with him.’ He said, ‘I’m talking to you when you get back as well.’ This lad went home and never came back anymore.
DE: Really? No.
PC: No. Well, they used to do things like that you know. I mean like in the mortuary you took them into the mortuary in those days. You don’t do it now but you took them in to the mortuary and the mortician oh he was terrible. He would, if somebody had had a bad accident on the head he would take the top part of the crown off so he could see inside. He’d do that to some people and you know they’d pass out. And then one day there was, he was here and then there was a kind of a coffin there where they left the bodies and they sent this young lad in. They said, ‘You’ve got to go and confirm it was the person you picked.’ But they’d put a coffin there and this mortician laid in it with a cover over him and as the lad pulled the cover back he cried. Another scream.
DE: I bet. Wow.
PC: Oh, he was awful.
DE: Yeah.
PC: They were wicked.
DE: So, when, when were you driving ambulances then? Was this, I don’t know —
PC: When was I driving it? Oh God —
DE: ‘50s, ‘60s or later.
PC: No, it must have been ‘50s ‘60s. ‘9. ’49. About yeah.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Do you know I’m old.
DE: It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
PC: I’m terrible aren’t I?
DE: Going on.
PC: My brain’s going.
DE: Dates are really hard to remember.
PC: Yeah.
DE: So, can we go back to Lincoln during the wartime a little bit? What was it, what was it like in Lincoln during the war?
PC: Well, it wasn’t bad. You had as I say there was shelters in the streets etcetera. High Street was all street you know. You could –
DE: It wasn’t pedestrianised no.
PC: Oh no. You could up and down cars. Up and down everything. All ways. Even the Stonebow and I seem to remember I don’t know if it was true that I used to think a double decker bus used to go through the Stonebow because there used to be a policeman at this side and a policeman at the other side and they would work together to bring traffic up.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Through the Stonebow and around. Yeah. But there used to be what they called the Still. Then there was a big hotel and then there was Woolworths come down. Then there was the High Bridge.
DE: Yeah.
PC: You know. But yeah, then you went down there was Marks and Spencer’s. What did we used to call the other one? Oh God. Woolworths, Marks and Spencer’s [pause] not home stores. Or was it British Home Stores? No, I can’t remember. But there were three great big. Yeah.
DE: Did you do a lot of shopping? I imagine lots of things were rationed weren’t they?
PC: Oh yeah. Rationed. Yeah. Yeah. That was another thing. You know, I told you we lived at Belle Vue Road.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Up near the Lawns. Mum’s, mum had two friends and the husband worked down Ripon Street. Do you know where that is? Monson Street.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Ripon Street.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Right. I’d be about nine. Nine, ten, and she used to send me with a pound note and I used to walk all that way down there and I used to have to stand and wait ‘til all the queue had gone and then Uncle Frank we called him, he wasn’t, he used to fill my bag up. There would be joints of meat and pig’s trotters, tripe, bacon, and I used to walk all that way back up the hill to Belle Vue Road. Nine years old. Can you imagine doing that now?
DE: No. You wouldn’t do that now. No.
PC: No.
DE: No.
PC: And this you know, ‘Make sure you don’t lose that pound.’ ‘Yes mam.’ [laughs] Yeah. Yes. Because the sister next to me yeah it’s alright it’s Fiona seeing if I was alright. Sister next to me she was, she wasn’t barmy but she wasn’t all there. Do you know what I mean? So she was slow.
DE: Right.
PC: Peg, they called her. She’s on that picture. Oh, that’s another thing. When we lived at Bracebridge Heath there was a woman there she was taking pictures all the time and she took that one of me there with the goat.
DE: Oh yes. Yeah.
PC: And she put it in the Sunday paper and it said Mary had a little dash dash dash. Yeah. So that was in some Sunday paper.
DE: Oh smashing.
PC: I can’t remember which one it was. Yeah. I always remember that goat it went and butted me.
DE: Oh really? [laughs]
PC: Frightened the life out of me. Yeah. We all there, oh there was quite a few of the family there.
DE: Yeah.
PC: In that one. Aye but [unclear]
DE: Now you’re doing, it’s wonderful from the things you’re talking about so [pause] do you have any, any stories about rationing?
PC: As I say meat and everything was rationed. Oh, did I tell you about that time when we got I don’t know it, get, it wasn’t from the proper butcher? What do you call them when they were black, no not black.
DE: Black Market.
PC: Black Market. That was the name. Yeah. You’d get horsemeat.
DE: Oh.
PC: Mum sent me to this place and I had to get this horse meat and she made, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t eat it. Horse meat. You know, I thought oh that poor horse.
DE: But you were ok with tripe and pig’s trotters and things.
PC: No. I didn’t like —
DE: You didn’t like those either.
PC: No, I didn’t like them. No.
DE: I don’t like tripe.
PC: I was, I was awful choosy. Yeah. But this horse meat. And another time we got whale meat. Yeah. I don’t know where we seemed to get that from. Take me for this whale meat. Oh, that was when Vera Lynn, can you remember she used to sing, “We’ll Meet Again.”
DE: Yeah.
PC: We started singing, ‘Whale meet again,’ [laughs] Yeah. But yeah, during the war it was funny. But I used to oh, the pictures at the cinema. If the queues, do you know the Savoy? It was —
DE: It’s Radio Lincolnshire now, right? On Newport.
PC: No. Radio Lincolnshire is up the top, isn’t it?
DE: Yeah.
PC: No, this is down near Free School Lane.
DE: Oh right. Ok. Yeah.
PC: The Savoy Cinema —
DE: Yeah.
PC: Was there and the queues used to go right down. Right down. Oh, ever so long. Really long. You’d be stood there for hours waiting to get in. Anyway, then you’d get in and there used to be an organist used to come up and play before the picture started. Anyway, you’d be sat there and then there would be, I can’t remember if it come on the screen or if somebody spoke it. ‘The sirens have sounded. If you want to you can leave now or you can stay.’ So we used to say, ‘Might as well stay.’ What’s the good of going out? Yeah. And they used to say like you know the sirens have started. Yeah. Radio Lincolnshire was at, up on Newport. At that time we had about eight cinemas.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Didn’t we?
DE: Yeah. Yeah, I think that was —
PC: Must have been.
DE: The Radion wasn’t it on Newport?
PC: There was a Ritz wasn’t there?
DE: Yeah.
PC: The Ritz. We called it the Exchange. Exchange Cinema on the Cornhill marketplace. The Regal. The Central. The Savoy. The Plaza. The Grand. The Radion.
DE: Wow.
PC: Oh, there was eight. Eight cinemas we had.
DE: What sort of films did you like watching then?
PC: What was that one used to be on a lot? Oh I can’t remember. We used to go in watch whatever you could get in actually. Yeah. And I can remember when the Exchange Cinema when we were kids you know and we used to go around asking people, ‘Have you got any bottles you want taking back?’ Because you got a penny back off the bottle.
DE: Yeah.
PC: And nobody else can remember it but I can. When you were in the Exchange Cinema there was like wooden seats at the front. Benches. Then there was wooden, ordinary wooden seats before you came to the proper cinema seats. But they were like tuppence, fourpence or a shilling for the —
DE: Wow. Ok.
PC: So we used to get the tuppeny ones.
DE: Yeah.
PC: And sit there like this looking up at the —
DE: Yeah. Craning your neck because you were near the front.
PC: Yeah. Sat there watching. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
PC: But yeah, we had about eight cinemas. I’m sure of it. Gosh.
DE: Did you listen to the radio much as well?
PC: Oh, in them days. Oh gosh yeah. Oh, mum used to have it stuck on all the time and especially anything to do with the war. Yeah. With, you know brothers being in the forces.
DE: Yeah.
PC: I can remember that day. I know it was a Wednesday because I was off when the telegram came. My brother was lost at sea. Oh, my mum. And she said, ‘Don’t tell anybody until they’ve had their teas.’ You know. And I couldn’t stop crying. I went. I went upstairs and then she told the others when, after they’d had their teas Ron had got lost. Oh dear. She was always hoping that he, you know he would be found. Of course, he never was. Therefore, there was no closure was there?
DE: No.
PC: You see. No body. Yeah. Shame. And he was such a lovely lad. Whistling Rufus. Aye. He used to work [pause] are there any photos up there? Some photos there was. Oh no. That’s [unclear] that was my mum during the war.
DE: Oh smashing. Ok. Yeah.
PC: Dressed in her red, white and blue.
DE: If, if its ok with you I’d love to take proper copies of some of those but we would have to do that another day.
PC: Do what? Sorry?
DE: To make copies of those. Of the photographs.
PC: Yes. You can help yourself love. I don’t know what there is. That was my brother Ron. That was at Jersey before the war started.
DE: Oh ok.
PC: He used to go every kind of season.
DE: Yeah.
PC: And go potato picking. And then they’d get paid you see and then he would be away while potato picking was on. Then he’d come home. Yeah. But that was at Jersey. That was my mum as I say during the war in her red, white and blue.
DE: Do you remember VE Day?
PC: Oh, gosh yeah. Oh yeah. VE Day. Oh, everybody went mad. All the High Street was full. You know, everybody shouting and kissing and the old Yanks. The Americans.
DE: Yeah.
PC: The Yanks. They, oh the women were all over them and you know. Yeah. But then we had a VE party. The streets all had a parties. Right. We had one in the Ripon Arms in Monson Street. The Ripon Arms. We had it in their kind of yard.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Garden. I was fifteen. Too young to sit with these children. Too, no too old to sit with children.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Too young to sit with the adults. So us fifteen year olds we just went around and picked any bits that were left over. But I mean you couldn’t sit with the kids.
DE: No.
PC: Because they had their little party.
DE: Yeah.
PC: You couldn’t sit with the adults because you weren’t old enough. Yeah.
DE: No such thing as teenagers then.
PC: No.
DE: No.
PC: No. That’s the barge we used to own.
DE: Oh really. Ok.
PC: Yeah. Bought that for a hundred pounds.
DE: Oh crikey.
PC: Yeah. Brought it up from [pause] oh right down the Witham. We used to go [pause] that’s my nephew, Peter when they were building Bracebridge Heath houses. Sat in this [pause] That was one of the houses that belonged to the RAF.
DE: Right. Yeah.
PC: You see. There’s me and my sister. Yeah. Oh, that’s the old Brayford. Oh Russian. Oh yeah. We went to Russia.
DE: Oh really?
PC: Yeah. Me and my husband went.
DE: Ok.
PC: On a trip to Russia. Yeah. I’ve got a book there full of them. That was my nephew. He lived in London. He was in the Air Force during the war. And my cousin she was in the Navy.
DE: Did you, sorry did you, did you see many service personnel around Lincoln then?
PC: Service.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Oh yeah.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Yeah. Especially Yanks.
DE: Really?
PC: Americans. Yeah. They all used to be [pause] what was that big hotel near the Stonebow? This side of the Stonebow. Woolworths and that big. There was a big hotel.
DE: Yeah.
PC: And they used to stay there. Most of them did. Yeah. Because we used to go up and, ‘Got any gum, chum?’
DE: Really? Ok.
PC: Yeah. ‘Got any gum chum.’ Yeah. And they used to say, ‘Have you got any older sisters?’ Yeah. [unclear] Oh, we did save some junk. That were Germany 1952. Got sent over to Germany, my husband did on the Berlin Airlift.
DE: Oh really. What, what did your husband do then? Was –
PC: Hmmn?
DE: What, what did your husband do?
PC: Oh, he was air frames.
DE: Right.
PC: You know, worked on air frames. And 1952 we got married. That was another thing. I was at work January the 8th 1952. Right. At work. My fiancé came down to where I worked and said, ‘Hurry home. We’re getting married at half past five.’ ‘You what?’ He said, ‘Yeah. I’ve got to go to Germany tomorrow.’ And he, he got my dad and that to St Peter’s Church. We got married at that time of night.
DE: Wow.
PC: And he went to Germany the next morning and I went back to work.
DE: Crikey.
PC: Honestly. Then of course 1952 I went out there to join him. Stayed there. That’s another thing. I’ve never been, you know on my own travelling and I went over on the ship and then we had to get a train to somewhere near Fassberg. A big town. Anyway, this German he come on and I was sat in this carriage. I was on my own and he come in and he said, ‘Get up.’ I looked at him you see. He went [unclear] And I thought how I dare to do it but I said, ‘Listen.’ I said, ‘You started the war. We won it.’ I said, ‘So just mind your manners.’ He looked at me.
DE: Oh.
PC: I thought oh God. Yeah. Oh, that was another thing. In Fassberg people there couldn’t get tea or what was the other thing? Tea. There was tea and something else you couldn’t get. So I asked my mum to send some over. And so my husband said, ‘I’ve got to work this evening so will you go to the old aerodrome, take this tea. There will be a German waiting there for you. Get the marks off him.’ Well, I went to this old aerodrome. There was all hangars with great big holes in them. I was scared stiff and I saw this man just stood there. Oh, he was like something out of Harry Lang. Peak cap on.
DE: Yeah.
PC: So, he said, ‘You’ve got tea?’ I said, ‘Yeah. You’ve got money?’ ‘Yeah.’ He gave me money, took the tea. God, I ran like hell. Frightened to death. I mean a young girl sent to a [pause] and all the hangars had great big holes where the shells had come through. Yeah. There was a big American, he was, I had a photo somewhere once of him. In fact, he, I think he’s still alive and he was on that squadron. He was very nice actually. We had tonnes of stuff and I don’t know what somebody’s done with it all but [pause] there we are. Anyway. Go on. There’s, that’s my mum. Mum there you see. You know she was only in her fifties. She looks like an old woman doesn’t she? Yeah. I don’t know if there is anything else on there. No [pause] no. Yeah. So —
DE: No. That’s wonderful. Let’s have a look.
PC: I haven’t finished my tea.
DE: No. You’ve been talking for forty six minutes so yeah.
PC: I do go on.
DE: I think it was, I think it was post-war but before I started recording you had a story about, was it Peter and a green ration book.
PC: Oh gosh. Yeah. Did I tell you that?
DE: Yeah. But you can you say it again for the, now we’re recording.
PC: Right. Well, the fish and chips weren’t rationed so you could get them and I can’t remember how many was in the house. About seven or eight of us. My mum sent my nephew Peter to the fish and chip shop you see. Anyway, five minutes later he came rushing back. She said, ‘Aren’t they open?’ He says, ‘Yeah. But there’s ever such a long queue. Can I borrow Auntie Joan’s green ration book?’ The pregnant woman’s ration book [laughs] Oh God. She sent him off like.
DE: Yeah.
PC: She couldn’t stop laughing. Can you imagine going in there with a green ration book. Yeah. If you were pregnant you could go to the front of the queue you see.
DE: Yeah.
PC: Poor old kid. Yeah.
DE: Ok.
PC: Yeah.
DE: Right. Unless you can think of anything else to tell me I shall say thank you very much and stop the recording.
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 Patricia Cook
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Date
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2023-09-12
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:47:53 Audio Recording
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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ACookP230912, PCookP2301
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
Germany
Coverage
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Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Patricia Cook was born in Lincoln, one of eight children, during the Second World War. She recalls having to sleep four to a bed and having to share their house with complete strangers. They had the Morrison shelter table in their front room. The family dog would climb under the table just before the siren sounded which prompted her mum to know that the siren was about to sound and gather the family together. Just before the all clear the dog again seemed to know and wandered back to the fireplace before the humans heard the siren. Pat’s brother joined the Navy and was killed at sea. Never having a body meant there was no closure for the family. Her mum did not tell her other serving brother until he returned from service that he had lost a brother and a sister, who had a failed operation on her legs and was confined to a wheelchair before dying.
She left school at fourteen and worked in an office until she later became the first woman to drive ambulances in the city.
She recalls having to eat horsemeat and whale meat due to the rationing regime and speaks of the large number of cinemas in the city.
She was engaged to marry an RAF serviceman who arrived at her work and told her to be at the church later that evening to get married as he was going to Berlin the next day to take part in the airlift. Moving to Germany to be with her husband, she discovered that tea was in short supply and had it sent from England to sell. She recalls that some of the exchanges were in dubious locations and were frightening.
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Julie Williams
Terry Holmes
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Toule, Keith
K Toule
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An oral history interview with Keith Toule (1934 - 2023). He was a child on a farm at the end of the RAF Skellingthorpe's main runway.
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2022-10-03
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Toule, K
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DE: So, this is an interview for the IBCC Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. It’s an interview today with Keith Toule. I’m at his home near Doddington in Lincoln and it is the 3rd of October 2022. I’ll put that there.
KT: Yeah.
DE: It is recording. So Keith I’d like you to tell me a bit about —
KT: I was five years old, just turned five at the start of the war and the first memory of we didn’t really know what was happening but they started to cut all the trees down in what’s now known as the farm belt. The wood to the east side of the farm. These trees was all cut down and suddenly it opened a view up. We could see right across which was Hartsholme Estate in those days to fields from Hartsholme Estate right across to the Cathedral. We got a beautiful view of the Cathedral, the Castle and the water tower on the top of the hill and that’s my first memory of what was happening. Now I can’t remember how long it was before the first Hampden took off one Saturday afternoon because all this, well we could see across to the airfield. We wouldn’t be able to see. I’m not old enough to remember actually seeing the runways being put down. The perimeter. But this, I was on the stack one Saturday afternoon with a chap who worked for us for over fifty years fetching hay in to feed the cattle. This Hampden took over, took off. It would only be about twenty foot high over the field at the back of the time and I could tell its engines weren’t running properly so I says to Bob, I says, ‘He’ll not get far.’ And he carried on and I watched him. I was in a position where I could see him and he just cleared the tops of the trees and then suddenly disappeared. Up with a pile of smoke. Now, I’d said he wouldn’t get far and I was exactly right. It didn’t get far. No. We found out since that that crash was never recorded in any Air Force records. I don’t know how important that is. Whether it’s going to help you, whether it’s too far back for you to trace. Trace.
DE: We can have a look. Yeah.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Now the next part was —
DE: You told me earlier before I started recording about where it actually came down. That, that Hampden.
KT: Yes.
DE: And what happened then?
KT: Well, after the war a lot of my friends came with metal detectors.
DE: Right.
KT: And they was finding bits of car, bit of brass and copper that hadn’t burned out. Most of the engines and that I can’t remember too much about the site but a lot of bits of brass from carburettors and that sort of thing they were finding.
DE: What happened to the crew?
KT: Well, the crew was saved, you know. Who they were. There was no communications in those days you see. We never got to know much about the the airfield at all because as I said in the DVD there was the three rolls of wire between the farm and the airfield so I never got any communications or any, with any airmen. Now in 1947 this is another thing that had enabled us with the wood cut down and we could see across and you could see the tankers going around the airfield delivering the fuel to the planes and the dispersal points. Frying pans as they was commonly known in those days. And in ’47, in February ’47 I was going to the City School in Lincoln and in the second week in February the teachers came in and said all the lads in the country could go home early. And we looked. A lovely cold sunny day. We looked at one another. Didn’t know what was happening until I got nearly to Skellingthorpe where the ice cream farm was and we learned that the snow was drifting across the road and it snowed and drifted. We didn’t go back to school for nearly three weeks because all the, all the hedges and dykes on the farm you couldn’t see them. It just snowed. Snowed and blowed and snow and blowing and when we was working in the fields getting swedes and that in to feed the cattle all of a sudden you’d see a black cloud behind the Cathedral. It would disappear and three or four minutes later it was coming across with the east wind and we was in the middle of the snowstorm on the farm ourselves. These storms seemed to last about five or ten minutes and then a lovely sunny, sunny day again and it just kept repeating itself. Repeating itself these storms. Well, I can’t remember in detail how long but I’ve never seen so much snow in dykes. We could walk over every hedge and dyke on the farm and not know there was a hedge and dyke there.
DE: Wow. Was that worse than ’63 then?
KT: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Because that a bad winter wasn’t it?
KT: No comparison to any winters we’ve had since.
DE: Yeah. So you were sent home from school but it ended up being even more hard work than if you’d have been at school.
KT: Yeah. Well, I weren’t old. I weren’t old enough then and I mean the only hard work you had to do then was fetching the food, the swedes in for the cattle. All the rest of the stuff was already in the stack yard. The straw and that sort of thing.
DE: Right. I see.
KT: And oh, one of the things I found out or mentioned about the the sound travels faster and clearer on a cold, or if the colder it is the more the sound travels through the atmosphere. I remember cleaning the bottom field of the farm cleaning swedes one morning we could hear the cathedral strike ten. A strong east wind coming across. No storms. No snow storms that particular morning but you could hear them to one, two count up to ten and then at eleven up ‘til twelve. We’d got what swedes we wanted to so I wasn’t in the field in the afternoon to hear but it was so clear and that’s about three and a quarter miles away as the crow flies.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Never hear it now because there’s a wood between us and —
DE: Yes, of course. So that’s all grown up since hasn’t it?
KT: Yes. Yes.
DE: And there’s the bypass there yeah.
KT: And it’s been replanted with conifers with now.
DE: What were the trees that were originally chopped down then?
KT: There was oak. Mainly oak trees like the wood here. That’s mainly oak trees in there. A few silver birch. A few beech. There was a few beech scattered around the edges of the woods. Whether they’d been planted or what I don’t know but all the beech trees I know was on the dyke side right on the edge of the wood which is an interesting point. But they’ve all died since. They got, I suppose they got that old and they’ve all died with the, with the dryer summers. Can’t see them. Whether the roots aren’t so deep. But they’ve all died. Every one. No, there’s just one. There’s just one up on the drive side up there that’s still alive.
DE: So these, these trees were cut down I suppose some of them because that’s where the airfield were and some would be because they didn’t want trees in between you know on the flight path.
KT: Well, the wood was right at the end of the runway.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I mean when the, where they cut these trees down when the aeroplanes, the Hampdens to start with and I think there was one or two Manchesters. A short period of Manchesters on the airfield. But then the Manchesters weren’t capable of doing the the bombing trips because they hadn’t got this power and the strength of the engines. And then I can’t remember what year it was. Whether it was ’42 when the Lancasters but we was working down on the bottom of the farm one night cutting some low branches off the oak tree ready, getting ready for harvesting and this Lancaster took off and God it looked enormous. A giant of a plane compared to the little Hampdens that we had seen. Well, it would be wouldn’t it?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: About three or four times as big I suppose. I’ve never forgot that happening.
DE: Yeah. A hundred and two foot wingspan I think. A Lancaster.
KT: Does it? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And when, when they’d got the trees cut down in the winter when there was no leaves on the trees G for George is dispersal point and I’ve got that. It shows you the dispersal points. [paper rustling]
DE: It’s a map of the airfield with the runways and the perimeter track.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So tell me about G for George.
KT: We could see them when there’s no leaves on the trees because of a few silver birches and that started to grow around the frying pans as you might say. We could see them and see all the crew up and down on the wings you know for servicing up and they came back in the early morning. Three or 4 o’clock in the morning. Some of the planes you could hear the engines had been shot at you know. They were misfiring and that sort of thing. So it was always a relief when you heard them shut the engines down. You knew they weren’t likely to crash on the house. You knew they was in line with the end of the runway and they was going to float in to land. I can clearly remember that.
DE: So you got quite familiar with the, with the noises from the aircraft.
KT: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
DE: Could you tell you know which aircraft was which by hearing them?
KT: Oh, you could. You could always know a Lancaster. Yeah. Was it the Merlin engine was it? Yeah. They was different to all the others.
DE: But you say you never, you never got to interact with any of the crew or the ground crew.
KT: We no we never got any contact with one single airmen you know.
DE: Yeah.
KT: No.
DE: So it’s just from what you could see and and hear.
KT: Yeah.
DE: As they fly over.
KT: Yeah.
DE: What about when you know what time of day were they taking off and coming back?
KT: Generally about half past six to 7 o’clock at night. And when, when they was taking off from here you’d look towards Saxilby at night. That was, that was more or less north from here and there was a string of Lancasters coming down from the airfield. Yorkshire and probably further north. I don’t really know. And that would last for three quarters of an hour, up to three quarters of an hour and they’d be coming down and they would take off from Skellingthorpe. There was Scampton, Skellingthorpe, Waddington and surprise I’ve found out recently there was Lancasters at Swinderby airfield. I find that a bit surprising because there’s only one straight runway at Swinderby airfield and it’s not a big airfield. Whether that’s correct or not but somebody said.
DE: I don’t know. I would have to have a look.
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. But there were more down at Winthorpe near Newark.
KT: Winthorpe was.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Near Newark. Yeah
DE: Yeah.
KT: No. There was Syerston the other side of Newark.
DE: That’s right. Yeah.
KT: But I’ve no details of knowledge.
DE: No. No.
KT: About what they were.
DE: That’s, that’s fine. Yeah.
KT: Then there was Fulbeck. There was an airfield at Fulbeck, I think.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Cranwell.
DE: Twenty seven operational bomber stations in Lincolnshire I think.
KT: Coleby was one of the —
DE: Yeah. Not all, these are not, not all bomber stations.
KT: No. No.
DE: So you would, you would see hundreds of aircraft.
KT: Oh yes. And another thing that when I was at Doddington School on D-Day when they invaded France there was, well I found out since there was seven hundred and sixty odd I think gliders, Dakotas towing gliders. We was out in the playground playing about 11 o’clock one morning and these Dakotas started to come over again going north to south. From the north to south towing these and we’d no knowledge at all of what was happening with these gliders, where they were going and I’m too young to remember whether it was you know heard anything on the radio at night about it.
DE: But it was sufficiently different.
KT: Well, to see so many aircraft and another thing that in those days there was always [pause] I can’t remember what we called them. There was long lorries, forty foot long lorries coming up down through Doddington village from probably the Sheffield area. I don’t know which way and that at AV Roe’s they were the people up at Bracebridge Heath and that apparently with some of the Lancasters. The AV Roe’s made the Lancaster, didn’t they?
DE: That’s right. Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. There was a repair shop up at Bracebridge.
KT: Was it? Yes.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. And they was, you’d see them. They’d always got a big wing, two wings that were wide enough and long enough to hold the wings bringing the wings through. But we’d no idea where they were taking them to and a few hours later you’d see them going back empty.
DE: Wow.
KT: That was a regular trip. So the wings would all of a sudden be constructed somewhere up north and brought here to —
DE: Yeah.
KT: Be assembled.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I suppose.
DE: Wow. Okay. Just going back a little bit about your childhood you have some stories that I have heard about soldiers and boxes of ammunition and searchlights and things.
KT: Yeah. When I first started school in the September the first week in September 1939 I went along the farm drive and turned right to go up towards the village and every twenty yards in the farm belt, sorry the long planting wood, the soldiers or somebody cut gaps in the hedgerow and across the dyke and there was boxes of ammunition about five to six foot all stacked up every twenty yards. And then around about the same time we always used to go to South Scarle for a supply of carrots for the family through the winter. I remember being with my uncle. We went to Newton towards Dunham Bridge turn left for Collingham.
DE: Yeah.
KT: To head for South Scarle and there was piles of bombs every twenty, thirty yards. A dozen bombs all piled up on like pallet forms at the side of the road. And I have found out since that Chamberlain who was the Prime Minister at the time got the war, the start of the war delayed about a year. There was talk with Hitler about starting the war and he got the start delayed. So while he was doing that they was obviously preparing the ammunition and the bombs ready. Getting a good stock in hand before it started wasn’t there?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Were they guarded, these things then?
KT: No. Now, these, this when I walked to Doddington School there was two soldiers at the crossroads and I’d no idea what there was and then they put a little pre-cast concrete hut in the, in the little wood at the corner of the crossroads. And then I found out through another daughter of Wagner that came to live here they were farming up towards Eagle at that same time and she said there was boxes of ammunition in the, what is now the Old Orchard Wood and there was two soldiers in a pre-cast concrete building at that crossroads. So we now discovered they were on guard guarding the ammunition. I don’t know who was going to pinch it in those days but they was the regular guards.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I walked past them every day going to school and back again.
DE: Yeah. You talked about searchlights as well.
KT: Yeah. The searchlight was it was just the other side of the [ Gilbert’s Plot ] with looking up the drive from where we are now and it shows the drive doesn’t it on the DVD looking up where we are there and the, the searchlight itself was about thirty yards from the wood on the other side surrounded by an eight foot brick wall about I would say thirty foot across this circle inside and to prevent the brick wall from being blown down with any nearby bombs they dug a deep trench around the outside and then piled the stone, the soil right up to the brick wall. So it was like a moat around because the water where they dug the soil out it was full of water all the time and then just one opening where they could get in and out to to get to the searchlight. And I mean one or most nights in the wintertime when it was dark you could see these searchlights fanning around all around the sky. There was I would think there was five or six around this area. We don’t, we’ve only discovered possibly one was at Sudbrooke. Now whether there was any at Norton Disney, Stapleford, Pocklington, Navenby we don’t know whether but there would be five, at least five where you could see the torches. The beams of light going up from them and I mean there was one particular night they all homed in on this cloud. You know, it was just like daylight under this cloud.
DE: Wow.
KT: They was, they was obviously there for spotting enemy air —
DE: Yeah.
KT: Enemy aircraft.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And there was a big gun. What you’d call the gun, anti-aircraft gun inside this ring with the searchlight. I never saw that but they talked about it, the soldiers about this big gun.
DE: Did you ever hear it fired?
KT: No. No.
DE: Right.
KT: Well, there was no, never needed to fire but the one night when I was around with my uncle because we lived on rabbits in the war time because meat was so short. We were going around with a twelve bore. On the north corner of the farm this German fighter came over the top of us. My uncle could have hit it with a twelve bore it was that low and it had come in at what they called hedge upping in those days and it had got in and if they had known it was coming the searchlight could have shot it down because it was only about less than a quarter of a mile away from the site of the machine gun and searchlight. But it apparently, we did find out later that it went straight over us, over the airfield and down through what’s the Lincoln gap where the Witham goes through Lincoln. We did hear that they scrambled some fighters and got it shot down before it got back to —
DE: Oh right.
KT: To Germany.
DE: Okay.
KT: So that’s an interesting point which there will not be many people around know much about that I suppose
DE: No. Do you know what aircraft it was?
KT: Junkers 88. That’s what we were told. How I know that I can’t tell you.
DE: You probably didn’t know at the time but you found out since.
KT: No, we didn’t.
DE: Yeah.
KT: We found out since.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: But you weren’t bombed or anything around here.
KT: Yes, there was four.
DE: Oh. Okay.
KT: I can remember being taken out of bed one morning. Woken up. I don’t think I actually heard the bombs drop but my mum, I remember my mum coming and taking me out of bed to carry me downstairs out the back door on to the causeway. And I looked down to the bottom of the farm and the wood was all ablaze with fire and they’d dropped, the Germans had come over first of all with planes and dropped incendiary bombs. The little round, have you seen an incendiary bomb?
DE: Yeah.
KT: And well I wouldn’t hear this so I can’t, but they say when these incendiary bomb there’s a fin at the back that they turn the bomb around to keep it spinning and it whistles. Makes a whining noise. Now the woodman from Doddington had just recently cut a beech tree down on the edge of the farm and one of the incendiary bombs had dropped on the top of this beech tree and it had bounced off and burnt out at the side but it had left the number of the incendiary bomb on the wood. You could read the, the number that was stamped on the bottom of every bomb.
DE: Wow.
KT: There will not be many people who would be able to tell you that.
DE: No.
KT: Sort of a story.
DE: Right.
KT: We did, we did find two incendiaries that hadn’t gone off that they’d dropped in dyke bottoms where there was a lot of leaf mould and that and there hadn’t been enough impact on the charge to detonate it.
DE: Oh okay.
KT: But the wood was on fire but they dropped four bombs just between the farm buildings and the wood across the bottom fields but they didn’t do any damage. If they’d dropped ‘em the other side. I don’t know which way they were coming from towards the coast when they dropped them but if they’d dropped them the other side of the fire the same four bombs would have landed on the airfield. So the, it’s difficult to imagine what was happening in those days on that type of thing isn’t it?
DE: Oh yeah. Definitely.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. I mean right through the war I mean there was just so many aircraft. Lancasters. Mainly Lancasters about but towards the end of the war the Germans sent over I think were they called Stirling bombers? Four engine.
DE: They’re British.
KT: Are they British are they?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: One thing that I can clearly remember after the war was you know when you was working in the fields there were so many aircraft in the, in the sky. All the fighters and all this sort of thing. And we saw one day when from south to north a six engine plane with the propellers at the back of the wings.
DE: Wow.
KT: Now, I have looked this up on the internet on the computer and it was an American plane. The six propellers at the back pushing it forward and at that time there was one of the British companies I don’t know which one it was down in Bristol, probably the Bristol Blenheim and they were starting to make one with six engines with the engines behind the wings but apparently it was never never finished off and —
DE: Interesting.
KT: But it’s a big sight when you see six engines.
DE: Yeah.
KT: At the back of the wings pushing it forward.
DE: Yeah. Mostly, mostly it was Lancasters so you got used to this. The sight and sound of Lancasters. Yeah.
KT: The Lancaster. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So what was it? What was it —
KT: No. The Lincoln. The Lincolns followed the Lancaster.
DE: They did after the war. Yeah.
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. It was the Lancaster that gets the history still isn’t it? They come back. Fly around with the Lancaster.
DE: Well, it’s the Lancaster that they have with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
KT: That’s it. Yes.
DE: Still flying yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. It used to come over when we was in the strawberry season. On the Sunday when they had the do at Skellingthorpe wasn’t it?
DE: Right. That’s the reunion.
KT: The reunion. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So what was, what was it like? What was life like on the farm then?
KT: Oh, hard work. Everything was manual. There was only horses did the pulling power and everything else it was done manually. Hand picking potatoes. Hand knocking sugar beet to get that clean. Throwing it in carts. Leading it off and then when the lorry came to take it to the factory it’d be brute force and you had to throw it on and that was hard work. On a wet day it wasn’t a very nice job filling a twelve or fourteen tonne load of sugar beet with a coat, raincoat on to keep dry. Sweating cobs you were.
DE: I can’t begin to imagine. Yeah. Did, did you have any help on the farm?
KT: Oh, there was my uncle, myself. Well, I left school in 1950 so it was a bit different then but whatever I was doing in the wartime, whatever was happening I was always helping.
DE: Yeah.
KT: As best I could to the maximum that my strength would allow me to do really.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Were there any POWs?
KT: Yes. This is an interesting story. I think it was the second year of the war, possibly the third the, the most of the potato harvesting the ladies who were from Jerusalem used to come and pick but they had all their husbands was away at war and they’d all got little children, one and two year old children so they weren’t able. There was one year I can remember clearly we had seven or eight probably ten German prisoners of war came to pick the potatoes for us which I was a bit frightened of to start with. But I know we were at war with the Germans but they turned out to be, you know nice and friendly towards us all in the end.
DE: Did they work alright then?
KT: Oh, they was good workers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they didn’t want the war did they? A lot of them. They were, it would be a relief to be a prisoner of war and come over and one thing that they were very very clever at. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen them when they did this carving of a sailing ship inside a bottle. Have you ever seen one?
DE: I’ve seen the sort of thing. Yeah.
KT: Yeah, and we’d a, we’d a gate post that had rotted off. An eight foot by eight foot square gatepost that had rotted off at ground level and as soon as we took that out the ground and gave them this post they carved that into a fantastic sailing boat. Eight by eight and it was about four to five foot long and we did see that. A photograph of that. Very very clever, weren’t they?
DE: Do you know where they were? Where they were living?
KT: They were stationed down Waterloo Lane at Skellingthorpe in pre-cast concrete buildings and at Aubourn. Haddington near Aubourn. There was a lot of them there and at Wellingore up on the hill. There was a lot of pre-cast concrete buildings where the prisoners of war lived. I don’t know of any other sites around about.
DE: Yeah.
KT: That was three big sites.
DE: Wow. Okay. Well —
KT: Did you know they was down Waterloo Lane?
Other: I did. Yes.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. What were they wearing when they were out here? Were they —
KT: Oh, God. I can’t remember.
DE: No, but you knew they were POWs. You knew they were prisoners of war.
KT: Well, yes I suppose so.
DE: Yeah.
KT: They’d have some uniform on wouldn’t they?
DE: Yeah.
KT: They’d be given some uniform. Yeah.
DE: So, I mean you said you were frightened of them. Were you, were you frightened of the whole, the whole thing of being at war and —
KT: Well, the whole of the war time it was so frightening. I had to carry a gas mask to school. They gave me a gas mask to carry to school and we left school at about a quarter to four or 4 o’clock in the afternoon and I was always afraid that the Germans might come before I got back to my mum because they always said the Germans was going to invade the country. It wasn’t if. It was when. They were so convinced that the Germans were going to invade the country so it was a very frightening time for a young lad to be left in those conditions. And when I was six years old I had to, one of the workers had an accident and couldn’t sit down so I was asked to hand milk one of the cows in the morning and at night. So as a six year old hand milking a cow that was a difficult job. I was barely big enough to get around the teats but I ended up with some very strong wrists as a result of that.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Which has stood me well in the rest of my life in cricket and sport. Yeah.
DE: Have you got any other, other bullet points on there you wanted to talk about?
[pause]
KT: I think I’ve covered most of that there.
DE: What about you’ve mentioned the Hampden? Were there any other crashes that you can —
KT: Oh yes. Now, I saw four crashes when planes came out the sky. We was in the stackyard one Saturday, just come out from having our dinner and a Wellington was flying over from north to south. And they were, they were all around the sky, there was, you couldn’t look up any time of the day then there were one plane or another flying around. And the fuselage from the back of the wings just exploded and we saw it all floating down to the ground and the engine and the wings just took a nosedive straight down to the ground and crashed on the road just opposite this side of the road where the Damon‘s restaurant is now. And apparently a Manchester bomber coming back from a bombing raid crashed on virtually the same site. And there was you went up there was a cinder plot about two hundred yards away I suppose. Two to three hundred yards away and I can remember seeing the, the framework from the wheel. It had blown one of these wheels off. Now whether it was from the Manchester or the Wellington that crashed I don’t know but it’s that part of the scrap thing was up in that wood for years and years. Nobody ever went to retrieve it.
DE: Right. Okay.
KT: Whether it’s still there to this day I don’t know.
DE: Yeah. Possibly not.
KT: Yeah. And then the other one I was walking home from school. This was towards the end of the war and there was a Lancaster coming in over from over Saxilby on the north to south runway and he just crashed straight out the sky on to Monson farm. Immediately crashed and a pile of black smoke goes up so that was my witnessing and the various crashes out of the sky which is there is always a lot of black smoke you know when the smoke from the oil in the engines set on fire. And I’ve got a photograph [pause] That’s the fuel tank. There’s two fuel tanks.
DE: Oh, this is, this is the farm and your house. Yeah.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Two. You got two fuel tanks out of a Lancaster bombers at the end of the war to store the fuel in, the paraffin for when we got a tractor. That was in the mid-50s I think when we got those.
DE: So did you have electricity here?
KT: We didn’t get electricity until 1952 and I think the same year we got on mains water. There was no, it was a hand pump for drinking water. You know, I said about how cold it was in the winter times in the wartime. That hand pump got frozen up with ice numerous times. Covered it with straw and that to keep the frost out but you’d go and pull the handle and it was frozen up. So a kettle full of boiling water to pour down the spout to free it off.
DE: Right. Whose job was it to fetch the water then?
KT: Well, my mother’s. And when they, when they got us on mains water in 1952 they come around and condemned the hand pump. Said it wasn’t fit to use but my mother kept going across. We didn’t like the taste of the mains water pipe for making tea so she used to go and fill the kettle from the hand pump for a year or two after we got on mains water. It tasted better.
DE: Yeah.
KT: It was the hard water you see.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: The tap water unfortunately from here was quite a soft water. And I have been told and how true this is that the bore hole at Elkesley what it must be thirty miles away from us where the water comes from. It’s supplied from by underground stream from Norway. They’ve tested the minerals in the water and it’s the same minerals as in the rocks in Norway.
DE: Wow.
KT: And they did drill for oil after the war at Eagle. A little corner of a field there and they went through the same underground stream of water at Eagle. It comes the same as Elkesley which is probably twenty or thirty miles apart so where this stream goes to or where it ends up I’ve no idea.
DE: That’s interesting.
KT: Interesting point.
DE: Yeah.
KT: When they test for the minerals in the water you can fairly well imagine it’s the same source wouldn’t you?
DE: Yeah.
KT: I do know for a fact a lot of the water from the falls, heavy rainwater in Derbyshire comes up in the, near the Showground at Lincoln. There’s a spring there and that’s the start of the Nettleham Beck. And the water in the Nettleham Beck is always running. Running water. Dry, however dry it is and that’s the spring coming.
DE: Oh right. Okay.
KT: Rainwater.
DE: Yeah.
KT: In Derbyshire.
DE: Yeah. I’ve got just one other question about your wartime experience and then we’ll start talking about postwar. I think on the DVD you mention a couple of other explosions or accidents or there was an aircraft that landed with bombs on board.
KT: Oh.
DE: Something that went up in a —
KT: The timed bombs. The timed bombs. Yeah. There was two timed bombs from memory. We didn’t really know much about it at the time but between us and the Whisby side of the Old Orchard Wood I remember my uncle taking me across to see this and a massive hole. And apparently, it was a timed bomb that penetrates the ground and then the clock inside it and it can have a longer set of time for it to explode and it blows all the soil up. A pile of soil five or six foot high all around the side. But the depth of the hole must have been ten, fifteen foot deep and apparently we was told there was one dropped at the side of Waddington Church which demolished part of the church when it went off.
DE: Yeah.
KT: You might find that out from any old people at Waddington.
DE: No, that’s the bombing at Waddington is quite, quite well known about.
KT: Is it? Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Well, we got to know about it.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. And all right through the war there was a red flashing light on the Waddington hilltop so that was where the planes would find it. And Coleby Church was a very high spire about two miles from Waddington. There was always a red flashing light on that so that our own planes didn’t crash in to the spire. I suppose there must have been one on the Cathedral but I can’t remember seeing that from memory. They wouldn’t want any planes crashing into the towers —
DE: Definitely not.
KT: Of the Cathedral would they?
DE: Definitely not. Okay. So you sort of said half in passing that you played a lot of sport and a lot of cricket.
KT: Yes.
DE: Yeah. Do you want to talk to me a bit about that?
KT: I started, I started to knock about with the cricket bat at Doddington when I was seven or eight I suppose and I was always interested in that. During the wartime there was a, Doddington kept the cricket team going for well I think right through the war because all the farm workers all strong blokes they were all good at playing cricket and I can remember going to watch them one night. This, this Army lorry from RAF Skellingthorpe pulls up into the field and a big canvas van. Eleven or twelve of these airmen got out and one chap was as black as the ace of spades and for an eight or nine year old lad I’d never seen a coloured person. Shiny black skin. Anyway, they, Doddington batted and this chap measured his run out about twenty five yard run, come running in and our batsman never saw the ball and apparently his name was Edwin St Hill. He was a test bowler from, played for the West Indies. And a lot of good cricketers Freddie Trueman he was stationed at Hemswell apparently.
DE: Oh right. Okay.
KT: In the RAF. Maurice Leyland from Yorkshire and England, opening bat from Yorkshire. He was stationed in one of the airfields around about. So, you know there was quite a lot of good sportsmen about. I can’t, I think I’ve heard of another chap who was in the RAF but I can’t tell you his name. But I never forgot this black man from the West Indies. And then when I got to be eleven years old I started to play in the Doddington. Got into the team and started to hold my own. Just bowled a bit slower to start with.
DE: Right.
KT: I was eleven or twelve and when they found out they couldn’t get me out by the time I was thirteen or fourteen I was just as good as the others and getting as many runs.
DE: Fantastic.
KT: I went to play at Lea, Lea near Gainsborough. And on one Sunday afternoon that made fifty not out. So that was the start of my career and I carried on with Doddington and in 1952 Hartsholme, a good club side in Lincoln were short and I went and play for them at Woodhall and got a rapid fifty in my first innings. Fifty not out and that, that led me to be a member of the Hartsholme Club for the following year. And within four years of playing for them the county got interested in me sent me to Trent Bridge for coaching and within four years I was playing for the county side.
DE: Fantastic.
KT: Yeah. First century I scored was playing for the Hartsholme club side against Forest amateurs when I put a hundred and two not out at Trent Bridge.
DE: Wow.
KT: I scored over twenty centuries in my lifetime. Hartsholme I got a century for Lincolnshire. That was the only century I got where I was ever dismissed. All the others were not out. DE: Right. Okay.
KT: The highest one of all was a hundred and fifty two not out playing for Lincs Gents against Burghley Park. So I had a fairly successful season. A career at cricket.
DE: Yeah.
KT: At seventy eight I decided I’d started to play golf and I soon got very good at golf so I packed up cricket and played for Lincoln Golf Club at Torksey. And when I was fifty five I got into the county seniors team. Played off six handicap below for twenty years. So I was just naturally gifted. A good timer of the ball and if you’ve got that natural gift it’s a big help.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Where the natural gift came from I can’t tell you but I always enjoyed the cricket and football. It was part of my life.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Mind you working hard on the farm all the week you looked forward to a bit of relaxation.
DE: Something to do yeah at the weekend.
KT: All work and no play was what they said was made a dull boy. So I was never dull.
DE: Excellent. Yeah. And this was all when you were working on the farm because you came to own the farm. Yeah.
KT: Yes. In the end.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yes. Yeah. And when I was thirteen or fourteen we always used to thatch the stacks in the wintertime to keep the wet off so that all the corn was dry.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And at eighteen I’d thatched this, this stack and made a nice neat job. Trimmed it around the bottom and a rep came in and he said to my uncle, ‘Who’s done the stack?’ He said, ‘Oh it’s my nephew there. He’s only eighteen. He’s done that.’ Seventeen or eighteen at the time. ‘He’s done that.’ And without me knowing he went off. There was a local thatching comp, ploughing, [plashing] and thatching competition up at Whisby and they came and I got second prize in the junior section.
DE: Wow.
KT: Well, that whetted my appetite so I took a lot more attention to detail and when I was twenty [pause] twenty one I won the junior section but then that’s the photograph of the stack up there.
DE: Okay. Right. I might have to take a photo of that.
KT: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Before I go. Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Well, it’s in, but the one thing you’ve got to be careful about is not to get the Lincolnshire Echo bit across the top.
DE: Right.
KT: Because it’s copyright isn’t it?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
KT: I mean that shows that stack on the, and the report’s on the side so he said to do that a bit cross fingered.
DE: Right. Fair enough. fair enough. Okay.
KT: I don’t think there’s many people around from 1955 is there that’s going to pick that up?
DE: No. I mean the Echo’s archived. I know we’ve got copies of them.
KT: Well, we tried to get a copy in, of it says 1955. September, I think. We went there. They weren’t prepared to look for one for me.
DE: Oh, okay.
KT: So disappointing.
DE: So you’ve always been quite competitive then.
KT: Yes. I always enjoyed the sport. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. [pause] I suppose the one thing which we haven’t played on was mentioned is all the amount of aircraft prior to the start of the war. There was the Bristol Blenheims, Airspeed Oxford, the Lockheed Lightning. That impressed me. That was very similar to the Vampire. Twin fuselages. Just one engine in the middle and it was, it was the fastest plane in the sky. The Lockheed Lightning was. So we were told at that time. And then towards the end of the war when the jet engines came on to the scene there was the Vampire and the Meteor. The Meteor. And they did ops from Wigsley to Swinderby. Up and down practising landing and that and one of the Meteors crashed into a house in Harby village. Killed one or two people.
DE: Oh dear.
KT: I can’t think of anything else. I think soon after the end of the war all the Lancasters, they closed Skellingthorpe airfield where the Lancasters all went to I’ll never know.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I think there’s, is there one at at Winthorpe? In the museum. Or is that the Vulcan? No. It’s the Vulcan isn’t it there?
DE: Yeah. There’s, there’s the one with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and there’s another one at East Kirkby.
KT: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I intend to go to the East Kirkby sometime or other.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. You should. It’s good.
KT: Yeah.
DE: They’ve got a Mosquito there as well now.
KT: Have they?
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Oh that, that was a pre-war plane. Twin engine the Mosquitoes aren’t they? They were quite —
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Quite rapid. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: From memory. The Lockheed Lightning was the one that’s I always loved to see with the twin fuselage.
DE: Twin booms yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. I think I’ve crossed off lots of things on my list here so you know do you want to tell me a bit about your, your life on the farm post-war and some of your successes?
KT: Post war.
DE: I mean it seems to me there’s so much that has happened around here after the war.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Well, I’ve mentioned on the DVD about the party at the end of the war on VE Day. Victory in Europe. That was a big relief that was. And during the wartime and after the war all the farmers they all helped one another which on a thrashing day you wanted about eight or ten men so you all came from the various farms and switched to help one another. The community spirit then was just unbelievable. I know I’ve mentioned in the DVD about the whist drives when I was twelve years old. The whist drives at the end of the war. There was one at Doddington one Thursday night, Harby the next week, Eagle the next and people came on bikes. There was no transport. Everywhere you went on bikes. I mean I biked from Doddington to Aisthorpe one night to play cricket.
DE: Right. Okay.
KT: Which is twelve miles.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And you thought nothing of it you know. There was no other mode of transport so you set off. It took you a fair while but you got there and you played. You did a hard days work, biked twelve miles, played the game of cricket and biked back.
DE: Wow.
KT: I suppose I’d be ready to go to sleep [laughs] when I got back.
DE: I expect so. Yeah.
KT: Kids won’t go five yards now will they without being taken in a car.
DE: I know. No.
KT: A different world altogether. No. Farming. When I left school in 1950 we were still doing most of the work was chopping sugar beet out by hand, hand picking potatoes. Harvesting was all done by hand. Cutting the stack and the sheaves after the binder and leading them and stacking them on the [unclear] them on the [unclear] load at night and teaming them because in those days September was when you did most of the harvest and the, the weather then was so much different to what it is now. Virtually the whole of the September we always considered the best month of the year. You got foggy mornings. By half past nine the sun had got up. All the fog had cleared and you’d get three wagon loads of sheaves at night. So you could put those up the elevator and put them into the stack. By half past eleven or so you’d got them in the stack and then you went off [unclear] before lunchtime and there was enough of us to have two people in the field fetching the sheaves in. Three of us in the yard. One team in. One stacking and one taking the sheaves away, stacking the sheaves around and building the stacks up.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Which was quite a skill. I mean I started to be what they called a binder taking the sheaves from the elevator and my uncle as he was stacking around the outside went around and around. Then I put what they called binders it’s like putting slates on a roof. One sheaf overlaps the others to tie them in to stop them falling apart. And then I think when I got to be about sixteen I started to do the stacking around the side. And there is, there is a big skill in that. You only, you only to get to know that with the experience of doing it. You know, if you’re stacking what as the stack goes up and if you, if you’ve gained that much from four feet down when you get the weight of this the sheaves on the top that area goes to there. So that doubles the angle of it going out. Do you see where I’m coming from.
DE: Yeah.
KT: So you’ve got to keep them only just showing a little bit [unclear] you’ve got the nice shape look at the bottom.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: And it’s you’ve got to go out like that so when the rain comes off the thatch it drops clear of the sheaves in the —
DE: Yeah.
KT: Walls. Yeah.
DE: So that’s why it’s at that angle at the bottom.
KT: That’s it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. Of course, there’s none of that now. It’s just —
KT: No.
DE: It’s just baled and —
KT: It was a sad day when I remember going to a dance at Skellingthorpe one Saturday night. I would be eighteen or nineteen probably. No, I’d be a bit older than that and there was a bright frosty moonlight night when I came back on my bike down the drive and the [rime] on this, on this thatch the golden colour of the straw was like the domes in India when you see these yellow [pause] it’s a pity I never had a camera then because that was once. Once in a lifetime.
DE: Wow.
KT: All, all this straw just showed the golden tops.
DE: Yeah.
KT: With the frost on it. Yeah. [pause] I’m trying to think what else might be of interest to you.
DE: No, I’m just thinking that you’ve seen some changes because I mean you know when you were a little lad there wasn’t the, there wasn’t the airfield at RAF Skellingthorpe was there? And then that was built. And then that closed. And now of course it’s, it’s the housing estate.
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: When did that, when was that built?
KT: It would start in the [pause] I think Birchwood was started somewhere the mid-60s possibly. I can’t, I can’t when I first played when I first got my first car to go and play cricket at Hartsholme I used to go across the main runway of the airfield. The nearest way to the Skellingthorpe Road to get to the ground.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And then when they started to build on it you could still get across. And then they took all the runways up. Crushed them up for hard core for making probably the A1 when they did the dual carriageway of the roads. A big demand for aggregate.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: I remember seeing it and the, now then that that plan we can come to that plan because apparently the second frying pan down there is just across the road from Damon‘s. It’s still, still there. They left one frying pan.
DE: Oh right. Okay.
KT: Did you know that?
DE: I know there’s a few bits left.
KT: Yeah.
DE: But yeah.
KT: The main thing which sorry Pete which that’s not on the for those who had failed to return there were six seventy two thousand gallon fuel tanks in the, that’s where they were look. Marked it out there. If you wanted to take this and if you want a copy of this photograph it. Now, we’ve always been puzzled since the war. How did they get the fuel to those tanks?
DE: Yes. Right. Okay. I’ve got you.
KT: For this. I mean there was what twenty odd planes flying from everywhere out most nights. There weren’t a lot of fuel. And we’ve discovered my patent agent, I’ve got several patents and he’s, he was interested in this. He went on, you’ll probably have to do the same and we found out you know the railway crossing down Doddington Road?
DE: Yes.
KT: To the left, about a quarter of a mile to the left there was a siding. He found a map which show where there was a siding came off and the fuel had come with tankers on this siding. The tankers that took the fuel around to their planes on the ‘drome and you could see them clearly all the day backwards and forwards. We think they must have left the fuel from those tankers in the siding and put them in to the six seventy two thousand.
DE: Right. Okay. Yeah.
KT: They were well hidden. All covered over with soil.
DE: Yeah.
KT: But they’ve all been removed.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And taken away.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. No that is interesting because yeah it’s marks as —
KT: But you see, Mick. You’ll know Mick Connack won’t you?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Who’s done the Skellingthorpe site.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And he said they’ve walked around the bomb dump but there’s no mention. You see I’m probably the only person alive that knows about them.
DE: Fuel storage.
KT: Fuel storage there.
DE: Oh okay.
KT: But we was quite pleased when we found this siding because you had to link one thing with another.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Don’t you. Common sense to —
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
KT: We knew there was no one well nobody I’ve asked various people around about we couldn’t find an underground fuel supply.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Now when they play golf at Torksey there’s a fuel supply pipe goes underground from the Gainsborough side going across towards Newark. Now, whether the fuel was coming from Gainsborough going to Swinderby or Winthorpe or something like that we don’t know but there’s certainly a fuel pipe underground.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. But not necessarily here. That’s interesting.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So how did you feel when they started to, you know rip up the runways and build houses on it?
KT: Well, I can’t. I mean it was progress wasn’t it? I remember them saying on the wireless or on radio Look North probably one night they said the Hartsholme, the Birchwood Estate was going to be the biggest estate in the country. Housing estate. Was there six hundred houses originally planned? Early days. There’s a lot more than that now isn’t there because I think they’ve more or less stopped building now haven’t they?
DE: I think they have there. Yeah. Yeah.
KT: I don’t think they’ve much room left. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. And then there was the ’46 the bypass was put in as well.
KT: Yeah. The bypass. That was ’80, ’82 I think. Damon‘s restaurant was opened in ’85. We have done a bit of research on that. After the, after the war the City Council purchased the airfield from, from the Ministry of what did they call them?
DE: Ministry of Defence. Yeah.
KT: The government. The government wasn’t it? The government. Yeah. They bought the airfield from the government but it was all farmland before the war you see. Stones Place Farm. We, we got to know the game keeper. The [pause] from the, from the Hartsholme Estate and they used to come around what’s now the perimeter of the farm belt and the wood at the back of it. Hospital Plantation I think. They put long nets around there at night after harvest time and they’d get two or three hundred rabbits. There were so many rabbits in those days.
DE: Yeah.
KT: We would have got, I mean we every time you finished an harvest field cutting with the sheaves the gamekeepers used to come with the twelve bore and a gun. When you get to the middle all the rabbits come out. It was nothing for us to get twenty, thirty, forty rabbits from the middle of a field.
DE: Right.
KT: Just scores and scores of them. Every wood was full of rabbit. And if you went out in the car at night it was aim to run over, blinded them in the lights run over them with your car and try to kill them off. But when myxomatosis came I remember going to Skegness playing cricket once and I went past a field Wragby way just between Wragby and Horncastle and there must have been thirty or forty rabbits. They’d had come out of the wood across the main road onto the grass field at the side. Of course, when they got myxomatosis they can’t see can they? They’re blind.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Hopping around and people had run over them to put them out of their misery because they do suffer when they’ve got it.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I shall think of no end of things when you’ve gone.
DE: Oh, of course you will. Yeah. Do you want to tell me a bit more about your, your farming and I know you’re quite keen to talk about that.
KT: Yes, I mean the biggest change was to start with when we got rid of the horses and got one or two, got a little David Brown tractor on the farm. That meant you could, you could do more work in a day with with a tractor and the power then. I got a corn drill that drilled corn and fertilizer at the same time. That helped increase the yields because there was no fertilizer on the farm when I was young. Only the [unclear] manure from the cattle that went to feed the plants. And as, as a [pause] I find it difficult because of my age to put this into some form of pattern for you. We started, it would be mid, late ‘50s when I started to get fertiliser and drill with the corn. That increased the yields quite a lot because you got more plant food available.
DE: Yeah.
KT: But —
DE: Yeah.
KT: And then we started and got a combine in 1956. There’s a photograph of me up the drive here with a combine. A [flash] combine. Self-propelled combine. So that all the hard work that was in the harvest field all was taken away because all your corn was put in sacks.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And then when you got a self-propelled combine it came out of the spout into the trailers and we had to get a proper, to convert the cart shed into a proper grain store.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Where you could dry the grain on the floor. On the floor for drying as they called it.
DE: Yeah. And I suppose you got balers as well.
KT: We had to get a Bailey, yeah. Yes.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. The Dutch and the new Dutch barn which I put up in ’70, 1977 I think because we’d got about nine thousand bales of straw and hay and no means of keeping it dry. So we put six telegraph poles, we got all the telegraph poles off the side of Waddington Hill. From the bottom of the hill right up to the Grantham Road. Bought those off a referee friend of mine for a pound each and put them in the ground and put the roof on the Dutch barn.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And we could, we stacked, put the posts in the ground. Six posts each side. Stacked the bales up to the about twelve fourteen foot high and then stood on the bales to put the frame for the roof on.
DE: The frame of the roof. Yeah.
KT: No health and safety men about in those days.
DE: No. No.
KT: But it worked and thats —
DE: Yeah.
KT: That building is still there to this day.
DE: And that’s yeah that’s just because you’re not you’re no longer doing the —
KT: The thatching.
DE: The thatching, yeah.
KT: When the, when they started to combine there’s no sheaves.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And no stacks or anything. It was a sad day really because it was something everybody took a pride in. In putting the sheaves in straight lines. It was hard work but you you just took it on you know.
DE: Yeah.
KT: There was nothing, no other way. You just accepted it and got on with it.
DE: Yeah. I know as you said the other difference is the tractor and then.
KT: Yeah. The tractor and then.
DE: With more horse power.
KT: Yes.
DE: That’s when you can start doing the things like subsoiling.
KT: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: That we were talking about earlier yeah.
KT: Yeah. That was a big step forward when I found out from, “Arable Farm” was a magazine we used to get once a month and they did a lot of experimental work and I was always keen to read that every month it came out. And we got a [tomb] drill. They found out in Finland that if they drilled the fertilizer instead of down the same spout as the grain put the fertilizer down as a separate spout about four inches deeper than the grain. As soon as the grain starts to grow the roots naturally go down and with by the time they’ve been growing about a fortnight they’re plant food which gives them a better, more strength and higher yields.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And there’s still a [tomb] drill in Hughes’ shed at Jerusalem to this day.
DE: Right.
KT: Harold Hughes, he was always if I was doing any work on the side of the road here he would always stop. ‘Now what are you doing? What are you doing?’ Because I got the reputation of being the first. I was always experimenting and all the time. I was always trying to get better. If you can eliminate a mistake all you end up with is an improvement isn’t it?
DE: Yeah.
KT: Whatever you are doing.
DE: Yeah.
KT: You put out a fault you get better.
DE: Did you, I mean it’s easier to talk about when you were successful. Did you have any times when it went wrong?
KT: I made mistakes. I will admit. I sprayed the strawberries once with some Betanal and it they always said if you spray Betanal you don’t do it when it’s going to be frosty at night. And that was on the sugar beet. It could damage the sugar beet when they were little plants and I sprayed this Betanal on the strawberries but they was big plants. It didn’t kill them but it damaged them and I lost quite a bit of yield. So that was a mistake. I never made that mistake again.
DE: As long as you’re learning from them.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you want me to go through the strawberry season. I mean —
DE: Oh yeah. Yeah. That would be interesting. Yeah.
KT: Well, I found out that [pause] I came down one Saturday afternoon and I decided that if you could ridge the soil up for sugar beet on sandy land you got a lot of you drilled the sugar beet and it was flat and it would blow and it would be drift and it would cut the sugar beet off when the plants got got strong winds. And I thought well if I can ridge this soil up and drill the beet on top of the soil then when it comes through it’s not flat to drift. But not only did you drift it up like that you increased the depth of the quality soil under the seed.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And that, that made me, I got a lot of praise for that because it had got higher yields and I think if you look on that DVD it shows I was getting ten tonne, ten tonne hectare more than the average around the factory. It was all due to the ploughing the fertiliser down.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And getting the, if the plant food’s down in dry weather the roots go down to the plant food. When it dries out that’s the last place to dry out. So you know I was always searching for what if it was plant, leaf feeders and that sort of thing. Trace elements is very important and I was only talking to some friends a couple of days ago, I played cricket. To start with the first sign said of how important lime was with some sugar beet and I was only very young going to school. This sugar beet came through and it was yellow and we got some advice and it wanted four tonne of lime to the acre. We were short of lime. But we were told to put two tonne on this year and two tonne next. Go from one extreme to the other. Too fast and the crop can’t compete. So we did that and I mean I played cricket on several years later on the Ruston Hornsby ground on the Newark Road which I’ve mentioned and went to field the ball on the boundary and where they’d marked the football pitches out with the lime, the burned lime for the line.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Each side of that the grass was green and that told me that the Ph level of that soil was right. It had washed the lime down and the roots of the grass was deeper down and had to get enough moisture just to keep green.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: I was talking to some friends a couple of nights ago from the cricket club and they said that the same thing now all where it had gone to the sports field where they marked the pitch, the white lines out with lime. It’s, it’s they’ve seen it so it shows how important lime is. Particularly in this climate change now.
DE: Yeah.
KT: It’s going to get —
DE: So it’s tiny little things that totally change the balance.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You see nowadays there’s all the farmlands is deficient in sulphur. Now in the wartime when there was coal fires you got your natural sulphur fall out on to the, on to, on foggy days. You never get any fogs now because there’s no sulphur particles going up from smoke from coal fires. Now, sulphur not only is it a trace element it also works as a fungicide. A fungicide, put on a spray fungicides on corn and that to keep the diseases off. The first when I started to grow all my cereals on contract for seed. [Pages] was the plant breeding station at Billingborough I think. The other side of Sleaford. And I went to see these trials and they’d sprayed the the trials, the winter wheat trials with sulphur and that was to keep used it as a fungicide. But now there’s no, no such smoke from coal fires. All the manufacturers are putting sulphur in the fertiliser to correct the imbalance so all people’s lawns [pause] have you got a good lawn at home?
DE: No. I wouldn’t call it good.
KT: No. No.
DE: It’s grass but —
KT: All the lawns around about are poor because they’re short of sulphur and the Ph is, there’s no depth of root. So I’ve always worked. I’ve always been a big user of fertiliser. If any plant, you look after the plant and it looks after you. It’s as simple as that as far as I’m concerned.
DE: The trick is knowing what it needs isn’t it, I guess.
KT: Well, yes. You can do soil tests you see for analysis.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And like I said with the, with the strawberry plants the spray rep, he used to, as soon as the plant started to grow take the small new leaves off. Send them away to a laboratory and do what they called a tissue test. And they come back it tells you. They know what trace elements a strawberry plant needs to give the best results. And if it was, if it was above the level required I mean magnesium was, was quite short on one but of course we got a lot of cow muck from the neighbouring dairy farm. [unclear] on the farm. A lot of magnesium in that. And so that, no. No, copper. If you recycled the straw back into the land it keeps the copper levels right. So they’re all, they’re all forty or fifty parts per million they probably only want but if they’ve got ten they’re thirty short.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Which is a big amount isn’t it?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: It’s quite technical to go into this but with the strawberry, with the strawberry leaves it told you what they want and then the advisor that was looking after me told me what to put in the fertiliser. What trace [unclear] are needed to spray on the leaves. And that’s why we got the reputation. We got the reputation of the best strawberries in the country. Which is something to be proud of isn’t it?
DE: Definitely. Yeah.
KT: What have we got from these?
DE: I think, I think we’ve —
KT: Well, I could go on forever and a day but you know just to catch me like that you need a bit of time and a bit of preparation. That’s the [pause] that’s the bypass. No. I’ve got it the wrong way around. That’s, that’s the bypass down near Damon‘s.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Comes across the road there. Ah, now in the wartime because this main runway came over the road there where are we? No. This one. That came over the road. There’s the start. That’s where Damon‘s is.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Came over the road. There was an eight foot wall built in the woods down there to stop any cars or anything and a lot of people that worked from Skellingthorpe worked at Hykeham Malleable they used to go to work on a bike.
DE: Yeah.
KT: So they had to get off the bike, carry the bike around the wood to get around the wall and then —
DE: Oh right. Okay. Yeah.
KT: If there were any planes taking off they would let them get past, I suppose. They wouldn’t bike down the road.
DE: Yeah. Give way to the aircraft.
KT: Yeah.
DE: We’d always advise. Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
[pause]
DE: Yeah, it has really changed hasn’t it?
KT: It has. Yeah. Have you seen that, Pete?
Other: Yeah.
KT: I want to get a few more of those photocopied.
DE: Yeah. I’m just going to press the button on here for a minute.
KT: Yeah.
DE: We can start recording again if you think of something.
[recording paused]
DE: So we’re recording again and we’re going to talk about landing lights.
KT: The landing lights for the east west runway. There was three posts across the ground and they came with the subsoil and subsoil the wiring where it came on to the farm from or not but they would have come from the control tower so that they could switch the lights on. There was three on the farm, two on the next farm and when I played cricket for Doddington there was one in the cricket fields about ten yards off the square and if the cricket ball hit this this fenced off post you got two runs. That was, that was directly in the line with the western, east west runway so that when the planes were coming in, coming in at night they could. They wouldn’t need them to take-off would they? The lights. The landing lights.
DE: No, it’s you know when they’re coming back. I mean before —
KT: Yes.
DE: They had those lights there would be some poor erk out with a truck and —
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: A paraffin lamp.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Lighting the little —
KT: Yeah. You see we never got many strong winds from the east so the planes, the Lancasters never, I can’t ever remember one coming in against a strong east wind to land on the east west runway. They was all taking off over the fields and they would be no more than fifteen or twenty foot high the Lancasters when they were taken out. They’d put their hand up and you’d wave to them when you was working in the fields. They’d all wave back to you.
DE: Wow.
KT: Which was a nice thing to happen when you was that young.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Waving to the crews. And I’ve told the story about Decoy Farm. One of my friends he, his auntie and uncles lived there and there always used to be a card school there on a Saturday night and they said it was often sad. You know they have a regular card school for three or four Saturday nights and then the next Saturday night there would be two changes. Two fresh airmen would come and two had been shot down and lost their lives.
DE: Oh dear.
KT: So that was a bit of a turmoil for them to put up with as a young lad because he was about my age. I remember his aunties and uncles telling me that story. And Bob Scarborough he’s a bit older than me farmed at Skellingthorpe. He tells the story about there being a crash somewhere and there was human remains in a tree somewhere. Have you heard of that Pete?
Other: I have.
KT: Yeah. I mean Bob’s ninety four or five now. I don’t think he’s very well so not worth, fair to sort of go and ask him.
DE: Fair enough.
KT: To contribute on that side of it.
DE: I don’t think we’ve got the jam story on the tape either.
KT: Haven’t you?
DE: No, I don’t think so.
KT: Oh, about the strawberry jam.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Didn’t I mention it earlier when I said about Joe Alsopp?
DE: I don’t think it was recording.
KT: Wasn’t it? Oh sorry. The one of the things in the early part of the war while all the soldiers were across at the searchlight they used to go over to Tuxford for the rations every once or twice a week and the one of the soldiers Joe Alsopp whose name was I remember him from Notting, a chap from Nottingham used to come and stay with my Auntie Stella at nights when we were listening to the radio. There was no telly or anything in those days and he said they’d got fed up with strawberry jam. They was going to bury it in the wood. So we told him not to bury it. Bring it to us. And we ended up with three or four tins of strawberry jam and what I can’t understand I mean I always went to school with, with jam sandwiches and we all, my mother used to get pineapple jam sandwiches. Pineapple jam.
DE: Right.
KT: Now, where this pineapple jam came from, whether it was made in this country but I’ve always been a lover of pineapple but the strawberry jam was good.
DE: And there’s a bit of weird circularity with the starting out with eating strawberry jam and then being successful at growing them.
KT: Growing them towards the end. Yeah. I suppose. I never connected that up but I can remember him saying one night when he got out the Army he wanted to go over to South Africa and grow tobacco.
DE: Oh right.
KT: That was one of this aims. We never never, we lost track you see when when they moved on.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Never had more communication with him whatsoever so whether he fulfilled that ambition or what I don’t know.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I haven’t got into pig killing if you do want to know anything.
DE: You can, you can tell me about that. Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Well, in the, in the wartime I mean when meat and everything was rationed we always used to kill two pigs. One in November for the family and one in March and they were about twenty five stone so there was plenty. Never short of meat for breakfast. Cold boiled bacon at breakfast every morning. So we were, and it was my delight when I was old enough when you killed a pig my uncle used to, he had a licence to kill pigs in the wartime. Early part of the war he used to pull the pig‘s head and stick them in the throat. And then the government somebody said it wasn’t humane. So then he had to go and get a little stun gun, put a little cartridge then fire this tube into the brain to knock them out and then bleed them when they was laid down. As soon as he got them on the two wheeled flat cratch to scald them to scrape the hair and the scurf off I used to, my first job when I was about seven or eight was pull their toe nails off. And there was a proper little handle with a little hook on the end. They showed me how to push this hook under the the toenail and work it from side to side and loosen. When you’d got it loosened you give it one sharp pull and I was thrilled to bits with all these pigs’ toe nails off. But for a young lad I’d actually achieved something on my own. We was always trying to do something like that. Something that showed your strength and keener and enthusiasm I suppose.
DE: Yeah.
KT: To do it. Yeah. And Boxing Days in those days was always ferreting rabbits. Go around with ferrets for rabbits and the gamekeeper used to go every Boxing Day morning when I was young and it was my job to handle the ferrets. A little box and a strap over your shoulders. Walk around and you’d come to the rabbit hole. All the hedgerows were full of rabbit holes.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Put the ferret in. Put the ferret in and if he, if he didn’t bolt the rabbit and he got to a rabbit and got eaten then you, know. You’d put the doe ferret in. the female ferret and she would flush them out and if she got down then you had to put the buck ferret in with a collar and a line on. So then you had when you had to dig a hole where the line went from the ferret to find and see which way he had gone.
DE: Right. Okay.
KT: That’s something you probably didn’t know.
DE: No. No. I thought you know I thought they just came straight back out again.
KT: No. You see some of the rabbits was at the dead end so if they, and they’d get tucked up at the end of the burrows and they couldn’t [pause] So the doe rabbit would start to eat the ferret from the back. From its back end. And then once it was eating the meat then it didn’t bother to come out again. It wouldn’t come back.
DE: Right.
KT: But they went in and if they bolted the ferret, the rabbits out you see and they’d come back out the hole to you. Then you moved on to the next rabbit hole.
DE: Oh, I see. Right. Okay.
KT: But it was the buck ferret that went in to find her and then you followed the line. You had to dig a hole about every two foot down to find the hole and you’d put your arm down to see which line the line went and then decide where you was going to dig the hole. You had to keep doing that every two foot until you got to the, to the rabbit.
DE: Crikey.
KT: Down the hole. That was hard work digging.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Holes like that.
DE: The hedgerow with all the roots and stuff.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve told you the story about the rookery haven’t I?
DE: Rookery?
KT: The rookery.
DE: No. You haven’t, no.
KT: Well, the farm, the long plantation between the farm and the Lincoln Road there was about a hundred and twenty rook nests about every spring and so on the second, 14th of May that was the date when they was just coming out of the nests. So it would be about ten or twelve guns. We’d walk up and down. Walk from one end of the wood to the other and the rooks had just come out their nests so they couldn’t fly see. You shot the rooks and picked them up. We’d get two or three hundred rooks out of these, these nests. And then the following morning the following day we had rook pie for dinner. Now that was a different flavour. Nice and tender. And the following day all the gravy that was in the bottom of this rook pie turned to jelly. We had it cold for breakfast the next morning. Fried potatoes. And rook was different to cold boiled bacon.
DE: Aye. Wow. Okay.
KT: Yeah. That happened for two weeks and by the time you’d got to the next week they could all have come out of their nests and they could all fly so you didn’t get a chance to shoot them when they could all fly.
DE: So that’s a thing that doesn’t happen anymore either does it? Yeah.
KT: No. No. No. No. There’s not the same number of birds about. There is a few rooks about but nothing.
DE: No.
KT: It’s sad really. The change of farming. All the Yellowhammers and all the other birds we don’t get because of the global warming. We don’t get the winter visitors like Siskins and Waxwings, Redpolls, Redwings. What was the other main one? And every winter when you was working in the fields you’d, you’d be working away cleaning the food for the cattle and that and you’d hear the wild geese. Proper sort of flying south. And if you saw them flying south that was an indication there was some cold weather.
DE: Yeah.
KT: They was, they was weather forecasters the wild geese was. You never hear them now because we don’t get the cold weather you see.
DE: I’m trying to think. I saw some flying over my house the other yeah at some point but yeah.
KT: What just recently?
DE: No.
KT: No.
DE: I’m trying got think what it was and if it —
KT: Well, you heard them before you saw them.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Because they was always honking while they was flying.
DE: Yeah.
KT: They were going from north to south. You see it was so cold in those days that the winters was was sometimes it would be freezing all day long. Down to minus twenty degrees of frost in the middle of the night lots of days. And I mean there was ice on ponds from the middle of December right through to the middle of February when it started to become a bit warmer and it started to rain. Rains coming. So global warming as far as I’m concerned is just where they say one and a half degrees you know above normal I mean it’s massive. It’s, I would say the the winters are probably ten or fifteen degrees warmer now than what they used to be.
DE: Yeah. Because didn’t you were say about something freezing over and the teacher testing it and walking on it.
KT: Oh the schoolteacher.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yes. At school. At the back of the school a big pond and she would go. We weren’t not allowed as kids seven or eight years old we weren’t allowed to go on it until she had cracked it. If she stood up and it cracked that was it. It was danger. And she’d go again the following day after there had been more frost and put her foot and if it, if you could see it bending, if it bends it bears. If it cracks it swears. And if it cracked you weren’t allowed on it.
DE: Yeah.
KT: But once it had beared you’d would be two or three months because it never melted again. It was so cold during the day.
DE: Wow.
KT: And at night. Sometimes freeze all day. So this global warming is you know did you see Simon Reeve last night in America?
DE: I didn’t. No.
KT: Did you see it?
Other: I didn’t. No.
KT: It’s brilliant. This global warming it is, it is bloody serious. There’s millions and millions of acres over there and all the icebergs and all the snow up on the mountains are melting isn’t it and it’s flooding areas. Theres’s millions of acres now under water because all this frozen ice and snow coming down and the rivers can’t cope.
DE: No. I watched David Attenborough last night and he was showing glaciers in Antarctica which are doing the same thing.
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
Other: Right. I’m just going to get some [stone] I’ll be back.
DE: Okey dokey.
KT: Yeah.
DE: I think seeing as we are now talking about the environment and global warming I’ll —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Keith Toule
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-10-03
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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01:19:36 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ATouleK221003, PTouleK2201
Description
An account of the resource
Keith was five at the start of the war and lived in a farm adjoining the airfield at RAF Skellingthorpe. He describes the airfield and how the trees were cut down in the farm belt. The airfield was closed soon after the war, bought by the City Council and was later turned into the Birchwood housing estate in the mid-1960s.
Keith recalls preparations for war as well as the many aircraft he observed before, during and after the war (Blenheims, Oxfords, Lightnings, Vampires, Meteors, Sterlings and Lancasters). On D-Day Keith witnessed, from the playground at Doddington School, some of the C-47s towing gliders on their way to France.
There were four separate wartime crashes: a Hampden, a Wellington, a Manchester and a Lancaster. A low-flying Ju 88 was also shot down by fighters. Incendiary bombs were dropped at the bottom of the farm. Keith also recollects the impact of two time-bombs.
There were very bad snowstorms in 1947. Life was hard on the farm during the war and the work was all manual, picking potatoes and sugar beet. Some German prisoners of war, stationed at Waterloo Lane in Skellingthorpe, helped to pick potatoes. In 1952 the farm acquired electricity and mains water although they still used the hand pump for drinking water. Keith had success in some thatching competitions. He eventually owned the farm, which became increasingly mechanised. Keith increased yields through experimentation, having particular success with strawberries.
Keith remembers playing sport and describes the impact of climate change.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1944
1945
1944-06
1947
1952
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
50 Squadron
61 Squadron
animal
C-47
childhood in wartime
crash
Hampden
home front
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lancaster
Manchester
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
prisoner of war
RAF Skellingthorpe
searchlight
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2222/39868/PAlboneJM2201.2.jpg
61544c80dfefd3838ae77117eccf71b9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2222/39868/AAlboneJM220922.2.mp3
dd0b6a60a633b2562eb786b56f3ed0ee
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Albone, Jan
Janet Margaret Albone
J M Albone
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jan Albone (b. 1930). She grew up on a farm in Lincolnshire.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-09-22
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Albone, JM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview by Dan Ellin with Jan Albone. I’m at her house in Scawby in Lincolnshire. It’s the 22nd of September 2022 and also present in the room is her son Alex Albone. So, Jan could you start by telling us a little bit about your early life and where you grew up?
JA: I was born at Redmond Grange which is only five miles from where I now live and I lived on the farm there with my parents and sister. Went to school in Brigg which is only up the road. So I’ve always lived in this district all my life except for ten years when I lived at Binbrook. So I know a bit about the local area.
DE: And what was, what was your early life like? What was school like? Your home life.
JA: Oh, my school. Early life was a bit grim actually because I was born on a a very sort of isolated farm in those days. It was still two miles from the nearest village but it was a long way from there. So I was born and brought up and I was very cherished. And I think my first memory was the fact that somebody when I was three, I’d been very protected and loved by everybody on the farm and then suddenly somebody came and took me upstairs and said, ‘You have a little sister.’ And I can remember seeing this thing. That’s one of my earliest memories. This thing in this cot and it was my sister so I was going to have to share things. I didn’t like that much at all. And my mother had been a schoolteacher and so she taught me at her school and I could read and write very early in life. And then it was decided that I would go to school. Well, it was a bit difficult to go to school in those days from there where, and so it was decided that I would go and live with my aunt and grandmother in Scunthorpe and my aunt was the headmistress of a school in Scunthorpe and I would go to school there and go as a weekly boarder with my parents. I hated it. I absolutely hated it because I loved the farm. I loved being outdoors and to go into a big school where your aunt was the headmistress and all the people in the school were children from, well it was a backstreet school in those days. Henderson Avenue. And it was, I just was so lost. I wanted to make friends but I couldn’t because I was the headmistress’s daughter. Anyway, it was then decided after that that I think they could realise that I was unhappy and so I came home and then was sent up to the nearest school, primary school which was at Kirton Lindsey which was two and a half miles away. It wasn’t a lot better I have to say because I was the only farmer’s daughter at the school. The rest of the people at that time were farm labourer’s children. Extremely nice children and I again I wanted to make friends but it was not the children it was the parents saying of course, ‘She comes from the, farmer’s daughter.’ So therefore, then my sister was ready to go to school by then. She was five and I was eight and so we then went to Brigg. To the prep school at Brigg and it was heaven. Absolute heaven then. But we went by bus to Brigg and I had to look after my little sister which I didn’t like much. But anyway, it got better. But I’ve always loved being at home and I can remember so many times going back to school at the beginning of term hating going into school because I wanted to be at home. And it wasn’t home. It wasn’t parents. It was being outside. It was being mainly with the horses. Loved, loved horses.
DE: Did you have many on the farm then?
JA: Well, of course the only work when I was a child there were no tractors. There wasn’t such a thing. Well, there was but we didn’t have tractors ever. All the work on the farm was done by horses and my father grew fifty acres of potatoes and all the work was done by horses and man power. So, but I always loved them you see. I mean I, and I could do things with them that other people, even when I was very small I could go and feed a difficult one when one of the men wouldn’t like doing it because I was quite relaxed of course. So anyway, that was how I started.
DE: Okay. And then, and so and then what happened?
JA: Then I got my eleven-plus and went to the local high school which was a grammar school in those days and that was fine. You know. I was reasonably clever. I loved history, loved reading and writing and everything else. But then I left school at sixteen because you see the war was over. The war finished in 1945 and it was so wonderful to be free and I didn’t want to be at school. I didn’t want to be restricted and of course afterwards I think my parents should have insisted I stayed and did A levels but never mind. I didn’t so that’s that. So it was an interesting life living at Redmond Grange where I was during the war.
DE: So what was that like?
JA: Interesting. In fact, that we, Kirton Lindsey aerodrome was only three miles away and Kirton Lindsey aerodrome was a fighter ‘drome in those days and it was the fighters were, it was mainly a rest home for people that came from the Battle of Britain. And they would come to Kirton Lindsey to rest. And we had father there. We always knew he was there when he came because he would take his plane up on a Sunday night and do all sorts of performances. And my father really got on well with the CO there and it was funny around my father really in many ways but he got on with the CO and he decided, he and the CO whether it was the CO‘s idea or not I don’t know that the men that were coming from, to rest from Battle of Britain they were traumatised. Extraordinarily traumatised, and so father said the worst thing they can do is to sit and mope and of course on the farm we were desperately short of labour. We desperately needed food in those days. And so they used to come down. I don’t know how they got there. It wasn’t so very far away. I can’t remember any vehicle bringing them but something must have brought them and they came and they helped him with the harvest. And they worked on the land and a lot of them hadn’t got a clue about well land work but they soon learned and my mother cooked enormous great meals every day and so in this kitchen there was a huge kitchen table and all these men would be. There would be six or seven and they would change. I remember one particular one. He was so young. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He probably was but he was so young and he was so frightened but I could see even as a child. I was, you know I was only eleven, twelve I could see that hard work, it was a hot summer, the hard work kept, made him sane because he went home and he slept.
DE: Right. Yeah.
JA: But it was, it was terrible with those young men because we never knew them anymore. They became quite friends but then they went. Did they die? I don’t know.
DE: So did that happen just just the one year or was that the —
JA: That was really only the one year of the Battle of Britain but it’s very significant that was for me because all these, I’d never seen young men. I didn’t know what they were like. And I mean I was only [pause] but and they also treated my sister and I a bit like mascots. You see, we knew about the horses and and they didn’t but it I’m I’m sure it saved the sanity of quite a lot of young men.
DE: Excellent.
JA: It was nice. It was good.
DE: Okay. Anything else you’d like to tell me about that, that time?
JA: I think the funniest thing it always makes me laugh now but at the beginning of the war my father, it was the old DV in those days. It was before Home Guard and he decided of course we had again another hot summer that first year of the war and Hitler was going to invade. And I understand later on that Hitler’s soothsayer said it wasn’t appropriate for him to invade but if he was my father was quite convinced if he invaded he was going to land at Skegness on that east coast and actually could have done. Walked across. So my father was in the LDV and he used to go and stand on the top of Waddingham Church which is only two miles away. My father had a twelve bore gun and he always took one of the farm men with him but the farm man only had a pitchfork. My father [laughs] I mean it was terribly serious at the time I mean it was. I can remember being so frightened and father took it so seriously. But in hindsight there was my father with a twelve bore shotgun and a man with a with a pitchfork. They were going to defend the nation. But I was frightened. I was terrified and of course you see in 1939 I was nine when war broke out. I was ten when this all happened and I was so aware then. I was quite grown up for my age actually and I kept, I said to my mother, ‘What is going to happen to me? What will happen?’ Because as a child you only think about what’s going to happen to you don’t you? ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ So my mother said, ‘If the Germans come you’ll be absolutely fine, dear,’ she said, because at that time I was very very fair and I had long long plaits and I could sit on them. It was long and thick as that. ‘You’ll be absolutely fine. The Germans will take you and they will look after you and they will put you on a breeding farm.’ Well, I knew about breeding because I mean I would breed these horses if I had a breeding farm. ‘And then you will breed wonderful fair haired Aryan children.’ I should actually to be honest. You know. At that time she was quite right. But that comforted me. I was going to live.
DE: Crikey. Did, you said you were, you were frightened and needed that reassurance.
JA: It was reassuring actually.
DE: Where did you get your information from? Did you listen to the radio or read the papers or —
JA: Oh yes. The radio was always on you know. And of course, my mother had been a school teacher and father was very sort of articulate and we, we had got contact. We had aeroplanes flying over us all the time and we were all very conscious of the Lancasters at the, you know only down the road there’s Scampton and we knew that a lot of the fighter planes were here to defend them. So we knew what was going, we knew what was going on.
DE: So, I mean yeah you —
JA: I had to take my gas mask to school in its cardboard container.
DE: Did you have anything to do with any evacuees?
JA: Yes, we did. But I can’t really remember very much. I know they were fairly awful. They were two girls and they came from Sheffield and they didn’t stay very long. They were not happy. They were town children landed on an isolated farm. They didn’t like the food. They didn’t really like anything and their mother came and took them home. I don’t think they were, they came to school with us but I don’t think they stayed for more than about three months. But it was, it was interesting. It was the fact that that work on the farm was so hard in those days.
DE: And you, you helped with the horses. Yeah.
JA: Oh, all the time. Yes. I remember sitting when I was twelve sitting at the back of the school, at the back of the class in school in a maths lesson. I hated maths. And early in the morning, it was a September morning when, you know I was at school and they were picking potatoes at home and I wanted to be there with, with the horses.
DE: I see.
JA: I wanted to help.
DE: So you listened to the, to the radio. Did you ever hear what’s his name? Haw Haw.
JA: Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes. We had to listen to him. It was always because father always made, we got to listen to him because it was a joke. Father always said it was. I mean, we had to be amused by him.
DE: I see. Right. What about the, what about the newspapers?
JA: Newspapers. I don’t really remember much about newspapers. I think it was mainly the radio you know. It was the wireless was, wireless in those days of course and of course, father would listen to the news. I was always, I always remember later on when war ended and all the news came out about Auschwitz and you know the camps I always remember my father being so horrified by it and unbelieving to begin with. He could not believe that anything could have happened. There were a lot of people like that. It was quite quite horrendous that, well he didn’t. Well, I didn’t. We did not know anything about prisoner of war camps. Well, the Jews being in camps like that.
DE: Were there any prisoners of war camps around here? I know there was some Italians in Lincolnshire.
JA: Yes, we had. Yes, we had the Germans to start with. Big Hans and Little Hans. They came to work on the farm. They came from Pingley which was the other side of Brigg. A big, big camp there and it was mainly Germans and these two Big Hans and Little Hans they were very poor. A little man. I should imagine they were homosexuals or whatever. They came and they worked for us and they were, they were little farmers in Germany and we got very fond of them because they were just ordinary men like ours.
DE: Yeah. How long did they work on the farm for?
JA: I should think they worked for us for a good year. They were dropped off. Pingley used to take them and drop them off and we were very grateful to have them because we were desperate you see. You know, today on a farm you only have one man. In those days we needed ten because everything was done by hand.
DE: But they were never there at the same time as these British pilots.
JA: Oh no. No. This was towards the end of the war.
DE: Yeah.
JA: No. No. No. No. No. British pilots it was definitely, that was 1939 1940. When we had the prisoners of war was ’45.
DE: Right.
JA: ’50.
DE: Okay.
JA: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
JA: I remember my husband because he lived at Spridlington and they had Italian prisoners of war and he always remembered that they had one officer, well that he said. His boots were always immaculate all the time and he helped him break in a horse and he said he knew how to ride. He definitely was from, you know. It worked.
DE: Yeah. And you got on fine with them.
JA: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Oh, well yes. Yeah. We were pleased to have them and they were pleased to work.
DE: Did they, did they get their meals around the table?
JA: No. No.
DE: No.
JA: No. No. No. No. It was only the —
DE: Okay. So you said you know you had lots of aircraft flying around because there was, you know Lincolnshire known as Bomber County.
JA: Oh and of course —
DE: There was Hemswell before.
JA: Well there was either a landing ground or or a airport every few miles.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean you’ve mentioned Scampton but in between Scampton there’s —
JA: There’s Hemswell. Yes.
DE: Hemswell and Ingham.
JA: Yes, yes, exactly. And they were mainly sort of landing grounds in case main the main airport had been bombed.
DE: So did you get to recognise the different aircraft flying over?
JA: Yes. I mean we knew the difference between a Spitfire and a Hurricane and a Lancaster and a, and a cargo thing. Yes. I wasn’t particularly interested but but my father was of course.
DE: Did you know of any, any of the Luftwaffe aircraft flying over?
JA: No. We didn’t. I don’t think they, as far as we were concerned I don’t think they ever came. They came to Hull of course because they bombed Hull. But that didn’t mean they came over here.
DE: No.
JA: No.
DE: Were you, were you aware of Hull being bombed?
JA: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. If we stood on the, you know on the farm we could actually see the, you know, what was happening. Very much aware of that. But then you see for when you lived here and you only had horses and you did have a car and a bicycle whatever Hull was a long way off. You know, it seemed, and it was the other side of the river. Yeah. Still in a way it is.
DE: Yes. Yes.
JA: In those days the only way to get to Hull was on a ferry.
DE: Yeah. Or the long way around. I know that —
JA: Yeah. Well, when you went then you always went across on a ferry.
DE: Yeah.
JA: But you did. You had to choose the time of day to go or else you got stuck on a sandbank.
DE: Of course. Yeah. I know the, the Auxiliary Fire Service from Welton.
JA: Yes.
DE: Went to Hull during the Blitz.
JA: Oh, did they? I didn’t know that.
DE: Yeah. I mean it must have taken quite a while to get there.
JA: Yeah. Yes. Well, I think you know because the fires were very very bad you know. We could see that.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Yes.
DE: How did it make you feel seeing the fires?
JA: Well, it just was there. You know when you’re a child, you must remember I was a child as long as you were safe with your mummy and daddy and you were in your own home it was [pause] it was a bit, in a way it was a bit like a film I suppose to us.
DE: Yeah.
JA: You know it wasn’t, it wasn’t reality really. It was very sheltered.
DE: So, what did, what did you do for entertainment then?
JA: Not a lot. I was thinking about it this morning because I thought this was one you were going to ask me. Where? Entertainment. You went, you went to school. I mean we had to leave because we had to catch, we had to leave the house at ten to eight in the morning and we walked for half a mile on the main road to catch a bus. Then we didn’t get home until ten to five at night. And then we ate and did our homework. In the wintertime it was a matter of keeping warm. And the days went by. In the holidays I was outside all the time. We didn’t actually think of entertainment actually.
DE: What about when you got older?
JA: Well, I was fifteen when war ended but that was wonderful you know because we could then, I could then be a member of the Young Farmers’ Club and I was allowed to to go. I had an autocycle. My father bought me an autocycle. That was a bicycle with a thing and I used to come in to Brigg. I was allowed to come to Brigg in the dark, it was safe in those days, to Young Farmers’ Club meetings which were absolute bliss after being caged as we were. But we didn’t know anything else. So it was lovely to be there.
DE: So what happened at these? These Young Farmers’ meetings then.
JA: Oh, that was fun. I mean we used to go to the local pub and I mean we had talks and we had [pause] I can’t remember a lot about the talks but we had competitions and of course we were allowed to go to other farms with with our friends judging cattle. It was so exciting actually, you know when you think of the young people today but it was so exciting having had nothing to have this. That’s how I met my husband.
DE: And do you want to talk a bit about that?
JA: Well, if you like. I mean he, it was exciting because he lived at Spridlington which was on the road to, you know where Spridlington is?
DE: Yeah.
JA: On the road here and all our courtship right up to us being married to come and see me he had to have a chain in the back of the car and the chain was to bring the chain from his father to my father or, and when, when going home it was to take the chain back from my father because you were not allowed to travel with petrol at the end of the war you see. You had to have a reason for using petrol.
DE: Oh, I see. Right.
JA: So to come and to come and see me he had to have a genuine farming reason to come and see me.
DE: Oh, I see. Oh, that’s clever.
JA: So this chain would have lived in the back of the car if any police stopped him he was taking the chain from his father to mine.
DE: I see.
JA: Backwards and forwards.
DE: Right. Yeah.
JA: And then he could pick me up and we could go to the Young Farmers’ Club and then there were dances then. But you see I always think people are not wise enough. When I went into the nursing home to have my first baby who is seventy next birthday I took my ration book with me. Times were so much worse after the war.
DE: Right.
JA: I don’t think people realise that.
DE: Yeah.
JA: How we had to pay back and we were very hungry and rationing was very strict after the war.
DE: And there was, that was worse after the war.
JA: It was. Yes. It was. Everybody was happy and glad to be able to do it but food was so important.
DE: So in one way you had this freedom that you were, you know —
JA: I had the freedom to go. Well, a certain freedom. It felt like wonderful freedom but it was still restricted to the fact that it had to be rural. It had to be, you know it had to be sort of [pause] and then then it became and then you see I was fifteen when war ended. Sixteen I started at the Young Farmers’ Club. By the time I was eighteen then we could have dances and we could go out and be much more social. And tennis parties. And my husband went away. He was older than me. He went away to agricultural college and I was going to go but of course I went but when it was picked that I was to go I couldn’t I couldn’t because all the ex-servicemen coming back from the war they all had priority.
DE: Sure. Yeah. Of course.
JA: And we met some and my husband was there at the Agriculture College at Sutton Bonington with a lot of the people, men who were ex-soldiers. He was a lot younger than most of them because he’d started and they came back and we had some wonderful friends actually who had been in the war. A lot of tragedies.
DE: So your husband was a little bit older than you.
JA: Yes.
DE: What —
JA: He was two years older than me.
DE: What did he do during the war? What were his —
JA: Well, he was a farmer you see. He was a farmer and he was working. He was working on the land to produce food. It was. It was work and sleep.
DE: Right.
JA: And, and that’s what [pause] that’s all we, if you don’t know anything else you accept it.
DE: Yeah. So I’ve mentioned it before we started recording but I believe you had a couple of links to RAF stations in Lincolnshire.
JA: He had a lot more links because he, living at Spridlington they were more or less in the flight path from Scampton and he and his father used to stand and count Lancasters going out at night and then they would count them coming back in the morning. And you know he always said how dreadfully tragic it was.
DE: And I understand your sister in law was in, in the WAAF.
JA: No.
DE: No.
JA: No. No. I haven’t got a sister in law.
DE: Oh, it’s [pause] was there somebody who was a driver?
JA: No, I don’t know where you got this from.
DE: No. Okay. Never mind.
JA: No. No. No.
AA: Guy Gibson’s driver. That’s Fred Albones.
JA: Oh, yeah. That is a relative of my husband’s.
DE: Oh I see. Right.
JA: Yes. Yes. Yes. Which was over there. But it was, it was a strange upbringing but the whole point I’d like to emphasise is the fact that because we knew nothing else it was acceptable and what was so wonderful and we appreciated it so much was the freedom afterwards. When by today people have freedom from the day they’re born we, I now look back and I still think we had some wonderful times when I was seventeen and eighteen which today the youngsters would just think was stupid. But we hadn’t had anything else.
DE: Yeah.
JA: And then of course which was the most exciting I left school and my father decided that because he had no son that would I like to be a farmer you see and take over the farm. So that’s why I really began to work on the farm and so then when I was seventeen, I’d be nearly eighteen he bought a tractor.
DE: Wow.
JA: And I had the tractor and it was a little grey Fergie but it didn’t have a cab but I could go plough where I’d been actually ploughing with horses and I mean ploughing. Not many women of ninety two can say they’ve ploughed a lot of land with two horses. And then I had a tractor to come plough with.
DE: Okay. So I mean you said that you really loved working with horses, you know.
JA: Yes, I did.
DE: What was it like swapping over to having a tractor then?
JA: Well, it was you were just sat on a seat. You weren’t walking behind.
DE: Oh right. So it was —
JA: But it was always cold. No, but I still I love the horses as horses but I realise that I could do a lot more work in a day with a tractor than I could with two horses.
DE: So how, how long did it take before the the horses had gone and —
JA: Well, I don’t know. Gradually tractors, things began to go so quickly when war ended you know because tanks had been in the war and tractors soon were invented. You know from the little grey Fergie we got another tractor, another tractor and within a couple of years it was amazing how quickly —
DE: And I suppose they just kept getting bigger and more powerful and —
JA: Exactly.
DE: Yeah.
JA: And less labour was necessary.
DE: How many acres did you have?
JA: My father had, it was interesting he had three hundred and forty acres and he also had another rented another forty acres of pure grassland which was in those days was a very good living for a farmer. You would need three, four times as much today to get the same benefits.
DE: So, so it was mostly potatoes was it?
JA: It was. It was arable.
DE: Right.
JA: And then we did have cows which were bought for me because I wanted, I liked animals so we had a bit, we had a small dairy herd which was mine which was very nice. I thoroughly enjoyed them but the trouble is I soon found out that cows don’t differentiate between Fridays and Saturdays or Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
DE: Yeah.
JA: And I found it rather tiresome but I had to do it because this was what was decided because when everybody else was going out on a Saturday afternoon I had to milk the cows.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
JA: Good discipline.
DE: So what happened when you, when you were married then?
JA: When I married. Oh, it was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful to be married. I mean I loved my husband but it was so wonderful to get away. I was free. I was free to make my own decisions. Free to decide what we were going to have to eat. Free to decide when I was going to go shopping. It was marvellous. It was a good job I married him because I really needed to get away.
DE: So what happened to the farm?
JA: Oh, the farm. Father carried on of course. I had a sister came in then. A younger sister.
DE: Right.
JA: Whom had got a boyfriend who hadn’t got any land and he came and sort of took over. Took charge. But I was so pleased to get away. It was wonderful.
DE: So where did you live?
JA: I lived at Hackthorn. In the rectory. I don’t know whether you know Hackthorn. We lived in the rectory for a time and God it was cold. There wasn’t such a thing as central heating. But we stayed there and then we went to live up at Binbrook. By then I’d had a baby of course and life moved on.
DE: So, can you tell me a bit more about, you know your life after the war?
JA: Oh, well as I said after the war I got married in in 1952 and then we moved. My husband was a farmer. We lived up at Binbrook. I had another baby. Then then another one and then he came along. That was it. It was hard work but but then I I’d been used to living in the country. I’d been used to being on my own. I’d been used to discipline. So it was great.
DE: Did he ever, did he ever travel?
JA: Oh yes. All the time. As we got, as we got older we got freer when the children were grown up and we came to live down here. We travelled a lot. All the time. And we made the most of it and we still do actually. It was because my husband he got leukaemia. He started when he was only fifty seven and he died at sixty five and so we made the most of those years because he’d only been given three years to live and he actually managed to live nearly ten.
DE: Wow. Okay.
JA: Crossing our fingers. Very good. And so we made the most of it you know. It was each year, ‘Come on. We’re going to go.’
DE: Explored.
JA: Make the most of it. And I don’t regret a single thing.
DE: No. Where did you go?
JA: Oh, we travelled all over. We went, we went to and travelled to and all over been to Australia. We travelled around New Zealand. We went to Europe. We went to America. I went later to the Galapagos. He didn’t go to the Galapagos with me but we did. And we had a wonderful doctor and when we wanted to go to New Zealand he said, ‘Oh, that’s alright.’ We had to see the consultant said, ‘I’ve got a colleague in the Auckland. If you turn ill you can ring him in Auckland.’ So we had a camper van and and travelled all the way around the New Zealand for the month.
DE: Wow. Okay.
JA: Making the most of it.
DE: Yeah.
JA: If you know that the end is near you. So, I’m still travelling.
DE: But you know you didn’t fancy ever settling down anywhere else that you —
JA: Actually, when we went to New Zealand my husband loved it so much the first time we went if he hadn’t, he was an only child and if he hadn’t had elderly parents who were still alive it was like that. I think it wouldn’t have needed much for us to to emigrate because he loved New Zealand. Thought it was the ideal place but there it is. Times change.
DE: So how, how much do you think Lincolnshire has changed?
JA: Oh, well it’s unbelievable how it’s changed. I mean it’s still an arable county and even when I was a child there were, there were cattle but it was beef cattle. Sort of single herds but nowadays it’s now all well of course with the war all the grass had to be ploughed up to produce food for people and so it was never laid down back again and so it is much more an arable county and of course the tracks are just huge. The machine. But the machinery is, it’s enormous. I mean progress. I mean even in this last, even since my husband died I mean the the mere fact of the television and the iPads and all those sort of things I mean he would have a fit if he came back [pause] So life moves on but it always does.
DE: Yes. Yeah.
JA: But and I think every generation has said we’ve seen the best of it. But I don’t know. I’m just in a way I’m just sad that I’m getting old because I want to know what’s going to happen in another ten years. You’ll see it. I shan’t.
DE: I don’t know.
JA: That’s what, I don’t think I want to live to be a hundred and two.
DE: I’ve interviewed someone who was a hundred and two.
JA: Have you?
DE: Last year. Yeah.
JA: Oh, come again in when I’m hundred and two and see what I’ve done in the last eight years!
DE: I just, you know I’m just wondering if you have any other stories that you’d you’d like to tell me that you might have thought about when you heard I was going to come and meet you.
JA: No. Life, I think life has been, it sounds a bit monotonous as though you know I’ve not been almost killed in an air raid or anything like that but I can’t. I can’t think of anything that there are so many bits aren’t there in life. I think the most important thing is to make the most of everything and not to be too critical. [dog growling] That’ll be the post coming. No. I, of course when you’ve gone I’ll think of all sorts of things.
DE: Oh, yeah. But if I switch the machine off you’ll think of something.
JA: That’s sods, that’s sod’s law. I mean I do regret not getting [pause] The only thing I think that I wish that my parents had insisted that I carried on with further education. It’s alright that I loved the horses and I loved the land but I had a good brain and I should have used it. But then my life wouldn’t have been the same as it is today.
DE: And then you couldn’t go to agricultural college because there wasn’t —
JA: I missed out on that.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Mind you I didn’t really mind because by then I I was realising that I was in love with my husband and that we would get married and you did get married in those days you know. You didn’t live together and that sort of thing. You got married and I mean literally I had a baby nine months after I was married.
DE: Right.
JA: And, and that was the way my life went. But I do regret whenever like I said I try to do it occasionally, you know. I loved to read. I love history. I’m interested in in everything that goes on. I wish I’d had more of a trained brain. But [pause] but it’s no good. It’s no good regretting because it’s happened.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. And I dare say you’ve educated yourself.
JA: Yes.
DE: By the things you were reading.
JA: Yes. Yes.
DE: And the places you’ve been and things so —
JA: The places I’ve been and I’ve always been a great embroideress and a great sewer and I’ve done things around the Pony Club for twenty years. I’ve always done things but but not for money if you like.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Otherwise, I’d, and I was also a marriage guidance counsellor for forty years which was interesting.
DE: Wow. Okay. Can you tell me about about those things and the Pony Club? And working in marriage guidance.
JA: Yes, if you like.
DE: That sounds fascinating.
JA: Oh yes. Well, Pony Club I loved because I, I love kids. I don’t like, I don’t like small children very much but I do like teenagers. There aren’t many people that actively like teenagers [laughs] and I used to love running the Pony Club. It was, it was great. Well you know there were kids and ponies and again it was the horses wasn’t it? And when I look back when I I see the rules and regulations now that there are about having children in groups and I mean we used to have Pony Club Camp and I would quite happily have twelve, have thirty twelve and unders sleeping in farm buildings with their ponies and I would be the only one sleeping the night with them but I never thought anything about it but if something had happened. But it didn’t, did it?
DE: No.
JA: So, I loved running that. That was okay. But so many, and even today somebody in the supermarket only last week you know came up to me. She said, ‘I think I know who you are.’ So I said, ‘Oh yes?’ she said, ‘You’re Mrs Albone aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘I was one of your Pony Club girls.’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘I’m fifty next week. Do you remember me?’ Well, I had to talk myself through it but she was slightly different at fifty than she was when she was seventeen.
DE: Of course. Yeah.
JA: And as for marriage guidance well I just, I like people you see and I like people. I like to be able to listen and help people. I mean it worked for me. And you see my generation in those days because I hadn’t got a career in inverted commas so many of my friends if you like didn’t either. They came home from school to help mother or came into their own farm home. So they either sort of played a lot of golf, or a lot of us did a lot of social work and, you know we ran the Pony Club or we did other things for other people because we had to do something that was away from the farm and it’s sad nowadays because but everybody now has a career and they earn money. So that is why I think a lot of social things they find it difficult to get volunteers. So this is why I went in to doing my marriage counselling. Then it became Relate and then I became a sex therapist which was great fun I have to say. It was because there was, no it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t because so many people had so many sadnesses and if you could help them through that it was fantastic. But —
DE: No. But I suppose you had to keep a bit of an open mind and I suppose a sort of farming background would help a bit with that would it?
JA: Well. Yes, well it was just the fact that I mean I had a lot of experience in the fact that I had been, you know I’d been alive. I’d had a family. I’d had parents. I’d had you know. I’d lived in many ways.
DE: So it’s a sort of passing down your experience.
JA: Yes, and actually you know when all is said and done with all counselling work it isn’t what you say it’s, it’s being able to listen. It’s what they say to you is what, you know, or they sound off against you.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Which I found very interesting. Quite traumatic at times but good and my husband was always cooperative. He didn’t want to do it but he was very happy for me to do it. I mean he was busy farming wasn’t he?
DE: Sure.
JA: And fishing.
DE: Fishing.
JA: Yes.
DE: Okay.
JA: Farming and fishing.
DE: So did he, did he not get involved with the Pony Club then either you were saying?
JA: No. No. He didn’t like horses.
DE: Right.
JA: Didn’t like anything to do with horses.
DE: Right.
JA: But —
DE: It was tractors and machinery.
JA: Tractors, machinery and going fishing.
DE: Right.
JA: But no but you see he was fishing and shooting and I was riding horses and hunting and so but we knew the same sort of people so we always used to say on a Saturday night we had an awful lot to talk about because we came from different angles.
DE: Yeah.
JA: I don’t know what you’re going to do with all this.
DE: Well, you know we will if you sign the form saying you’re happy for us to use it we’ll, we’ll put it as part of the archive.
JA: You want to say something Alex.
AA: Well, I was, I was just thinking that you could, you could enlighten a little bit more about, about father’s experience of being in the Home Guard and shooting rabbits during the Second World War and raising enough money to —
JA: Oh yes he did. That’s how we got married.
AA: That, that’s the story you should talk about. I think you could also could talk about having chickens in the, in the drawing room at Hackthorn when you first got married.
JA: Yes.
AA: In order that you had enough money and I think you could expand upon that.
JA: Yes, I certainly, yes.
AA: And also expand a little bit on, a little bit about what community was like during the war years. I think you’ve mentioned it but I don’t think you’ve really talked about how you actually entertained yourself just after the war. How, rural life was up to and around.
JA: Funny boy.
AA: Wartime.
JA: Okay. I, I liked about my husband he had a wonderful dog and he would shoot rabbits and he would take rabbits to market to sell and we actually got married on his rabbit money savings.
DE: Right. Okay.
JA: Yes. We went to local sales and bought furniture. The bed cost ten pounds I remember. But it was, it was a very comfy bed and, but, that’s, that’s how it moved because he had to work. So, you know. Well —
DE: So, what was the going price for a brace of rabbit?
JA: Oh, for goodness sake [laughs] I don’t, not a lot but there again well oh yes one thing is when I first got married I was you see when I, yeah that was interesting. When I, when I did get married I had in my bank account I had thirty two pounds because all my father ever paid me was four pounds a week even when I had the cows and driving tractors. Mind you I did get all my food and everything else. And I’d thirty two pounds in the bank and when I got married my housekeeping allowance was five pounds a week and five pounds a week in 1952. And out of that my husband always paid for the meat. Farmers in those days always paid the butcher’s bill and, but I managed to dress myself and feed a baby on five pounds a week.
DE: That’s inflation for you then eh. Yeah.
JA: That’s inflation.
DE: So, chickens.
JA: Oh, chickens. When we first got married we were desperately hard up and we had this enormous rectory which had a drawing room, a dining room, a sitting room, a kitchen, you know. So we thought what were, what were we going to do with the dining room? So we had, we put an incubator in and we had baby chickens. And then and then put them in the walled garden and produced eggs to help with our income. It was quite interesting when people came to the door when they’d hear the chickens in the dining room but still never mind.
DE: And Alex said something. A bit more about the sort of community life.
JA: Yes, I think the community life as far as we was concerned were dances once a week when there was, you know freedom. Tennis parties in the summertime. Grass courts when we had to cut the grass. You know, lined. No hard courts. We had to line, you know. Do it all ourselves. And that’s how we met our friends. And we did. And of course, the Young Farmers’ dances and then it got to be people’s twenty firsts and in those days it was so funny. I mean we went the ballroom at Brigg we always used to invite [laughs] for your twenty first you always invited the young people but you always invited their parents as well. So the parents would sit around the outside of the room watching the young people dancing you see. We were, we were accustomed to it. That was the way it was but looking back on it you know you couldn’t be a bit naughty or anything else because somebody was going to see. But it was the way it was and what I’m trying to say is you accepted the way it was. And that was it. Where today you know everybody has so much freedom. It’s fine. But that’s today, isn’t it? [pause] I don’t know what else to tell you, you know.
DE: So you’ve sort of painted a picture of of what, what happened in, in the summers. It was tennis and dancing.
JA: Dancing in the winter of course.
DE: Oh, there was dancing in the winter.
JA: We went dancing in the winter. Yes.
DE: Right.
JA: Yes, there were dancing in the winter. There was usually a dance every Friday night, you know. And yes, yes that’s reminded me. And I had a particular way of my mother made me, she was a most wonderful seamstress and she made me some wonderful clothes to wear to these dances because it was very important we had something new all the time. And when the New Look came in I had a New Look outfit which was extremely smart but when it was a dance a lot of the, they were ballgowns you see. Off the shoulder and I had a small pin had been given to me. A small pin of a fly and in the first place Sellotape. I used to manage to get this fly pinned on to my skin with Sellotape so I was always known as the woman with the fly. That was my —
DE: Well —
JA: Different to anybody else.
DE: What an odd thing.
JA: It was.
DE: Yeah.
JA: It was very interesting. Yes. But you had to have, you had to look different. You had to look special.
DE: Right and it obviously worked because —
JA: Oh yes, obviously it worked. Oh yes.
DE: You met your husband. Yeah.
JA: Yes, it worked.
DE: So, I mean you said it was a bit hard when you first got married and you had to have the chickens in in one room.
JA: Oh it was hard but then I was used to hard. Are you with me? I mean we we we were all of us used to hard work but we, we had each other. We had privacy. We were away from our families. And then of course I had a baby and it was a natural process but it was, it was good. It was really good.
DE: Okey dokey. Thank you.
JA: And then my husband got the opportunity of having a farm up at, up at Binbrook and so we moved up there and I always remember he was, whether this is applicable but he was, he was a lovely man my husband and he was very much liked by a lot of people and the local auctioneer who had no sons took him under his wing and I always remember him coming and said, ‘We’re going to get you a farm, Ted.’ And he did. He got this. He got this farm for him and we accepted it. And he said, ‘But you must remember,’ I’ve always remembered this, ‘Always remember you’re going to be successful but you will lose friends.’
DE: Right.
JA: And we laughed about it. Ted laughed about it. He was right. We did. Some of his school friends never spoke to him anymore.
DE: Because he’d—
JA: Because he’d suddenly become successful.
DE: Right.
JA: That was quite a powerful feeling actually in those days because when you’re young you like to be liked don’t you?
DE: So what did success mean then?
JA: Well, success meant that we moved. We moved into a bungalow that was built for us. We had another child by then. Success didn’t necessarily mean a lot more money. I mean we were still always hard up. But it meant that we were, well equity had increased. There was more opportunities. We were making a lot more friends up on the Wolds there. Completely new people. But we were still always hard up. We always seemed to be hard up actually.
DE: Well, I suppose that part of that’s, you know needing the next new tractor or bit of machinery or whatever.
JA: Well, yes. In farming one, one has stuff but you don’t have cash. I think it might apply today in many people.
DE: Yes.
JA: You have things but no —
DE: Yeah. So it’s investments. Yeah.
JA: You have land and it’s worth an enormous amount of money but it’s not much good having fifty acres of land that’s worth ten thousand pounds an acre if you haven’t got enough money to buy lunch is it?
DE: No, I suppose not.
JA: So that’s why I learned to sew and make things. Make things for my home and make things and I’ve sewed ever since. Oh and yes probably the main thing is which is not many people when I was eighty I had an exhibition of all my handiwork in the local village, in the local church because I had a friend, I always said that when I died I didn’t want a particular funeral. I would like to have an exhibition because I’ve always sewed and made things. Cushions. Everything in this house I’ve made. And so she said, ‘Don’t be silly. Do it now when you’re eighty.’ And I did and I had eighty eight pieces of from curtains to wedding dresses to embroidery to whatever that I have done all my life. I’ve collected it and never sold anything in my life but and made things for family and friends and everything else. Collected it all up and had an exhibition. It was fantastic. Raised a lot of money.
DE: Really?
JA: Yes.
DE: What charity did you choose?
JA: I gave it half to the church and the other half to, to Leukaemia Research because my husband died of leukaemia.
DE: Yes. Of course. Yeah.
JA: But he was I was glad I did it because you know, if I’d been dead I should never have enjoyed it should I?
DE: No. No. Were there many people came?
JA: Oh yes. Well, you see all my friends knew it was my eightieth birthday and it was and thanks to Alex he got it publicised in a local magazine and actually so many people have said, it was open for three days have only said to me the other day, ‘Well, let’s do it again?’ I said, ‘No way. Thank you. No way. Thank you.’ There we go.
DE: Smashing. Thank you.
JA: So what, there are lots of bits aren’t there? So what do you, do you put the bits together?
DE: No. We don’t edit anything. Shall I press pause for now.
JA: Yes.
[recording paused]
DE: So just started recording again. Electricity.
JA: Electricity. We, okay even as a child we had only electricity because we had a generator and it had a an engine but it only generated enough electricity for light. It was always going wrong I have to say but we were definitely one up on the local population who only had oil lamps. So electricity would come. I can’t remember when electricity, when we got to be on the electricity but the most important thing was the water because we had our own borehole as children and we dug a borehole. And we had cattle in the, we always had cattle even if we didn’t have cows. But we children kept saying to our parents, ‘This water tastes horrible.’ Because we drank water and those who didn’t drink the orange and this water tastes horrible. We would be eleven twelve. It would be sort of during the war but getting on in the war. Eventually my father decided to have the water tested. Of course, we lived on limestone ground and the cattle in the in the crew yards the water had, the effluent had filtered into the borehole hadn’t it. So we were actually drinking water that should have caused us illness. At that stage father decided right so we had to have water. We had to fetch it from a local bore, a local pipe two miles away with a, with a [pause] and my father and he said, right, we could still bath and everything still in this dirty water but he would never do. So my mother had to carry water from well was boiled in pans on her, the pure water for him to bath in. But we could bath in the dirty water.
DE: Right.
JA: So my father was an odd man. But this how we didn’t get any I do not know because the water was disgraceful. And that is I think both how my sister and I to be honest I wouldn’t like to say but I don’t think we’ve ever had a tummy upset.
DE: Right. It’s sort of inoculated you to everything.
JA: Inoculated us for life. Yeah. We’re both very tough.
DE: Crikey.
JA: And and and I honestly believe that it was because we were sort of —
DE: So when did you get the water better water supply?
JA: Oh, I don’t know, It would be around about, it was towards the end of the war. It would be about in 1943 ’44 when, when we [pause] No. I think we had water right to the end of the war. It would be 1945. Things began to go ever so fast once war was over. When we got mains. Mains water.
DE: What about electricity?
JA: Electricity. About the same time. About the same time we got electricity. But everything seemed to happen together. The war ended and we seemed to suddenly move up into the twenty first, twentieth century. And it was. But we didn’t die did we?
DE: No. And then you had to, you watched the Coronation on a, on your —
JA: Oh yes. A little box set. Yes. And my mother in law had bought it. Terribly expensive at the time I remember. I think about the same price as they are now. It was a lot of money in those days. And so half the village came and sat and watched it. But I was so because I loved clothes and I loved the Queen’s dress and everything else. And then later in life it was only after my husband died my daughter took me to London to see the Queen’s clothes and the Coronation dress was there in this exhibition in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace. I’d never been so absolutely amazed. It was so beautiful because on television it was only black and white and silver but in real life the embroidery on it was all in colour. It was, I’ve never seen anything more exquisite in my life as that dress.
DE: Wow.
JA: A bit disjointed.
DE: No, it’s wonderful. Thank you.
JA: Going from sewerage [laughs] to that dress
DE: Yes. Opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah. Right. I shall press stop.
JA: Right. I think you’ve had enough.
DE: Thank you.
JA: I think you’ve had enough.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jan Albone
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-09-22
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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00:57:11 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AAlboneJM220922, PAlboneJM2201
Description
An account of the resource
Jan was born on a farm in North Lincolnshire. She went to school in Brigg. She loved the farm, particularly the horses.
Their farm was close to RAF Kirton in Lindsey which was used as a rest home for men from the Battle of Britain. They worked on the harvest to help them recuperate. Jan was aware of the Lancasters at RAF Scampton. They had two evacuees from Sheffield for a short time. Towards the end of the war, Jan also recalls having two German Prisoners of War from the camp in Pingley, near Brigg, to help on the farm.
When the war ended, Jan enjoyed being a member of the Young Farmers Club and met her husband. There were dances and tennis parties before her husband went to agricultural college and became a farmer. After marrying in 1952, they lived in the rectory at Hackthorn where they incubated chicks in the dining room. They moved to a farm in Binbrook. Jan helped with the Pony Club and was a marriage guidance counsellor for 40 years.
Jan talks about the changes in farming and how change accelerated after the war.
At the age of 80, she put on a three-day handiwork exhibition in the church.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1952
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Binbrook
England--Hackthorn
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
childhood in wartime
civil defence
evacuation
home front
Home Guard
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF Kirton in Lindsey
RAF Scampton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2140/36880/PBerrillR20220222.2.jpg
62097c03b299cef6924cd09318ad6317
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2140/36880/ABerrillR220223.2.mp3
2088ba7a6b2a22a47d6746c6de108790
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Berrill, Roy
R Berrill
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Roy Berrill (b. 1924, 189888 Royal Air Force). He was one of three Meteorological Officers at RAF North Creake.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-02-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Berrill, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Just check it’s recording. So, this is an interview with Roy Berrill for the IBCC Digital Archive. I’m Dan Ellin. It is the 21st of February 2022 and we’re in Easingwold in Yorkshire. I’ll put that there.
RB: Well, actually it’s the twenty, yeah the 23rd.
DE: Yes.
RB: Right. Are you alright there?
DE: Yeah. I’m just, I’m just, I want to just check that this is recording.
RB: Yes. Ok.
DE: So, Roy could you first of all tell me a little bit about your early life and I believe you were evacuated.
RB: Yes. I was born in Northampton and I stayed in Northampton until I was, I think it was twelve or thirteen when we moved. Had to move to London for various reasons and at which time I lived in Becontree and went to school in Barking Abbey Grammar School which was, wasn’t a mixed school. It was a school where the boys and girls were separated. Now, is that ok?
DE: Yeah. That’s fine.
RB: Is it working alright?
DE: It’s going fine. Yeah.
RB: Righto. My homelife was rather restrictive. My mother came from a strict Baptist family so I was really, well we were all very restricted as children but I was particularly restricted because I was a relatively weak child. I was always fainting and this sort of thing and I was no good at sports so there we are. But when I moved, when we moved to Becontree in Essex as I say I went to Barking Abbey School, Grammar School there and on the 1st of September 1939 I became an evacuee. I left home with my gas mask and a few changes of clothes and we went to school and then we were told at 10 o’clock in the morning we had to walk to Rainham Underground Station where we travelled right across London to Ealing Broadway where we caught a steam train which went to Bristol. We got to Bristol about the middle of the day. We had no food or nothing to drink and we still stuck out just outside Bristol Station not knowing what was happening. Eventually the train went on to Weston-Super-Mare and for the next three years I was an evacuee in Weston-Super-Mare where I lived in six different places as an evacuee. I took my, the equivalent of O Levels or what was then called School Certificate and I passed every subject including Latin but I failed at one subject and that was woodwork. I then stayed on at school to take my Higher School Certificate but the snag was that during that time the school was bombed and so the part of the school which we were sharing with the local people from Weston-Super-Mare half of the school got burned down. And there was another school then dumped on the same school so there were three schools in the same building and the night when they, the school, that part of the school got burned down I was supposed to be taking my Higher School Cert and we hadn’t got any exam papers. So they had to collect all the exam papers from the other school which was from London and then sit the exam. I seem to have passed that subject [laughs] and then at the suggestion of one of my brothers I applied to go to Queen Mary College, London which is now Queen Mary University I understand. I never set foot, I have still never set foot in Queen Mary College yet [laughs] But the college was actually evacuated to Cambridge where I was allowed two years to do a three year general degree and at the same time I had to do two afternoons a week with the other Cadet Force to train to be an officer. After one year I decided I didn’t like the Army so I transferred to the ATC, Air Training Corps and that’s how I got into the Air Force. While we were at university as I say we had to do these two afternoons a week and we also had to do fire watching and I spent the odd night on the top of King’s College, Cambridge actually looking for fires. It was a platform with no handrail of any kind right on the apex of King’s College Chapel. So that was an experience. However, I seemed to have passed my degree by the skin of my teeth and I had no sooner finished my exams than the Air Force called me up to see what I was going to do. And I said I wanted to be a Met officer because I was very interested in Met work at the time and they said, ‘Oh, that’s just what we want. Some more Met officers.’ So they allowed me to go and train as a Met officer at Kilburn in London. I did my training there and having completed the training and passed I was then sent to Warboys in Cambridgeshire as a forecaster to see how it was done and what happened. So I had a few weeks at Warboys and then I was moved to the next station at Wyton where I dropped a major clanger at the time. The point being I was supposed to be doing the observations for one night while I let the assistant go and have a bit of a snooze and I didn’t know anything about how you worked out visibility at night in the blackout and thick fog so I assumed that it was still foggy. I got a telephone call later on. He said, ‘Why are you the only station in the area that’s got fog? All the other stations around you are as clear as can be.’ Well, I couldn’t talk myself out of that one because I didn’t know how to do visibility at night. So there we are. But eventually I got transferred to North Creake and I’ve written a piece of paper which tells you about my, what happened at North Creake.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Do you wish me to read that out or —
DE: No. That’s, that’s fine if I can take a copy of that that will be good.
RB: Yeah. That’s your copy.
DE: Yeah. So, so how do you tell the visibility at night?
RB: You have to go outside and let your eyes adjust and you have to be sure you know where things are and you look in that direction. And very gradually your eyes do adjust to the dark and you can just make out what is going on. But it’s a very hit and miss sort of process.
DE: So you look for landmarks that you know are a certain distance away.
RB: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DE: Right.
RB: So I got to North Creake and a very interesting time while I was there. And one of the interesting things as far as I was concerned was I flew one morning on an air test with a, in a Stirling bomber and the pilot took me up just to have a look around while he was doing his air test and we came back down. And that night he went out with his crew and he was killed over North France by friendly fire. The Americans. His name was Tiny Thurlow. He was a Canadian and he was six foot odd and that’s why he was called Tiny. A nice chap. All his crew from his aircraft managed to get out. He told them to get out but before he [emphasis] could get out the plane blew up. So there we are. One or two other little stories which are of interest to me at least was after VE Day there was a tannoy over North Creake that said, ‘Is there anybody here who can speak German?’ And one chap said, ‘Yes. I can speak German.’ ‘Oh. How well can you speak German?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have a First Class Honours degree from Cambridge in German.’ ‘Oh, you’re just the sort of chap that we want. What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I have to paint the edges of the coals around the station to stop people tripping over it at night.’ I thought that was an excellent example [laughs] of how to use manpower. The other little thing is that is not recorded on that sheet is there’s, in a photograph there is a what looks like a long sort of covered affair and that is where we used to store the gas to blow up balloons. We had balloons which were supposed to ascend at a certain rate and you fuelled it up to a particular size which was measured with a piece of wire and you released it and it’s supposed to go up at a certain rate and you timed it and there was, you know. Thereby you could tell where the base of the cloud was. So that’s my basic experience of, of North Creake and subsequently after VE Day and VJ Day I eventually got a, this is after the war of course I got posted to [pause] Tilbury and they sent me up to Lancashire to get kitted out for the Far East. I went back to Tilbury, caught the ship, the Strathaird which set sail and we were told we were going to India. We got as far as Gibraltar, dropped the anchor and literally dropped the anchor down a pothole. So we lost an anchor and the ship can’t go through Suez Canal with one anchor. It has to have two. So we waited a week in Gibraltar for a second anchor to be brought out. Eventually we went through Suez Canal and while in the Red Sea I had Vaccine Fever which wasn’t very good in that temperature. And we got to Bombay and when we got to Bombay they said to me, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been sent here.’ ‘Oh, well we’ve got nothing for you to do here. You’d better go to Singapore.’ I said, ‘Well, how do I do that?’ ‘Oh, your ship is being diverted to Singapore.’ ‘Oh, righto.’ But they filled, there were about twelve of us on a ship with only twelve officers on. It was a forty thousand tonne ship and you think what happened to the rest of the ship. ‘Oh, we’re taking people to return home to Singapore.’ So we were filled up with Malays and Indians and goodness knows what. And within a matter of minutes the decks were red where they were spitting all their stuff having chewed betel nuts and what have you and, but as soon as we got out of Bombay it happened to be monsoon season so the ship started to pitch and roll and that sent all these, these people returning to Singapore below. We never saw them again. And I got to Singapore and they said, ‘Who the hell are you? Where have you come from and what are you doing here?’ And I said, I told them and I said I’d been sent here and they said, ‘Oh, well we’d better find something for you to do.’ So they said, ‘Oh, we’ll send you on to Japan.’ ‘Oh, thank you very much. How do I get there?’ ‘Oh, you’ll have to wait for a ship to come in.’ I said, ‘Well, when is that going to be?’ ‘We’ve no idea.’ So they said, ‘’Well, and while you’re here you might as well, we might as well make use of you. You’d better go to Seletar.’ Which is on the north side of Singapore Island and it was basically a Flying Boat base. Well, A, I knew nothing about the weather in Singapore so I didn’t know much about forecasting and I knew nothing about Flying Boats either. Anyway, one day I decided when I was off duty I would go back in to Singapore and down to the docks. Having got to the docks I saw a ship there and a bloke standing on the gang plank swaying, so I said to him, ‘Hello. Are you a British ship?’ He said, ‘Of course we are.’ I said, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Japan.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s what I need.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘If you want to get on you’d better go and get your stuff pretty quickly. We’re going this evening.’ So I dashed back to Seletar, collected all my gear which was at the laundry so wet or not I packed it all in and dashed back to the ship and got on it. Told nobody.
DE: Oh.
RB: Nobody cared. Nobody seemed to know. I got on this ship and we went, we got, we went to Japan via Hong Kong and we got to Kure and we were then taken by train to our station which was a place called Iwakuni. But you had to go through Hiroshima and I got to Hiroshima one year exactly after the atomic bomb. We then went on to where I was stationed at Iwakuni and I was there for just short of two years during which time we had, we had [pause] we were called the British Commonwealth Occupation err Occupying Forces. And on the station where I was were English, well British really and New Zealanders, Kiwis and flying mostly Dakotas and things of that kind. There was, there were two other British stations. One further down the line, one for Australians and then one on the north side of the island which was for Indian Air Force. While we were there I met Lord Tedder who came and he was going to the trials in Tokyo. Also while I was there there was a Japanese being taken to Tokyo to give his record of what happened and he was to be prosecuted. Well, the forecasting place where I was based was next door to a kitchen which was to provide food for people passing through and this chappie had a few minutes left to himself so he picked up a butcher’s knife and committed Hara-kiri actually in that kitchen. So he never got to Tokyo. Later on because all buildings were wooden we had an arson attack and the whole of the officer’s mess got burned to the ground and we lost two people there. I managed to get out in the smoke and we then had to be rehoused in another building which was really basically for the erks as it were. We hadn’t got any clothing and so we went to the stores and they said, ‘Well, here you are. Here’s some shirts for you and some trousers.’ We put the shirts on and they came down to our waist. They were intended for the WAAFs [laughs] So we eventually got kitted out and as I say we were stuck there for the rest of the time. And eventually one of the chaps who was a forecaster at North Creake. He happened to be at the same place Iwakuni so I knew him. He wasn’t a very nice chap but never mind. He went. He was demobbed, sent home and the other forecaster he was sent home. So there was a period for me when they did get another forecaster out when there were only two of us so it was twenty four hours on and twenty four hours off which was a bit of a trial but never mind. I found all sorts of things to do and I met up with a New Zealander who said, ‘You should come and live in New Zealand.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to come and live in New Zealand at the moment. I want to go home and get married to my [laughs] my fiancé,’ who I’d met in Cambridge. And then on one occasion as I say Lord Tedder came. Lord Tedder went on to Tokyo by train and his aircraft was going back to the UK so I got a hitch in Lord Tedder’s Dakota down to Hong Kong and had two or three days in Hong Kong which was an interesting exercise. But of course, how the hell did I get back? ‘Oh, well there’s a Flying Boat going back up to Iwakuni’ So I jumped aboard that. A huge Sunderland aircraft which I got in. I was the only passenger. So it was a very pleasant ride.
DE: Yeah.
RB: And as I say we, all our stuff came via Sunderlands from the UK eventually. While we were there for the first about six months all our food was tinned and then suddenly one day we got an aircraft that came up from New Zealand bringing fresh celery and we went absolutely berserk eating celery which was a wonderful change. However, as I say eventually of course I was demobbed but before I was demobbed they said, ‘Well, you’ve been in the Air Force a fair while. We think you might have promotion. But before you have promotion what else do you do besides weather forecasting?’ Well, as it happened I was interested in teaching other people who were illiterate and I didn’t know anything about illiteracy at the time so I started to teach them about numeracy. So they accepted that as a good reason to get promotion. So I was actually promoted to flight lieutenant when I came home. When I got on board ship to come back I was made troops catering officer. Of course, I knew such a lot about catering [laughs] Anyway, that was my job while I was on board ship. But the ship on the way back was constantly being diverted to places they hadn’t intended to go. For example, having got to Singapore we were supposed to come on home but we got diverted to Colombo first, then to Aden, then to a place called [Misawa] and some other funny place. Port something or other. Then through the Suez Canal and having got through the Suez Canal it was Christmas so as an officer I had to serve the troops with their chicken for Christmas dinner [laughs] Then we got diverted again to Algiers and eventually after, I think it was well over nine weeks I arrived home. I got, got got to the UK on the 5th of January and got married on the 10th of January.
DE: Oh wow.
RB: And I think that’s more or less my story.
DE: Yeah.
RB: For the time being.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Is that enough?
DE: That’s, that’s a brilliant start. I’d love to go back and ask you a couple more questions if that’s all right.
RB: By all means.
DE: Do you want to have a, have a drink —
RB: Yes.
DE: Of your coffee.
RB: Good idea.
[pause]
RB: You may understand of course that I live on my own. Although I have a number of people who come in and help me considerably.
DE: Yeah.
RB: So anyway. What were your questions?
DE: Well, it’s a little bit more about your, your role as the Met officer and forecasting. So you said here that when you were at North Creake —
RB: Yeah.
DE: You had, there were three other officers there with you and you worked shifts.
RB: Well, well, there were three. Three Met officers.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Including myself. Yes.
DE: And you worked shifts. One ‘til ten and then the next day eight ‘til one.
RB: Yeah.
DE: And then 10pm ‘til 8pm and then the third day you were, you were off.
RB: That’s it.
DE: What, and you’ve also mentioned setting the balloons and trying to check the visibility at night.
RB: Yes.
DE: What, what other, what other jobs did you have to do as a Met officer?
RB: Well, we had an assistant of course and it was their job, a WAAF to record all this information. And that information was sent to the [pause] I’ve forgotten what he was called. Sort of the local Regional Met Office and it was they who were required to produce the forecast for the flight. Wherever the Group was being sent. We were not allowed to alter that in any way even if we disagreed with it and I think I have explained in there on one occasion there was a significant difference where they didn’t realise there was a thunderstorm around which we did know and that stopped the flight for that night. I always went. I did the forecast with all the crew there and the officers who were also telling what the target was and all this sort of thing and I also attended the debriefing afterwards just to find out how accurate the forecast was. So does that answer your —?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. What was the atmosphere like at the briefings when you were telling them the weather?
RB: Well, of course, being 100 Group they didn’t do bombing. They were concerned with dropping radar interference. Most of. Window it was called and they were going for them at that time they would go and stooge around for about eight hours, dropping this Window. And of course, flying at the height at which they were which was anything between ten and twenty thousand feet they were very prone to the weather itself including icing which I’ve mentioned in there. So, whereas modern aircraft of course flying at thirty thousand feet and the other interesting thing to me is because I still follow the weather our forecasting was done at two thousand feet. We drew up a synoptic chart on a regular basis every three hours and every six hours for the country as a whole and, but nowadays of course the forecasting is done at thirty thousand feet with a Jetstream. Well, we knew about the Jetstream but we didn’t know anything about what it did or how it worked and we had no idea what it was all about. And we had a wonderful piece of instrument. It was on a pole and it was like a garden rake but with the prongs sticking upwards and you had to estimate what the height of the cloud was in this Jetstream and then you had to time it between each of the prongs. And you then had to calculate how fast that Jetstream was. But having done that nobody knew what to do with it. It was a ridiculous arrangement because you were looking at cloud at anything from thirty to thirty five thousand feet and this made the accuracy pretty hopeless. So there we are. Does that answer your question?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So did you get, did you get intelligence from, from the aircraft as well? I know they had Meteorological flights and some of the crews reported back wind speeds and directions and things.
RB: Yes. There were, I think it was four places that would send up balloons much bigger than the cloud thing and that had a series of each instruments dangling below the balloon which would record air pressure from which you could calculate the height, temperature, humidity, and the drift would tell you the windspeed. So that was, that was useful and mostly they just eventually the balloon would burst and we would lose that apparatus but occasionally they would be found perhaps in Norway or Sweden. So there we are. That was that. What else? One of them incidentally was fairly close to a docking we sent up from there. The other thing was some places at Docking I think it was they would send up either a Hurricane or a Spitfire suitably adapted with a, with a gadget on it that would tell you the height and the biometric pressure and they too would record humidity, temperature and they could calculate the direction and speed of the wind and what have you. So they just circled a way above the station to a certain height and that was it. And that was very useful because being in Norfolk you had that wretched North Sea stratas or haar or whatever you’d like to call it which was absolutely deadly from the point of view of forecasting. We couldn’t, we didn’t know anything about it to be honest and they still don’t know. They still get them. So anyway, does that answer your question?
DE: Yes. Yeah. That’s wonderful.
RB: Anything else?
DE: I can probably, I can probably look through and find something else. Yeah. So you mentioned the pilot, Tiny. How well did you know him?
RB: Oh, only, only socially in the mess. Not, not very well. I didn’t get close to many of the aircrew to be honest because they came and went. I was more interested with my colleagues in the Met office and in the air traffic control because that was all relevant as far as I was concerned, you know. Giving them QFE and QFC and what have you. And so I didn’t get close to aircraft crew. I did one or two of the ground crew. The maintenance people. I got to know one or two of them but I have no contact with them. Not now.
DE: No. No. Have you been involved in the, in the Memorial at North Creake?
RB: Not yet.
DE: Right.
RB: No. I think that’s one of the things that they want me to do. I have joined. I joined this 100 Group Memorial Group but unfortunately of course that’s all based in Norwich and I can’t get. I have no car now. I’ve only got a little electric buggy. I can’t go more than fifteen miles away from here. Anything else?
DE: Let’s have a look, see. Could you tell me a little bit more about your time when you were evacuated and your time at Cambridge? Where were you staying? Where were you living?
RB: Well, as an evacuee in Weston-Super-Mare as I say I had six places that I lived and the last one I lived in was a hotel which had many of the recruits that were being trained doing square bashing on the front. And the hotel was a crummy place. It really was disastrous. Eventually it had to be closed because the conditions that were there were really beyond anything that anybody ought to live with. I was there. There were two of us that lived in the attic but the rest were all Air Force trainees so, and that was it. The other places that I lived in as an evacuee varied enormously. One was where there were two ladies who used to be in charge of some sort of school or other. Very doctrinaire and didn’t think much of us [laughs] Anyway, but you want Cambridge as well?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Please.
RB: Well, I lived the whole time in King’s College, Cambridge. For the first year I was in rooms right next door to the Chapel so I could hear the organ playing and that was wonderful. And it was wonderful too when I had to do fire watching because you could hear the organ coming up through the roof. So that was very good but the conditions were not very [pause] There were three of us in two rooms. We had to share the rooms. We had one little gas fire and we were absolutely frozen the whole time. And, and as far as lectures were concerned for mathematics we had mostly lecturers from London University. For physics we had almost entirely people from Cambridge and those lectures were pretty useless in as much they didn’t tell you about what you should be learning. They were just entertainment as much as anything. For example, we were talking about sound and he had a block of concrete on the front desk and he picked up a piece of wood and dropped it on it. He said, ‘There you are. Noise.’ And then he picked up a series of these wooden blocks and he proceeded to play a tune to demonstrate that in fact noise in fact had got a note to it. Well all very interesting but not much help from the point of view of learning the physics of sound. And the other thing we had to do we were all compelled to do early, early computing.
DE: Oh really? Ok.
RB: We were forced to do one session a week to learn about cathode-ray tubes and what have you which nobody explained and I didn’t understand a word of it. But there we are. We had to do it. And then we had tutorials also in physics which again were quite useless. For geography I had tutors from my own college and they were good. Very helpful. We did a lot of interesting work including experimental survey work and that kind of thing. So that was good. Anything else you want?
DE: I suppose I should ask you what the living arrangements were like at North Creake. I mean you’ve spoken a bit about your time in Japan and on board ship. What was it like at North Creake?
RB: Well, I can’t remember the mess very much but the food was good in as much a lot of it was of course related to rationing as what things of that kind. We hadn’t very little butter or things. Stuff of that kind. So when we got on board ship eventually which had got loads of food from other countries one or two people just went stupid and were eating butter and all sorts of things and they made themselves ill. But what was the other thing? Food and —?
DE: Well, you know what, you know —
RB: The conditions we were —
DE: Yeah.
RB: Actually living. Well apart from being the Met office which was below the traffic control in a brick built place so it was relatively warm but the actual living area which was a Nissen hut which was, there was nothing there. You just had your bed and your washing kit and that was it. So it was very very basic. Oh, one thing I did do while I was there I got very friendly with the chap who did, I’ve forgotten what it was called but it was a gadget which you simulated flying.
DE: Mm Mm?
RB: So I’ve forgotten what it was called and I’ve got a —
DE: Link trainer.
RB: That’s it.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Well done. Thank you. And so I did have a go on that once or twice and which was interesting because I’d also while I was at university did have a flight in a Tiger Moth and that was great fun. We looped the loop and that sort of thing so I enjoyed that. Anything else?
DE: Well, did you fancy becoming aircrew?
RB: Sorry?
DE: Did you —
RB: No. I didn’t. They decided actually that physically I wasn’t really quite fit enough for that. Why I don’t know but there we are.
DE: So a couple more questions I jotted down when you were talking earlier.
RB: Yes.
DE: You said you had Vaccine Fever. I mean in today’s climate I should probably ask you what that was.
RB: Well, at the time when I was a kid all my brothers and sister were vaccinated. You know it was a vaccination against flu or whatever. I didn’t have it as a child so they decided I needed to be vaccinated if I was going out into the Far East. So they vaccinated me on board ship and that produced Vaccine Fever. And boy was I hot because the Red Sea was hot enough and I was sweating it out on my own in the, on board ship. So anyway, yes?
DE: And the other thing that I’ve jotted down you said you travelled through Hiroshima.
RB: Yes.
DE: Could you tell me a little bit about what that was like?
RB: Well, when I eventually I was stationed in Iwakuni it wasn’t all that far from Hiroshima and I went there two or three times. We were given tins of cigarettes. Fifty cigarettes in a tin. I didn’t smoke but boy did the Japanese smoke. They loved them and so I could barter without any money. Barter these tins of cigarettes for whatever I wanted. As a result I had enough tins of cigarettes to buy the material for my wife’s wedding dress and that was great because it was Japanese silk which was embroidered. And it was things of that kind but the actual town or the city itself was in a very very poor state. There were trams but they had managed to get to work but they went across bridges and you thought God that bridge is never going to support this tram but it did. It rocked and what have you and we got through. The people themselves were quite good. They weren’t, weren’t objecting to us particularly but of course there were a group of people who had been caught by the radiation and they’d collected together and isolated themselves on a little island in, in the inland sea. Oh, and one other thing too while I was there I think it was three earthquakes. One while I was in my officer’s mess, one while I was up in Osaka and another one which took place on the island to the south of us. And that was an interesting experience too. The one in Osaka —
[voice calling from distance]
DE: There’s someone, I’ll just press the pause because someone has arrived.
[recording paused]
DE: There was a visitor so I’ve started recording again. Yeah. You were talking about Hiroshima.
RB: Yes. As I say there was a group of people who had been caught by this radiation and had isolated themselves and they weren’t pretty to look at either. One day on my off day I was talking to a group and they said, ‘We’re going fishing.’ ‘Oh, I’ll come with you.’ So I went fishing with them and they complained about other fishermen. Fishermen from another island encroaching on their land, on their territory and so we caught them and we took them back and they were, they were sent to jail for for fishing in the wrong area. So that was quite interesting too. Anything else?
DE: Well, you said that there was an arson attack and the quarters were burned down. Who? Who was responsible for that?
RB: We know that it was Japanese but we have no idea actually who it was. There were actually three arson attacks. One where the fuel for the aircraft used to come in enormous metal barrels they stored there. And there was a whole storage there and somebody set light to that and blew the lot for God knows how long. I mean barrels were shooting up in the air. And there was another attempt to burn down the officer’s mess but that was caught in time to stop it. But it was the second attempt that burned the place down.
DE: So this was some resistance to the, to the base.
RB: Oh, there were one or two people who did object to our being there undoubtedly. The other interesting little sideline, if you can forgive me for this but when the arson attack took place there were certain of the WAAFs who suddenly disappeared from the officer’s mess back to their own quarters at night [laughs]
DE: I quite understand. Yeah.
RB: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Anything else?
DE: I don’t think so. I mean one of my final questions I normally ask is, is what do you think, what’s your opinion on the way the Second World War and the bombing campaigns have been remembered?
RB: Been remembered? [pause] Well, I hesitate to say this. There was a programme on the box the other day, I’ve forgotten what it was called but it followed an American aircraft, it was an American film needless to say who’d gone bombing over Germany and got shot up and all sorts of things and just managed to stagger back. There’s no such film for the British. And I find that you know it was the Americans won the war. It’s that sort of attitude.
DE: Yeah.
RB: And I find that very sad because the number of British people and I include the Australians and the Kiwis and what have you I think that’s a great shame that there’s no appreciation of what went on. I mean we lost a hell of a lot of aircraft. And the design of aircraft too was an interesting issue. I mean the Stirling bomber was a shocker. A terrible thing to land whereas the Lancasters and those they were great.
DE: Is there anything else at all that you can think of that you’d like to, to tell me?
RB: I shall do when you’ve gone.
DE: Of course. Well, I can press pause. If you think of anything else that you’d like to add.
RB: No. I can’t at the moment but little snippets keep coming back but I suppose one thing that did bother me quite a bit at North Creake was the maintenance of the aircraft was always done in the open air and the poor devils who had to service the aircraft must have been frozen stiff at times. How they managed it I do not know.
DE: But you were there ’44 to ’45 and that winter was really really bad. Yeah.
RB: It was a bit grim.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Yeah. Yeah. But there we are.
DE: I suppose as a Met officer you saw that coming and knew quite how bad it was going to be.
RB: We didn’t know how bad it was going to be but there we are. So [pause] No. I really, off hand I can’t remember much more. Oh I remember one occasion as that I was going on leave to see my fiancé and of course at that time there was a railway went right through to Wells.
DE: Yes.
RB: And I got from Wells to the camp of course by van. But I went down to Wells and caught the train to get back to London and I think we got about five miles out of Wells and ran into a snowdrift and the train could not move so we had to get out and walk over the top of the snowdrift to the next station and try and catch a train from there.
DE: Oh wow.
RB: Which we did and the curious thing is we got to Kings Lynn and when we got to Kings Lynn and travelled south there was no snow.
DE: Wow. Ok.
RB: Which relates in a way to something that happened long after the war when I was actually teaching in Guisborough.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
RB: And the staff used to play the Sixth Form at cricket for a day. It snowed in July in the middle of the cricket match.
DE: Wow.
RB: It’s something peculiar to that area. You know, stuck off the North Sea. So there we are.
DE: So you, so you were a teacher after.
RB: I came back home and I didn’t want to stay in the Air Force, in the Met Office because at the time you had to move every three years and I think it was about every ten or fifteen years you had to go overseas and I didn’t want my children if I had any to be constantly changing school. So I decided I’d opt out. I went to London Institute and trained as a teacher. I taught mathematics for nearly twenty years and then I became an inspector of schools for a time and I finished up as the senior advisor for further education, adult education, youth service. You name it. Jack of all trades and master of nothing [laughs].
DE: Yeah. Smashing.
RB: So there we are.
DE: Yeah. That’s marvellous. I’m going to press pause. If you think of anything else you’d like to tell me —
RB: Yes. Righto.
DE: Just give me a nod.
RB: Yes.
DE: And I can start recording again but that’s absolutely fantastic. Thank you.
[recording paused]
DE: So I’ve just started recording again. Yes.
RB: There was one occasion when the group from North Creake was required to fly to North Italy to drop Window to prevent any radar or what have you from the Germans as they were coming back north after the invasion of Italy and Sicily. Well of course that meant flying over the Alps which was a very difficult thing for Stirlings and, but they all got there with one exception and he was a squadron leader. He turned back. He couldn’t face it. I quite understand why because the height they were flying the danger of icing was extremely bad but they made it and they did their job. Ok?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Smashing. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Roy Berrill
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-02-23
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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00:53:53 Audio Recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABerrillR220223, PBerrillR2022023
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
England--Cambridge
England--London
Singapore
Japan
Japan--Iwakuni-shi
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Roy was born in Northampton and was evacuated from Becontree in London to Weston-super-Mare. He gained his degree from Queen Mary College, London, which was evacuated to Cambridge.
After the Air Training Corps, Roy was called up to be a meteorological officer. Roy trained in Kilburn, and went as a forecaster to RAF Warboys in Cambridge before RAF Wyton and then RAF North Creake.
Roy recounts the death of Canadian “Tiny” Thurlow, brought down by friendly fire in Northern France. There were three meteorological officers at RAF North Creake, working shifts. The information recorded was sent to the regional meteorological office whose forecast could not be amended. He attended the aircrew briefing and de-briefing sessions. The 100 Group dropped Window radar countermeasure. Its aircraft were prone to icing.
Roy contrasts weather forecasting then and now, particularly with reference to the jet stream. He talks about weather balloons and the readings they took. RAF Docking sent up Hurricanes or Spitfires, fitted with new equipment, to take readings.
In 1945 Roy set sail from Tilbury on RMS Strathaird to Bombay, Singapore (RAF Seletar) and then spent nearly two years for the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces at RAF Iwakuni in Japan, passing through Hiroshima. A Japanese man committed Hari-kari and there were three arson attempts by the Japanese.
On his return, Roy was promoted to flight lieutenant. After discharge, Roy taught mathematics, and subsequently became a school inspector and senior further education adviser.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
100 Group
171 Squadron
199 Squadron
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
ground personnel
meteorological officer
RAF North Creake
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
Stirling
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2102/34734/PHickeyL2101.1.jpg
6d51b81be01eb0530b73e0727b991222
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
Hickey, Laura
L Hickey
Laura Clarke
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Laura Hickey nee Clarke (b.1930), the sister of Air Commodore Charles Henry Clarke OBE.
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
2021-10-18
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hickey, L
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview with Laura Hickey, nee Clark for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. It’s 18th of October 2021 and we are in Riseholme. Possibly also present are Amanda Hickey and Ben Phillips. I shall put that there. So, could you tell me a little bit about your early life and where you grew up.
LH: Well, I was -
AH: Can I ask you, do you think we’re better not being in here?
DE: It’s entirely up to you.
LH: I’m okay with that.
AH: Was she chatting better?
DE: I’d just done an introduction and asked a question then you walked in! [Laugh]
AH: Oh all right. We’ll see how it goes and then.
LH: Well I was born in the City of London, the City of London Hospital, on City Road I believe. And very early years had lived in that area, and my parents were both working people and they had a chance to move to Tottenham which was like a new green area, as Welwyn Garden City became later, [dog barking] so it was that sort of thing. Anyway, living in, moving to Tottenham, that changed a lot of things. I was six years old I think, probably then, yeah, and everything was fine as, you know, all kids, we just played, weren’t concerned with anything until everybody sat around the radio and Winston Churchill said, “I have to tell you,” and everybody knows that line: “we are at war with Germany.” Well then of course Charles would have been – in 28 he was born – so he’d have been twenty would he, in 39? No, no, still a young lad.
DE: We’ll do the maths later on.
LH: Yeah. But he belonged, he was a joiner, and we were all a bit like that. I was in the Girl’s Training Corps, he was in, and the Red Cross. He became an ATC and Army Cadet and of course dad had had a military career earlier. [Whisper] Where are we now? [/whisper]
DE: You’re in Tottenham and war’s being declared.
LH: Yes.
DE: So what did that feel like?
LH: Well it concerned me more that we were going to be evacuated because it was considered a good idea to get children out of London. So we all had to go to, oh no, first, earlier, I had an aunt in Canada and they said we should go to her. But when we were on the train, to Liverpool I think, and my mum’s sister was with her, and saying how could you let them go to Canada, the children, which was my younger brother, he came between Charles and I, and she changed her mind, so we came back again, consequently we were evacuated, to be evacuated and once again I think we were all sent to Liverpool Street to get on a train to safer territory. Which was a joke because we were evacuated to Eriswell, which was a little village close to Lakenheath and surrounded by aerodromes, all being bombed and my mother was very nervous, so occasionally she would come and take us back to London and then she would go back to Suffolk. And we were, it was all very comfortable really. We were, the people we stayed with, we were evacuated to, were extremely nice people.
AH: You weren’t with Dennis though.
LH: Oh no, I wasn’t with Dennis then. What happened? Oh we were, on the train from Liverpool we were allowed out at a certain point, for twenty minutes, well I was the only, it was a boy’s school and we were attached to the boy’s school, but when I got out, I was chatting to another girl, oh, another girl! And so when I got back on, the train, a bit naughty really, I got back in with her so went to a completely different village. My brother went to one and I went to the other, but it was all, all okay. Fine. So my first real thought about the war was being evacuated. But one of thousands.
DE: What was that like, moving from the middle of London to a village in East Anglia?
LH: Well we were never in the middle of London. Tottenham was quite spacious, you know, it was, the earlier version of other new city, new towns. But, you know, it was okay. Except when my mother came to visit, we were having air raids because of all the aerodromes around, one of which I believe was a dummy for a while, which they blew up, the Germans blew out of existence. But the war years were happy years really.
DE: Did you stay there throughout the war then?
LH: We stayed there, I would come home to London and then I’d go back, and my mother would come down but I stayed there more or less throughout the war, yes.
AH: Didn’t you go back to the undergrounds, didn’t you have to sometimes?
LH: Oh yes, from where mum lived in Tottenham of course, we used to, she was very nervous and she would go, we had a concrete shelter in the garden, but she would go anywhere to be you know, underground or wherever, and at that time people used to sleep on the underground stations, like Wood Green which was our nearest station and so we spent many a night on the platform, sleeping there, you’d carry whatever you needed. Which was the safest, a very safe place to be. Actually you know, there was an occasion where one of the underground stations was bombed direct: obviously everybody was killed. So it wasn’t all honey, being down there. [Laugh]
AH: Was it good fun though?
LH: Sorry?
AH: Was it good fun?
LH: Yeah, it was fine, fine. People used to sing, play musical instruments. But yeah, it was fine.
DE: So your mother was worried but you saw it as a bit of an adventure, excitement.
LH: You noticed the blackout of course because you might be in Wood Green and everything was black, the trolley buses and everything, and I can remember an occasion when my brother was, who had already, he was, he immediately joined up as a cadet he would, I can remember him coming to Wood Green, and we were go, we lived in Tottenham and he said not to worry, we’ll follow the tram lines. And we did, we walked along with, by the tram lines from Wood Green to Tottenham. Not a good idea, but a brilliant idea in some ways, jogging along the tram lines. It was lovely to have him around, at that time. But then he was shot down, over Schweinfurt I think.
DE: Before we talk, before we talk a bit about that, how did it feel, what did you feel like that he volunteered and was going to become aircrew?
LH: Thrilled for him because it was what he wanted. If ever earlier on, if ever he was missing, he’d be somewhere, I think it was Northolt, was an aerodrome, he’d be somewhere like that, he’d disappear, and he was always keen on, you know, aerodromes and things.
AH: When you say missing, do you mean like if he just got lost? Not like he’d gone off for the day.
LH: He was missing from home.
AH: Oh right, yeah.
LH: You know, you’d say, mum would say do you know where he is, well we’ll find him wherever there’s an aeroplane. I think he’d had several flights, you know, paid for, and various places. But once he was aircrew, that’s a different ball game because they used to, there used to be someone on the radio announcing if they’d located somebody that was missing because you just got a telegram saying we’re sorry to inform you that your son did not return from a flight so and so, but there was a radio programme where different people rang up and heard about other people and perhaps they already had someone in a prison camp and it was unbelievable the amount of, amount of thought people put in to letting other people know that somebody had been found and you know, because you, the only thing you knew was that they were missing. Devastating because you haven’t got a clue, have you?
DE: No. So I suppose, did your mother receive the telegram then?
LH: Yes, I regret to inform you that he’s not returned from, somewhere, you know, and that was a very worrying time of course, but the information seemed to filter through in various ways. I had a cousin who was extremely busy with the Red Cross: Laura Kramer and she lived in Streatham and she seemed to be able to find out lots of things that you couldn’t, which was good. And then of course he was a POW at, oh we all know the camp but I can’t remember.
DE: Stalag Luft 3, the one where the Great Escape was.
LH: Yes. And I believe he arrived whilst it was being, you may know more about this than me, having spoken to him, while it was being engineered, you know, the underground track and so on. So he wasn’t involved in the escape as such, only in the way you had to gather everything together to prepare them to do that. So, you know, obviously worrying time, that.
DE: What was it like for you when, first of all you heard that he was missing and then you heard news that he might be a prisoner of war. What was it like when you heard that he definitely was okay and he was being held as a POW?
LH: Well, it was a mixed blessing, as you can imagine. Sad, but, I, we used to write, you were allowed to do so many letters and I wrote regularly, cause I was probably thirteen and you know, more independent, thirteen.
DE: Were you in London or were you in?
LH: I was in London partly and then in Suffolk.
DE: Okay.
LH: But again it was, that was all strange; it seemed strange to me because my mother used to come down from London and say why do they bomb around here! Well of course, what better place for it!
DE: Than where the airfields were, yeah. So what sort of things did you write to him about, what did you put in your letters?
LH Just tell him, mostly about the family things, in people that I lived with, people that my brother lived with. He was, my thought, when I changed, when I got into a different carriage, he was twenty miles away on a farm somewhere, but you know, but my mother did, and father, they both went down. It was a, he was a gamekeeper that he was living with and they used to go out and shoot things and what have you. Anyway they soon had him moved to the same village as me.
AH: So did you write things like that to Charlie then? To tell him.
LH: Oh I expect so, I don’t know if he got our letters, you couldn’t possibly know, but event, after some time we had letters back from him. The short air mail letter thing that you fold up.
DE: Yes, I’ve seen some.
AH: I’ve got.
LH: I did keep them for years, I know.
DE: What sort of things did he write about in his letters?
LH: Not a lot of information really, just we played football against somebody else, you know, they made teams in the prisoners, in the camp. But you heard stories afterwards about some people, the person that couldn’t take it, and just ran at the wire. You know, they couldn’t stomach being a prisoner, there was never a length of time for you, was it, you can imagine, is that all an unknown quantity. But he survived. That would have been, special time. I know, my dad had a police truncheon, leather covered, that he kept in the house. And I believe it came from a police station in Shoreditch and Charles used to come home ad hoc and I remember him saying, it’s a wonder he didn’t get himself killed cause he’d come in in the night and my dad would be – [laughter]
DE: Oh, you mean. Thinking it was, thinking your brother was a burglar, I see!
LH: He was lucky he wasn’t killed.
DE: I think it was lucky he wasn’t killed quite often!
LH: Quite often, yes.
AH: So when, did you know he was coming home or not?
LH: No, no, we didn’t know he was coming home. He just walked in as if he’d been out for the day, you know. You can imagine, that was brilliant. And I don’t know how he got home. I think, was the war over?
DE: The war in Europe was, and I don’t know if it happened to him, but the RAF flew lots of prisoners of war back. You could get twenty prisoners sitting along the inside the Lancaster and they flew back. A lot of them.
AH: He had to march though, didn’t he.
DE: Yes, as the Russians were advancing the Germans evacuated the camps. It was just out into the snow carrying whatever you can.
LH: They wanted to move them.
DE: Did he tell you about that?
LH: Yes, briefly, but it got so that, on the march, I think it was pretty much every man for himself really; it had to be, didn’t it.
AH: What did he have? Didn’t he have something wrong with his feet, and his mouth? Was he eating?
LH: Oh, he had trench mouth, and his feet of course were bad. [Pause] Yes. But he survived.
AH: If you’re thinking things in your head, say them out loud because we don’t know what you’re thinking.
LH: I thought, you’d have to be pretty brave I think, for a start to bale out of an aircraft, wouldn’t you.
DE: I think so, but you know, you don’t have a lot of choice if it’s if it’s been hit. You have to.
LH: That’s right.
AH: Did he tell you about that, cause I don’t know about that.
LH: Well they were shot down over Schweinfurt, I know that, no he didn’t talk about that. But I think three of the crew survived, I did meet them, later on. [Sigh] He didn’t talk a lot about being a POW.
DE: Did he talk much about what it was like when he was on the squadron and when he was on operations?
LH: Not really no, he didn’t talk a lot about it. I bet he had a lot to say, but he didn’t talk a lot about it.
DE: So when he was at home on leave or after the war when he came home, what did you and him, what did you and he talk about?
LH: We were, both intent on enjoying ourselves and we used to go dancing, in the Mecca Ballrooms and I’ve got a picture that came from a newspaper of he and I dancing.
AH: I think I’ve got a copy of it in there.
LH: Oh, modern technology.
AH: They interviewed you, didn’t they and said and you’d promised, it said ex prisoner of war; Miss Tottenham, sister, sister and there’s a picture of you and him dancing, promises.
LH: You know, fifteen I think I was, and I worked at the Eastern Gas Board and the girls said to me, oh come on, get up, you know, there’s a beauty competition and I won it! I suppose what she’s talking about [laugh]
DE: Oh wow!
LH: There’s a picture in the paper of me dancing with him I think.
AH: With him and it says Ex prisoner of War’s sister promises to kiss four hundred servicemen! [Laughter] Or something like that. I thought I’d got it actually.
DE; Well there’s a story I think you need to tell us! [Laughter]
AH: Tell Dan about the, what you used to do with the girls when you used to meet them, arrange to meet them to go to the balls.
LH: Well at the Gas Company, which is in Wood Green, it’s now the Magistrates Court, it’s a beautiful building, Woodhall House, and we, our offices were in various places there and we used to organise dances, at the social club, and somebody had to phone the London Service Clubs, and that was me; that was my job. To phone them, and invite the people, servicemen, to come to our dances, which were very good. We had, not a bad band, and there wasn’t a lot going on anywhere else. But we would say, “We’ll meet you at Wood Green and someone will take you.” And that’s what we did. We met them.
AH: You didn’t always meet them.
LH: We didn’t always meet them. If you had two, oh I can’t say that, two great hulking suntanned people [laughter].
AH: I don’t know what that means.
LH: Don’t bother, which wasn’t very nice.
AH: Oh dear. Sorry.
DE: That’s okay. So what sort of music did they play? What dances did you do?
LH: Really mostly you know, foxtrots and waltzes and quickstep. No jiving, or anything like that.
DE: There wasn’t any of that, okay.
LH: Just before that I think we were.
AH: Here we go, it says: POW had a grand time at civic reception: Dreams Come True. Four hundred prisoners of war and their friends attended the civic reception given by the Mayor of Tottenham, President of the local Prisoners of War Relatives Association at the Tottenham Municipal Hall on Thursday night. For many of the many of the men it was a night of dreams come true, they were dancing with wives or sweethearts in dear old Tottenham. No one could watch the faces of the dancers and remain unmoved. In prison camps over many weary months some of them had longed, hoped and prayed for such a night as this. Yeah, he might, that’s quite interesting.
DE: Might try and find that newspaper. That sounds like a fantastic party, that.
LH: Yes. Well it had to be. Everybody was having parties. Either for someone coming home or someone being –
AH: There’s another one as well.
DE: Oh wow.
LH: Someone being, leaving, you know retired from the services. But there were parties everywhere. Party, party, party. And what, you know, why not.
AH: So did you go out with him a lot then after that?
LH: Charlie? Quite a bit, we’d go out together, dancing, but then he met a young woman in Southend and we didn’t see so much of him once they get, got a girlfriend, and that was it.
DE: What about you? Did you have any boyfriends?
LH: Yeah, naturally! [Laughter] But nobody, there was nobody really special. Just used to, because I was involved with the Gas Club social thing and I was, we were always busy organising our own stuff.
AH: Where is it? We’ve got a book. You’ve got your book of notes, maybe that might help you. Where did you put it?
DE: There’s, there’s those two things.
AH: No, there’s a whole bag.
DE: So how, did you stay working for the gas company for long?
LH: Oh, I worked for them a long, long time, yeah, from oh I think, oh I know I was, we’d be walking home from work at lunchtime, after lunch, at four o’clock home, and there’d be, that when the doodlebugs were coming over.
DE: Yes.
LH You’d be walking along and you’d say oh the engine’s stopped. But they seemed to go in a half circle before they actually landed so it was a case of you were better if you were either immediately below it or could think about where it was going, you know. We were walking home many times, when we’d have to redirect ourselves, out of danger.
DE: How did it feel when you heard them?
LH: Well, you’d be frightened, cause you knew what was, what damage they could do because there’re sorts of, wherever you went there’d be craters and that. Craters of bombs and rockets and what have you. I never really panicked about it, I don’t think. I think my mum did enough panicking on her own for everybody. She couldn’t understand why they were bombing us in Suffolk. [Pause]
DE: I was just letting you have a think to see if there were any other memories that came up.
LH: Any special memories.
DE: Yes.
LH: An odd thing really. Where I, the people I lived with in Suffolk, we had a well which was a great novelty to me, I’d never seen anything like that before. And we grew all our own vegetables and fruit and everything, and he was the local barber and he used to, and in the shed he’d have, all the men came to him to get their hair cut. I think it was about tuppence they paid. Amazing. I remember him because I wasn’t used to that, that was something different. But the food was good. We were never short of food. As you wouldn’t be.
DE: So the food was better in Suffolk than it was in London.
LH: Oh yeah. Yes, we never, certainly never went short of food. And after that they built the aerodrome, the American aerodrome at Lakenheath and then of course everything was available. I remember the, some American guys giving us some tins of pineapple, which were very strange. It was an eventful life I think.
DE: What did you think about the Americans?
LH: Well my host, she worked for them. So you know, she was in her late thirties I think. Yes. She was quite smart, savvy, you know. So we never really went short of anything.
DE: So he was, amongst other things he cut people’s hair and she worked for the Americans.
LH: Yes.
DE: Do you know what she did?
LH: No.
AH: You’ve written here mum, shall I read this out to you.? She’s made some notes here.
DE: Well.
AH: Betty and I would collect milk cans in the evening.
LH: Yes, because all the milk had to be collected from the farm, the local farm and Lock was name down there, the farmer’s. And so we, every house had a can, like little half pint or pint or whatever, and we used to go to the farm in the morning and get the milk, but in the evening we’d go round and pick up all the cans and they’d have the requests for what they wanted and the money in the lid. You collect all the cans, yeah, and go and get the milk in the morning and then deliver it. I think we got paid about a sixpence a week.
AH: This says to be shared equally before school?
LH: Oh yes, we’d pool the money.
AH: Then you’d have a thirteen mile journey to school.
LH: I did, because I took my eleven plus there.
DE: Right.
LH: In the, locally. And I think, there were only two of us that got through, one boy and me.
AH: To go to the grammar school.
LH: To go to the grammar school. Now I didn’t want to go, I wanted to go where all the other kids were, that I knew and you know, been mixing with, but I went, and he went, and it was a thirteen mile journey.
DE: So how did you get there?
LH: By coach.
DE: Right.
LH: You used to have to be at a certain point. Which happens nowadays, doesn’t it. I know I’ve two grandsons who have to catch a coach very [emphasis] early in the morning. Yeah.
AH: It says here mum you ran away to Cambridge once.
LH: Oh, when I was at Eriswell, which was the village, and their daughter was the same age as me, there was only four months between us, which was a bit awkward. It was awkward when I passed the grammar school, and you know, that.
DE: Oh, and she didn’t, she went to the other school.
LH: That was awkward. So I wasn’t happy about it – more for her than for me. But while I was at Eriswell, I had an auntie that had, was living in Cambridge. She’d gone away because of the bombing in London. And I decided, oh she and I were having a tiff one day, while cycling to get some shopping: the girl that I lived with, four months between, and I think I had I the money, or she had the money [cough] but whatever, but we decided, I decided I wasn’t going to go to Mildenhall think it was, I was going home, back. So the money was tossed in a purse between us in our baskets on the bikes and, is that when I ran away?
AH: Yes, says you ran away to Cambridge and something about Charlie.
LH: Oh, cause I knew my auntie was there, that’s right. It must have been a Saturday I think. I cycled all the way to Cambridge from Eriswell and he came, he cycled down there the next day.
AH: Charlie.
LH: From London.
DE: Oh wow!
LH: To take me back again. [Laugh]
DE: Crikey!
LH: I was thrilled. And he did. And then he went back afterwards. I think he might have stayed overnight and went back. Yeah.
AH: It says he cycled down from London to collect me the next day and took me, both cycling now back to Eriswell to Mrs Lock and then back to work. Any spare time and holidays was spent on field jobs, paid for, weeding kale.
LH: Oh, we had to weed kale.
DE: Right. So they worked you hard then!
LH: Yeah. I think we got thruppence a day, something like that.
AH: Says school was a mess and so you attended Charles’ old school, Down Lane, and then it says eventually decided I could apply to leave and work after brief spell at Tottenham High. Met Beryl and became good friends and then started working at the Eastern Gas Board.
LH: And stayed there for years.
DE: Would it be possible perhaps to, at a later date, to take a photocopy of that or something?
AH: Yes. Fine, yeah.
DE: Brilliant. Thank you.
AH: There’s quite a bit here.
DE: I can see!
AH: I have got more stuff about different things have been over the years, have been written down and things like that.
LH: They asked me to write things and I know I should.
AH: It used to roll off, but it’s -
LH: Yes. And I think it would have been very good if, had I been, applied myself to it. It would have been much more useful, wouldn’t it, but you don’t. You think you’ve got all the time in the world.
DE: Well I’m enjoying talking to you and listening to the stories.
AH: Tell us about the rationing. That’s quite interesting.
LH: What?
AH: About the rationing, do you remember about the rationing and the ration books. After the war.
LH: Oh rationing, was you know, a real bug, wasn’t it! Because when I got a Saturday job in the butchers, butchers! And they put me in a cashier’s -
AH: Kiosk.
LH: Kiosk thing and the people used to have to come to me and the butcher himself would write on the paper: so many coupons or whatever he was charging, and you’d say they had their, to cut the coupons out, and everything you had to keep a detail of. You can imagine, can’t you. Yeah. Rationing I think was brilliant, really, overall, but it was a major -
AH: I didn’t realise it went on till the fifties.
DE: 53 I think.
LH: You what?
AH: I didn’t realise it went on till the fifties.
LH: Well, that’s true.
DE: So what you do after the war?
LH: Well I went to the gas company.
AH: Didn’t you work in London as well, in Helena Rubenstein.
LH: Oh yeah, I worked for them. I had the chance to work for Power Samas, and I don’t suppose you know what that is, but they’re accounting machines.
DE: Right.
LH: I had the chance to go to Power Samas in Holborn, so I did and within that accounting machine area, I worked for J Arthur Rank, Helena Rubenstein, what’s the chain of, one of the chains of clothes, still going I think, I worked for them as well. So I worked mostly around Mortimer Street, Portland Road, one place was the, Helena Rubenstein was in Mayfair, that was good, but because you were a Power Samas worker, you could change your job whenever you like. You’d pick up the evening paper and you’d see half a dozen jobs, in various places. So we, I had a friend at the time. Who, I worked with her first at the gas company, Doreen, and we would say, oh they’re paying more at so-and-so and we’d go [chuckle], no loyalty, paying so much more an hour.
AH: What about your modelling career, what about that?
LH: That came to an early stop.
AH: Early finish.
LH: Early finish, yeah.
AH: She won a place in a modelling school, a very famous modelling school but her mother wouldn’t let her go.
LH: My mum wouldn’t let me go, she said all models became tarts. [Laughter] But I did a place at Lucy Clayton. That came up quickly didn’t it. Ah dear. [cough]
AH: Can you remember more about Charlie, mum? Can you remember more about things that you know, you might have done with him or, cause you’ve told me so many stories and sort of not, they’re not coming.
LH: [Cough] Yeah, we did quite a lot of stuff together. We used to, you’d seek out the old relatives. I haven’t seen that. Is she still alive you’d say and we’d have to go and visit them. But one of them, my cousin, she, I said that was, she did quite well with the Red Cross but she was also, worked in the, for the Admiralty. She was very clever lady.
AH: I thought she worked with Winston Churchill?
LH: She did.
DE: She may have, might have done, if she was at the Admiralty.
AH: Cause you always told me about how she used to, she was in a room somewhere, with him, and something to do with the war.
LH: Oh, there was a big meeting, somewhere, that she was at. That’s gone.
AH: Was it abroad, or?
LH: I think it was a meeting that was held abroad.
AH: See I did a bit of research and the only thing I came up with was Yalta.
DE: Right. Well that is fairly abroad.
LH: The what?
DE: Well they would have had lots of other meetings with other people I would say.
AH: But I would love to find some history on her, Laura Kramer. Don’t know how to do that really.
LH: Laura.
AH: Yeah. That’s who you’re named after, isn’t it?
LH: Yes. Well, yes.
AH: She’s your cousin.
LH: I’ve got a death certificate in my name. Laura Bertha Clark. I think I was aged sixty five. It’s a black memorial thing.
AH: Yeah, why have you got that?
LH: I don’t know, probably amongst my dad’s papers. And I thought ah, hang on to it cause it had my name on it.
AH: And your dad was, he was in the war, he was in the first world war, has she told you that?
DE: Yeah. But I know that from listening to Charlie’s interviews.
AH: Okay, yeah. Then he was Military Police as well. But he had shell shock. Was it shell shock?
LH Oh no, that was another, that was another uncle.
AH: No, your dad.
LH: Oh my dad, no, he didn’t have shell shock.
DE: What did your dad think about Charlie joining the Air Force?
LH: Well we knew it was inevitable because he’d been an ATC nut, you know, but he was also an Army Cadet. We knew that he would you know, join the Air Force.
DE: So he was, he became a bomb aimer, didn’t he. Did he actually want to be a pilot?
LH: He wanted to be a pilot and he got mumps at the time that he was supposed to have his assessment, I suppose. Had mumps and was heartbroken. Yeah.
AH: Was that why he couldn’t be a pilot?
LH: Well, he failed because he, whilst he had mumps, you know, if you weren’t fit when you took the important bit of the tests you’re bound to fail aren’t you. Anyway.
AH: So the bomb aimer, they were the ones in the, weren’t they in the back of the plane?
DE: Front.
AH: Front. Of yeah, of course it was!
DE: Laying down looking out the little -
LH: Not much room in the front there.
DE: There’s not a lot of room in them at all, no.
LH: I’ve seen one recently. Not that recently, but [Cough] you know, there’s no room in them.
AH: She coughs like that all the time by the way.
DE: I’m not, no worries. So your brother, he stayed on the Air Force and he did quite well, didn’t he.
LH: He did do well. Yeah, he did do well. He ended up as what?
DE: Air Commodore I think.
LH: Air Commodore.
DE: Yeah. And he was awarded an OBE 2007 I think.
LH: OBE. He was a nice man, a nice bloke, very popular on the stations. I went to a station once where apparently he’d jumped into the swimming pool fully clothed and of course that went down really well. [Chuckles] An RAF station that was. Not a police station! He was a nice man.
DE: Yeah, and he was the chair of the Bomber Command Association and the Prisoners of War Association and then he did a lot of work towards getting the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park in London, didn’t he.
LH Yes, and the guy on the end looks bit like him.
DE: Oh, do you think?
LH: So I’m told.
DE: Did he talk to you about his work with the Associations and the Memorial?
LH: No.
AH: Yes he did, he used to ring you up all the time and talk to you.
LH: Yeah, but I don’t, can’t say what he talked about. Can’t remember.
AH: He was always going, every time you spoke to him he was always off somewhere, and doing something, here and getting the train to Oxford or back and things, or, he was always travelling around.
AH: Yes he was, and the last time -
AH: And at an older age as well.
LH: Well, not so long ago he came to see me and, you probably remember, he was staying at the Royal Bath, and I remembered he was staying there and I remember he was going to a funeral, somewhere at, north of where we live, in Bournemouth, but -
AH: Salisbury, Wimborne?
LH No, still in Bournemouth, but -
A: Ah, okay.
LH: North part of Bournemouth.
AH: Don’t know.
LH: And I thought well if he’s staying at the Royal Bath and he’s got to get up there, it’ll be a long way, I’ll drive down and see if he wants me to take him there, cause I knew exactly where the church was. So I did. I went down to the Royal Bath and he said, I drove in the front and he was on the steps and that, oh hello, I’d got the Lexus, get in, where do you want to go? A taxi service!
AH: She was eighty something!
LH: So he said I’m going to this funeral at, oh, you head straight out of Bournemouth, Alma Road and up that way somewhere, I can’t.
AH: Talbot Woods.
LH: Yes. So I took him up there, dropped him to the funeral, he was very pleased because in a place like Bournemouth getting from A to X Y Z, is always, if you don’t know where you are, well he’d had to got a taxi I guess. In fact that’s what he was doing and I said to him, do you want a lift and he said yes, and he said I was just going to order a taxi. I said well you’ve got your own here. So I took him up there, dropped him off and blow me, the road was, one of those roads across the top, and they were all barricaded up with roadworks. But he did appreciate it. [Pause] Yes. He had a good life though, didn’t he.
DE: He did, yeah, very busy, definitely. What about you? How’s your life been?
LH: Mine’s busy, got two sons and two daughters. One of them’s in ‘Marbellya’
AH: Marbella.
LH: Marbella, yeah. She’s out there languishing. Oh dear, but she said she would be didn’t she, when she retired. But she’s not retired! [Laughter]
AH: Oh dear.
LH: Well she’s sixty three.
AH: Yes, so she’s got twin boys. I’ve got an older sister and older twin brothers and then I came along sort of fourteen years later.
DE: Right.
AH: So she had me at forty one, which is quite late really.
DE: And what brings you to Lincolnshire today?
LH: Amanda and Ben. Literally, driving. It’s a long way isn’t it.
DE: It’s a fair old way from Bournemouth.
AH: We came up yesterday. What did we come up for yesterday?
LH: Tell me.
AH: Where did we go yesterday?
LH We went to a memorial of some sort yesterday, didn’t we?
DE: Yes.
LH: In Lincoln. Was an air, at Bomber Command.
AH: Yeah, that’s it.
DE: For? That’s fine. What do you think of the way the war’s been remembered and Bomber Command’s been remembered?
LH: I think it’s good, that it is [emphasised] being remembered, definitely, but I can’t remember yesterday! [Laugh]
AH: Yeah, you can remember things about the war, can’t you, cause you often randomly, you can remember things she comes out with things randomly.
DE: Just looking at my notes. Oh. Did you have any pets during the war?
LH: Yes, we did. We had a dog. Guess what it was called? It was my mum’s spaniel and he was called Raf.
DE: Okay
AH: Like RAF
LH: And he was lovely. Cocker spaniel. But before that I don’t remember having lots of pets.
AH: You told me once about the dog barking, as Charlie -
LH: Oh no, he would, he would bark, he knew my mother’s routine was to get down to a shelter somewhere. So the dog would bark an hour before the raid started, you know, their hearing is so acute, isn’t it, and he would pull on her skirt as much, you know, come on, we’ve got to go. They’re on their way over, we’ve got to go.
AH: You told me the dog was barking before Charlie got home, as if he knew the dog was coming, as if he was coming back. You told me that a long time ago.
LH: Oh well, that might have been so but I can’t say I remember.
AH: Do you remember him, do you remember him coming through the door when he got back?
LH: It was a bit difficult because I probably was still at school, or at the gas company, I don’t know when he, would have been the end of the war wouldn’t it, 1945. But I knew that we did, we objected, Dennis, I’ve got a brother between Charles and I, we objected to the way he had to eat all the eggs and all the milk. My mum – [laughter]
AH: Spoilt him, when he got home.
LH: Yes, because he, fair enough we realised later, he was suffering from trench mouth is it? And stomach problems, I’ve forgotten what.
DE: The rations that the prisoners of war got were very, very poor and you know, particularly during the long march, they were freezing cold and starving hungry.
LH: Terrible.
AH: What did they eat, do you remember what they ate when they were walking back?
LH: No, they would eat raw -
AH: Vegetables.
LH: Raw veg that was growing in the ground still. I knew all that, and there’d be people dying along the way, on the way and you just, they just had to leave them.
AH: I would imagine though, can you imagine if it was, you know, you were sort of fifteen and your brother’s sixteen and they’d been off somewhere, they’re still brothers and sisters aren’t they. They’re still going to bicker and fight, whatever.
DE: Yeah, why is Charlie getting all the food?
AH: Why’s he getting all the food? Who cares if he’s been and done that, you know. Whereas the mother would be coddling him like, obviously, but then.
LH: And that’s what it was like.
AH: Why should he get the eggs?
LH: Why should he get all the eggs?
AH: Probably for two or three days was fine, but if it went on any longer – it’s funny.
LH: He had something wrong with his stomach, I can’t remember what it was, but it was something that was quite normal for somebody in his -
DE: Well I know lots of the POWs had things like dysentery and things like that, when they got back.
LH: Yes.
DE: He didn’t, he got better because it didn’t keep him out of the RAF. Well, I think I’m probably going to wind it up as talking together for well over an hour now.
LH: Poor man!
DE: I just wondered if there was any other memories or thoughts or things you’d like to tell us.
LH: About the war? I don’t know that it affected me that much, the war, because I was happy.
AH: Yes, she always says she was happy where she was, she had a best friend, she lived in a lovely farm.
LH: Lovely family, and nothing I needed or wanted, particularly, yes.
DE: It sounds like you got to go home to London to see your mother when, at least sometimes.
LH: Yes, she used to come down to us and she would stay with us, in the house where I was living and so they were very good to her, and they stayed friends, my parents and my Eriswell parents.
AH: That was taken in Eriswell aged eleven.
DE: Oh wow.
AH: That’s her mum.
LH: Let’s have a look, quickly. Oh yeah, that’s my mum. I like that picture because it’s got the wooden, see where we’re sitting?
DE: Yes.
LH: My dad used to saw wood over that, you know. That was what it was for. Wasn’t meant to be a seat. [Pause] Who’s that? [laugh]
DE: Someone looking very glamorous: Miss Tottenham. I’d love to arrange to get copies of these at some point.
AH: Yeah. Oh, there’s in the gas board.
DE: There’s nothing I can do with it now.
AH: No, no, just to show you see if there’s pictures in there might be of interest
DE: I’ll press pause, I won’t stop the recording. So just been talking that you, after the war you went on a bit of a tour round Europe. What was that like? Where did you go?
LH: Oh yes, well a lot of it was trips really, you know, like, the gas company used to organise trips and we went to Paris, we went to -
AH: Holland.
LH: Holland, yes, and somewhere else.
AH: I saw you in pictures Monaco, Cannes.
LH: Oh that was Sadie and I going, we’d go on these holidays, save up, you know. We went by train down to the most southern part of Italy. Would you do that now? You wouldn’t would you?
DE: What was it like?
LH: It was lovely. We were just two girls saving up for a holiday. She worked in a bar and once again they put me in a kiosk. People seemed to like putting me into a kiosk! [Laugh] I had all the cigarettes and all the sweets and things, you know, in a Mecca dance hall, in a kiosk. I loved that cause I’d get there early and had some good bands there.
AH: Oh yeah.
LH: And they’d all be playing and I had some music all to myself. Cause I’d be in there piling up.
AH: Who did you meet in there then?
LH: That’s where I met your dad! He used to come hang round the kiosk, buy cigarettes from me. Yeah.
AH: But was it interesting going round Europe after the war? That must have been quite strange.
LH: Well yeah, but it didn’t matter, it was, well you know. Well, not, exciting isn’t the right word, but you felt you were doing something a bit, different.
AH: Yup. I don’t know if I’d have fancied going, after a war, where people were being held prisoner. I think that’s pretty brave to then go at a young age. Isn’t it.
LH: Yeah, well, you need to see things for yourself, don’t you.
AH Did you meet Bruce Forsyth?
LH: I did meet him, in the Mecca.
AH: Yep. What about Tommy Steele?
LH: Oh, Tommy Steele was a funny story. I had a friend, she was having a party, and she said can you bring somebody, cause it was, you know, it was like cider and what’s it called.
AH: Whatever.
LH: Anyway, it was just a party and I asked your dad if he wanted to come and he said no, because he was a man, at that time, that didn’t, completely opposite, didn’t venture out of his area much, at that time and we went, got to the party and Tommy Steele was there and he was, yeah, it was really fun. It was Merrydown and, I can’t think, the drink, and it was a really good party, so it was nice. That that was before he was famous.
DE: Right, okay.
LH: Or the night before I think!
AH: And you went to the opening of the Festival Hall.
LH: Oh yes, I did go to that.
AH: To the all night ball, the Royal Festival Hall, in London, the Barbican.
LH: That was in 51, overnight. Yes, oh yeah, that was a big [emphasis] event, on the South Bank and that was the only building there.
AH: Did you have bacon sandwiches in the morning?
LH: [Laugh] I think we had breakfast.
AH: Breakfast, yeah.
DE: That’s how all good parties should end, with breakfast, I think!
LH: Yeah. But I was allowed to go, which was something: that I was allowed [emphasis] to go.
AH: I think that’s probably the end.
DE: I will switch it off. Thank you.
LH: - in Canada. It was all arranged we were going up there, and on the way Sue would say, kept saying to my mum, I couldn’t let my children go to another continent like that. So we didn’t go.
AH: She wouldn’t let them get on, go on the boat, they got to the station.
LH: We were on the train going up, then we came back again. And I think that was the boat that was sunk. There was a boat load of evacuees going out there and there was a boat that was sunk, wasn’t there?
DE: Hm. So you’d gone up on the train with your mum and with your auntie.
AH: Your mum didn’t go did she? [Telephone]
LH: Yes. She was on the train with us. We were all on the train and Sue persuaded her not to go and we all came back again. There was the boat that was sunk then?
AH: What was it called?
LH: No idea.
AH: I think you have told me before.
LH: Began with B I think.
AH: Do you know about this?
DE: There was a couple but I can’t think which one that would be. I shall press.
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 Laura Hickey
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
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2021-10-18
Type
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Sound
Format
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01:18:10 Audio Recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHickeyL211018, PHickeyL2101
Description
An account of the resource
Laura Hickey was living in Tottenham at the outbreak of war and was evacuated to Suffolk. Her brother, Charles Henry Clarke joined the RAF and was shot down, becoming a prisoner of war and enduring the Long March. She tells of her times as an evacuee, school and working as a young woman in London. Laura has many stories about herself, her brother’s success, and their time after the war, from her being Miss Tottenham, dances and trips to post-war Europe with her friend.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Poland
England--London
England--Suffolk
Poland--Żagań
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
childhood in wartime
entertainment
evacuation
home front
memorial
prisoner of war
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2101/34733/AEllisS-U211116.2.mp3
f9a020bfce981c980a709db759c752b4
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Right. So, this is an interview for the IBCC Digital Archive with Sidney and Una Ellis. We’re in Firbeck in Nottinghamshire. It’s the 16th of November 2021. I shall put that there. It is recording. Yeah. So, could you tell me a little bit about your early life and growing up in Sheffield?
SE: Well, I was born and bred at 54 Wulfric Road which is on the Manor Estate in Sheffield. A council house. There were five of us. Parents, my elder Sister Reine and my elder brother Lewis. Lewis was eight years older than me and needless to say with that age gap he very much my hero even before he joined the Air Force. Of course, he was crazy about flying like I suppose a lot of young chaps were in those days and always wanted to go in the Air Force at the earliest possible moment. And I suppose in some respects I followed that and thought well, you know this is what it’s all about and I had a tremendous interest in aircraft. So even before the war started I think I could pick out a Heinkel from a Messerschmitt and so on. But the war, well let me say this straight from the start for a kid of that age bearing in mind I was eight years old when the war started it was exciting. It was so interesting. I mean, there were just so many things happening. We were never ever bored. I mean and, I mean if anything I mean the main problem was it took your mind away from the sort of things you should have been thinking about which was school of course. Anyway, I followed my, my brother Lewis. He passed what they subsequently called the Eleven Plus, we called it the Scholarship and went to High Storrs Grammar School and I followed him subsequently. We, both of us went before that to Prince Edward School at the top of Prince of Wales Road. Anyway, back to the war. I think the earliest things I remember was going on a seaside trip to Rhyl and on the way back seeing barrage balloons and subsequently of course we saw barrage balloons very close up because they used to be all over the place in Sheffield. The next thing was of course air raid shelters. Well, I mean the whole business. I think before air raid shelters we had gas masks and we all had gas masks and we had, at school we had to try them on and we had to sit in class with a gas mask on. And I always remember that they discovered a new form of gas so we got a little green part and a roll of tape and we had to attach the green bit on to the rest of the gas mask. And then air raid shelters. Yeah, well a air raid shelter in the back garden so we had to dig in a big hole, put the air raid shelter in it. Now, we didn’t go to the extent that a lot of people went to but we did sort of put some bedding in there and a heater and so on and a proper sort of wooden floor and so on. The other thing, big change at home my father was an expert breeder of canaries, canary birds and he had a large hut at the top of the garden and an aviary and so on. His main market and his main sort of source of breeding birds was Germany. The war finished all that so he did away with, or gave away all his canaries and replaced them with chickens and we had a whole range of chickens and from very early on we had a constant supply of eggs. Of course, my dad following his hobby with canaries had to do the same thing with the chickens and when they weren’t brooding they used to sit on eggs and then we got our own little chicks which my dad then sexed into male and female. The females went on one side. They were for laying. The cocks we kept and put in a separate pen and fattened up for eating. We also had rabbits that we used to keep for eating and I remember my mum used to make mittens out of rabbit skin. Incidentally, my mum, brought up in the country had no problem, my dad had no problem whatsoever killing a chicken and my mum had no problem at all plucking and drawing a chicken. Incidentally, on top of that my grandmother out at Anston they kept pigs so we also occasionally got a bit of pork and ham when they killed a pig. So, we didn’t do too badly from that point of view during the war as far as eating were concerned. We were pretty healthy. The most exciting of all in the first instance was the [pause] No. Wait a minute. Before the Blitz. Dunkirk. Now, this, this really was something because St Swithun’s Church Hall became what shall we call it? A —
UE: Reception Centre.
SE: Reception Centre for all the troops coming back from —
UE: Dunkirk.
SE: From Dunkirk. So, the word went around the estate of course in no time at all that something was happening and busses of all shapes and sizes and coaches were all coming up and all parading around, around the church and so we all rushed out there and sure enough disposing troops. All mixed up. All regiments of all different types and so on and they were all sort of being sorted out in St Swithun’s Hall and billeted in houses on the Manor Estate. Now, we couldn’t take anybody because we had a three bedroom house and of course and so we were full but my Aunt Bett, that’s my mum’s sister who lived around the corner she took two. Two soldiers. One from the Royal Engineers and the other one from the Gordon Highlanders and I can see those two fellas even now and they, because they used to, well they gave us all sort of souvenirs. Chocolate and what have you. And I think they must have been with Aunt Bett for what, I suppose at least a couple of weeks I would think before, because that’s what they were there was such a mix up and I always remember some of them were sort of walking wounded with their arms in slings and bandages around their head and this sort of thing. And of course, we used to be around there asking for souvenirs. I used to have a tremendous collection of hat badges and buttons and the like. Yeah. So that was that. Blitz. Yeah. Well, that was, talk about excitement that, now that really was something. It, the first Blitz of course on Sheffield they hit the city centre. Now, on the Manor Estate we’re not all that far. I mean we’re on the top side of Norfolk Park and beyond Norfolk Park is the city centre but of course we —
UE: High up.
SE: Were high up. The first thing was the air raid sirens. So, we all went into the shelter and before long the aircraft battery at Manor Lane, there was a big aircraft battery there, a tremendous din. And then searchlights and we’re all in the, and then we hear the droning and then we hear bombs falling. Well, this was too much for —
UE: Lewis.
SE: For Lewis. And for that matter for me in spite of my mum’s pleading.
UE: Pleading.
SE: He had to stand outside and before long I went to join him and there we were because the sky was full of bursting anti-aircraft shells, searchlights and of course the thing that sticks in my mind most of all was when a searchlight found an aircraft and I can see it now. It was a Heinkel and it was lit up by the searchlight and one searchlight and then another, at least another three or four, five searchlights all joined it and then the aircraft shells bursting all around it and we were hoping. Before it was hit it went into a cloud and we never saw it again. Anyway, they said this went on, I don’t know a long long time anyway. Anyway, when it was all over and we got the all clear we came out of the shelter walked along to the corner of Queen Mary Road where we could actually look right down the centre of Sheffield and what a sight. We could see the whole centre of Sheffield was ablaze and of course don’t forget these were the nights of blackout when everything normally was absolutely black and there we had the brightest thing we’d seen since before the war started and there we are. And as I say never ever can I ever remember feeling in the least scared at all. It was just sheer excitement all the time. Anyway, it was shortly after that that Lewis went into the Air Force. He was, he’d be seventeen on the Blitz. He turned eighteen and went and joined up in January was it and I think actually, actually left. Yeah. He was called up in February. Yeah. And of course, he always wanted to be a pilot of course and that’s what he turned out to be. And the further he went I mean I took a immense interest in where he was and what he was doing and all the aircraft he was flying. I kept a list of which I’ve still got somewhere and yeah it’s in, in the back of that spotter’s book I think.
DE: Yeah.
SE: And yeah. What else? I don’t know. What do you want to say, Una?
UE: Well, I was only very very young of course when the, when the war started but I do remember when the sirens went that we all had jobs. Even, even I had a job. But my brother’s job was to come in and put my siren suit on and take me and of course my sister was a very young baby down to the air raid shelter. And ours was I suppose quite luxurious. We had bunks and we had what we would have called not an oil stove it was a wood burning stove. And of course, I was always curious why the chimney had a kink in it and that was of course so that the light from the fire wouldn’t reflect in to the sky. And we shared the shelter with our next door neighbours so it was quite full because there were five of us and two from next door in the shelter when the sirens went. But my particular job even at sort of two and a half three was to tear newspaper up and thread it on a string for the toilet because of course you couldn’t go back into the house and it was a bucket with a lid. The children at school were always interested in what we did for that. And my brother had a job. He had to carry some food in. And my father as soon as the sirens had gone he would go and light the stove and get it quite warm for us inside so we were quite cosy. And I know that we had at one time, we weren’t evacuated but I think it was an incendiary dropped at the corner of Sicey Avenue where I lived on the Shire Green Estate. And I know and I can remember another, another very pleasing episode. We had Canadian officers stationed. I think they were stationed near Ecclesfield and I don’t know how my parents got to know them but they used to visit the house and my mother would use a big [unclear] and she would make a meat and potato pie. Mainly potato but of course we were on rations and meat was fairly scarce. But I know they used to supply us with various things. They used to bring various things because they were very well looked after and remember evenings when they came my mum and dad said, ‘Oh, no. Go on. The children are asleep.’ And they used to come upstairs and I can remember lying in bed and I shared a bed with my sister, one of them between us with his arm around us singing. Singing songs well into the night. And it was, that was a happy time. But, and at school, I went to school by the time the war, the Christmas that the Blitz was in Sheffield. We were lucky that my parents had collected our Christmas presents and at the time I’d been desperate for a little black doll and my parents had got me one. And Christmas morning highly delighted my mother had knitted all the hat and the matinee coat and the dress and the bootees and everything and she was all dressed up and I played with her outside with my pram and being called in for tea went out to fetch her in and she’d gone. Someone had been and stolen her so I was only blessed with my little doll for a few hours. But that was very very upsetting. But my father used to keep rabbits and things but I would never ever wear the gloves because we’d treated our rabbits as pets. And let me think. Oh yes. At school we had underground shelters in primary school and we used to have practices. I don’t think we ever went down there when there was an actual raid on but they used to have practice sessions and we would go down under the shelters and apparently, my brother told me that his teachers used to tell them ghost stories down underneath which he quite enjoyed. He thought that was great. But no. I’m trying to think of other things that happened.
SE: Well —
UE: Of course, I was still, still young because I was seven years younger than Sid was.
SE: Oh, you were well you were born in ’38.
UE: Yeah. Yeah.
SE: So, you were only one year old. You must have had one of those baby enclosure type you know, masks, gas mask. Well, it wasn’t a gas mask. It was a —
UE: No. I know my, I know the baby had like a Mickey Mouse one.
SE: No. That was when they got, they were toddler’s. Toddlers had Mickey Mouse but if you were a small baby it was —
UE: That wasn’t me.
SE: Like a small incubator.
UE: I mean, I was two and a half by the time the Blitz was on. Two and a half, three.
SE: I know but we got, we got gas masks before the war started.
UE: I remember the gas masks. I remember the gas masks.
SE: They were before the war started so you’d only be one. Well, I don’t know. Perhaps if you were walking you’d have a Mickey Mouse which looked like a Mickey Mouse with a [pause] Anyway that’s, incidentally talking about your mum’s meat and potato pie she just I suppose it was sentimental really but she used to make sort of wartime meat and potato from thence on.
UE: Yeah.
SE: You know, lots of potato and not much meat.
UE: In a [unclear] we’ve got the, we’ve still got the [unclear] It’s in the loft.
SE: Talking about Christmas presents you say, yeah what you could get and what you couldn’t get. Very limited. And I was lucky again because my, my dad was a tram driver and his, his conductor became very friendly, a fellow called Albert Foster and he was very handy with his hands and I remember him making me an absolutely superb, first of all a farmyard and then bought the animals. Other people bought the animals to go on. And then, I think a couple of years later a garage. Magnificent presents actually you know to say that there was a war on. But that was typical of course. Anyway, just thinking on about Blitz. The second Blitz of course was more serious from the, from the war point of view because it hit the East End and this time they did really hit the steel industry. But we were further away so we had, we had all the noise from, from Manor Lane again but as I said we, we just, just not the [pause] As far as I recall it was more overcast that night and certainly nothing like as exciting as that first Blitz night. But in point of fact, we had the nearest bombing factor where we lived was on the second Blitz. It was on Prince of Wales Road. Not far away. In fact, a few houses on Prince of Wales Road were damaged not least from incendiaries as well, as I recall. What else? I don’t know. Lead me for a bit [laughs]
UE: I can’t think of anything else much.
SE: Of course, the, the, my brother was killed of course which had an immense —
UE: Effect.
SE: Effect on me I suppose. More. I didn’t realise it at the time. I think I sort of went in to a sort of —
UE: Wasn’t your mum called in to school about — yeah.
SE: Well, later yeah. Yeah.
UE: Because he never told. Never told his friends.
SE: I never told anybody. I didn’t want to tell anybody. I mean the lads at school were, you know knew I’d got a brother in the Air Force. In fact, you know that used to give me a status and I suppose in a funny sort of way I mean not that it was important but I sort of lost my status overnight literally and, but I, it certainly affected my schoolwork in the first instance. And I do remember my mum coming to school and meeting Dr Mack who was the headmaster and him sort of having a talk to me and trying to urge me. And in actual fact, for whatever reason however it came about from sort of definitely falling away in ’45 by the time I took the School Cert in ’47 well I did get, in those days you had to pass seven subjects to actually get a school certificate. There was no question of how it came subsequently of getting passes in separate subjects and I mean this many levels and so on. But yeah, so the war and I remember having strange feelings because don’t forget my brother was killed on the 23rd of February and of course the war was over, well VE day on the, on the 8th of May. Celebrating. I know my cousins wanted to go into town and I wasn’t all that keen. It seemed all a bit strange that people were celebrating while at our house of course I mean, well I mean, I don’t like to even think about how it affected my parents. Bear in mind of course that my, my dad had spent the whole of the First World War in the Western Front in the Royal Field Artillery and he became deaf as a result of that which always affected him. In fact, it stopped him being a tram driver and he had to go into the [pause] he had to go into —
UE: Workshop.
SE: The tram sheds. Just doing odd jobs and cleaning and so on after that which of course lowered the income. We never, never had much money anyway. But yeah, it, it was, it was a rum time. But I was saying my, my dad spent the whole of the First World War on, in France and I recently found his, his paybook which sort of confirms all the places he went to and so on. But my mum lost a brother in the First World War and my father lost a brother in the First World War and then there again then they lost a son in the Second World War so, I don’t know. Doing your bit for Britain. I suppose it was a bit over the top really. Anyway, there we are.
DE: It’s, it’s fascinating. Thank you. I wonder if you could tell me a bit about what it was like when you, when your brother joined up and his, his career and where he went and the things he did.
SE: Yeah. Well, he, he joined up. He went to Scarborough. He joined up as an, he immediately went for aircrew tests. He went down [pause] I can’t remember. Actually, at my age my memory sort of has big gaps. I forget things. He went down to London for aircrew tests and passed for, for pilot. Came back and then subsequently went to Canada and did his training in Canada. After he qualified as a pilot and got his wings he went in to, he became what was called, I think a staff pilot and he was flying, well various aircraft but essentially went to a bomb and gunnery school where they were actually training bomb aimers and gunners and obviously Lewis was piloting the plane while they were chasing drogues and what have you. And of course, he did that for quite a time and until he came home and originally when he came home, we found out subsequently that for whatever reason it appeared as though he was, well he wanted to go in to, in to Transport Command and he was, it looked as though he was going from one piece of correspondence we had. But for whatever reason obviously he finished up in Bomber Command with 166 Squadron at Kirmington.
UE: Well, they needed pilots.
SE: Yeah. They must have been short of pilots. Of course, we know there were huge losses which of course is something I feel very strongly about which of course I’m not alone in this. That obviously, I’ve took a lot of interest and whereas war was exciting when I was a kid bearing in mind you learn as you grow up and so my attitude towards war is entirely different now and I get very mixed feelings. My feelings towards my brother don’t change but I can’t forget that he was involved in the Dresden raid and then what I’ve learned subsequently the raid when he was killed was over Pforzheim when the actual civilian deaths were, I think at the highest rate that they’ve recorded of any, of any raid in Germany. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about that. It does, it plays on my mind that and when people say that bomber aircrew should have been regarded as war criminals because what they did was as bad as a lot of the things that happened in Nazi Germany, area bombing. And then of course I’ve looked it all up and followed it subsequently and I know that all about the Silverman Enquiry into the whole raids to test the population’s reaction to air raids and morale and it was proven that it did not affect morale. In fact, it could improve morale in spite of that. In spite of that Winston Churchill together with Harris they’d got it stuck in their mind that terrorising the population was a way to conduct the war. And that’s what happened to Bomber Command and that’s why they became the, to have the highest losses of any, any section in the war. Huge losses and bear in mind that most of these lads were the, if you like the cream of youth because most of them were Grammar School lads who’d, the ones that had succeeded like my brother did, you know from working class backgrounds and became aircrew and then they were lost. And then to crown it all of course there’s been more recognition I suppose of what Bomber Command did over the past maybe ten, fifteen years but it was the only, the only —
UE: Force.
SE: The only force not to get a campaign medal was Bomber Command which of course being probably the bravest of all is, well it’s pitiful. Ridiculous. Anyway, there you are. I could go on but just the other side of the excitement of war. No. No. Believe me war is to be avoided. Whether it’s in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else. That’s, it should be the absolute last resort but there we are.
DE: No. I agree. Yeah. Could you, you know bearing all that in mind and your family’s experiences and your, you know father’s experiences in the First World War why, why did he want to join the RAF?
SE: Youth. Excitement. He wanted to fly in the first instance. I think that was it. I mean, don’t forget we’re talking about the 1930s. I mean we regard flying now, you know I mean everybody, everybody’s flown. I mean everybody’s been on an aircraft I mean and flown around the world and so on. That wasn’t the case in the ‘30s. How many people had flown in the ‘30s unless you were extremely rich? I mean, bear in mind, I mean we never had a motor car. I mean most people didn’t. I mean, how many people had motor cars? Obviously, in the war I mean you were restricted anyway but I mean I, we never had a motorcar and so when it came to flying and the opportunity to fly I mean, fantastic. Wonderful. And that was the first attraction of course. The fact that you had to fight in a war in order to be, become a pilot and to fly I suppose that was, yeah, that was a bit of a problem. But no. No. The first instant was flying.
DE: Right.
SE: Without any doubt at all and Lewis loved it. I mean, he made that absolutely clear. He used to love flying. Yeah. And he was, they always said, I mean other people said he was a natural pilot. I don’t know if you want to talk about his, his best pal in the war, in the Air Force who was Gus Knox who was a New Zealander.
DE: Yes. Definitely. That’s on my list.
SE: Yeah. Well, you’ve got all the, I’ve kept all the correspondence there separately but he met Gus Knox in Canada and Gus Knox was a wireless operator actually although he subsequently as I understand it earned his wings later on in the war. He, he met him in Canada and they became extremely close friends. In fact, some of the correspondence shows just how close. I mean relative to some of the things he talked about and so on. They left Canada. I think Lewis left Canada first to come back home and Gus Knox shortly after that and he went back. Well, he didn’t go back to New Zealand. He went in to the Pacific. He was on Catalinas. Flying Boats. There was a lot of correspondence then. In fact, it’s quite funny actually because the correspondence was censored and we’ve got one letter which is, is full of strips.
UE: Full of holes.
SE: Because in that particular letter the censors actually cut out, cut out the letters and sentences. But that correspondence went on for some time. Just to indicate the depths of their friendship Gus Knox named his son, he’d already got a daughter and his wife became pregnant shortly after and that’s referred to in the correspondence. And then it was a son and they named him Lewis. Lewis [Laidley] Knox —
DE: Right.
SE: Who must be probably in his late seventies, eighties now in New Zealand. Anyway, Gus Knox carried on writing to Lewis and he started getting letters back in some cases and he stopped getting replies and this was obviously after the 23rd of February ’45. And so he was sending letters even after Lewis had been killed which at that time he’d, because he’d had letters returned from various stations because Lewis was on, made a tremendous number of moves after he came back from Canada but he was writing to Lewis’ home address. So, we’ve got those letters and then eventually he sent a letter to my father, in effect fearing the worst. The fact, he’d not had a letter for so long and fearing that Lewis had in fact been killed and of course they wrote back and telling him that. And then this quite a moving letter which he writes about his friendship for Lewis. And anyway, there we are. There’s a whole bundle of correspondence there on that. Yeah.
DE: Thank you. And there’s all the letters.
SE: Yeah.
DE: From Lewis.
SE: What you’ve got is my, my, it’s my mother really. I mean, she was an, she, she didn’t like throwing things away and she would, sort of things like letters such as these I mean she would never think of throwing away. I suppose I still have that hoarding thing.
UE: Yeah [laughs]
SE: According to Una. Anyway, all the letters are there that Lewis sent to us all the way from the very first letter when he went into the Air Force to the last letter he sent to us from Kirmington. In other words from 1941 right through to February ’45. We’ve got a few letters that Lewis had actually saved for whatever reason that’s been sent to him from, from home and from various people. Incidentally including letters from me because he was always interested in the fact that I’d gone to school and there is a particular letter which incidentally started all this off because I wrote him a letter all about my early days at High Storrs Grammar School mentioning the masters and I even, as I say I sent him all the details and even the nicknames.
UE: The timetable.
SE: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Even the timetable. And he, what am I saying? The other. Yeah. He, I’m trying to think of the letter he sent. Oh yeah. The other thing what I did find well even touching actually is a lot going back to Gus Knox actually. In a lot of the letters it does in fact refer to me asking how I’m going on and so on. And of course, it just brings back to mind that Lewis talked about after the war going to New Zealand. In fact, all of us going to New Zealand and who knows it could be quite easily if he hadn’t been killed we could very well. Life would have been different because I would have been a New Zealander by now. So, there we are.
DE: Yes. smashing. Thank you. I think I’ve covered most of the things I’ve jotted down to ask. Have you anything to —
UE: No. I don’t. I can’t think of anything else.
DE: I’ll not press stop. I’ll just —
[recording paused]
DE: Ok. So, tell me about RAF Firbeck.
SE: RAF Firbeck. Well, it all starts with the fact that Firbeck Hall became a famous country club. A guy called Nicholson who owned the Grand Hotel in Sheffield acquired the Firbeck Hall Estate in the 1930s and made Firbeck Hall into an absolutely magnificent country club with absolutely, they did actually, did everything. He constructed, he got a leading golfer, was it Cotton, to design the golf course which surrounded that? Went in to all the fields all around here and they did everything. I mean, but anyway now going in to all that the main thing here is they constructed an airfield. It was at that sort of level that they constructed an airfield so that people could actually fly to Firbeck Hall Country Club.
UE: For the weekend.
SE: It opened in 1935. The war came in 1939 which put the kibosh on the whole thing. Firbeck Hall became a hospital and it also became the officer’s mess for the RAF, obviously took over RAF Firbeck.
UE: Wasn’t it a Polish —
SE: No. No. No.
UE: No. Not.
SE: But they, they took over the being so remote as it was in those days it was became a special operations and I think there’s no doubt about this now because it’s all come out subsequently. The last resort. Well, I don’t know about the last resort it might have been a first resort but if Hitler had invaded they would have been met with poison gas. The poison gas would have been delivered by Avro, by Avro Lysanders that were stationed at RAF Firbeck and they —
UE: [unclear]
SE: The remnants of it are all around Firbeck. In the wood behind the airfield there’s the result of all the, what do they call them?
UE: The remains of the billets.
SE: Where they kept the poisoned gas and, what did they call it? The Decontamination Centre was actually where our village hall is now. Right next door to us and don’t we know about it because of the special drains that were constructed between our actual garden and I found out when I tried to dig out a pond.
UE: Dig a fishpond.
SE: Anyway, the, that was, that was RAF Firbeck and about what was it three, four, five years ago.
UE: Yeah.
SE: They, what did they call them? You might know them. The aircraft. The airfield. The Airfield Association that are going around checking or if you like looking into the history of every RAF airfield from World War Two and they came across RAF Firbeck and that’s when all this information came out together with lots of photographs incidentally.
DE: Ok.
SE: Confirming all this. All these characters in decontamination suits and so on and the —
UE: Memorial as well.
SE: Yeah. Yeah. The, after they’d done all this they, they erected a Memorial out of local stone in, actually it’s in the path that runs through what used to be the airfield and with a Memorial type there and we had a grand opening but they, they couldn’t find, what was it? They had Austers there as well and there is still an Auster flying but that wasn’t available. We had a Tiger Moth actually did a fly past.
DE: Right.
SE: When we went to all this business. Now, the point I’m making here from what we were talking earlier is —
UE: The people that turned up.
SE: We all met up. Now, needless to say the British Legion and all the characters all turned up you know in what is the uniform of grey slacks and navy blue blazers and obviously berets and medals.
UE: Medals.
SE: And all the rest of it and after the, after all the celebrations of, of inaugurating the thing which was on the first Remembrance Day after, it was lightened up for that anyway we were all in the Black Lion Pub and I’m sat next to, well sat at a table with three or four of these lads and I’m saying, what —
UE: ‘What did you do?’
SE: So, ‘What did you do?’ You know. Sort of to get involved in all this lot. Oh, you know, anyway I’m not going to go into all the detail but we all got, they’d all done National Service and none of them had, you know been anywhere near a war or anything like that. But for these lads and don’t get me wrong I’m not blaming them for it I mean it would appear that the most exciting thing that happened in their life was being in the Services. Particularly in the Army and and it’s led to following you know this business almost like a hobby because practically every other weekend there is something happening and they put on that uniform.
DE: Yeah.
SE: And they go along, you know. I’m not saying, I’m not going to say rent a crowd but anyway but and and and that sort of brought me comes back to what I’ve just been talking about.
DE: About remembrance.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: So, you were in the RAF. Yeah?
SE: Yeah. Oh yeah.
DE: And you don’t feel the need to —
SE: I went in the RAF I mean this is [laughs] right. Say when you as you get older it didn’t take me long actually. Don’t forget I, I was, I was doing the student apprenticeship at Hatfield’s in Sheffield and I was supposed to be deferred. I would have been deferred from that job. My, I’d always made it clear, you know earlier before Lewis got killed that I wanted to follow him in the Air Force. I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to learn to fly. Again, no thought of, you know originally of getting killed or anything like that. Needless to say my parents made it absolutely clear that that was the last thing they wanted me to do. I mean bearing in my mind what we said about losing brothers before —
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
SE: Losing a son. Anyway, the fact remains I thought well, I’ll give it a try anyway. So the first thing I did when I’d been called up for National Service and reported to Padgate, and early on they ask you what you wanted to do and I applied for aircrew. And I went down to Hornchurch and had a full aircrew test and got through. But instead at that time when I went in in ’47 National Service was eighteen months. As a result of that of the forty, fifty of us who were in that draft went down and did that test only five were offered pilot. National Service pilot. In other words to learn to fly in that eighteen month so in effect be available for a Reserve or hopefully to persuade them to sign on.
DE: Yeah.
SE: Anyway, I I passed there. I didn’t want [laughs] I didn’t get, well I got, I could have been a pilot for eight and four that’s what they offered me. Eight hours. Eight years.
UE: Eight years.
SE: Followed by four on the Reserve and eight years when you’re eighteen years old seems a hell of a long time so I won’t commit myself and, but it was still there. But then unfortunately shall we say, or fortunately for the Air Force, I don’t know if fortunately or unfortunately for me although, well let’s put it this way in the meantime I became an instrument engineer. Instrument repairer or instrument mechanic as they called us then because we still had the three grades and I knew a lad in, in HQ who was a cyclist like me and I’d been told I was going to be posted to [coughs] excuse me. I’ll have a drink [pause] Because I was going to posted to Sutton Coldfield and they told me at the last minute it had been cancelled. They were short of instrument people in the Middle East and so I was sent out to the Middle East and finished up at Fayid, on the Suez Canal on 39 Squadron. Mosquito night fighters that changed to the Meteors. Life in the Canal Zone, you couldn’t have a worst bloody posting in the RAF I can assure you. And in fact, I don’t know, I mean even a pal of mine committed suicide out there and he wasn’t alone. The thing that kept me going is, was cycling actually. I organised a Cycling Club out there. Anyway, that’s another story. Let’s put it this way whatever thoughts I’d got about making a career in the Air Force was certainly put way on the back burner from having to spend because incidentally I’d been in Egypt for about a couple of months when instead of having to complete eighteen months they extended National Service to two years. So, I just got to hate Egypt and it kept me there for another six months. And so, oh another interesting thing here I think one of the first things that happened when I was, got to [unclear] I was sent to station headquarters and I’m not sure if it wasn’t the CO wanted to see me. ‘Ellis, you passed aircrew test. Now then, why on earth haven’t you taken it up?’ You know. You silly boy [unclear] and all that. ‘Oh, I’ll think about it, sir.’ So that was that. When I was leaving [pause] well some time in between I was sent for again and the last thing before I was demobbed they asked me again and now, blow me I’d been home for what was it twelve months, eighteen months something like that and they called me up on Reserve for RAF Waddington. Only for a couple of weeks I think it was or it might have been a month. I don’t know. Because I remember there two things happened when I got, early things that happened when I got to RAF Waddington was the station WO called me over and told me to get my hair cut. And then the next thing that happened I was sent for by station headquarters and asked if I was interested in becoming, you know aircrew again.
DE: Sign on ‘til you get to the end.
SE: So, there you are. That’s what happened to my big, you know dreams.
DE: Yeah.
SE: From being a kid.
DE: And you —
SE: You grow up you see.
DE: Yeah, and you don’t feel the need for —
SE: You grow up the hard way.
DE: You don’t feel the need of putting the blazer and the medals on and parading at the weekends either.
SE: Well, yeah. I mean maybe. Maybe it’s just me. You know brought up don’t forget kids like me I mean I wore you’ve got to admit this I mean, I mean I’m not, I wouldn’t say normal but let’s just say that war, World War One cast a, if not a shadow an influence on my early life and it was continued into World War Two and it was continued through National Service. So, it’s there all the time. Now, anybody sort of born anything subsequently you know after the war would just, probably well, I don’t know maybe some people born after the war if they’d lost somebody in the war would obviously be affected by it but for the vast majority of people I mean all these influences that I had. I mean my actual education. I mean, I went to High Storrs like my brother did but half the, I mean it was a boy’s school incidentally, half the teachers were women and the ones that were men they were all old men and they were all — so there was no young vigorous teachers. What a difference after the war. It must have been ’46, the year before I finished we got a new form master called Albert Leach and then even well when you think about it subsequently what a difference when you get a young fellow like him you know after the war and his all way of teaching and generating. I was saying how my performance you know it went down after Lewis was killed but surely one of the characters who got me back to somewhere normal was having a young male teacher like Albert Leach. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Interesting. Thank you. I’m going to, I’ll hit pause again.
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 Sidney and Una Ellis
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-11-16
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:49:44 Audio Recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AEllisS-U211116
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney and Una both experienced the effect of the war in Sheffield as a child. When Dunkirk survivors arrived at the nearby Reception Centre Sidney collected many souvenirs such as cap badges and his aunt also took two soldiers in to her home while they were waiting to be returned to their units. Sidney’s eldest brother, Lewis trained as a pilot and was posted to 166 Squadron. He was shot down and killed 23 February 1945. Sidney joined the RAF during his National Service.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Sheffield
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Contributor
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Julie Williams
166 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
killed in action
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Kirmington
searchlight
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2059/33805/PJordanT2101.1.jpg
09dc6a2488b7ac7e723e9f142c075dd6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2059/33805/AJordanT210922.2.mp3
678f99e1e9fc2e1dd5cdd1e36d1c8060
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
Jordan, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Thomas Jordan (b. 1916, 635545 Royal Air Force). He served as an armourer at RAF Cosford, RAF Scampton, and the Middle East.
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
2021-09-22
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Jordan, T
Requires
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Thomas Jordan was born and raised up in Hornsea, East Yorkshire, learning to fly privately at Hedon aerodrome, near Hull and joined the RAF wanting to be a pilot. However, after failing the eyesight requirements, he trained as an armourer, dealing with transporting, arming them and loading the bombs on to the aircraft. On one occasion, moving several bombs through Lincoln, one fell of the transport, rolling down the hill, scattering people, although there were no injuries and of course it was not live. Thomas also undertook bomb disposal, travelling to crashed aircraft and making the bombload safe. Working from RAF Cosford in Shropshire, RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and also spending time in Aden, now a part of Yemen, Thomas worked on several different aircraft, including Lancaster, Halifax and Mosquito bombers. While he stated that working closely with explosives was safe, mostly, he did lose several friends to accidents.
Andrew St.Denis
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DJ: Do you want me to sit around that side?
DE: No. You’re fine. So, this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. I’m here to interview Thomas Jordan. Also present is his son, David Jordan. It is the 22nd of September 2021 and we are in Hornsea. Mr Jordan, thank you for agreeing to see me.
TJ: Yeah.
DE: I wondered if we could start, if you could tell a little about your early life and where you grew up.
TJ: Where I grew up?
DE: Yes. Please.
TJ: Hornsea, I think.
DE: What was it like there?
TJ: Eh?
DE: What was it like as a child?
TJ: I think it was quite good actually. I think it was better than [unclear] No. I had a good childhood. I was very lucky. Swimming in the sea and, you know.
DE: What did, what did your parents do?
TJ: Dad was a tailor. Mum was just a housewife.
DE: Where, and whereabouts did you live in Hornsea?
TJ: Well, we lived up Atwick Road but the shop was in Southgate, Hornsea. A tailor’s shop. Dad and his brother were in business together.
DE: Right. And how, why, why did you end up in the RAF, rather than becoming a tailor and following the family?
TJ: Why did — ?
DE: Why did you end up in the RAF? How did you join the RAF?
TJ: I didn’t want to go in the tailor’s business. That was the main thing. They had it all laid for me on a plate but I didn’t want it so that’s why I went in the RAF.
DE: When, when did you join?
TJ: Oh God, now [pause] I haven’t a clue. During the war. I think it was during the war. I can’t remember whether the war had started. I’m not sure. I, I, I, think I joined before. Before the war started. In the Air Force. I feel as though I did. How would I know?
DE: It’s, we’ve, we’ve got your record. That’s fine.
DJ: You worked after school dad didn’t you on a chicken farm? Did you work on a chicken farm after school?
TJ: Sorry?
DJ: Did you work on a chicken farm after school?
TJ: In Hornsea. Yes.
DJ: And then you left that to go in the RAF.
TJ: No. And then I went down the road. I think I joined the Air Force from there.
DJ: Yeah. That’s, yeah that’s what—
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: That’s what I thought. Yeah.
DE: What was it like on the chicken farm?
TJ: Eh?
DE: What was the chicken farm like?
TJ: It was alright. It was a good life. But it was a bit, if anything a bit, not quite a farm. It was, it was, it was interesting and a good outdoor life.
DE: But you fancied the, you fancied a change and you joined the RAF.
TJ: That was it. Right. Yeah.
DE: Did you want, did you want to fly?
TJ: Yes. Well, I could fly like private but my eyes weren’t good enough for the RAF. I wanted to fly. That’s why I went in. Yeah. But I had an air licence. I could go and borrow a plane now.
DE: Oh ok.
TJ: Yeah.
DE: When did learn to fly?
TJ: Hedon. Hedon Aerodrome just outside Hull.
DE: Right.
DJ: Hedon. Near here.
DE: Yeah.
DJ: You know that.
DE: Yeah. Was that expensive?
TJ: I don’t know really. I think it would have done it if I’d stayed there a long while but it, it wasn’t, wasn’t too bad for a start. If you [unclear] and just wanted to go for an hour’s flight it was pricey.
DE: So, you, you always felt, you were always drawn to the RAF then.
TJ: Yeah.
DE: You wouldn’t have joined the Army or the Navy.
TJ: Well, you know I liked flying, you know. I think I had an air licence. I’m not sure. At one stage I could have gone and borrowed a plane if I’d wanted. For me I couldn’t have taken you. I think I could have borrowed one for me.
DE: So, were you a bit disappointed when they wouldn’t let you be a pilot in the RAF?
TJ: Well, my eyes weren’t good enough. No, I wanted to fly. Yeah.
DE: So, what was, what was your trade?
TJ: Sorry?
DE: What was your trade? Instead of being a pilot what happened?
TJ: I went as a, well somebody told me if you go as an armourer later on when you’ve passed your test you can have another test and sometimes your eyes improve enough to get pilot. So, I went as an armourer in the RAF but it didn’t work. No. I was still a bit potty.
DE: So, what was, what was the training like for that?
TJ: Very good. Very, very good. Yes. [pause] I had a good time in the RAF. I was alright.
DE: So, were you working with bombs or bullets or both?
TJ: Sorry?
DE: Were you, were you working with bombs or bullets or both?
TJ: I was in as an armourer. I was on bomb disposal. That’s what I used to work on. You know, if a plane had come down and crashed I used to go and make the bombs safe before they took them away and that sort of thing. Cushy job.
DE: Really? Unexploded bombs a cushy job.
TJ: Yeah.
DE: Did you, did you ever have to dispose of any, any German bombs?
TJ: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At Cosford. Yeah. They were alright. They weren’t, they weren’t dangerous. Well, if you did the wrong thing they would have been but no, they weren’t.
DE: So, how did —
TJ: One rolled down the hill in Lincoln. Right to the bottom of the hill in Lincoln. If you’d seen people scatter. But there was, there’s no detonator in. It couldn’t have gone off. It couldn’t have gone off but there were people getting out of wheelchairs and everything.
DE: Was that, was that one of theirs or one of ours?
TJ: No. We’d just been to fetch them from the station and one happened to roll off. It rolled off. One of the, it was my fault really. We were in such a bloody hurry. It rolled down the hill. People leaping out of wheelchairs and all sorts to get out of the way. It wouldn’t have gone off.
DE: So, they’re safe unless they’re fused then basically.
TJ: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So, you mentioned you were stationed at Cosford.
TJ: Sorry?
DE: You were at Cosford.
TJ: Yes. Yeah.
DE: What was that like there?
TJ: Well, it was quite good you see, but we were needed at Birmingham where, a bomb disposal there because Birmingham was always getting quite a lot of bombing. So, I was on there, and then I was at [unclear]. No discipline much. It was very good. You did your own thing within reason as long you did your job.
DE: So as long as you stopped the bombs going bang you were —
TJ: Sorry?
DE: As long as you stopped the bombs exploding you could do what you wanted.
TJ: It was alright. A good life.
DE: Was there, was there many of you there?
TJ: When, when I first went to Cosford I think there was, there was an NCO, another one, myself, and then there was an armament officer just used to come and not, not do anything. Just sign the thing and see you were doing things properly.
DE: So, did you, did you do any of the, of the digging the bombs out or did somebody else do that?
TJ: Did what?
DE: Did you have to dig bombs out where they’d landed or did —
TJ: Oh yeah.
DE: Yeah.
TJ: Yeah. Well, planes were always crashing anyhow. In orchards and all sorts of things. Somebody had to make them safe but it was no big deal.
DE: But later on in the war some of these bombs were, you know huge. Really heavy to —
TJ: I can’t quite remember. I think I went in to Lincolnshire. I’m not sure. I’m sure I did. There was a bomb disposal place at Cosford. I think I was there for a bit. I’m trying to think.
DJ: When Steve was over.
TJ: Sorry?
DJ: When Steve was over here, when Steve was over he took you around didn’t he? And one of the places you —
TJ: I can’t hear what David’s saying.
DJ: One place you went to was Scampton.
TJ: When I went to Scampton.
DJ: You were based at Scampton, weren’t you for part —
TJ: Yeah. I was at Scampton. I’m just trying to think. No. I think I was in charge of the bomb dump at Scampton on Bomber Command. I was with 5 Group then at Scampton. But Scampton itself then was a little satellite, and they used to send us out to these to bomb them up rather than do them in Scampton itself. Satellite places. I think it was in case we got bombed, you see they weren’t all together at Scampton area. Happy days.
DE: So, what, what was a typical day like working at the bomb dump at Scampton?
TJ: It varied you see. If you was, if you was in charge and just dishing stuff out that was not so bad but if you were pushed for men and doing the jobs yourself it was hard work. You never had a minute to spare and you know, things had to be right. You couldn’t just leave them. That was at Cosford. And there was a big dump outside Lincoln itself. I’m just trying to think where that was. Something to do with 5 Group but I can’t remember what the 5 was.
DE: I’m trying to think where it was as well. It’s, I think it was, I think it was up near Brigg wasn’t it? Or there was one up there and they moved. They used to move the bombs by train, didn’t they?
TJ: Sorry?
DE: They used to move the bombs by train.
TJ: Oh, not always. Some were taken from the station just on trailers, you know. A trailer with about probably a dozen bombs on. You go trundling through the town and [laughs] and one rolled off in Lincoln down the hill. If you’d seen people bloody scatter. It wouldn’t have gone off.
DE: No.
TJ: It rolled off a lorry at Lincoln station. Do you know Lincoln?
DE: I’m from, I’m from Lincoln.
TJ: Well, you know the hill outside there.
DE: Yeah.
TJ: It rolled all the way down that hill.
DE: It’s a big hill.
TJ: I know people [laughs] people scattered. They wouldn’t have gone off. They were alright.
DE: So, when, when you were working at the bomb dump was it, did, who did, who did the fusing and putting the fins on the bombs?
TJ: I’m sorry I’m just a bit deaf.
DE: Who, who, who put the fuses in and who put the fins on the bombs?
TJ: Was what?
DE: Who, whose job was it to put the fuses in the bombs?
TJ: Well, whoever was in charge at the bomb dump at the time, you see. If it was me, my time I mean, I would do it. I’d do the fusing. Whoever was in charge. Then you had to sign, you know. But against all the bombs you’d made ok.
DE: You see quite a lot. You see films of WAAFs driving the tractors with the trailers with all the bombs on.
TJ: Oh yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
TJ: Well, men. There was no, no spare men to be driving tractors. Nearly always WAAFs.
DE: So, did, when, when you were loading the aircraft up —
TJ: Sorry?
DE: When you were loading the aircraft with bombs —
TJ: Yeah.
DE: Did you send out all the high explosive bombs and then the incendiaries or did you send one load to one aircraft?
TJ: You get to know what your bomb load was. Generally, incendiaries were on their own. Odd times you’d get incendiaries and others, but in general incendiaries, they were different lighter bombs. They were just sent on their own.
DE: Did you have to, did you have to pack those in the cases?
TJ: Sorry?
DE: Did you have to pack those in the cases? In the bomb cases?
TJ: The incendiaries? Well, that was most of them were like hexagonal and they fit rotated together in like a box. There was probably about ten incendiaries. They weren’t shaped like bombs. They were hexagonal. The long ones. The bigger incendiary bombs, there was probably one or two 250s, but generally incendiary bombs were hexagonal. No tails on them or anything.
DE: No.
TJ: And they just flopped about all over when they went down.
DE: What, what were the biggest ones? The biggest bombs that you, you had to work with?
TJ: I’m just trying to think. I know there was a few 250s but I think odd one 500 but not many. Nearly. They were 250s.
DE: You didn’t get —
TJ: But they weren’t incendiaries. They were HE.
DE: Yeah.
TJ: Incendiaries were only about that big and they weren’t like bombs. They were, hexagonal. They were a funny shape. Most of them anyway.
DE: So, did you not, did you not work with the cookies? The really big bombs.
TJ: Did what?
DE: Did you work with the cookies?
TJ: With?
DE: With the cookies. The, the big four thousand pounders, and eight thousand pounders.
TJ: I was once. Once. They were big bloody things with them as well. Yeah. No. I was on once. It was just how I were telling your fella it was nothing special. You just went two armourers out the bombs and there was half a dozen bombs to load up, and whatever the way you do it. With the [pause] the really big cookies, they were, I think they were more frightening than what they did damage.
DE: Were there ever, were there ever any accidents?
TJ: Oh yeah. Yeah. Not that often but at, on Lincolnshire, on the main road just outside the camp there was a field. It was almost devastated. About three or four bombs had gone off and killed everybody there. The bomb dump at [pause] outside Lincoln. It was about five miles from Lincoln, and the one field it just cleared everything that was on the field. Yeah. HEs and stuff to play about with.
DE: So, did you, did you have to deal with, with any hang ups?
TJ: Any?
DE: Hang ups.
TJ: Hang ups? What do you mean? What? Taking them off the plane again?
DE: Yeah.
TJ: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Used to have to change the load half way through before they got off the ground sometimes. Yeah. You were always taking them on and off. You’d get all bombed up, and then you’d have to take them all off and put something else on.
DE: How did that make you feel?
TJ: Eh?
DE: How did you feel about doing the same job twice?
TJ: How did I feel?
DE: Yeah.
TJ: Not happy at all. When they used to go there was probably about twenty bombs which I’d put the detonators in and I knew it was made for killing probably hundreds of people maybe but that was part of it but I wasn’t happy at all. It was your job. You did it, didn’t you? Oh dear. Because you know, the bomb dropping wasn’t that accurate. You know, they dropped on civvies as well as. The main thing was to drop the bombs and get the hell out of it [pause] No future in war is there? Whatever side you’re on.
[pause]
DE: What was it, what was it like then living on, on a station? Did you have good close friendships with people?
TJ: Well, you get that, where there’s a bit of danger friendships form, you know. They do automatically, I think. Worst job were when planes didn’t get off. Probably crashed on going off and you had probably half a dozen bombs on board. And they were bloody dangerous, you know. If they hadn’t gone off them was the worst thing because anything could happen. Loads of people got killed like that.
DE: Was that people you knew that happened to?
TJ: Sorry?
DE: Was that people you knew that that happened to?
TJ: I can’t, I’m a bit potty and deaf.
DE: I say, you know when planes didn’t get off and they’d got a load of bombs on did any, did any of your friends get hurt trying to take them off the trolley?
TJ: Oh yeah. Yeah. A few got killed. Yeah. Well, sometimes four of you working on a plane and somebody hands a spanner to somebody and they shouldn’t have done. They were magnetic and blew the lot of them up, you know. Four or five. Working against the clock as well you do daft things.
DE: So, it was, it was hard work. It was dangerous work.
TJ: No. It wasn’t particularly hard work but we, you had to watch what you were doing and as long as your mate knew what you were doing it was all right. But when you were working against the clock that’s when accidents happened. Yeah. A few of them, you know went off in Lincolnshire at the bomb dump. It would be all over the world I would imagine.
DE: But you, you worked quite well as a team and you trusted each other.
TJ: Sorry?
DE: You worked as a team and you trusted each other.
TJ: In general, but there would be the armourer who was in charge I mean of putting the last detonator in or put the switch over to make it live. Anybody could mess about and shove the things in within reason. But there was only one who signed their death warrant who was responsible for, you know, just connecting the detonators up. Until they were in there was no, you could, you could kick them along the ground. The bombs.
DJ: I remember a photograph you used to have, dad. You had a photograph of you sitting on a bomb. On a —
TJ: Sorry?
DJ: We had a photograph of you sitting on a bomb on a trolley.
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: With a load of other people. It looked like a big bomb to me.
TJ: Oh, they were.
DJ: And what was that? Did they, did they load them with chains and things?
TJ: I could imagine it being a whatsit. Was it a big bomb? A big bulky one.
DJ: Yeah. Very.
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: Very bulky. Yeah.
TJ: Maybe a long load. Maybe a long load. Only one bomb on the plane maybe.
DJ: Looked like it.
TJ: Going a long way.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: Was that in Lincolnshire?
DJ: I don’t know.
TJ: I would imagine so. Yeah.
DJ: No. It was a photograph. I just remember it as a kid. Seeing it. Yeah.
TJ: They were, in an old bomb they were like —
DJ: Landmines.
TJ: On the phone we used to call them veg. So, we used to say what we’d need. So many veg. So many sprouts and that thing. You didn’t talk bombs. It was all veg for secrecy but —
DE: Well, the vegetables, were mines weren’t they? For shipping.
TJ: It was all, most men had the name of veg. You said, ‘What’s the veg situation today?’ And you’d tell them, you know.
DJ: Oh right.
TJ: You just, you didn’t talk about bombs, you know.
DE: So —
TJ: Happy days.
DE: Aye. What, what aircraft were there that you were — ?
TJ: Lancies and Halifaxes. Then a few [pause] them fast little planes.
DE: Mosquitoes?
TJ: No. One like the Mosquito. They’re very I wouldn’t say light planes but they used to go just across the Channel.
DE: Oh.
TJ: Yeah. [pause] Happy days.
DE: Did you have, did you, did you have to load them by hand or did you have powered winches?
TJ: What was that?
DE: Did you have to load them by hand or did you have powered winches?
TJ: Well, there was both. You had, you had trollies which you could yank them up but if it was a light plane just taking a few you could do it by hand. But a Lancie like a big plane they were too heavy for, to manhandle.
DE: And they’re quite high up as well, aren’t they?
TJ: Sorry?
DE: They’re quite high up as well, aren’t they?
TJ: Oh yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
TJ: But they had winches. It was, it wasn’t particularly heavy. Where there were winches you could winch them up.
DE: Did you, did you ever get to associate with the aircrew?
TJ: Well, at night time you’d share the mess you see. You know them all by, like I shared a bedroom with one sergeant [bang noise] Sorry.
DJ: Don’t worry about that.
TJ: That’s how close we were. Yeah. Happy days.
DJ: Did you socialise much with the —
TJ: Eh?
DJ: Did you socialise much with the aircrew?
TJ: Well, you see there was four bunks and there was two of us in each bunk. Most of them were aircrew but I happened to be the armourer on that section, you see. No. You didn’t. When you were done you feel too bloody tired. There wasn’t much socialising. There was a bit but not a lot. You’d have to get to bed.
DE: What, what about the WAAFs?
TJ: Sorry?
DE: What about the WAAFs?
TJ: What? Did they liked to get to bed [laughs] Same as everywhere throughout the world. There were saucy beggars and there were those that weren’t. No. But they were good workers were the WAAFs. They were really. I’d have rather have done a plane with WAAFs than blokes, because blokes were always messing about with the girls. They don’t concentrate on what they’re doing. No. I had a good life. It’s funny. Odd stations. One station the food and everything would be marvellous, and on another absolute rubbish, you know. If you got one with good food you could put up with anything. We used to do silly things, you know. Not blow the mess up, you know. Ever so careless. You see, if you were working with armaments all the time it gets ordinary. You know, it’s dangerous but it doesn’t seem to you because you were working with it all the time.
DE: What sort of things did you get up to when you went on leave?
TJ: Eh?
DE: What did you do when you went on leave?
TJ: Well, I was married. I mean some of the blokes were a bit wild and had some wild nights out. If you were going on a bombing raid on Friday night and you had a chance of a bit of high jinks you had it didn’t you, you know. But I wasn’t aircrew. I flew. I wasn’t, I wasn’t aircrew. I used to go on odd raids because I had to report on what had happened but I never went on a raid as such. It must have been hairy.
[pause]
DJ: Did you know where the, did you know where they were going? If you loaded a plane —
TJ: Sorry?
DJ: If you loaded a plane did you know where it was going?
TJ: Not always.
DJ: Sometimes you did.
TJ: Sometimes you’d go into the room and he’d take three of you into a room and he’d tell those three but the rest of the people didn’t know.
DJ: Didn’t know.
TJ: Yeah.
DE: Was that out of secrecy?
TJ: Well, it could have frightened them a bit [laughs] No. It was a good life. It really was.
DJ: All of it?
TJ: Most of it. Got some sloppy runs but no. I’ve nothing to grumble about. More to grumble about at home. Yeah.
DJ: What do you mean?
TJ: Well, the discipline, and you know. You’ll be working all night maybe ‘til three in the morning, and then he’d come you’d got a bloody button undone and the SP would do you. That sort of thing.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: Yeah. Oh, it was a good life.
DJ: So, you’d get into trouble for that.
TJ: Sorry?
DJ: Did you get into trouble then?
TJ: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because half the time people had been working overnight, an SP would spot him and he’d get thumped, you know.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: But when you’d been working all night and somebody in the, SP in the guard room you’ve got a button undone or something. But generally it was alright.
[pause]
DE: There’s a couple of times, I’ve seen on your record there’s a couple of times you were in hospital.
TJ: Sorry?
DE: There’s a couple of times on your record you were in hospital.
TJ: I’m not hearing very good.
DE: There’s a couple of times on your record that you were in hospital.
DJ: Hospital dad. You were in hospital.
TJ: Was I?
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: What had I done?
DJ: I was hoping you’d tell us.
DE: Yeah.
DJ: Just a minute [unclear] he did say.
TJ: No. I don’t think it was anything exciting. Well, when I was on bomb disposal[unclear] it probably was a bit exciting but as such —
DJ: You used to get nose bleeds, didn’t you?
TJ: Eh?
DJ: You used to get really bad nose bleeds when you were younger.
TJ: Well, bombing up you see you bend down. You bend down while you were working and by the time you finished and then you stand up and then your nose starts to bleed but it wasn’t, it didn’t bother me. It’s messy but —
DJ: Yeah. Cosford you were in hospital dad. A couple of times.
TJ: I think I was on bomb disposal at Cosford wasn’t I?
DJ: I don’t know dad, from this.
TJ: No.
DJ: I’m not used to reading.
TJ: Yeah. I was there for about a year.
DJ: Reading this stuff.
TJ: Yeah. Get all sorts of perks.
DE: Ok. Tell me some.
TJ: Oh yeah. Yeah.
DJ: Go on.
DE: Tell us. Tell us what the perks were?
TJ: Eh?
DE: What were the perks?
TJ: No. I can’t go in to any details.
DJ: It might be interesting. I’ll leave the room if you want, dad. Do you want me to leave the room if you want, if you want to tell the —
TJ: What was that?
DE: He’s saying if you don’t want to tell him you can just tell me.
TJ: Is he? No. I’m just trying to think [pause] On bomb disposal I used to get about ten times the leave other people got. Yeah. That was one thing. You’d probably do two weeks of bomb disposal and get three weeks leave. No. It was ever so good was that.
DJ: What, what about unofficial leave?
TJ: Eh?
DJ: What about unofficial leave?
TJ: What was that?
DE: Was there any unofficial leave?
TJ: Was there what?
DE: Unofficial leave. Did you —
TJ: Oh no. Well, people would work it so that [pause] I think we got three months leave, but on top of that if you were on bomb disposal and that sort of thing they could work out all sorts of leave for you. Yeah. I bet I, I bet I got three months leave a year. It was nice. It was a good life. I’ve got no complaints.
DE: And you were married so you used to go home.
TJ: Eh?
DE: You were married so you used to go home.
TJ: I got married during the war, didn’t I?
DJ: Yeah. I think you did, dad.
TJ: I wasn’t married when I went in the RAF.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: But I got married during the war.
DJ: You did.
TJ: I think.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: Or when I came back. I don’t know.
DJ: It was during the war. I think you went to, you lived in Wolverhampton, didn’t you?
TJ: Very possibly. Yeah.
DJ: Mum moved.
TJ: Yeah. A good life in the RAF. It was a good life. Good food. Plenty. More leave than most people.
DE: And when did, when did you come out?
TJ: After the war, I think. Did I? After the war I believe. I can’t remember. I had a good little number somewhere. I don’t remember where it was. Like on bomb disposal. I got all sorts of perks and leave. I mean the bomb disposal, if a bomb had dropped on your place well, they’re ever so easy to handle. No danger. Well, not much danger anyway. Every bomb disposer had about a weeks leave, you know. There was no danger.
DE: Did you experience any of the, any of the bombing then?
TJ: Did what?
DE: Were you, were bombed at all?
TJ: Did what?
DE: Were you bombed?
TJ: No. I was on bomb disposal.
DE: Did the Germans drop bombs on you? Were you —
TJ: Odd times, yeah. But, nothing very near. They did sometimes at night when you were in bed. You’d go to sleep, and, I don’t say there’d be a bomb next to you in bed. In the building next door maybe. You didn’t know where it had come down. It was whistling until you couldn’t put lights on you see. Pitch dark. And then you’d find a bomb not next to your bed, but in the cookhouse and that sort of thing that hadn’t gone off. Thems the worst ones. You didn’t know about. Oh dear.
DJ: You went to Aden, dad. At the end.
TJ: Eh?
DJ: You, had, you were in Aden for a while.
TJ: What was that?
DJ: Aden. Do you remember? You went to Aden.
TJ: Aden.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: Oh yeah. Yeah.
DJ: What was that about?
TJ: I’m just trying to think. It was dangerous down there but it was dangerous with the Arabs coming in and sneaking in to the camp and blowing your stuff up. The Arabs were the trouble when I was at Aden. Yeah. That was the biggest problem. They were all getting blown up in the bomb dump. Sneak in, or even throw something in the bomb dump. They didn’t like us very much. That was, but they didn’t treat them very well. When you’d been bombing up you’d give them a sandwich and then tell them it was meat, you know and they’d go and try to be sick.
DJ: Oh.
TJ: Happy days.
DJ: So, were you loading bombs then in Aden, was —
TJ: What?
DJ: Were you on an air base?
TJ: Was I?
DJ: Was it an air base in Aden or were you doing bomb disposal?
TJ: Oh no. It was an air base. It was operational was Aden.
DJ: It was what?
TJ: Yeah.
DE: Operational.
DJ: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
TJ: They used to fly over, and on rainy days they would drop a bomb with a detonator in which hadn’t gone off and let them sort it out, you know. They would always blow themselves up. That was the tribesmen. Just ordinary bomb with a detonator in. Then you’d hear a bloody great bang. Probably killed about twenty people. We, we weren’t very popular when I were at Aden.
DE: And then I guess you came back to England.
TJ: Sorry?
DE: Then you came back to England and I suppose you were demobbed.
TJ: Yeah.
DE: What was, what was that like?
TJ: Have I been demobbed?
DJ: Yeah. You’ve been demobbed dad. Yeah.
TJ: Have I?
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: I don’t know. I had some good friends in, in the RAF. You know, you make good friends. Lifetime friends really. Probably don’t see somebody for about eight month, nine month and then everybody was so pleased to see each other. No. It was a good life but I was with Bomber Command most of the time. In Lincolnshire. Happy times.
DE: What did you do after the war?
TJ: Sorry?
DE: What did you do after the war?
TJ: I’m damned if I know. I can’t remember.
DJ: Well, mum was at Hornsea. Weren’t you living in Hornsea when I was little?
TJ: Where was I?
DJ: Well, at the farm.
TJ: The poultry farm.
DJ: For a while.
TJ: I seem to remember something about a poultry job.
DE: No. No.
TJ: Up at, up [unclear]
DE: But that, that was before the war dad. After the war you were living at Desmond Avenue.
TJ: Where?
DE: Desmond Avenue in Hornsea.
TJ: Yes.
DE: You got your own flat there or something with mum, and then you bought the house in Withernsea.
TJ: Yeah. I’m trying to think about Desmond Avenue. Was I in the RAF then?
DJ: I think it was after you’d been demobbed. Mum was living on the farm because she was from a farming family, my mum, in Hornsea and you came back from the RAF so you’d been demobbed and things.
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: And then you, you did you went and learned to be a bricklayer.
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: Didn’t you? You went to train.
TJ: Oh, I did that training course, didn’t I?
DJ: I don’t, I know it was a course in —
TJ: I think so. I’m not sure where I went. Where I went after that.
DJ: Kettlewell’s.
TJ: Eh?
DJ: Kettlewells. Kettle. A company called Kettlewell’s, a big builders.
TJ: Pardon?
DJ: That’s where you were worked for many years.
TJ: Yes. Yes. I worked, I worked for them in Hull.
DJ: Yeah. That’s right.
TJ: Yeah. Kettlewells.
DJ: That’s right.
TJ: I know something about them as well.
DJ: Weren’t they involved in building the RAF —
TJ: Eh?
DJ: Weren’t they involved in building the RAF radar facility at Holmpton.
TJ: Maybe. I know something about it. About the radar place.
DJ: It was —
TJ: Weren’t I in Catfoss a bit?
DJ: You were in Catfoss during the war.
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: I’m getting mixed up.
DE: So, do I.
DJ: Well, when you went to Withernsea.
TJ: Eh?
DJ: You lived at Withernsea quite a while.
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: You were working with the building trade, weren’t you?
TJ: Yeah. Yeah.
DJ: And then you bought a house.
TJ: Weren’t there an RAF camp at Patrington wasn’t there?
DJ: Yes. There was but you, yeah there was. It was nearby.
TJ: I knew something about that. I knew something about the bombs, you know. But that was at the aerodrome.
DJ: But the Patrington wasn’t an operational —
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: It wasn’t flying, was it? It was like an administrative base and they serviced this radar station at Holmpton I think.
TJ: I’m getting mixed up a bit.
DJ: That’s all right.
TJ: But being on bomb disposal they often used to fetch us out to Patrington if there were, didn’t know about the bombs. I used to know about the old ones. Happy days. [pause] Where would Patrington come in to it?
DJ: Well, you lived, when we left —
TJ: We’ve been there, I suppose.
DJ: No. You bought a house at Winestead, an old semi derelict —
TJ: Oh yes. Yeah.
DJ: House and rebuilt it didn’t you? That was his life work at one point.
DE: Right. Ok.
TJ: But we had some bombs at Catfoss which nobody knew anything about. They weren’t German. They weren’t. They just had codes on them and nobody knew what they were. I remember blowing them up.
DE: So that’s how, that’s how you used to make some bombs safe then. You’d take them away and then blow them up.
TJ: Sorry?
DE: You’d make some bombs safe by taking them away and blowing them up.
TJ: No. We just used to take the detonator out. You didn’t blow them up.
DE: Oh ok.
TJ: You took the detonators out. It was easy enough. Just pin and pick them up. It was when you couldn’t get at them and you had to roll them over. Most you could, you know get the detonators out and then kick them like a football.
DE: So, what, how did you treat the ones that you couldn’t get the detonator out of?
TJ: Well, just outside the aerodrome. We used to take them out and there would be a gunnery range and some big pits of sand. We used to put it in the sand and then blow them up. Some were too dangerous. You daren’t take them to the beach. You had to blow them up but if you could, in the sand and that they were alright from the range. From the firing range. Happy days. And I don’t know why but the range at Catfoss, the back of it got blown out altogether. I don’t know whether I was responsible. Somebody had done something wrong and it blew the back of the range out. It was probably me. I don’t know. Happy days.
DJ: During the war did you go into Lincoln? Did you go into Lincoln much?
TJ: Did what?
DJ: During the war —
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: Did you go in to Lincoln much? Did you visit Lincoln?
TJ: No. Did I do what during the war, Dave?
DJ: Go to Lincoln.
TJ: Yes.
DJ: In to Lincoln on a night or —
TJ: Oh yeah.
DJ: On your days off.
TJ: Yeah. No. Not a good night but there were nice pubs in Lincoln. They were all good. And if you were in uniform it wasn’t often you paid for beer, you know.
DJ: Oh right.
TJ: We had bomb disposal badges on, you see. Show them. It was —
DJ: Oh, that was worthwhile was it?
TJ: Free booze.
DE: Ok.
TJ: Happy days.
DE: I think, I think I will stop the interview unless have you got, have you got any other stories you’d like to tell me?
TJ: Offhand? [pause] Maybe. I was trying to think of some [pause] I think we had a bomb dump outside of camp at, in Lincolnshire. Just outside Lincoln. And there was six of us got blown up there. I was lucky. I’d just got out, but on bomb disposal there and I’d been. I’d done mine, and I went and let Fred, he had six to do. This was in Lincoln itself. He got blown up and killed. So, you get a second chance, you know. But most, most bombs were quite safe really. You’d go to the station and you’d bring about twenty, five hundred pounders back on the lorry. They’d sometimes roll off on the street. People in the street galloped for miles. But they wouldn’t go off on their own. That was from the station and they’d rolled down the hill in Lincoln. People galloping for bloody miles.
DJ: Who, who trained you?
TJ: Eh?
DJ: Who, what training did you get to start bomb disposal?
TJ: I was an armourer, you see. If you were an armourer, you did the lot.
DJ: And was that part of your armoury training then? How to dismantle bombs.
TJ: Yeah. Yeah.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: You did guns and bombs but if, when you went on something special you had to go on a special course.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: Because there were so many different machine guns and bombs and that.
DJ: Right.
TJ: You got your basic bomb training.
DJ: And that was it.
TJ: It covered most things but not everything. Bombs aren’t very nice things.
DJ: No.
TJ: You don’t get a second warning.
DJ: Did people ever refuse?
TJ: Eh?
DJ: Did people ever refuse to load bombs?
TJ: No. No.
DE: No.
TJ: No. A part of the job, you know. You did it. There might have been something dodgy. They would have been sort of, not gone off but semi, semi detonated.
DJ: So —
TJ: And people were scared.
DJ: So —
TJ: Yeah.
DJ: For safety reasons. Yeah.
TJ: You never sent anybody into that. You’d do it remote, you know. Blow it up. Because you couldn’t see how dangerous a detonator was. It was there, but you know. You didn’t take any chances. Blew it up away from the camp and away from the bombs. Explosives aren’t very nice.
DE: I think I’m going to, going to press pause now and we’ll stop. Ok. Are there any questions?
DJ: Not really. No. Not really.
DE: Ok. I’ll just say thank you very much for, for talking to me.
TJ: Sorry I’ve not much to tell you. I’ll probably remember something when you’ve gone.
DE: Oh, of course you will. Yeah.
DJ: Did you have a skirmish with the law? Did you have a skirmish with the law when you —
TJ: A what?
DJ: In Lincoln, did you have problems with the law? The police or the —
DE: Not really.
DJ: Authorities. There’s something in your record that I thought oh.
TJ: No. No, I had a good war down in Lincoln, you know.
DJ: Yeah.
TJ: I mean the bomb disposal we did it was like every day work after one day.
DJ: Yeah. Right. Ok.
DJ: Happy times.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Thomas Jordan
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-09-22
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Yemen (Republic)
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincoln
England--Hornsea
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
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00:52:55 Audio Recording
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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AJordanT210922
PJordanT2101
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas Jordan was born and raised up in Hornsea, East Yorkshire, learning to fly privately at Hedon aerodrome, near Hull and joined the RAF wanting to be a pilot. However, after failing the eyesight requirements, he trained as an armourer, dealing with transporting, arming them and loading the bombs on to the aircraft. On one occasion, moving several not live bombs through Lincoln, one fell of the transport, rolling down the hill, scattering people, although there were no injuries. Thomas also undertook bomb disposal, travelling to crashed aircraft and making the bombload safe. Working from RAF Cosford in Shropshire, RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and also spending time in Aden. Thomas worked on several different aircraft, including Lancaster, Halifax and Mosquito bombers. While he stated that working closely with explosives was safe, mostly, he did lose several friends to accidents.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Andy St. Denis
bomb disposal
bombing
bombing up
ground personnel
incendiary device
military living conditions
mine laying
RAF Cosford
RAF Scampton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2048/33184/AMcCulloughF210621.1.mp3
d8b712349412abcb5c40a9cda95fb48e
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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McCullough, Fred
F McCullough
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history with Fred McCullough about his uncle, Sergeant Henry McCullough (645957, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 61 Squadron and was killed 9 March 1943. <br /><br />The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. <br /><br />Additional information on Henry MucCullough is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/115432/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-06-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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McCullough, F
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: Ok. So that’s recording. So, this is an interview with Fred McCullough about his Uncle Harry or Henry. Sergeant Harry McCullough. He was a flight engineer with 61 Squadron. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. It’s taking place over the telephone. Fred is in Tasmania and the time is sometime just after 6pm and I’m in the UK and it’s sometime just after 9am. So, Fred, thanks very much for agreeing to do this. This telephone interview. Obviously, your uncle died before you were born. How did your family remember him and what’s your experiences of his memory when you were growing up?
FM: Well, his name was just brought up obviously from time to time in my early years living in Belfast. You know. From my father mainly. He obviously, he was killed three years, I was born in 1946 so I never did meet him. My elder, my older brother had vague memories of him but mine are, mine are all from photographs and sort of family stories basically. And it wasn’t until later years, I mean as a young lad there was a lot of, a lot of our family were involved with various aspects of the military during the Second World War. My father was in the 8th Army. He was in the [unclear] campaign and the Italian campaign. My Uncle Harry who was killed, his younger brother, younger brother Joe also was in the RAF and had, he was taken prisoner in in Greece, just north of Athens for quite a while and so a few stories and then he was released and we have back in Northern Ireland. So a few stories from my father and his brother basically that I know of the background of my Uncle Harry really. And its probably not until my later years, when you’re a bit older you sort of start really taking all this stuff in. So it’s not really until probably when I was in my fifties and then I was married with children my father and mother came visiting quite a few times from Northern Ireland to Tasmania. And it’s not until you’re a little bit older that you start to take a bit of interest in your family history and where you’re from. Also, I had taken a lot of interest in more local history. I worked for a while at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery here at [unclear] and started to learn, take on board more about your surroundings and the people that led to where we are now. So that’s probably how I came to be interested in the first place. My father brought his logbook out and gave it to me in the late 1990s. I want to say something like logbook. That makes it a sort of concrete bit of documentation as opposed to just a story but it was from then on that I took a more personal interest.
[recording interrupted]
FM: We were lucky that the logbook actually was on a whole passed from my grandfather to my, to the eldest brother in the family. My father was one of four boys and two girls. Harry, who was the second eldest. An older one again and he had, he had all our family logbooks and history and medals and all that sort of stuff. So, I don’t know why it came in my direction because as I say have an older brother. He lives in [unclear] in the South of Ireland but for some reason they decided maybe it was because of my artwork and [unclear] with family history but his medals were given to me. I have them here beside me hanging up on the wall in fact with his photograph and so through that sort of thing my father bringing those out to Australia and giving them to me was what sort of triggered my interest in the background. There had been different pieces prior to that. And then I suppose I started looking at the logbook and just starting random pieces of work based on, on the information in the logbook that was operating to Essen [unclear] and so on. So I just took a random one and started doing that and after a while it became largely because I did the series from, it was in his tenth operation as you know that he was killed.
DE: Yeah.
FM: So it just seemed logical that I, from that sequence I did an introductory painting called, “Above and beyond,” and it was all to do with, the paintings are quite abstract in, visually with perhaps [unclear] relating to the contents on the back. But interestingly these paintings, and I did ten paintings on his logbook and then I did a conclusion painting which was based on Fürstenfeldbruck which is where he was shot down north of Munich and [unclear] a photograph of his first burial site, the cross etcetera. Him and the crew.
DE: Yeah.
FM: So, I did sort of contain the [unclear] twelve paintings in all and I have that series here at my home in Glengarry. I’ve used it a number of times. Particularly at an exhibition in Hobart back in 2015 as a lead-in. But in 2009 I put, I reproduced [unclear] on canvas [unclear] and added more information from the logbook of aircrew names etcetera and dates and flight times and that’s what I took to Belfast in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast and all those things that are now in East Kirkby next to Lancaster, “Just Jane.” The Belfast was significant in that my father and his family all grew up in the very centre of the city. My grandfather was a fireman.
DE: Yeah.
FM: All the family lived there from the early days in the fire station. That was prior to him joining the Army and therefore [unclear] where they were living. So his family had a big association with the fire brigade and just coincidentally on the Waterfront Hall where I exhibited is just across, literally a hundred and fifty, two hundred metres across the road [unclear] building in the centre of Belfast from where they lived. So that made it quite appropriate. Yeah. So that, that’s as far as that first series goes. I, after I’d displayed those paintings I also then and the coincidence of where all these events took place and my wife and I travelled from Australia. I’m to Ireland virtually every year right up until my father died in 2003. My mother lived until 2011 so I would go home every year for a number of weeks to look, just to check on her and on the way my wife if she was with me rented a van unit and travelled [unclear] stayed there and cycled out to find Durnbach War Cemetery and you know obviously had a look where the whole crew are buried.
DE: Yeah.
FM: Which was quite a fantastic location. When I got there they were actually renovating. They were actually landscaping over landscaping and they had actually closed that one section of the cemetery. So I thought well I’ve travelled twelve thousand miles. I stepped over the rope to get in to have a closer look and I had with me a small, about four inch by twenty section of a Lancaster I’d purchased from the International Bomber Command. They were, they had refurbished the tail section of the Phantom of the Ruhr. They were selling off small sections which were advertised through the Lancaster Association. And I had bought, I bought two small sections and one of them I had engraved with the family names starred my father, sister, my grandfather and grandmother.
DE: Yeah.
FM: And I sort of hastily buried that.
DE: Oh wow.
FM: Beneath the headstones of where the crew are buried in Durnbach. So hopefully that is still there.
DE: I’m sure it is. Yeah.
FM: Yeah. So that was significant and I brought back, I have sitting here in front of me a pinecone from Durnbach, from the cemetery and I took two small soil samples from the, from the area because from Munich we flew to England.
DE: Yeah.
FM: I’d arranged through the RAAF Association here in Launceston in Tasi, to put me in contact with flight lieutenant [Hughie] Hector. Now, I hadn’t ever met [Hughie] Hector but I had close communications with her so I told her I wanted to visit Syerston where he flew from. She arranged, and she arranged something. I knew they were flying gliders.
DE: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
FM: Up there. And through her she arranged that I would get in. We go there and they actually if we went to, we spent two or three nights in that area and they actually took me up on two glider flights off the same runway that Harry would have used in 1943.
DE: Oh wow. So you got to see the area from, from the air. Yeah.
FM: Yeah. The whole, the whole set up of the, of the Trent coming through at the end of the runway and frost and all that sort of stuff. And I was really lucky getting that because we visited there in 2017 and I think there has become stricter now with the Ministry of Defence. The young gentlemen that came virtually was very sceptical that I had actually managed to get a flight there. He was telling me who the pilot and that was so it happened some of the photographs of that flight and that, dad actually encouraged me and said [unclear] state of the logbook by the end of the series based on the glider flights flying from there quite a few painting based on that and one of the painting which was a link between that, a glider flying and again randomly chose one aircraft W4270. I did one on that and within a number of weeks just coincidentally again through the [unclear] link at the Lancaster Association they had an article about [unclear] services and it just coincidental I recognised the aircraft number and that then triggered off that he had, my uncle had actually flown that, that aircraft two weeks before he had his operation to Dusseldorf and Nuremberg and the aircraft I think was probably shot up a bit and they then used it as a training aircraft for another crew. And so in this the article was saying pieces of that aircraft had been found in the area by a local farmer [unclear] Ablewhite who you may —
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
FM: Have heard. They were sitting on the Memorial. Anyway, I got in touch with Di Ablewhite through the Lancaster Association and when we visited them in 2007, sorry [unclear] my times now.
DE: That doesn’t matter.
FM: Yeah. We were able to look at some [unclear] very small fragments of the aircraft and they knew it was that aircraft because one of the fragments in particular had a serial number on it. And that’s how they identified it still. So then that started me off on the ones that I sent you, Dan.
DE: Yeah.
FM: The paintings, “The Seven from Syerston.” So, and they took me to see the location where the aircraft went down and that sort of thing and again through as you know, a man who follows history the more you find out the more, the less you know.
DE: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
FM: Lead to a bigger picture. I discovered that Warne who was the pilot had actually flown with my uncle’s crew at one point when my uncle must have been off on leave or doing a course or something but they did do a flight. It was an operation to Milan with [Walters]as the pilot and all the rest of the crew so he must have flown as second dickie or perhaps as the flight engineer with the same crew that my uncle had flown with. So, there it was. What maybe just a number of weeks later that Warne and his crew were doing that training flight from Syerston and the aircraft had engine failure and the crash. So there was that double link if you like from finding out the name of the crew and the crew had flown with another crew. And then handling bits of aircraft were just [unclear]
DE: Yeah.
FM: So all of that became part of a greater exhibition I did in 2015 at a gallery in Hobart. About seventy paintings I had and the lead in of the exhibition was to do with his logbook series. And then that led into my experiencing the, “Seven from Syerston.” Then other, other aircraft, local ones near in Australia came with one called Little [Neva]. It was a [unclear] bomber crashed on the way back from New Guinea and I took, that coincidentally was called after my daughter. Coincidences. It was called Little Neva. And it was something based on that. Flying up the Gulf of [unclear] and there was the wreck of the aircraft. it’s pretty well inaccessible. So all of those sort of the Bomber Command stuff was the beginning of the sequence if you like and lead in. But then gave me a pathway through to explore other aspects in a broader way.
DE: And so you know your original interest in this was, was sparked by the stories you’d told, you’d been told about your uncle and finding the logbook. And then, “The Seven from Syerston.” It’s, it’s you know it’s largely it seems to me it’s a coincidence that you chose this aircraft that crashed that you found later on had a, had a connection. Yeah.
FM: Yeah.
DE: That’s incredible.
FM: It was actually a coincidence to that is for some reason I’d chosen as W4270 prior to reading about that because it featured in one of the larger paintings with the number. Yeah. I mean my paintings that are not paintings of aircraft which perhaps disappoints some people. I know people tend to like things like look like what they expect to see. But I find my paintings, the way I do that I’m able to include broader information than just depicting an aircraft if you know what I mean. It was pulling other information together past and present.
DE: Yeah. I mean I’ve looked. Looked at the work you do and yeah it’s mixed media isn’t it? It’s a mixture of Perspex and acrylic paint and digital and, and there on the, they’re unframed, aren’t they? Just on the canvas. Is there, is there a reason behind that?
FM: Sorry Dan? [unclear]
DE: Is there, as I remember they’re not framed. Is, is there a reason behind, behind that? Is that —
FM: No. The actual central surface has a small trim around them. The, the logbook series they have a frame. The frame is actually part of the painting. The central piece of the painting and the central piece I tend to imply it’s more about the person, the experience. The experience of the moment in time if you’re sitting there in a very confused situation and the big broader outside piece which had been in the original pieces of 30 ml of craftwood with the middle bit inserted in that. And the outside of it is more to do with the aircraft so, but at times, and the same with the [unclear] at times the outside finds itself competing with the inside and vice versa because of the confusion of the moment.
DE: Yeah.
FM: I’m not trying to replicate the situation but I would imagine they were having a very confusing time and the confusion of the moment the inside and the outside sort of come together. [unclear] outside the aircraft the centre. The frame itself is the frame but it’s also part of —
DE: Yeah. It’s part of the art. So yeah, it’s quite, it’s quite abstract and there’s bits that represent the crew and there’s bits that represent the aircraft and then its about the relationship between the aircrew and the aircraft I suppose. Is that —
FM: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. And particularly, there’s one there is only one which you actually see a figure [unclear] a clear image of my Uncle Harry from a photograph. His head is the operational [wing pattern] and I used his head. I engraved that. I engraved his head and made it on a bit of Perspex and then in the ink so that name fits over the top of a piece of the painting. So you get an interaction between the transparency of the Perspex and the paint and the images behind. So it’s almost like a reflected or refracted imagery coming together as one. You bring the person and the object together.
DE: I suppose there’s a sort of ghostly element to it as well a bit. You know it could be interpreted like that anyway. I mean, yeah. I see. I see your point about you know some people who are expecting to see a sort of photo, realistic painting of, of people in aircraft but my, my son has just completed a degree in animation so I’m, he uses mixed media and he’s very abstract as well. So I kind of get that sort of thing. It’s all about impressions and feelings isn’t it?
FM: Yeah. Well, the guy who did the interview in Belfast [unclear] prior the afternoon before the opening. I mean he said there were a lot of aircrew and there were and I actually gave a short talk the previous day to the RAF Association in Belfast. A number of those guys there and they were all coming that night. And he said, ‘Well, you know what do you think they’re looking over it?’ And I said well it depends [unclear] open ended. Different people will take different things from from the work.’ And I said, ‘I suspect with people who are coming from the RAF Association perhaps would be more interested in the documentation and information that they can read as opposed to interpreting [unclear] in mind you know and make up with composition. So —
DE: Yeah. But that’s, that’s included on the, in the artwork itself as well, isn’t it?
FM: Yeah. Yeah. The crew names and the numbers and the flight times, and the operational times. All that is included. More so in the three that are in England. I would choose one where we had a little bit of information. Series one they’re in relief and for example you know the location of the operational [unclear] would be Munich or Dusseldorf or whatever was actually raised up as three dimensional relief from the object. So the huge one which I have here is much more physically three dimensional. They are more relief panels whereas by transcribing it on to canvas obviously it’s more of a flatter painting.
DE: Yeah.
FM: And I did that but then I had the work tools so they’re not just reproductions of originals. They are another step forward and more information added. And also logically it had taken me twelve thousand miles to actually transport them to Belfast and they were, just rolled the canvases up and then I put them together, set them all together in frames and what have you while I was in Belfast trying to make the exhibition transformation from there.
DE: And they’re the ones that are now in East Kirkby. Yeah?
FM: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. I went to East Kirkby in 2017 with my cousin who lives in Woking and another cousin is [unclear] outside London. And she was getting married and my cousin and my wife came with me and my cousin, Sam who lives in Woking who has also been stored a lot of family history as well. And the only living relative of my Uncle Harry and my father was a sister and she was alive until she died about two or three years ago. But she came with us from, we drove from London up to, well they drove, we took the train up and met up with her, went to, I went to East Kirkby and had a look at the paintings [unclear] quite a few [unclear] there. Just Jane and the paintings [unclear] it isn’t actually hanging. In fact, it’s interesting, a coincidence in one history cabinet I discovered, we always assumed that the crew, my uncle’s crew, Sergeant Walters I always assumed that they were all [unclear] at the beginning and end of their career but in fact I discovered an [unclear] in one of the glass cabinets there [unclear] the crew prior to my uncle joining them like in the November of 1942. So I [unclear] five operations with Sergeant Walters [unclear] he actually had quite a few. More than ten when they were done.
DE: Oh right.
FM: Operations of my uncle and that was a [unclear] thing because my father [unclear] was that he thought my uncle was getting very close to his tour but in fact, as you know a tour is thirty operations.
DE: Yeah.
FM: So he was far from the end. But I think he might have discovered that in fact, the historian we met and my grandfather was perhaps it was Walters and the rest of the crew that had done a lot more than the ten operations. So you know they might have been getting close to the end of their tour. They were just unfortunate to not get out of it altogether [unclear]
[recording interrupted]
FM: Flight engineer. He joined in 1939 and he went in, he trained, this is just information he trained at St Athan in Wales, in Cardiff as a flight mechanic. My grandparents, it’s quite funny because I have a letter here. The last and only letter I’ve got which [unclear] gave which my uncle wrote. He must have written it [unclear] from St Athan. I can read it. Would you like me to read you a little bit of it?
DE: Yeah. If, if you’re ok. Yeah.
FM: This is a letter from my Uncle Harry to my father and mother who were still in Belfast. This is in 1939 and he obviously had only joined. He’d had gone to St Athan and Glamorgan for training and he says just a few lines, “Dear Sam and Marg, just a few lines to wish you luck and give you, give you Sammy [pause] Britain,” oh try again, “Britain has a lot of men who are so called heroes out here without you joining. So for God’s sake use your brains and stay at home and leave it to Joe and I.’ Joe was the younger brother who was in the RAF [unclear] 1944 and became a POW. “And let them do things to keep Jim from doing.” So also, he was the younger brother. So he had to [unclear] join up because they were streetwise and they can, “They know the ropes. They’ll not get into any trouble. If you do join now you would have to, you will have a hell of a time. They’ll push you all over the place. It’s not so bad for us. I’ve seen others train and the best way is to run like hell. Believe me I ain’t no hero and don’t intend on pushing my way to the front. I hope to be able to use my brains also and come out alright. If I don’t I will have had a good time.” Anyway, and it goes on in a more personal level of celebrating out on the town that night.
DE: Yeah.
FM: Local people he’d met and they’d got to take [unclear] Someone obviously knows and stay at home. By the looks of thing you will have plenty to do.” My father was in the Reserve Police at the time in Belfast. A [unclear] special. So there’s a man and he went on. Trained as a flight mechanic and obviously then obviously with the big Lancasters came on board and he’s obviously seen operations of that sort.
DE: Yeah.
FM: And for some reason ignored his own advice and became a flight engineer.
DE: Yeah. With, with the expansion of the RAF you know ground, ground crew were under a lot of pressure to, to remuster as, as air crew and particularly as flight engineers. So yeah.
FM: Yeah. And that would have suited him in a way because he always had a, one of the photographs that comes up on the internet he always has a [unclear] motorcycle and how they work and —
DE: Yeah.
FM: Weekend rides on the motorbike when they were living at the fire station pre-war which obviously [unclear] a Sunday morning ride and would snap the bike and put back together again. So he obviously was mechanically minded so the engineering and things obviously suited him. And then just transferred that skill and information interest to aircraft.
DE: Yeah.
FM: Yeah.
DE: And I’m just, it’s interesting that, you know you discovered that the rest of the crew had done more ops than him. Perhaps, I mean flight engineers weren’t needed in, in aircraft like Wellingtons so perhaps they’d fly on ops in something, you know, twin engined, and were then moved, yeah, to 61 Squadron wasn’t it? So yeah. Interesting.
FM: Again, some of the interesting things you find in the logbook after one of the operations they didn’t land at Syerston and they landed [unclear] they were then because their aircraft and the thing actually it may have been 4270 which was damaged and they flew back to Syerston and he flew back as a mid-upper back from England where the base was at Duxford or —
DE: Yeah.
FM: Bottesford. To Syerston, and he was mid-upper and the pilot was Flight Lieutenant Hopgood. And then again it turns out Hopgood in the end, they were his, they were down at Syerston introducing, the radial Lancaster being introduced and Hopgood was ferrying a radial Lancaster around Syerston and Harry just hitched a ride as a mid-upper. But it turns out Hopgood, as you probably know turned out to have had a second go at the Mohne Dam.
DE: Yes. A bit of a famous name. Yeah.
FM: Yeah. So they were, they were most, a lot of the Dambusters were selected from that, from Syerston and they formed that squadron command but I guess not from Syerston and of course by that time Harry was obsolete on 9th of March 1943 this [unclear] called the Dambusters.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
FM: But [unclear] there was fantastic. I mean [unclear] operational place the whole landscape there [unclear] and we really, we’ve had two trips around that area and fantastic bit of landscape. Unfortunately, when we went into this with my aunt [unclear] who is now dead they wouldn’t let us on the day for security reasons and she and my cousin went back to London and my wife and I went back the next day and chanced our arm at the gate and spoke in the intercom and explained we were just over from Australia and the guy came down and could take us in, ‘I’ll take you in for five minutes.’ [unclear] and what have you but Margaret she never did get the chance to actually go on the base even. However, a lot of the side roads you are able to drive up and park right next to the [unclear] where the bays were.
DE: Yeah.
FM: So she at least got a feel of where he had flown from which was pretty, probably pretty emotional for her. Because she was only young. She’d have only been a baby. Very young. Well young. During her early, in her teens when her brother was killed she was. Yeah. So she actually joined the WAAFs towards the tail end of the war. She must only have been about seventeen.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
FM: She was a WAAF until the war finished.
DE: Do you think the —
FM: So I don’t, I don’t know Dan what else I can add. I mean I could ramble all day. I’m not sure what you really want.
DE: Well, you’ve answered most of my questions. I understand now your new project you’re looking at sort of a maritime trilogy is it?
FM: Yeah. I I had again a lot of my things become not necessarily coincidences in my family and what have you. My grandfather on my mother’s side was with the Royal Irish Reg. He was a runner in the First World War. I did as part of that exhibition in Hobart I did a space based on the Great War including some information on his background and I visited a friend of mine in Melbourne with the Sandringham Yacht Club. I understand that he sailed [unclear] actually he sailed from Sandringham Yacht Club. It turned out there was a eighty five metre 1917 British submarine which they brought to Australia in 1918. One of five and in the end they [unclear] scuttling it at the breakwater at Sandringham and it lies there to its massive hulk. So I did a [unclear] from that and that led me in to all the maritime information. My daughter is up in Queensland near Fraser Island. At the back of Fraser Island there’s a boat called, a ship called the Moheno. The Moheno was built in in Dumbarton in Scotland in 1904. She was the New Zealand Steamship Company but they brought it to New Zealand and took it back and converted it into a hospital ship and it served Gallipoli.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
FM: [unclear] Then locally here we have working, having a worked in the museum here I knew of a vessel called the Nairana. Now, the Nairana as it turns out because [unclear] I started looking at history of the different vessels it turns out it was built in the same shipyard as the Moheno in Dumbarton. And the Nairana was a fantastic looking vessel because they converted into an aircraft carrier in 1917 which is [unclear] livery. So you got this, these two vessels built in the same place for two totally different functions and in the Great War and off the back of [unclear] the aircraft by gantry from the back of the carrier in 1917. I mean that was, aircraft were only flying what five years or something from their invention. This thing was very much it appears the dazzle had been very [unclear]
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Dazzle paint’s fantastic, isn’t it?
FM: [unclear] 1911.
DE: Yeah.
FM: [unclear] if you like but the aircraft was picked up [unclear] there was an aircraft called [unclear] one, two, three of the top of my head and they were built in Belfast from where I was born. So there was a bit of a Belfast link there and also in that the Nairana at the end of its service went back to Australia. It was refurbished at Harland and Wolff Shipyard [unclear] that was built in East Belfast and then it came and it served between that and the Tasman run between Melbourne and Tasmania until 1948. So again, yes I did that maritime thing with bringing past and present together if you like. I did it on the Moheno on Fraser Island and took a lot of photographs and I presume that Maritime Exhibition is until the 19th. Yeah. But again [unclear] even though it, even if it’s maritime it still has the actual flavour of —
DE: Yeah.
FM: Past. Bringing past and present together.
DE: And the geographical connections as well. I’m just, I’m just looking at my notes and some of the questions I’d put. I think I read or heard somewhere that during some of your research you were, you got in touch with a family member of one of your uncle’s crew.
FM: Yes. Well, I I exchanged emails many years ago with, I think it was Young. A Canadian crew. And it was a bit strange. I’d go on to the emails but they weren’t enthusiastic emails [unclear] and whether it was a brother or uncle I’m not quite sure but sort of lost that chunk out. And the only other one that I sort of come across was the machine gunner called Briggs. He was called Briggs and he was only twenty two and he actually appears, there’s a photograph of him in the last few years. More recent form of publication for the Lancaster Association. I had a query if it was him. A guy called Jack Waltham who lives in [unclear] sorry in Newark and [unclear] giving them to the Lancaster Association to publish by this Jack Waltham and I have a telephone number for him. I actually wrote a letter to him because I would have liked to have got a copy of that photograph but I’ve had no response.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
FM: But at least I have a magazine with a photograph.
DE: Yeah.
FM: Of one guy, a twenty three year old in it. So other than that that’s the only sort of contact I managed to have with any sort of vaguely any crew. I’d love to get a photograph of the crew but I haven’t been lucky with that forthcoming. I don’t know how whether there were any taken or what have you.
DE: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean it always astonishes me that you know so many years after the, after the events that people keep coming forward with, with photographs and you know bits of memorabilia and things like logbooks and letters and diaries and those sorts of things so, yeah.
FM: The only photograph I have of Uncle Harry in uniform I don’t know where it was taken. [It came in a case] with my grandfather but there doesn’t seem to be any insignia at all on his tunic. But it’s pretty [unclear] formal tunic but I can’t see any. He actually looks quite old in it. He was. He was probably older than the rest, any of the crew at twenty seven when he was killed.
DE: Yeah.
FM: And the pilot was twenty six. Most of the crew were around the mid-twenties other than the two, the gunners was only twenty two sort of age. But I haven’t any of him in any sort of formal [unclear] insignia or what have you. I do have, sort of in here medals and that sort of stuff and in [unclear] I have the one that was awarded to him for service because there was no campaign medal as you know for, for bomber crew and you know three or four years ago they did actually strike a bar with a —
DE: Yeah. The Bomber Command clasp. Yeah.
FM: And the clasp. Yeah. And when I was there she [unclear] gave that to me myself from that year because she had a medal collection. So yeah.
DE: Yeah.
FM: If you’re interested I have actually got sitting in front of me here on the table is my, one of my nieces who lives in Belfast she sent me a poppy from the poppies that were exhibited in the Tower of London.
DE: Oh yes.
FM: There was like thirty thousand of them and she, at the end of it they sold them off and she bought one. Beautifully packaged they were. A really good project they did. She sent me that and I, what I did with that [unclear] I have it mounted on a beautiful slab of blackwood which is a Tasmanian timber with part of a shell case inverted and that, then the stem comes up through that and on the shell case I have engraved my uncle’s name, my father’s name, service number plus my wife’s, my wife’s from Tasmania, her dad and what have you all served with the Australian Army in North Africa, Borneo and what have you. And my grandfather named [unclear] I’ll send you a photograph of that if I can bring it up on the internet. It’s just a really nice piece of sculpture. I mean it was a fantastic project the installation they made in the Tower of London.
DE: Yeah. It was. Yeah. Yeah. It really was.
FM: So rather than just keeping the poppy I made a sort of [feature] of it and I actually included that in the Hobart exhibition of 2015 as part of the [unclear]. Yeah.
DE: Smashing.
FM: Quite coincidentally in the 2015 exhibition I, there was a bit of, particularly a local Legacy here which is a bit like the British Legion. They look after wives and families of ex-servicemen and a guy I met who was a pilot in the helicopters in Vietnam. He got the DFC. A guy called Peter [unclear] Through Peter I had a table and I actually sat next to him for the two weeks it was on and I paid for three panels and they were one from the Great War period, one for the 1939/45, some post-war things and I created part, I’d done a sort of preparation of imagery as a sort of background imagery and the bottom I gridded it up and people who visited the exhibition were invited to put something on the bottom segment of these paintings and they were up for auction. For sale at auction then all the money raised from those three paintings went to Legacy.
DE: Oh, that’s a good idea. Yeah.
FM: Some very interesting people came in and gave me a whole range of thumb prints on that. Some from ex-Lancaster crew [unclear] who was Australian who flew DFC [unclear] years ago and a lot of interesting people came through and put a thumbprint. Then I took them away, worked on the painting and people then could bid for them.
DE: Wow, ok. Yeah.
FM: Initially the poppy inspired me. I did some wood blocks based on the poppy installation. That was going to be too complicated so the thumbprints were the second best thing and that turned out actually better. Much more personal.
DE: Yeah. Definitely. I mean some people, some people collect signatures but a thumbprint is, is —
FM: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. Ok. I just have, I just have one more question that I usually ask in these sorts of interviews. It’s just how, how you feel about the way Bomber Command is being remembered. I just wondered you know if you have a different perspective from some because you know you’ve seen how it’s remembered in the UK and in Australia.
FM: Mixed feelings because only recently a book was being published that mentioned Bomber Harris. And they make Bomber Harris out to be an ogre of course. I mean they mention I think that Bomber Command went too far with their bombing too and they perhaps didn’t really need to but I I can understand why [unclear] much longer. So I have mixed feelings about it. Some [unclear] in the community perhaps think it shouldn’t have happened in terms of how they went about it. I’m perhaps more sympathetic as to why they had to do it. I mean my, my mother was actually at the receiving end of the Blitz. They called it the Blitz in Belfast in 1941 because she, we grew up in East Belfast. My brother was born. My brother was like one year old and my father was away in Africa and my mother’s house, she remembered the Blitz and [unclear] coming down. And lucky enough after the second wave they had taken her out to the country so back home the house was demolished. So family wise was quite an interface out of that fact that Britain had [unclear] as Churchill said they’d sown the wind, they shall inherit the whirlwind but I can, I can understand that attitude. And the things is all the Northern Irish men were all volunteers. There was no conscription in Northern Ireland so we were very much there voluntarily for whatever they were [unclear]
DE: Yeah.
FM: If you like, which is another story.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
FM: Well, Dan I don’t know what else [unclear] I’ve answered all your questions or made them more confusing but —
DE: No. It’s been wonderful. It’s really interesting. Yeah. Thank you very much unless you can think of anything else to add I shall, I shall press stop on the recording now. But [pause] yeah.
FM: Well, [unclear] one thing I’ll do I’ll forward you a photograph from the internet if I can bring it up on the poppy sculpture. Because I think that link [unclear] which are down here. Yeah. So, as I say if you have any other specific questions [unclear] if you want to ask by email or something I’m happy to reply to you.
DE: Smashing. Yeah.
FM: There are, there have been a number of articles. In fact, you can probably access them. There was an article with a guy who did an interview and it appeared in the Belfast, a weekend Belfast paper 2019. The guy lives in Canada. America. From Los Angeles actually. A writer. He contacted me after the [unclear] exhibition in 2019 and he publicised [unclear] with his family background and there’s a double page spread in the Belfast Sunday paper talking about [unclear] operations in their family. What he did and [unclear] and what have you.
DE: Right.
FM: And it also appeared, a similar article was printed in the, in the Irish Herald in California prior to that so there are other people’s websites. It gave a potted story about [unclear]
DE: Okey dokey.
FM: Questions [unclear] and then he put it all together and he was a professional journalist he went on to publish them. Yeah.
DE: Right. Well yeah, we can have a look for that.
FM: Yeah. I could ramble on as I say which I’d probably be repeating myself after a while. The only thing that Durnbach as a cemetery was fantastic. It was a beautiful location. It took my wife three hours to get to it because we were staying at [unclear] which was about thirty kilometre from the main route. You were directed by the scenic country route and the Germans are worse than the Irish for giving directions I can tell you. It took us a long time to find the cemetery and they didn’t call it a war cemetery they call it a soldier’s cemetery. The local population there. But we found it eventually and had a look at that. My son actually had been there the year before.
DE: Ok.
FM: With his then partner. He’s since married her and they were tourists. They toured around. They went by car and just coincidentally when he was there [unclear] out of nowhere no people, very quiet and while they were sitting at the headstones of the crew there was a fly past of a jet aircraft.
DE: Oh wow.
FM: They did a pass and did a half wing pass over the cemetery because I think [unclear] is still an American base not far from Munich. May have been probably again coincidental but it was were quite strange that this happened.
DE: Yeah.
FM: [unclear] flew over the cemetery.
DE: It was. Yeah. It felt quite poignant I imagine. Yeah.
FM: Yeah. But the cemetery itself is in a brilliant location. A brilliant location. Real atmosphere. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully my piece of the Lancaster is still at the headstone.
DE: I’m sure it is because, yeah no one else is going to go digging around there are they? So, yeah. Right. I shall press, press stop on the recording. Right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Fred McCullough
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2021-06-21
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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00:48:22 Audio Recording
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Sound
Identifier
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AMcCulloughF210621
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Pending review
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Description
An account of the resource
Fred McCullough discusses his series of abstract art works which are an homage to his uncle, Sergeant Harry McCullough, a flight engineer with 61 Squadron. He was killed on his tenth operation and is buried at Durnbach Cemetery.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Northern Ireland--Belfast
Tasmania
Great Britain
Temporal Coverage
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2015
Contributor
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Julie Williams
61 Squadron
aircrew
arts and crafts
crash
flight engineer
killed in action
Lancaster
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Syerston
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1800/31331/ADennyPJ170223.1.mp3
39ed0effcaabb0dfc505eebcdbd89466
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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Denny, Janet
Patricia Janet Denny
P J Denney
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Janet Denny.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-02-27
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Denny, PJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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[Other]: All yours.
JD: That means start.
DE: Yes!
JD: My name is Janet Denny and my father was in Bomber Command, but he had quite an unusual story because he began the war as a committed pacifist. [Interference] I never knew him because he was shot down and lost on the very day that I was born and so he was always just a [\interference] photograph on the mantlepiece of my childhood home and I always knew he was a hero, but I didn’t ask very much about him because I didn’t want to upset my mother and my grandparents, and it wasn’t until my mother remarried after she had been a widow for twenty seven years, that I discovered some really interesting books and these were the diaries that my father had written in World War Two. And at the time I had small children, I was busy, so I put them away and thought I’d read them again later. And in fact I didn’t read them until forty years later, when I was myself by then a widow and I’d lost my eldest son, so I was feeling a bit bereft and I thought maybe this man in these diaries, my father, could help me through this horrible period in my life. It turned out he did, very much, because I read the diaries and I quite enjoy writing and I’d been on various writing holidays, and courses and so on, and anyway the top and bottom of it is, I decided to write a book about him. This is the book, which is called ‘The Man on the Mantelpiece’, because that’s what he was to me; he was just a photograph on a mantelpiece. And I needed to find out why he changed from being a pacifist into volunteering for Bomber Command. Now he was a very, he had very left wing political ideals as an eighteen year old. He was very intelligent, well read, but he came from a working class family. His parents had very little education, well, practically illiterate, but he won a scholarship to a grammar school and I think that wass where he was inspired to expand his range of thinking and reading, and he adopted these pacifist ideas. Anyway, this diary, which he keeps for the first month of the war, when he’s expounding his ideals and his beliefs and then it stops. And then two years later he starts another diary and he has volunteered for Bomber Command, and he’s married my mother, a childhood sweetheart in the meantime. So I had a mystery to solve: why did he change his mind? I was very lucky when I was reading this book in that my mother and my uncle, my father’s younger brother, were still alive and very interested and helpful. My mother actually couldn’t really tell me why he changed his mind. She said, well dear we didn’t really talk about things like that, which I found very irritating. Mum, why didn’t you, you’re an intelligent woman, why didn’t you talk about things like that, but then I had to remember that this was the 1940s when women held a very different situation in society: she was the little woman, really, at home. But my uncle was more helpful, I think he realised why, it was partly the Blitz, they lived in South East London, they lived through the Blitz, and my mother, my father found this very affecting, but it wasn’t only that: I think it was also because Hitler turned his face towards Russia and was going to invade Russia. Now Russia, to left leaning young men in the 1930s, was an icon of a good society. I do often wonder how my father’s views might have changed, had he lived, but at the time, yes, Russia was the ideal and the thought that Hitler was to going to invade Russia I think was the thing that really sparked my father into fighting. Well, I was able to follow him through his, all his training, eighteen months of training for Bomber Command. First he thought he was going to be a pilot and then for health reasons he wasn’t, he was demoted to a bomb aimer. Now, this was extra hard for my father because just before the war, the summer of 1939, he’d been visiting his dear pen friend in the Ruhr Valley in Germany, and he had promised his German friends that he would do nothing [emphasis] to harm them, or their country, and here he was as a bomb aimer and likely to be dropping his bombs on the very area where his friends lived. That must have been very tough. I follow him right through, following his diaries, and then I visited the places where he trained and compared life now and then. It was absolutely fascinating for me and I felt all the time that I was gradually discovering my father – very exciting! And anyway, I decided that I really wanted to write about this. First of all I was just going to write a few pages, and transcribe the diaries, add a few comments of my own, staple the pages together for my family. But then on a writing course I was encouraged by a tutor to take it more seriously and I went off and I did an MA in Creative Writing and they, very kindly, the markers gave me a Distinction and said I really must publish this. So that is how the book came about. Now in his diaries, my father says, there’s one section, where he’s, before he’s joined up, when he’s a clerk in a sugar factory, and he says, “Oh, I must be creative, I must write a book, build a house, do something creative,” and he says: “oh Lord help me! Cause I am a clerk,” and then another section when he says he really wants to live his whole span of life so that he can see his children – he’s talking about me – so that he can see his children, see if they are men or women, see if they are great or little and see if they are artists, and he says: “Let there be artists!” Well, I am doing my best to carry on the tradition. He himself was a writer and I have scraps of his writing, but not many unfortunately. Then another section in his diary he says, that, he said, “I really want to live my whole span of life, and I must survive, I will [emphasis] survive,” he says, “but if I don’t, well maybe those who are dear to me will like to keep this diary and find me still living in these pages.” Well, I feel quite jubilant that I have [emphasis] found him in those pages, and I hope others may find him in the pages of this book I’ve written, so, and I feel, at the end of the book I talk about, I talk to my father and I tell him how life is today and how his sacrifice and the sacrifice of all those other lives that were laid down, not only in Bomber Command, but throughout the world, actually on both sides of the conflict, how they have really benefited me and my generation, and future generations, because I have been able enjoy the benefits of post-war Britain. I had a very good free education, I had the benefits of a free National Health Service and I feel that really my generation is a very blessed one, thanks to his [emphasis] generation. Enough?
DE: Absolutely wonderful! Thank you very much. Is it okay if I just ask you a couple of questions?
JD: Of course.
DE: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command has been remembered?
JD: Well, I think it’s very sad that Bomber Command has not [emphasis] been at the forefront of our remembrances since the end of World War Two. I do understand the reasons, you know, the carpet bombing was very controversial and still is, I suppose, and within Bomber Command itself people had different views. In his diary my father talks about a conversation that he has with a veteran of World War One who tells him and his colleague when you get over Berlin, you know, just annihilate it and his colleague says yes of course we will, whereas my father says I couldn’t agree and he’s drawing back from that, it’s his pacifist conscience coming through. But, in recent years of course we’ve had the Memorial in London, which is lovely, but it is just a memorial with wonderful statues, but it doesn’t tell the story of Bomber Command and that’s why this project here is so exciting, because it does tell the story of exactly what happened and how these young men, and they were such young men, such young men, and the losses were so [emphasis] great, but it made such an enormous contribution to that victory, that we really must celebrate it.
DE: Smashing, thank you. Listen, I think we’ve got exactly what we need, thank you. I’m just, probably not able to, it fascinates me that the motive he had for leaving his first job was because he didn’t want to be part of a total war, and then the motive for joining the RAF was because he wanted to be part of the total war.
JD: Yes, I know. It was a complete turnaround, but so many people must have had that struggle, I think, you know, and I think it, that’s why I’m quite pleased, and people have said to me that this is an important book, because it does show that people had that struggle, okay some, like a lot of my father’s friends, who were pacifists, remained pacifists, but as he says, he admires them terrifically for standing out for their beliefs and of course they did their part. They were down the mines as Bevan Boys, or they driving ambulances, or you know, they were doing their bit for the war effort without actually [emphasis] fighting, so they were just as important.
DE: The struggle, it comes across in the book and now you’ve drawn a portrait of your father as a rounded character who has his flaws and his good points and I think it’s absolutely smashing.
JD: Well thank you, I’m really pleased to have written the book and I hope that lots of people are able to read it and gain something from it.
DE: Smashing, thank you.
JD: Good. Right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Janet Denny
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-23
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:13:52 Audio Recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ADennyPJ170223
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Janet Denny
Dan Ellin
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Talks about her father and her research into his life for her book 'The Man on the Mantelpiece'. Originally a pacifist, he later volunteered and served as a bomb aimer in Bomber Command. Janet talks bout her journey discovering her father’s time in the RAF and his feelings about bombing, including his friends in Germany.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
memorial
perception of bombing war
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1767/31030/PHarrisonRW2103.2.jpg
68ba54b381a50cb1b3a6a5dddfe026ed
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1767/31030/AHarrisonRW210227.2.mp3
f89cbb8d1f788819921f73e1430e9eeb
Dublin Core
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Title
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Harrison, Reginald Wilfred
R W Harrison
Harrison, Reg
Description
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13 items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Reg Harrison (b. 1922, R155986, J25826 Royal Canadian Air Force) and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 431 Squadron and was known as 'Crash' Harrison because he survived four crashes during training and operations.
The collection was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2021-02-27
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Harrison, RW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RH: I’m ready for take-off then.
DE: Yeah. I’ll do a very quick introduction and then, then we’ll start properly. So this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive with Flight Lieutenant Reg Harrison. My name is, is Dan Ellin. This is recorded over Zoom. Mr, Mr Harrison is in Saskatoon, Canada and it is Saturday the 27th of February 2021. It’s 10.30am in Saskatoon Canada and it’s 4.30pm in Lincoln in the UK. So, Reg, thank you very very much for agreeing to do this interview with, with me this morning.
RH: My pleasure and my honour to do it.
DE: Thank you. So, right from the very very start could you tell me a little bit about your early life and how you came to volunteer for the Royal Canadian Air Force please?
RH: Yes. Well, I was born on a farm and we farmed near [unclear] Saskatchewan. Do you know where Regina, Saskatchewan is? Ok. Well, it’s, it’s towards central Saskatchewan and we were about probably a hundred miles away in the east of, of Regina. And when I did my Service flying at Yorkton we were flying Cessnas then but they started the station with Harvards. So the Harvards, we were only about seventy miles from the airport so the Harvards were always flying over. We didn’t have a tractor or a car so I was sitting behind six horses and as soon as the Harvards came over and doing their aerobatics I stopped the horses. Horses are pretty smart. It didn’t take them very long. As soon as they heard a plane they automatically stopped. So cut it short we didn’t get as much farm work done as we should because I sometimes sat there for about twenty minutes before I started them up again. So when I got embarkation leave, some of the neighbours came over to bid me farewell and I heard my dad say, ‘Well, we don’t like to see him go but I have an idea we’re going to get more farm work done.’ So, to make a long story short I only had my grade ten and I, I took my grade nine and ten by correspondence because we didn’t have a High School. I don’t know what you’d call it in England, I forget but, I had to go to Public School. I went to Public School at Lorlie from grade one to grade eight. Took correspondence course from the Department of Education to do my nine and ten. And then they said, ‘Well, in order to be a pilot you had to have your grade twelve.’ And in 1941 the Royal Air Force were getting short of pilots, so the powers that be decided well there’s a possible pool of, of pilots that only have their grade ten, maybe partial grade eleven, partial twelve. If we set up what they call Educational School, Pre-Enlistment Schools they called them, and if they passed a medical and a physical then they could enrol in this Pre-Enlistment School. So they set that up in 1941 and in the Fall of, after harvest was finished, I went to Regina to the Recruiting Centre and I had my medical. I only weighed a hundred and eighteen pounds so I was pretty skinny then but rather wiry I guess. I managed to pass the medical, and they also gave me an aptitude test. Coming from the farm I didn’t know very much about the big wide world, but maybe the aptitude test might have been easy because I managed to pass that. And then that school started at the end of October and lasted until the end of April. If you successfully completed that course then you got credit for your grade twelve, last two credits. And then you were sent to what they called a manning depot and that’s where all pilots, navigators, well they weren’t navigators then we were just called, we were just called airmen. AC2s and you stayed there for several weeks. You learned to march and you got all your inoculations and all that sort of thing. And then if you wanted to train as a pilot then they had what they called a Ground School where you took meteorology, physics, preliminary navigation, and so on. And they had that in Regina and that lasted for ten weeks. And then after you’d done that the pilots then were sent to Elementary Flying Schools, and in Saskatchewan at that time they were using Tiger Moths, Gypsy Tigers. You later switched over to Cornells but they used Tigers. So, about the time they were, they were starting those in the Fall it was, most of the fellas that I knew would get posted to Regina Elementary. But in 1942 they had a very large crop in Saskatchewan so my dad contacted the authorities and asked them if, they, I could come home for six weeks to help with the harvest. Which I did. And then when I got back to the station they said, ‘Well, there’s no room at the Regina Elementary so we’re going to send you to Virden.’ To Virden, Manitoba. So I then went to, I went to Virden. I started there in, in late October, and I finished that course just about the end of December. Went home for Christmas and then, but before that when I’d finished the elementary they asked me where I wanted to go for my service flying which I was surprised. I thought well they would tell me where I might go. And I said, ‘Well, what choice do they have?’ They said, ‘You can go to Dauphin, Manitoba, go to Brandon, Manitoba or you can go to Yorkton. I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I think I’d like to go to Yorkton.’ He said, ‘Why do you want to go to Yorkton?’ I didn’t tell him it was close to the farm. I said, ‘Well, if we happen to get a forty eight hour pass the bus connections or train connections would be easier for me to get home.’ So they said, ‘Ok. We’ll give you the warrant and you can go to Yorkton.’ So when I got to Yorkton I was very surprised to find that the fellas that had gone to the Elementary School in Regina, I figured they’d be halfway through their course but they hadn’t even started because in 19 — in that winter of ’42 there was a lot of blizzards and snowstorms, and the flying was set back. And my friend Buddy who I’d met at the, at the Pre-Enlistment School he was also there and that course had just started. It was about a week into the course and they thought well I could catch up so I joined that course. And that course lasted, it was started in January and we got our wings the last week in April. And we get, everybody gets ten days embarkation leave. I went home for ten days, and then I caught the train at [unclear] Saskatchewan and so I have pictures for you. I’ll send those to you, and they show me standing at the station. Then I had to change trains in Melville. What we called the Trans-Continental. That would be similar to your train that would go from Kings Cross to Edinburgh, and it would only stop at the main stops. I think that one from Kings Cross if I remember correctly it had about seven or eight stops. I know it used to, it used to stop at Doncaster and it would stop at York and it would stop at Newcastle on Tyne and so on.
DE: Yeah. The distances are totally different aren’t they?
RH: So that particular, what they called the Trans-Continental it would leave Vancouver and it would take seven days to get to Halifax. So that gives you an idea.
DE: Yes.
RH: How large Canada is. So I got, changed trains and got on that train at Melville and then it took about almost four days to get to Ottawa. Then when it got to Ottawa my friend Buddy, he boarded the train. Then it took us another three days to get to Halifax. And then I think we were in Halifax about, possibly three weeks. But we didn’t go over in a convoy. The convoys took about almost a month. Well over, maybe a hundred, a hundred and thirty ships in a convoy and under normal circumstances the U-boats were sinking at least twenty five to thirty ships. And they told us that we were going to go on the Louis Pasteur. That was a French liner that had been converted to carrying troops and we said, ‘Oh well, how about, we’re going alone. How about the U-boats? They said, ‘You don’t have to worry about the U-boats because this Louis Pasteur can go faster than U-boats,’ which it turned out to be so. It took us four and a half days to cross the Atlantic. Then we landed in Liverpool on July the 1st 1943.
DE: Can we, can we just go back a little bit? Could you tell me what, what was it like the first time you flew? And what it was like going solo for the first time?
RH: That’s, that’s an interesting question, Dan because when I was ninety three years old one of the CBC reporters had met me at an Air Show and unbeknownst to me she arranged, she arranged for me to go for a flight in a Tiger Moth. And one of the fellas near Saskatoon he had a runway right beside his house. It was on an acreage. And he also owned about five planes and I went back in a Tiger Moth when I was ninety three years old. And it was, in a way it was a, in some ways it was a strange feeling but otherwise it brought back a lot of memories for me. But he said to me, ‘When did you solo?’ I said, ‘I’ve no idea but,’ I said, ‘I’ve brought my logbook. Let’s have a look.’ And it turned out that I soloed on Remembrance Day in 1942. And I probably, I think the average would be about eight to nine hours, or ten hours before they sent you solo and I look at my logbook and I think I had, I had about nine and a half hours when I went solo. But I really liked flying and actually when I was about twelve or thirteen years old I had a flight. It was in the wintertime and I had a flight in a small aircraft. In our Public School they had a furnace that needed some repair so the chap from the furnace company came, rented a plane and came out and landed in a field near Lorlie. And then while the furnace was being repaired he came over into town and, and wanted to know if anybody wanted to go for a ride. It cost five dollars and I asked my dad. I said, ‘Dad, could you loan me five dollars?’ He said, ‘Why do you want five dollars for?’ I said, ‘Well, I can go for a ride in a plane.’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t have any five dollars,’ he said, ‘I might not even have enough to buy these groceries,’ he said. But the storekeeper overheard the conversation and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I understand that you’re a little bit of a trapper and you’ve been catching —’ what we called weasels and so on, and he said, ‘Do you have any?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, ‘I’m going to get ready to shift them to Melville.’ He said, ‘What do you think you can get for them?’ I said, ‘Well, I hope to get maybe seven or eight dollars.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll loan you five dollars on the understanding that when you sell those pelts,’ he said, ‘You’ll pay me back.’ So that’s, that was my first flight when I was twelve years old.
DE: Fantastic.
RH: And it was cold too because it was an open cockpit. I remember that [laughs]
DE: Yeah.
RH: So then, of course as you well know Dan when you get to, when you get to Liverpool or wherever you land in England everybody goes to Bournemouth. All the, all the, all the aircrew go to Bournemouth. And we discovered there that there were a lot of beautiful hotels and that’s where the, I guess you would call the rich people went there for their holidays but they, they made sure that all their pictures and all their expensive furniture was removed from the hotels. But I remember Buddy and I, we stayed at what they called the Royal Bath Hotel and we were there for probably maybe three or four weeks, and then the pilots had to go to an Advanced Flying School to take what they called a BAT School, Beam Approach Training. One thing I should mention is that when we were flying in Canada, night flying, all the towns were lit up. Aircraft had navigation lights on. When we got to England I can vividly recall that train ride from Liverpool to Bournemouth. It was at night. I knew we were going through towns and you couldn’t see a light. Everything was blacked out. And then we discovered that night flying you couldn’t have any navigation lights on. So in addition to the blackouts and no navigation lights we also discovered that the weather in England wasn’t as conducive for flying as it was in Saskatchewan because we had lots of sunny days. In the Midlands when you were flying we had, I suppose you’d call it quite a bit of haze because there was a lot of manufacturing done in Birmingham and Sheffield and those things. So flying was much more difficult. I think that’s why they started the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Furthermore, there wasn’t enough room left in England for, for all their training.
DE: And also, you know there’s, there’s not the Luftwaffe to worry about either if you —
RH: Pardon?
DE: There’s not the Luftwaffe to worry about either if you’re training in Canada.
RH: Oh no. No. I think that was, I think that British Commonwealth Air Training Plan really contributed a great deal to the success of the war.
DE: So did you go on to multi-engine aircraft in Canada?
RH: Yeah. When we went to Yorkton they’d switched over from Harvards to what they called 172 Cessna Cranes. They were twin engines because then they didn’t need fighter pilots like they did in the Battle of Britain. They were short of bomber pilots. So they switched a lot of the service stations over from Harvards to Cessnas, and Canada leased a lot of aircraft from the United States. And those were flown back again after the war.
DE: Ok. Yeah.
RH: So when we got to, Buddy and I went to Church Lawford in Warwickshire. I think it’s, if I remember correctly it’s not that far from Stratford on Avon.
DE: No. It won’t be. No.
RH: I had an aunt that married my Uncle Harold and she came from, from Warwickshire, near Stratford On Avon. But that, that course it was of course beam approach training, and I often wondered when we were at Yorkton why pilots had to take Morse Code. I thought well the wireless operator would have to do Morse Code. Why did the pilot have to know Morse Code? Well, I soon found out why that was required because then you had to use, you had to use the beam, the Morse Code to get lined up with the beam. And that of course was used when the, if you had to land in the fog when the ‘dromes were equipped with FIDO. And for our very first trip, this was much later, our very first trip in a Lancaster where we did have to land on FIDO but I’ll tell you about that later because that was over a year ago and I’d really forgotten what the damned signals were. So when we were at, when we were at Church Lawford [pause] every time Buddy would, Buddy was engaged to, to his High School sweetheart Jean Woods, and he wrote to her on a regular basis and every time he’d write to her, he called me Harry, I guess short for Harrison, called Harry, ‘Well, Harry you’d better put a footnote on this letter to Jean.’ Of course my usual reply was, ‘Well, I don’t know Jean and I don’t know what to say.’ And he would always say, ‘Well, you never know. Some day you might meet her.’ And the last day we were there I have a picture, I’m going to send you a picture of Buddy and I. And we had a little Welsh gal that looked after us. Polished our shoes and all that, so we thought we were really in, in royalty when we had that kind of treatment. That didn’t last very long after we left that station. And he said, ‘Well, I’m writing another letter to Jean.’ I have a picture of him licking the stamp to put on the letter. He said, ‘You’d better put another footnote on this,’ he said, ‘Because when we get back to Bournemouth,’ he said, ‘We’re going to get posted to OTUs,’ he said, ‘And we might not end up at the same one.’ So I used to say, ‘Well, I’ve told you before Buddy I don’t really know what to say.’ He said, ‘Well, just put something on this. You never know. You might meet her.’ So, when we got back to Bournemouth I think we were only there about two weeks when we got posted and I went to Ossington. That was number 82. I think if I remember correctly it was near, it was near Sherwood Forest and we were going to start flying there and then. They had a course that wasn’t finished so they had a satellite drome called Gamston so we, we did our flying from Gamston. But I found that the Wellingtons, they were, as you know they were geodetic construction and they were very sturdy aircraft. Well-constructed. And I found them I guess an easy way to say it was somewhat heavy on the controls but they were, I wouldn’t say they were easy to fly but they were quite a little bit more, certainly more effort than the, than the Cessnas and the Oxfords that we were flying and I found them particularly hard to fly on one engine. But I managed to get through that course and looking there, I looked to see what my rating was and I got, I got above average so I guess I didn’t do too badly. In fact, I got that, I’m not bragging but I got that in most of the training that I did. And that, that course lasted, I, it was a fairly long course. I think it lasted about three and a half months, and then we got posted to a Conversion Unit and we went to, we went to Dishforth which later as you know became, became part of 6 Group. And that’s where 431 Squadron and 44 Squadron were, were stationed. And it was all, all it was part, it was two of the fifteen squadrons that made up 6 Group and that was, that was a Canadian group.
DE: Yeah.
RH: They’d been advocating for some time to have their own, to have their own, their own group.
DE: So —
RH: And —
DE: When —
RH: That was —
DE: Sorry. Sorry.
RH: Ok
DE: I was going to —
RH: Go ahead.
DE: I was just going to ask when did you crew up?
RH: Pardon?
DE: When did you form, when did you form a crew?
RH: Oh, now that, I’m glad you asked that question because that’s very interesting the way they did it. They put us all in a big hangar. An equal number of pilots, navigators, bomb aimers and we weren’t in the hangar very long and this tall chap came over to me and he said, he introduced himself, he said, ‘I’m Hal Philips,’ he said, ‘I came from Vancouver,’ he said. And I introduced myself. He said, ‘You got on the train at Melville didn’t you?’ I said, ‘Really,’ I said, ‘How did you know that?’ He said, ‘Well, my wife and I got married on my embarkation leave and she said, ‘Well, I guess we’ll have, the honeymoon’s going to last seven days,’ she said, ‘Because it’s going to take seven days to go from Vancouver to Halifax.’ So, that’s how I got my navigator. And I said, ‘Well, Hal, we’d better look around for a bomb aimer.’ So we looked around and we saw a chap sitting down smoking a cigarette and we went over to him and we introduced ourselves and he said, ‘Well, I’m Gordon Dumville,’ he said, ‘I come from Saskatchewan. From Rocanville.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I know where that is. In south east Saskatchewan.’ I said, ‘Do you come from a farm?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Are you crewed up yet?’ He said, ‘No. I guess nobody wants me.’ I said, ‘Well, would you like to fly with us?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to fly with somebody. I might as well fly with you.’ So then we said, ‘Well, we’ll need a, we’ll need a wireless operator.’ So we looked around and we see somebody with, with a w/op badge on so, or a wing I should say so we introduced ourselves. He said, ‘I’m Bob Hooker,’ he said, ‘I come from Big River.’ That’s kind of interesting because where my youngest daughter lives now we go right through Big River and she, they live on a lake front property about eight kilometres from Big River so that brings back memories. So then we said, ‘Well, we need, we need a rear gunner.’ So then we saw some gunners in a group and one chap seemed to be by himself so we introduced ourselves. And he said, ‘Well I’m, I’m Kenny Taylor,’ he said, ‘I come from, from a farm near Mayerthorpe, Alberta.’ So it turned out that he was the youngest in the crew and I was next to, I was next to Kenny as far as age goes and my navigator was probably, he already had a degree in agriculture. He was probably seven or eight years older than I was and my, and Bob Hooker was also about the same age. And so that’s how we crewed up.
DE: Ok.
RH: And then —
DE: I was just going to say when did, when did you get your flight engineer because he’d have been RAF rather than Royal Canadian Air Force, wouldn’t he?
RH: We got, we got our flight engineer when we went to conversion.
DE: I’m sorry, I’m —
RH: We did, yeah we had a five man crew on Wellingtons and we didn’t need an engineer.
DE: I’m jumping ahead. Sorry.
RH: So, yeah, so we got the engineer then when we went to the Conversion Unit and the Conversion Unit didn’t last more than about three weeks. And I, excuse me I’ve got to have a drink of water.
DE: Cheers.
[pause]
RH: And they, they gave us an instructor who had just finished a tour, and I, I could tell that he wasn’t too enthusiastic about being an instructor. And so he did the first couple of circuits I guess and then he told me to take over. We were flying Halifax 5s with inline engines and I understand they used to have a lot of glycol leaks, Merlin inline engines. And on my first landing I didn’t do a very good job. I couldn’t keep it straight. So he stopped the aircraft and he said, ‘If you bloody well want to kill yourself,’ he said, ‘You bloody well go ahead,’ he said, ‘You’re not going to kill me.’ So we taxied the aircraft, told me to taxi the aircraft up to the flight. We did that and he got out the aircraft and left me there. And then a flight commander came out and he got in the aircraft and did a circuit. Told me to, no actually he told me, he told me to do a circuit and we were coming in to land, the aircraft was moving around I guess too much on the runway, he said, ‘Take your damned feet off the rudders.’ You don’t, he said, ‘You don’t need very much rudder control on these aircraft.’ He said, ‘Try another landing.’ So we did another landing and I suppose the reason I kept my feet on because I wasn’t very tall. I was about five foot six and he said, ‘I think you need a cushion or something behind you so you can reach that. But remember you don’t need much rudder,’ he said, ‘On these aircraft.’ And that was the problem that I had. So after we got that solved then as I say, that course only lasted about, about three or four weeks. And then while we were there it was interesting. They said, ‘Well, if you finish this course without killing yourselves,’ that was not too encouraging [laughs] They said, ‘Just hope you don’t get posted to Croft.’ We said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Well, Croft throughout Bomber Command is known as the jinx station. Everything that happens always happens at Croft.’ Well, I often think back and after I’d been there, finished my tour with my four crashes I guess I added to their reputation. [Laughs] So, when we, when we got to, to Croft I think we were only there about, well we got there on the 12th. I remember that. We got there on the 12th of March and on the 15th of March there were five crews arrived that day. They’d had a few losses. Five new crews. And they had told me what crew I was going to fly with and one of the pilots that had come to the station the same day he came to me and he said, ‘Well, I know pilot —’ so and so, he said, ‘Would you mind switching places with me?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t matter to me, I said, ‘I really don’t know any of the, any of the crews.’ So he said, ‘Well.’ I said, ‘You go and speak to the flight commander and see if he ok’s it.’ So he did. And so I ended up going with a Flying Officer [Feldman] and his crew and I discovered that he came from Quebec City and was a very good hockey player and he played with what they called the Quebec Aces. And the, the —
Other: Sorry. I’m just plugging this in. Sorry, Dan.
DE: Ok.
Other: Don’t want to lose power halfway through.
DE: Oh right. You’re just plugging in the power cord. Ok. Thank you.
RH: So, so the target that night was Amiens and we were, we were bombing the large transport, I guess you’d call it a transportation centre. The Germans were bringing up a lot of supplies in preparation I suppose for the, for the allied landings. And there wasn’t a jump seat there so I stood up about halfway and he said, ‘Well, you’d better go and sit down on the step,’ which I did. It was a sort of a routine trip. There wasn’t very much flak or much searchlights there and when we, when we were coming in to land, excuse me [pause] coming in to land he told me, I was standing beside him, I wanted to watch him land, he said, ‘Go back to the crash position.’ Well, I didn’t go. I stood back about three or four steps so he couldn’t see me because I wanted to see him land. And unbeknownst to the crew they had a five hundred pound bomb left in the bomb bay and when the aircraft touched down the bomb didn’t drop off. The runways were a bit, they weren’t very level there so the aircraft always bounced a bit. We got just about to the end of the runway and then the bomb dropped off even though the bomb switch was off. The bomb was still live. We never heard the bomb go off but it woke everybody up on the station and I suppose from the concussion, the bomb literally blew the plane apart. There wasn’t anything left from the wings. The fuselage was gone, the rudders were gone and it was like a movie scene. I, I suppose I was knocked out momentarily because in a Halifax you’re about twenty six feet off the ground. So I don’t know what my trajectory was but I expect that the bottom of the aircraft blew out when the bomb went off and it killed the two gunners instantly. And the rest of us, I suppose literally blew us out of the aircraft because I found myself lying on the ground and I remember opening my eyes and I thought I could see stars. And then I thought, my first thought was jeez, I must be in heaven. There was no sound. And then all of a sudden I started to get wet and, I, my first thought was oh I must be bleeding to death. Well, it wasn’t. What had happened, when the bomb exploded all the gas lines were punctured or fractured, and then the hundred octane gas was flowing towards the exhaust. They were still pretty hot from the flight and then they all burst into flames and then there was a big wall of fire. And I picked myself up, I was still sort of dazed. It was dark but it was getting lighter as the fire rose, and I started to run. This is a bit fresh, I don’t know whether I should tell it or not but I tripped, and I tripped over, someone’s head had been decapitated and there was no helmet on and he had a mop of, I remember he had a mop of beautiful curly hair. I kept on running and I saw someone else running and heard someone else yell, ‘Help.’ And the pilot was almost out of the, the cockpit was left, one wing was fully intact. Another wing was only partly there, but the pilot was almost out but he had those, the old type flying boots on where they, they were fleece lined with the zipper all the way up. That’s when they, later on they changed those into more of a boot with a zipper on. Then if you bailed out because when they were baling out the fire, when they baled out when the parachute opened they were losing one or both flying boots so they made a new type of flying boot. So this chap that was, I didn’t know the crew, the chap was running. He called me and so we, we both tugged on the pilot and pulled him, pulled him away from the aircraft. That part wasn’t burning. It was just the rear part of the wings and that that were burning. And then of course, I guess it was the oxygen bottles started to explode and the verey cartridges and there were a lot of explosions around. And then, then I think I think the ambulance arrived then and took us to the hospital. And then nobody seemed to be injured but I had a sore arm and so they said, ‘Well you’d better, you’d better go on.’ They told me it was a bad scrape. So I went to my aunt and uncle’s in Hull. They lived in Hull, and I was there about the third day and my uncle who had been in the, survived the First World War he, one day he was home for lunch and he said, ‘Let me have a look at that arm.’ So he looked at it and he said, ‘By Jove, I don’t like the look of that,’ he said. There’s an anti-aircraft battery. As you probably well know, Dan, next to London Hull was one of the most bombed cities in Britain. All the east I remember from history that there was a lot of, a lot of lot of shipping done from Hull, and all that was left there were just concrete. All the docks and everything were gone but there was just enough room for the trawlers to come in. They used to go out at night and do their fishing and come in with their catch in the morning. But there was still an anti-aircraft battery in the outskirts of Hull so I got on the bus and went out there. It was called Sutton. I went out there and I saw the medical officer. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You’ve got phosphorous burns,’ he said, ‘How did you get those?’ So I told him about the bomb explosion. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Those bombs,’ he said, ‘There’s lots of phosphorous in those,’ he said, ‘That’s where you got your burn,’ he said, ‘That needs to be looked at right away.’ And he said, ‘I’m a little short of bandages,’ he said. I suppose they had, quite a few people were killed in Hull. So he, he said, ‘I’m going to put a fish dressing on your, on your arm.’ And he wrapped it up in newspaper, tied it up and he said, ‘You’d better get — where are you stationed?’ I told him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’d better get back on the train as soon as possible and get back to the station.’ So I went back to my aunt and uncle’s and got the clothes that I’d taken there, and went to the train and then of course I had to take the train from there. I had to change in York to get back to Croft. Then Darlington. Then up to Croft to the station. Of course in those trains you know you’ve got six people in the compartment and three on each side looking at one another, and pretty soon people started looking around and sniffing. They could see I wasn’t carrying anything. They thought they could smell fish so I had to, I had to explain to them where the fish smell was coming from. [laughs]
DE: Oh dear.
RH: I don’t really know what the fish dressing did but apparently as the doctor said that was the best thing to do. So to make a long story short I saw the medical officer and he said, ‘Well, where do you want to go for treatment?’ Well, they might as well have asked the [unclear] because I didn’t have a clue where I should go. So he said, ‘Well, I’d better send you to Basingstoke.’ Of course that was a big, I remember my dad saying that was a big hospital in the First World War. And at that time they had a lot of casualties. Especially tank casualties from Italy. And when I got there I was so embarrassed because I was walking around and I saw fellas bandaged there with, you know some of them were blind, and some of them had their arms grafted to their face and I just felt so. They kept me there for a week. They just didn’t have enough time to deal with me. They did, dressed my arm and then they finally sent me to East Grinstead. And then I was there for, I had pinch grafts done on my arm. Dr Tilley. He was a Canadian doctor. He was the one that, that did my, my pinch. He did a pinch graft. They tried a flap graft first but that didn’t work so then they did pinch grafts. Took pinches from my, from my upper thigh and then grafted it on. So I was there for probably nine weeks and then I went back to the station.
DE: What had happened to the, your crew during the nine, ten weeks that you were —
RH: That [laughs] that’s interesting. When, when I got back to the station I thought oh well they’d have found another pilot. I’ll have to, I’ll have to get another crew. Well, I guess it turned out they didn’t know how long I was going to be away and the crew were still there. I don’t know what they did for the time I was away but they were there waiting for me. So I think, I think we did maybe one or two cross countries to get climatised I guess again, and well actually that would have been my, several weeks, almost two months before I’d flown or since I’d flown. And then we did, we did eleven trips without any, I wouldn’t say without any difficulty but some of them were, what the word for exciting is. I don’t know whether that’s the right word or not but they were all very different. And on the way out to, on our thirteenth trip on the way out to the aircraft, the lorry used to take us out, if I remember correctly I think the lorries were large enough to take two crews which would be fourteen airmen. And my rear gunner, Kenny Taylor, the youngest in the crew he was very quiet and I said, ‘What’s the matter, Kenny? Don’t you feel good?’ He said, ‘Well, skipper. Physically,’ he said, ‘I feel ok,’ he said, ‘But do you know what trip this is?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s twelve, er thirteen. Why?’ ‘Gosh,’ he said, ‘I sure don’t like, I don’t like thirteen,’ he said, ‘Can we call it 12a?’ I said, ‘Kenny, if it’ll make you feel better then it won’t be thirteen. It’ll be 12a.’ I don’t know whether Kenny had a premonition or just what, but when we got the green light to take off I got at least three quarters of the way down the runway and the port inner engine suddenly stopped and I had about eighty, it was just prior to lift off. About eighty to eighty five miles an hour, and the engine stopped suddenly and the aircraft veered off the runway. Then it’s pitch dark. It had been, we’d been, the flight had been delayed at least a couple of times and then when we took off it had quit raining but it was dark and I didn’t know if I throttled back if, I was the fourth aircraft off out of nineteen or twenty. The other aircraft, I knew they were slowly inching their way to the take-off point on the perimeter track. I couldn’t see them. I didn’t know if I could get stopped. I knew if I didn’t get stopped and crashed in to one what a horrible site that would be. So I pushed the throttles through the gate and when I did that I had more than full power on the two port engines and suddenly the aircraft, I did gain a bit of altitude. The, the right wing went down and then the aircraft started to shudder and I still had enough control. I remember straightening the aircraft out. I yelled at the crew to brace for impact. My bomb aimer was standing beside me. The last thing I remember is telling them to brace themselves and I don’t remember anything else. But I got over those aircraft and just off the edge of the drome there was a farmhouse and a barn and there was a stone wall around, around the house. The barn was attached to the house which was quite common in England. And we crashed into that wall and then when we, we were probably I don’t know how fast we were going. Maybe eighty, ninety miles an hour. My bomb aimer went forward into the instrument panel and I don’t know how I ended up with the cockpit split open. I don’t know how I got out but they found me lying on the wing. I was knocked out. My wireless operator and mid-upper gunner apparently pulled me off the, off the wing. And the navigator and the rest of the crew apparently were wandering around, around the aerodrome. And I was still unconscious but the bomb aimer, he was still conscious, and there were, he had a serious head injury and they were going to take us to a hospital. I think it was Northallerton. They couldn’t do anything at the, at the base hospital. So I, I woke up on the way to the hospital and I knew, I’m pretty sure that Gordon was still, was still alive then because they operated on him. I think it was Northallerton. But he didn’t, he didn’t survive the operation. But then I ended up with a broken nose and probably twenty or thirty stiches in my face and a badly bruised thigh so I was in the hospital for probably about ten days. [pause] So then they when I got out the hospital they had got another bomb aimer to take Gordon’s, take Gordon’s place, and we continued our operations. And on the seventeenth trip it was, we went to Brest, and I remember when we were going out to the aircraft I remember my wireless operator saying to, to my two gunners. He said, ‘Well, we’re, we’re going to Brest,’ he said. They told us at briefing it was, expect to encounter a lot of flak because the, Brest and Hamburg were where the German U-boats were being serviced, and he said we could expect a lot of flak and probably a few night fighters. He said, ‘I hope we get back from this trip ok.’ I think it was Kenny or Maurice said, ‘Well, why?’ He said, ‘Well, we’re going on leave. We’re going on leave tomorrow,’ he said, ‘So, I hope to get back.’ And I, whether which one was it? ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Well, the skipper, the skipper will get us back ok.’ So I never gave it another, I never gave it another thought. But then when, I suppose, I’m not sure just where we were, whether we were halfway back to England then we ran into this heavy rain. And as we got closer to the, to Croft, the wireless operator had told me, or I asked him, I said, ‘Have we got any diversions?’ And he hesitated and he said, ‘No.’ And then the second time he called up he asked about the weather. ‘Got any more?’ I said, ‘No.’ Then he said, ‘Well, aircraft from 3 and 4 were being diverted.’ I said, ‘Well, better, better listen.’ So he called up three or four times, and I kept asking if he’d had a diversion. He said, ‘No,’ he didn’t have any. But I don’t know how he, how he missed the diversion but when we got back to base it was still pouring rain and it was heavy cloud and I think there was only one. Only one person on duty in the control tower and he said to me, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You can land,’ he said, ‘But I’ll put on all the lights that we can,’ he said, ‘And come down to about eight hundred feet and see if you can, see if you can see any lights.’ Which I did but I couldn’t see any. And he then said, ‘Well, climb. Climb to thirty five hundred feet and stand by for further instructions.’ Well, they always say that you can’t fly by the seat of your pants, and I’d been flying for at least two hours in this heavy rain and thick cloud and I decided, well I’m pretty sure we’re going to, we haven’t got much fuel left. We’ll probably have to bale out although I never said anything to the crew. And he said, ‘Climb to thirty five hundred feet.’ So I remember it was easier to turn to port to do a slow turn than it would be to starboard. So I did a slow climbing turn with just enough RPMs on to gain some height and I suppose I was getting calls from the control tower, and while I was doing this slow climbing turn I must have been unconsciously pulling back slightly on the control column because all of a sudden the navigator yelled at me, he said, ‘Skipper, what’s happening?’ Just as he said that all of the navigation equipment ended up in the cockpit and then the aircraft started to shudder and I knew instantly what had happened. That the aircraft was almost on its back because the cloud was thick and I had no sensation in that position. I shoved the throttles forward. At the same time I pushed the stick forward. I still have that feeling of the aircraft shuddering but I caught it in time and then I got it into a dive and I pulled as hard as I could and finally got, got out of the dive. And apparently the chap in the control tower had been calling and he went outside and he could hear the aircraft so I don’t know how close we came to slamming into the ground. But then I said to myself well to heck with this I’m not climbing to thirty five hundred feet, I’m climbing to five thousand feet and I did. I kept the throttles at full force and the perspiration was pouring off me, and I climbed to five thousand feet and in the meantime he was calling up wanting to know where I was. Well, in that kind of weather I’m sure we didn’t know exactly where we were and he finally said, ‘Well, the only drome open is Silloth on the west coast.’ And I asked the navigator, I said, ‘How far is that? It sounds like it’s a long way.’ I think it was just on the very west coast. Right on the, I suppose it would be on the Irish Sea. I’m not sure. But I know it was an OTU because they were, they started flying Hudsons there, and I know they had a lot of, they had a lot of crashes there. But anyway we didn’t have very much fuel left and I said to the crew then, I said, ‘Well, it looks like we’re going to have to leave this aircraft. We’re going to have to bale out.’ So I said, ‘We’ve gone through the bale out procedure.’ I said, ‘When you leave your position,’ I said, ‘Let me know because,’ I said, ‘I’m going to be the last one to bale out.’ So [pause] they, they did. They all let me know when they were, when they were gone and then it was my turn to go. And you’re probably aware that the pilots had the opportunity of wearing a chest type chute or a seat type chute and as soon as I found that out I thought gosh that doesn’t sound very good. My chute’s down in the nose and the bomb aimer’s job is to give me my chest type chute if we have to bale out. What if the bomb aimer gets injured, we get attacked by a night fighter or we get hit with flak how am I going to get my parachute? So I used to carry my parachute. It weighed about almost thirty pounds I think with all that silk that was packed in there. I used to carry it in. I remember getting over the main spar. It was a bit difficult but I carried it in and it fit really well into the, into the cockpit seat. And then after I got in there I would strap it on, and then I’d put my waist, my Mae West on top of that. I did that every time. But when it was my turn to bale out which I’d never tried doing before because when we got back from a trip we just undid the parachute and I carried it out. So I moved across the cockpit and then I got hold of a rung with my right hand. Then when I figured I was clear of all the levers I let myself go. There’s three levers come at forty five degree angle and the last lever came up between my leg and my parachute harness. And I’d already let go of the rung and then I found myself dangling there and when I, before I baled out I put in the automatic pilot and I trimmed it so it was slightly nose down because I knew that it was a sparsely populated area but I didn’t know how far the, the aircraft was going to go. So I thrashed around and I thought egods, I survived the, survived the trip from there but now I’m going to go down with this aircraft. And I don’t know how long I thrashed around but finally I heard, I heard a crack and the lever broke. I suppose with my weight and the weight of the parachute the lever broke. I remember falling. There were three steps to the escape hatch and I remember falling down three steps and I remember hitting my elbow and I actually rolled out of the aircraft and I saw the, I saw the, I remember seeing the rudder of the aircraft and then I started to roll over and I found my rip cord. I gave it a yank. Of course nothing happens when you first pull it. And then this chute opened with a real jerk and I swung to the right, came back and I hit the ground. So I really, I really have no sensation of falling in a parachute. I’ve asked skydivers at air shows, ‘How close do you think I was to the ground?’ They said, Well, you were probably less than a thousand feet. Might have been about eight hundred feet when your parachute opened,’ because I remember hitting the ground really hard. But by this time the rain had stopped but it was real foggy and I remember sitting on, sitting on my parachute and I thought well at least I’m alive. And then I wasn’t sitting there for very long and it was real still and I heard a whistle. And as you know, we had a whistle on our battle dress that we had to use in case we were ditching at night. And I heard this whistle. So then I dropped my whistle and I blew back. And then I heard someone. Someone shouting, ‘Where are you?’ And I said, ‘I’m over here.’ Somebody said, ‘Where’s here?’ [laughs] I remember that so distinctly. And finally after calling back and forth my mid-upper gunner Maurice Content, he came from Montreal, he had a bit of a French accent but he was a really great guy. He was probably about seven or eight years older than I was but he said, ‘Skipper, thank God we’re alive.’ I said, ‘Yes. Thank goodness we are.’ I said, ‘I wonder how the rest of the crew made out.’ Then we heard another whistle. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Somebody else is alive.’ So then after more blowing whistles, and some more talking, here our rear gunner Kenny shows up. So at least there’s three of us alive. And so I remember we, I don’t know which one of them said, ‘Well, we’ve got an escape kit that we’re supposed to use if we bale out over enemy territory. Let’s open it and see what’s in it.’ [laughs] So we all opened our, our escape kits and of course there was some chocolate in there and there was a compass in there and a little map. Some I think had a little package of dressings and so on. I remember we ate our chocolate and then I remember Kenny saying to me, ‘Well, skipper. What are we going to do now?’ I said, ‘Well, I guess we’re going to have to start to —’ by this time then the fog had sort of started lifting and it would be, I think we baled out about, hit the ground probably about 4 o’clock in the morning and this would be about, well we sat there for a long time and finally the fog started to lift. It’d be about, somewhere about nine and nine thirty and then I said, ‘Well, we might as well go back in an northeast direction,’ because that’s where we came from. So we started to walk. And as you probably know we were in what they called the Fells district, and some of them call them high hills. Some actually call them small mountains but they seemed like mountains by the time we walked up one, they were and the grass and heather was at least up to our knees and we had the new type flying boots on. They’re fleece lined and they come up to just about your knees and then they actually made like a shoe, and then if you bale out over enemy territory then you can rip that top off and then you’ve got a boot. And but we didn’t do that. We walked and then about eleven or, ten or 11 o’clock the sun came out and it was, it turned out to be a really hot day which you, you get very few of those in England unless it’s, unless it’s in southern England you’d have more of them but not in, not in that part of the country. But anyway we walked all day. All we saw were sheep. We never saw any habitation. We didn’t see any buildings and we were getting tired and hungry and about 7 o’clock in the evening Kenny, my rear gunner, he said, ‘Skipper, I think I can see a building.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You must be hallucinating, Kenny,’ I said. ‘There’s no buildings around here.’ ‘Skipper,’ he said, ‘I’m sure there’s a building there.’ I said, ‘Ok. Let’s go and see if there is one.’ So we started walking. He told me where he could see it. Maybe his eyesight was sharper than mine but we kept walking. Sure enough there was a building there. As we got closer and there were lots of sheep around and it turned out that it was a shepherd and his wife. That that was their summer home and they had got probably hundreds of sheep. When we got there we saw at least three or four sheep dogs. And then what we thought was the hired man but it turned out later, I found out later that it was their son, and their name was Blenkinsopp. I could understand his wife but I could not understand [laughs] I could not understand and he actually when he saw us coming I guess whether he thought we were German airmen but he had, he had this pitchfork over his shoulder. I remember his wife, I could understand her, saying, ‘No,’ she said, ‘They’re Canadians.’ So they had this, this hut was stone wall but there was a, I don’t know whether it was a dirt floor or what it was. It seemed like a dirt floor but it was kind of solid. And then I remember looking up and they had bacon and hams hanging in a beam across there. I remember seeing chickens running around there and then we could smell bread. She’d just baked bread and she said in her accent, ‘I suppose you lads are hungry.’ We said, ‘Well, yes we are.’ So she made us some, cooked us some bacon and eggs, and she had some biscuits for us and I think she made us tea. And then the shepherd which we thought was a hired man, later it turned out to be his son he spoke to them and they had a horse and a cart and I saw him take off on this with this horse and cart. Just the son. And seemed a long time but about midnight an RAF van showed up and we got in the van and it took us to the Penrith. And when we got to the, it was the hospital and when we got there here the rest of the crew were there.
DE: Jolly good.
RG: And I, I have no idea how they, how they got there but they were all there. And the navigator apparently had, he had of all the sparsely populated area he’d landed on, he’d landed right on a stone wall. I don’t know whether it was part of Hadrian’s Wall or what it was but he’d landed on it. He landed on a wall and he had two fractures in his, in his upper vertebrae but he could still walk but that showed up after. And another one had a badly sprained ankle. But they were all alive. And then I guess they’d notified the, notified the station and later on during the day a Lancaster showed up and transported us back to Croft. But when I got my records from the War Records Branch in Ottawa I got this, that was after what they called the Access To Information Act. When it expired I think it was twenty five years after it expired, then you could request documentation. So I remember writing to the War Records Branch in Ottawa to get copies of my war records and I got an envelope and I’ve measured it. It’s twenty two inches long and it’s fourteen inches wide and over an inch thick. So when I looked, looked through that there were thirty five, they had two Boards of Enquiry. One in to the, in to why the bomb exploded even though the bomb switch was off and then of course was a large investigation over the crash on take-off because the very first thing they did was send the engine to the factory. And apparently when they took the engine apart there was no fuel in the fuel lines to the engine. So their conclusion was that the engine failed due to fuel starvation. Whether there was an air lock or what but that was their determination and, and then the, what else [pause] I’ve lost my train.
DE: It doesn’t matter. I just, so did you and your crew all get the little caterpillar badge for, for using your parachutes?
RH: Pardon?
DE: Did you get the little tiny caterpillar badge from the Irvin Parachute Company for, the little pin?
RH: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. Got that. Yeah.
DE: And do you know what happened to your aircraft after? After you managed to bale out.
[pause]
RH: That’s, that’s another story. In 1984 I went to, I went five times to Guinea Pig reunion at East Grinstead. Apparently, the English, they met every year. The Guinea Pigs that were remaining. Well, I say England. Britain now let’s say because they came from Wales and Scotland. And the Canadians, they formed their wing, because there were about seventy five Canadians that were treated there and I think there were enough Australians also to form a wing. But they were mostly British. They’d be a few maybe Poles or French and so on. But all together I think there were close to eight hundred treated at the, at the Burns Centre at East Grinstead and then we all became a member of the Guinea Pig Club. And that’s, that’s how it got its name. The plastic surgeon he was a New Zealander.
DE: McIndoe.
RH: Pardon?
DE: McIndoe.
RH: Yeah. That’s right. McIndoe. One morning he was going his rounds and they were, they had this Englishman in the bathtub in the saline bath because they’d discovered that the Battle of Britain ones that had baled out and landed in the Channel or the North Sea, that their burns were, that they healed quicker so it must be the salt water. So that’s how they treated them at East Grinstead. The first thing they did was put them in a saline bath. So the story goes that McIndoe poked his head around the door and said, ‘Good morning,’ and the Englishman in the bathtub, he said, ‘You know, sir,’ he said, ‘We’re just a bunch of bloody guinea pigs.’ And Sir Archibald McIndoe said, ‘Oh,’ he said ‘that’s interesting,’ he said, ‘We should form a club and call it the Guinea Pig Club.’ And that’s how it got its name. Because I think they’ve done a documentary on that.
DE: There’s books written and all sorts. Yeah. So, you were going to —
RH: Because I —
KA: Tell him about, he asked about when they found your plane.
RH: Oh yeah. That. Yeah.
KA: Right. Tell him about that.
RH: Yeah. I’m going to tell him about that. So, so in ’84 when I went to the, when I went to the reunion in East Grinstead there was a lady there from Carlisle and her brother, their name was Hutchinson. He was one of the very badly burned airmen and I think they were having a tea and she said to me, where, wanted to know where I came from and she wondered what station I was from and I told her then about the bale out. And she said, ‘Oh, well that’s, that’s not so far from Carlisle,’ she said, ‘Tell me the whole story,’ she said, ‘And I’m going to write it up and put it in the local paper.’ So she did that and then there was a business man there by the name of Peter [Connan] and he got interested in that story and took my address and wrote to me and said, ‘Well, the next time you come to England to visit your relatives,’ he said, ‘Come to Carlisle,’ he said, ‘And I’ll take you out to the crash site.’ He said, ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I’ve written two books now,’ he said, ‘And I’m on the third one.’ He said, ‘I’m researching aircraft that crashed within a hundred miles of Carlisle.’ But he said, ‘I have details of your crash and,’ he said, ‘I know where the aircraft is —’ For I don’t know how long it was but the RAF, the area where the plane crashed I think it was an earl that owned all the land and he wouldn’t let anyone near the aircraft unless they were from the, from the RAF. And so he took me as close as possible to where the, where the aircraft had had crashed. And he belonged to a Rotary Club and took me to one of their luncheons. And then about four years ago I got a letter from a fella by the name of Philip Smith who lived in Newcastle on Tyne and he said, “My friend and I,” he said, “We’re doing research on aircraft that crashed in the general area where —” he said, “I was born.” He said, “I came across your crash,” he said, “In my research,” He said, “Your plane crashed about forty miles from where I lived but —" he said, “I’ve moved now to Newcastle on Tyne,” he said, but he said, “I’ve been out to the, I’ve been out to crash site and,” he said, “There isn’t anything left,” he said, “As far as the plane goes. The scavengers they’ve taken everything.” Because I guess the earl sold [pause] I forget his name now. He sold the property. But he came to Canada to train and he was a Spitfire pilot. And I can’t, I can’t just, at the moment I can’t remember his name but he was an earl. And, so Philip Smith, he sent me pictures and he gave me the name of the, he’d been visiting the farmer and his wife and their, and at the moment I can’t think of the exact name of the town where they are but they’ve taken over. They’ve taken over the area or the farm where the aircraft crashed and it was in a boggy area and apparently it went almost straight down and the engines apparently are still in the bog. But of course there isn’t anything left now of the plane but the farmer’s wife, it’s not agricultural land, the grass is almost two feet high and they have cattle and sheep because it’s so hilly and there’s no, there’s no agricultural crops grown. And the farmer’s wife’s name is Edith, her husband’s name was Geoff Wilkinson and she went out in their quad. She said, ‘Philip has been out several times,’ she said, ‘So I decided one day I’m going to get on the quad and I’m going to go out and see what I can see,’ because all there is left is a crater but it’s covered over now with grass. But they took pictures of it and showed me exactly where the aircraft was and she said, ‘When I got there,’ she said, ‘I stuck my hand down rabbit holes,’ she said, ‘And I ended up with about thirteen or fourteen pieces,’ she said. ‘So I put them in a sack. I took them home and I laid them out on the kitchen table,’ she said, ‘And I took a picture of them,’ she said, ‘And I’m, I thought you might like to see them.’ [laughs] So, I’ve, I’ve got a picture there so I’m going to write to you and I’m going to send you one of those pictures.
DE: Oh smashing. Thank you.
RH: Because it’s interesting to see and then when on one of the visits that Philip Smith made out there he found, he found an article that there were numbers on it and he wanted to know if I knew where it came from. And I could see there were white numbers but there was a lot of mud and things caked on it. So I cleaned it up and I got out my pilot’s handbook and I looked. It looked like it might have been something to do with the fuel gauge so I looked at the engineer’s panel and I found that this, this, it was actually the shape of a, it was flat but it was indicating how much fuel was in a particular fuel tank because I got it cleaned up enough I could see all the white numbers and they corresponded with the numbers that when I, you know when they had them all numbered in the, in the Halifax handbook. I showed the engineer’s panel so I was able to write back to Philip and tell him that I’d been able to able to, able to identify it and I still have that. I’ve got it taped on there. So then when we got, when we got back to, when we got back to the, we got back to the, from, from the bale out about five days after that they told us that the powers that be thought that the crew should go to London, to the Central Medical Board to be examined. And of course when we got there we saw psychologists and psychiatrists and they were all wing commanders, I think. Coming from the farm I wasn’t that well versed with psychologists. I didn’t really know they existed. But we had some really interesting questions posed to us and I answered them the best I could. So to make a long story short we were there three days. When we got back to the station they called me there. The squadron commander called me in and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We got the results from your visit to the Medical Board.’ And he said that, ‘We’ve got good news and bad news for you,’ he said, ‘The good news,’ he said, ‘You and your rear gunner are still considered fit to fly but the rest of the crew they’re not fit to continue flying. So we’ve decided that even though they’ve only done seventeen trips we’ll give them credit for a tour. They’re entitled to the ops wing but then they’ll go back to Canada. But if you and your rear gunner want to join them you can also get credit for your tour.’ So, I gave Kenny the news. As I say he was the youngster in the crew and Kenny said, ‘Well, skipper. If the rest of the, if the rest of the fellas on the squadron know that we’re fit to fly and we don’t continue flying they’ll think we’re cowards.’ And I said, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ I said, ‘That would never do, Kenny.’ And at the time they were converting the squadron to Canadian built Lancasters, so the squadron commander, Wing Commander Mitchell, he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘If you and your rear gunner want to continue flying,’ he said, ‘We’ll give you a couple of hours flying with the Lancaster,’ he said, ‘And we can, no problem getting you a new crew,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a lot of orphan crew members around here.’ He said, ‘They’ve lost their crew. They were either in hospital or something, but they’re trying to finish their tour and they’re having a difficult time to get another flight.’ So he said, ‘We’ll soon get you a new crew.’ So my navigator had a very good friend named Abby Edwards. He came from near Toronto and he was a dentist. He was probably about my navigator’s age. He came to me and he said, well, at the time my nickname was Crash and he said, ‘Crash,’ he said, ‘I’ve got about six or seven trips left,’ he said, ‘Can I finish my tour with you?’ I said, ‘Abby, you know what my record is,’ I said, ‘You might never finish your tour if you fly with me.’ [laughs] He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I know your record,’ he said. He said, ‘Your crashes you were in,’ he said, ‘They weren’t your fault,’ he said, ’So, I’d like to finish my tour with you.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s fine.’ So he became my navigator and then they made up a crew for us. [pause] And then I still had Squadron Leader [Frankie Gulliver] for my flight commander and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Go and sit in that brand new Lancaster,’ he said, ‘And familiarise yourself with the, with all the controls,’ he said, ‘Not much different,’ he said, ‘From the Halifax,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘Sit there for a couple of hours,’ he said, ‘And then,’ he said, ‘We’ll do a couple of circuits and bumps.’ So I get, I can’t remember how long I sat there but I finally went back and I told him, I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I think I’ve got a good idea where everything is.’ He said, ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘Get your crew,’ he said, ‘And we’ll do a couple of circuits.’ So I expected he would get in to the seat and fly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘You get in there,’ he said, ‘And you fly.’ He said, ‘I’ll just go with you for one circuit.’ So, I got in and I was really surprised at the way the Lancaster handled. It was, I just can’t describe it but it was so smooth on the controls and I made a reasonably good landing and he said, ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘Take your new crew,’ he said, ‘And go out to do some air to sea firing,’ he said, ‘And do a short cross country,’ he said, ‘And then you can come back,’ which we did. Then two days later we went on our first op.
DE: Ok. So you’ve, you’ve flown a couple of different Marks of Halifaxes and now you’re flying Lancasters. There’s, there’s lots of people —
RH: Yeah.
DE: That argue, you know which they liked best and which was best. What’s, what’s your opinion?
RH: Oh, the Lancaster was, it was, for me it was much smoother and easier to fly. But I also, I’ve read many books where it said those that had to bale out over enemy territory that more people found the Halifax easier to bale out of than the Lancaster. Just the way it was designed I guess.
DE: Yeah.
RH: Same as, same as the Mosquito but apparently it was very difficult to escape from too.
DE: But you, as a pilot you liked the Lancaster.
RH: I liked the Lancaster. But I will say this about [pause] like I flew the, I flew the Halifax with the Merlin inline engines and I did my tour with the, with the radial engines. With the Hercules radial engines. They were very powerful but they discovered that you know they were very hard on fuel, so you couldn’t carry as many bombs. Well, you could carry probably twenty three hundred gallons of petrol if your tanks were full but they used, they used a lot of fuel on take-off. So we didn’t have any difficulty over the target on the first trip but when we were getting, I’m not too sure how far we’d be from there but the wireless operator said, ‘Well, we’ve been diverted to Tuddenham and it’s equipped with FIDO.’ Oh my God, I thought, my first trip in a Lancaster and now I’ve got to land on FIDO. Well, number one, when I was sitting in the aircraft I never looked to see where the little box was to turn it on so that I could get the Morse Code signals.
DE: Oh, for the —
RH: To get myself lined up with the runway.
DE: For the BAT. The beam approach.
RH: Yeah. The beam approach training. And then when I finally found the box to turn it on I turned it on and then it had been over a year since I’d taken a course and I could not remember the signals. The signals to port were different than the starboard and they always told us, ‘If you get into an emergency don’t panic. If you panic you won’t think of anything.’ Well, I don’t know how long I sat, well sitting there, I was in the ruddy, somewhere within the circuit and I finally [pause] it came to me. I knew that one side was dit dit dit. The other was da da da. And I finally got, I remember crossing the beam twice in my circling I guess the aerodrome and then I finally got the signals figured out and got myself lined up with the runway and then of course you’re still in fog and I get down to seven hundred feet, a thousand feet, nine hundred feet and I thought egods where is that? Where is that runway? And about eight hundred feet you break through the fog because they’ve got this hundred octane fuel forced through these pipes eh with holes in and blazing away. There’s two walls of fire and I thought egods I’d better keep this damned aircraft between these walls of fire because I glanced out to my port side and I saw a Halifax blazing away. Now, to make a long story short I got the aircraft down and taxied over to where they were dozens of aircraft there. I don’t know how, you know how many were there but there were certainly a lot of aircraft. I think they had, if I remember correctly they only had about three stations equipped with FIDO. But this was Tuddenham. It was a large drome, equipped at Tuddenham and we stayed there. And then about 10 o’clock I think, the fog had cleared and then we, then we headed back home. I think it was two days later we went to, we went to Duisburg which had been bombed several times. And when we were on the bombing run, just started the bombing run we got hit with flak and it hit the port, the port inner engine but, there was a small fire but the engineer was able to extinguish the blaze but almost at the instant the mid-upper gunner yelled at me. He said, ‘Skipper, there’s a Halifax shooting at us. What’ll I do?’ ‘Are you sure?’ He said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I can see the bugger.’ I said, ‘Well, shoot back at him then.’ And you know, I don’t know whether it was, it seemed like it was almost hailing, you could almost hear the bullets hitting the aircraft and then the firing stopped. And then we found out later that their guns had jammed but when they got back it was their first trip. We discovered that when they got back to the station they claimed they’d shot down an unidentified four engine German night fighter. Well, [laughs] as you know the Germans didn’t even have four engine bombers. I think they had Dorniers and Heinkels as their twin engines. I don’t recall them ever having a four engine bomber. But that’s what we turned out to be.
DE: Oh dear.
RH: An unidentified four engine German night fighter. So we got the bombs dropped and went to close the bomb doors and they didn’t close all the way. And of course I didn’t, I had no idea why they didn’t close. Then when we got into the circuit went to put down the, put down fifteen degrees of flaps, and then went to put down the undercarriage and we’d only got one wheel. And I remember flying the Halifax that there was, there was an air bottle there charged up to I think about twelve hundred pounds pressure to use that and the engineer knew where, where it was. Tried that. Couldn’t get the wheel down and then he said, ‘Skipper,’ he said, he said, ‘There’s a crank here somewhere,’ he said, ‘Maybe we can crank it down.’ I said, ‘Well, try cranking it then.’ Well, he couldn’t. Couldn’t get the wheel down. So I told the control tower. I said, ‘I’ve only got one wheel.’ And they said, ‘Stand by.’ And finally they came back and they said, ‘Well, you can’t land here on one wheel,’ they said, ‘The runway’s not long enough. We don’t know what’s going to happen to the aircraft after you land so —’ They said, ‘You’ll have to go to a crash drome.’ So, they said, ‘Stand-by.’ You know. They finally came back on and said, ‘You’ll have to go to Carnaby.’ Well, that was on the, you probably know where that is, that’s on the east coast and actually not that far from Hull where my relatives lived and we had enough fuel to get there. And when I was in the circuit I said to control tower, ‘Have you got any instructions how I can land this brand new Lancaster on one wheel?’ And there was silence. Came back and said, I forget what they called the, referred to me, not as skipper but I forget the word they used, ‘You’re the first one that’s tried landing on one wheel. We’ve had lots of belly landings,’ they said, ‘But we haven’t had one landing on one wheel.’ But they said, ‘We know that you’re going to ground loop so we’ve got three flare paths. We’ve got one with like,’ they were all hooded, of course. ‘We’ve got one to the right with red lights. We’ve got one in the centre with amber. And then we’ve got one at the port side with, with green.’ So they said, ‘We’re going to put you in the centre. We’re going to put you in the centre flare path.’ And this was right close to the North Sea and as I turned in one of the engines started to sputter so I knew that we were getting a bit short of fuel. So I came in probably a little bit higher and a little bit faster than normal but as soon as I touched down I suppose the weight from the aircraft was too much for the one oleo leg and it snapped off. And then the aircraft started to spin. I don’t really know how many, I don’t know how many times it actually did but we went right across the green flare path and we ended up, we ended up on the, on the grass. I’ve got several pictures there. It shows the Lancaster sitting on the grass. So this was still dark and when we went out, when it was daylight we went out to look at the aircraft and what had happened when they, when the Halifax started shooting at us all their bullets hit the hydraulic lines. It punctured the hydraulics and we slowly lost all the hydraulic fluid. But if they had been about three or four feet higher it would have killed the navigator, the wireless operator, they would probably have killed me, the rear gunner. Maybe the, maybe the mid-upper might have survived. But if they had been that much higher. So that’s how close it, how close it came. So, then we, we went to the, I don’t know how we got to the station in Hull but I said to the crew, I said, ‘I’ve got a cousin that works in an office not, not very far from the station,’ I said, ‘We’ve got, we’ve got an hour and a half to wait for the train to York and then we’ve got to change trains in York.’ I said, ‘I’m going to slip over to see if my cousin’s working.’ So I went to the office and there was a young lady there. She said, ‘Can I help you?’ And of course I’m in my flying gear. She said, ‘Can I help you, sir?’ And I said, ‘Yes. I’d like to speak to my cousin.’ ‘And who may that be?’ I said, ‘Mary Graham.’ ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I’ll call Mary.’ So I still see my Cousin Mary and her eyes were that big and she said, ‘Oh, my God,’ she said, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve crashed again.’ [laughs]
DE: It must have been, it must have been quite good for you having family in Hull. So I guess you could go see them when you were on leave and things like that.
RH: Oh yeah because my dad never did get, like after he survived the First World War. He came out to Canada in 1912. Went back when they needed engineers and got married in 1917. Got I think about three or four days leave, and he never did get back. He lost, he actually lost two brothers in that war. Strange because they named me after both of them. Reg. Reg and Wilfred. And then when, when we [pause] had my little visit with Mary of course she went home and told her folks what had happened. And when we got, got to the station and got on the train and changed at, changed at York and then got back to the station. Then I think it was the next day Wing Commander Mitchell by this time, Group Captain Turnbull, he’d been transferred back to 6 Group Headquarters and I’m not sure if it was Northallerton or Harrogate, it was either one of those where 6 Group was located but he was transferred back to 6 Group Headquarters and Wing Commander Mitchell was put in charge of both squadrons. He was the station commander then in charge of all, and they brought in another wing commander from the RAF to take his, take over his place. And then Wing Commander Mitchell called me in to his office and he said, ‘Well, Crash,’ he said, ‘You’ve cheated the Grim Reaper four times,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a feeling,’ he said, ‘That you’re not going to be lucky the fifth time,’ he said. ‘So we’re going to screen you,’ he said, ‘And you won’t be doing any more operations. But,’ he said, ‘If you like flying the Lancaster,’ he said, ‘They’re establishing a new special duty squadron over in Middleton St George,’ he said. ‘Not sure what you’ll be doing but,’ he said, ‘They’ll be making trips to France which is now clear of the Germans,’ he said. ‘So if you want to join that squadron,’ he said, ‘They have lots of room for you.’ So he said, ‘You can think about it for a few days.’ I thought about It, and I thought well I won’t be doing any more ops but I said. ‘Maybe my luck will run out,’ I said, ‘Even though I’m not on ops,’ I said, ‘Maybe something else will happen to me because,’ I said, ‘I seem to be jinxed.’ [laughs] So, I decided. Oh, I said, ‘Maybe I’d better get screened.’ So that was, that was the end of my flying career.
DE: So how many ops had you done at that point?
RH: Pardon me?
DE: How many ops had you done at that point?
RH: Nineteen.
DE: Nineteen. Ok. Thank you. Are you ok to carry on or would you like a wee break for a, for a little bit?
RH: No. I’m fine. I’ll have another drink of gin [laughs]
DE: Oh, you’re lucky [laughs] I’m on water.
RH: Yeah. I think I am too.
DE: Ok [laughs]
KA: Have you shown them the book?
RH: Eh?
KA: Have you shown the book?
RH: Oh. Can you see this book?
DE: I can see it says, “Flight.” If you lift it a bit higher. Ok.
RH: Ok. So that book that just came out recently and it was written by Deana Driver, and she once said there’s been, actually I should go back. She, she and her husband ran, she and her husband ran a printing business. Can you hear me?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
RH: And so she had [pause] I guess I have to go back to the Canadian Snowbirds. You’ve probably heard of them. Canada’s air demonstration team.
DE: We have the Red Arrows.
RH: Did you?
DE: Yeah. The RAF display team are called the Red Arrows. They’re stationed, well they practice over my house.
RH: Oh yeah.
DE: So yeah. Yeah.
RH: But anyway when they were formed they reactivated 431 Squadron. So then I’ve had a connection with them ever since and been to their station at Moose Jaw. That’s where they’re training NATO pilots. But then when, when the Governor General visited Saskatchewan in 2018 for her training as an astronaut she took some of her flying at Moose Jaw flying Harvards. So the Snowbirds said, well and she wanted to visit the station. They said, ‘Well, we’ll put on, we’ll put on a special show for you.’ And unbeknownst to me the fella in Saskatoon that had organised, he’d organised numerous air shows and there’s another photographer there. He had interviewed numerous veterans and done videos and they’d arranged, they’d arranged with the, with the Snowbird commander to make me an Honorary Snowbird. So after the air show I thought well we’ll be going back to Saskatoon. They said, ‘No. We’ve got a, you’d better stick around for a while because we’ve got something else to do.’ So then I saw people gathering around and people with cameras and much to my surprise the Governor General was there and the commanding officer and then they had a beautiful plaque and the Commanding Officer, Colonel French presented me with this plaque and made me an Honorary Snowbird. So I have a picture taken with the Governor General on my right and I’m in the centre and the Snowbird commander’s there and I’m standing right beside the Governor General and I thought, gee I wonder if I should put my arm around her [laughs] I suddenly thought well better not do that I said, because Prince Philip, he has to walk six blocks behind the Queen and the Governor General is representing the Queen. I said, you’d better, you’d better not do that [laughs] After they’d presented me she said, she had a bit of an accent and she said, ‘Oh, they tell me you used to fly the Lancasters.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘What were they like to fly?’ I said, ‘They were a lovely aircraft to fly.’ I said, ‘Your excellency, if you go to Trenton,’ I said, ‘There is one Lancaster that can fly and one in England,’ I said, ‘If you go to Trenton I’m sure they’ll let you fly the Lancaster.’ ‘Do you think so?’ [laughs] I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m sure they’d let you fly it.’ So I’ve often thought it was a good thing I didn’t try and put my arm around her. So where were we now? I got sidetracked.
DE: Yeah. You had just been screened so I guess it’s —
RH: Oh yeah.
DE: It’s, it’s from there and the voyage home I suppose.
RH: So then, well then of course I stayed around the station for a while. I went back to my aunt and uncle’s to, [pause] to say goodbye to them, and then went to Warrington. That’s where they all went to turn in their gear and so on. And when we, I was only there for one day and then it came [pause] oh I guess what you’d call a storm but anyway the weather turned really cold and all the pipes froze. They had hundreds of people there, and you had to return all your gear. And then they said, ‘Well, it’s going, everything is shut down because all the pipes are frozen. We can’t get anything done so where ever you came from you might as well go back.’ So I went back to Hull for another three or four days and said a second goodbye to my aunt and uncle. Then went back to Warrington. We had to turn in our helmets and flying boots, and I thought well I’m not going to turn everything in. If we didn’t turn in we had to pay for them. So I thought, well I survived four plane crashes I’m taking something home with me. So I took my flying boots. They said, ‘Where are your flying boots?’ Well I said, ‘I forgot.’ I said, ‘I left them with my aunt. I left with my aunt and uncle.’ They said, ‘Well, you’ll have to pay for them.’ So, ‘Ok. I’ll pay for them.’ And I often wish I’d kept my darned helmet, you know. Because when, over the years I’ve gone to numerous schools and so on and I often wish that, I used to take my flying boots to show them and that but I often wish I’d taken my helmet. But I didn’t. Then to make a long story short I, you remember my Buddy saying, ‘Well, you might meet Jean?’ Well, when we got to, when we got back to Canada I think it took us about another four, four and a half days but I got seasick. I never did going over but I got seasick. In the Irish Sea there was a bad storm and I was so sick. It’s the strangest feeling. I just wished the ruddy ship would sink I got so sick. Even though I’d survived the war. That’s how sick I felt. And I think we got, probably got tossed around. I don’t know how long. I was sick for about two days. Anyway, we got back to Canada. We landed at Lachine, Quebec and I wired my folks in Melville and told them at the farm, told them when I would, possibly when I would get there but I would let them know when I arrived at Melville because I’d decided I wasn’t stop at Ottawa because I didn’t know what I was going to say to Jean. I got cold feet. I’d never had to do such a thing so I figured she’d be upset and I phoned. I phoned, it was a Saturday afternoon and Jean wasn’t at home. Her sister Angela answered the phone. She said, ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Jean’s not here,’ she said, ‘But when will you be arriving in Ottawa?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, Angela,’ I said, ‘But I’ve wired my folks and I won’t have time to stop.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Jean’s going to be disappointed because she wants to talk to you about Buddy.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘But I won’t be able to stop.’ So I hung up the phone and it wasn’t long before a little voice said to me, ‘You know that’s pretty darned selfish of you. Your good friend, Buddy, he never even gets to the squadron and he’s killed in his last trip at Conversion Unit. The least you can do is go and see Jean.’ I wrestled around with it for at least an hour more and then I said, yeah, I guess I’d better go. So I phoned. I phoned back and Jean was home then and she answered the phone. She said, ‘Well, my sister told me that you weren’t going to be able to stop.’ And I said, ‘Well, I changed my mind, Jean,’ I said, I said, ‘I’m going, I am going to call.’ She said. When will you be arriving?’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s hundreds of airmen here and they us told it will be several days before they get everybody sorted out. All the trains.’ I said, ‘I’ll let you know when we’re going to arrive.’ I think it was three or four days before, before they got it sorted out and of course we had several stops before we got to Ottawa. We stopped at Montreal and other places. And then when we got to Ottawa this was a large station full of airmen getting greeted by families and so on and I’m sitting on my kit bag and my uncle had given me a nice leather case to bring my flying boots back. So I looked across and I saw two women and it looked like they were looking at a picture. I thought gosh, that might be Jean and her sister so I got my kitbag. It was heavy. Dragged it over there. And it was cold. It was the 28th of January ’45. And when I got closer I said, ‘Are you ladies looking for someone?’ They said, ‘Yeah. We’re looking for Flight Lieutenant Harrison.’ Oh, I said, ‘I’m a flight lieutenant. My name’s Harrison. Maybe you’re looking for me.’ So that’s how, that’s how I met Buddy’s Jean. And you know I often thought that he was always so emphatic when he’d say, ‘You never know. Some day you might meet her.’ And I often thought that then maybe he had a premonition that he wasn’t going to make it, eh? So anyway I was going to stay two days and I stayed four. Went back for holiday for ten days and that in ’45 and then the same in ’46. And December the 23rd ’46 we got married. And then my —
DE: Wonderful.
RH: My girls often say to me, ‘You know dad, if you hadn’t listened to that little voice we wouldn’t be here, would we?’ [laughs] I said, ‘No.’
DE: Yeah.
RH: But it’s a strange thing you know when, when I think about it and I should say too you know when I got back to the farm everything was quiet. It was like living in a different world and I, I thought then you know why didn’t I stay another year or so over there and join that special duties squadron because I understand that they were flying a lot of the prisoners of war back. Making trips and I’d often wished, but then I’d think well maybe I did the right thing because even though I wouldn’t be facing the enemy something else might have happened because my flying career was jinxed [laughs] But what really has bugged me and all through these years, my navigator and I were recommended for a DFC. And I know that because after the raid on Sterkrade when Croft lost eight aircraft on that raid, it was we were bombing a synthetic oil refinery and unbeknownst to, unbeknownst to the authorities the Germans had opened a night fighter ‘drome about thirty miles from Sterkrade. And we were attacked that night just after we left the target. We were attacked by a Messerschmitt 109 and my mid-upper gunner got credit for shooting him down. I think he was either inexperienced or I was just coming out of the corkscrew manoeuvre and my rear gunner saw him coming in. He missed us on his first run. He was coming in the second time and the rear gunner yelled at the mid-upper and told him where he was. The mid-upper gunner got a real good shot at him and that plane immediately went into a steep dive so he must have hit the pilot with his first burst. And then after the loss of those aircraft and they also, 431 also lost five aircraft on one night on raids to Hamburg. And they called me in and Frankie Goldman said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’re going to be a deputy flight commander,’ and I said, ‘Frankie,’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything about office work, I said. I came from the farm,’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a clue what to do as a deputy flight commander.’ He said, ‘You’ll learn on the job just like I did.’ So I was about, I think I was only on the job about four or five days. One afternoon the phone rang about 2.30 and I was in A Flight, and I didn’t give my name, I remember saying, ‘A Flight.’ The other end of the line was, ‘This is Flight Lieutenant Nicholls. I’m the adjutant at Middleton St George and I’ve got recommendations on my desk for gongs for Flight Lieutenant Harrison and Flying Officer Philips.’ He said, ‘I’ve got all the information I need on Harrison,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘Before I send them up the line for a final approval,’ he said, ‘I need more information on Philips.’ I said, ‘Flight Lieutenant Nichols, this is Harrison speaking.’ I said, ‘The wing commander’s in his office. I’ll transfer your call.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘By all means do so.’ I transferred the call to the wing commander. That night in the mess Al was writing home to his new wife and I might have been dropping a line to my folks at the farm, or I’m not sure. Looking at the pilot’s, I always had my pilot’s handbook with me and that night I said to Al, ‘Oh, it looks like we’re going to get a gong.’ He said, ‘How do you know?’ I told him about the phone call. Well, to make a long story short after the, after the crew were screened and just before, I think it was after the first trip on the Lancasters I looked on the Daily Routine Orders and there were three airmen that got the DFC and one was my navigator Al Philips. And I had an idea right away why my name wasn’t there. Because after the bale out the group captain called me in. The flight commander said, ‘The old man wants to see you.’ So I went to see the group captain. He said, I saluted him, he said, ‘Sit down. I’ve got something for you to read.’ So he had an endorsement in my logbook. Said at the top “Carelessness.” The gist of it was that my navigator also had one in his book and the wireless op. “This pilot in conjunction with the navigator knew that aircraft from 6 Group were being diverted and should have known that he had, that he’d be able to land at Croft.” So he said, ‘I’m placing this in his logbook,’ he said ‘Due to carelessness.’ Well, if I had ever known that any aircraft from 6 Group were being diverted I would, I would never have gone.
DE: No. Of course not.
RH: You know. So I, that’s why I never received my DFC. But anyway —
DE: So you were, you were, you were talking about this time when you were attacked by night fighters. Did any of the aircraft you flew did you also have the, the mid-under gunner?
RH: No. They never did. And you know what I never realised. I think I don’t think the authorities knew for quite some time that the German radar, you know they had the two types. They had the type where they, and mostly the women operating these three radar stations and they used to zero in on individual aircraft. They would relay that information to a night fighter, tell them where the aircraft was and then he was to let them know when he could see the aircraft and then he would get underneath. They had cannons on those night fighters as well as machine guns. They would get underneath the aircraft and he would aim the cannon at the gas tanks. Yeah. And if they were on the way to the target he didn’t get too close because he didn’t know what, what the bomb load was. And they had a, I understand they had a special tip on their cartridge and when it hit the gas tank the whole aircraft would be a mass of flames. Because quite often you’d see a big orange ball in the sky and that meant that it had been attacked and hit by a night fighter. They were probably, some of them were probably incinerated. But then the other method they had what they called the lone wolf. Right. So they would just, they would know where the bomber, they would be directed to the bomber stream and then they would just be on their own then. Then when they spotted a bomber then they would, you know come in for the attack. [pause] But I think, I think the closest estimate that I have I think there were close to the figure of all the bombers that were lost about eighty percent of them were shot down by night fighters rather than flak. And have you ever, have you read the book called “The Red Line,” the raid on Hamburg?
DE: I’ve read —
RH: No. Nuremberg.
DE: I’ve read several books. Yeah. Yeah.
RH: Have you read that one?
DE: I’m thinking, I think it’s one of the ones behind me.
RH: Oh, it’s an interesting one. That’s the night they lost ninety five bombers over, and then lost eight in England. And the wind changed a hundred and eighty degrees and they overshot the target. Did hardly any damage to the target they got so lost. And at the very bottom of that book it said the most costly and bloodiest raid of the war.
DE: No. No. It was. But you were, you were on operations in ’44 weren’t you?
RH: Yes.
DE: So after that. Yeah.
RH: Yeah. That was before when they, yeah.
DE: So did you do a mixture of targets? Because I suppose some of those were in support of the Normandy campaign and in France as well as in Germany.
RH: Yeah, we did.
DE: You said you did —
RH: We did quite a few of them in France, you know. Before, before D-Day, and after D-Day. We were on the Falaise Gap one too. Where they bombed short. Oh God, I can remember everything was timed right down to the minute and that’s when the Marauders had been in early in the morning and, and they’d, they’d, but they bombed things in a quarry and then, then the Canadians and the Poles moved into the quarry and then there was still a lot of smoke and that in there, and they had inexperienced crews on that raid. And I could, I can still see that Halifax. It was a Halifax setting up to meet and open the bomb doors and I said to the navigator, ‘How much farther have we got to go?’ And he said, ‘We’ve got about almost three minutes. We’ve got at least two and a half minutes. Why?’ I said, ‘Well, there’s a Halifax right up on my port,’ I said, ‘I can see all the bombs. I can see all the numbers on the bombs,’ I said, ‘And he’d got its bomb doors open.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’re not there yet,’ he said. I said, ‘Well, they’re —’ and I said, ‘I’m going to pull away from this because he was almost over my wings.’ And shortly after that the bomb, he let the bomb load go and then when that happened and we were bombing on yellow TIs that day and they sent a Lysander up firing off yellow cartridges to stop the bombing. I think it ended up with, it was either nine or thirteen bombers dropped their bombs short. Killed quite a few Canadians and Poles. And then when we got back to the station there was a message. All pilots, navigators and bomb aimers report immediately to the briefing room. And then of course they, they developed the pictures and we could tell quite easily the ones that had bombed short. But they should never ever have sent because the only escape route there was for the Germans to the east because the Americans were there to the west and then the Canadians and the British and the only escape route that the Germans had was the east. And I, it was a sultry day and a hot day and I remember looking out and there were, there were actually horses and that there. I suppose they were short of fuel that were pulling maybe some of their guns and that. But there were lorries and tanks. The whole countryside was littered with vehicles and trucks and tanks and streams of soldiers on the, on this escape route to the east. I’ll never forget that raid. So, that’s a few of the highlights of my, of my flying which I must say, Dan was entirely different than sitting behind six horses on the farm. And you know when I, there’s many a time when I look back and wonder how I ever, how I ever did it. Eh? Because when on the farm I knew very little about the big wide world. And then when you got over there every day was different. You learned something every day. It was just almost as if you were picked up and dropped on another planet or something. Life was so different.
DE: So did it change you?
RH: I think that it, I think it changed me in many ways. I think during that, for well the eight months I took the pre-enlistment course, I think during those four and a half years I think, I know I learned more about life in many aspects than I would have at any other time in my life. And I think what bothered me more than anything and I never realised it at the time that all the fellas that I trained with at all the different stations and different stops they made, Ground Schools and Flying Schools never thought that just over half of those fellas never came home because the loss rate in Bomber Command was fifty five percent. Somewhere between fifty five and fifty six percent. And I know for a fact, that for a fact because I had a picture taken just the day after we got our wings and there are four of us in there and I’m the only one that came back. There were thirty, thirty two I think got their wings that day and seventeen never came home. So that’s what it averaged out to. And you know, I often think when on Remembrance Days the thought occurred to me that for most people Remembrance Day was just a day in their life, eh. But for families that lost loved ones they had many Remembrance Days throughout the course of the year when the loved one that they lost had a birthday.
DE: Yeah.
RH: Or Christmas, or Easter or other occasions. And most people, you know they, they just have no idea. I’ve always said that there’s no glory in war. War is hell. More so for civilians than really the military. The military at least have, they have some opportunity to shoot back or that, but the civilians don’t and when you think of the millions that died in the Second World War. It was the First World War too. But I heard so many horror stories from my dad about the First World War that I was never going to join the Army and I didn’t like the water so [laughs] I think the only, the only place left for me is go in in the air.
DE: Yeah. There’s so many people like you, I think have said the same thing, ‘I don’t want to be in the trenches like the, like the infantry.’ And yeah. One chap said, ‘I can’t swim so I’ll join the air force.’
RH: That’s exactly how I felt [laughs]
DE: Yeah.
RH: Yeah. I think about the First World War. I never realised until reading the Legion Magazine probably a few months ago the number of horses and mules that were lost in that war, eh? Something like two hundred and seventy thousand. I often wonder how they ever fed them. But I also never realised that Canada sent several shiploads of horses over there, and those ships wouldn’t be really fitted for transporting horses and I understand they sent veterinarians with them but a lot of the horses were dead before they got there.
DE: Yeah. And some would have been, some would have gone down because they would have been torpedoed as well so —
RH: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
RH: Yeah.
DE: So, just, you know really quickly what, what did you do after you got married? You didn’t work on the farm then.
RH: Well, that’s interesting because I hadn’t, like I didn’t, I really didn’t like farming. I had allergies and working harvest time, and the grain dust and that it used to bother me and I never really, to be truthful I never really wanted to farm. So when, after I’d been home I got discharged in April. I think April the 14th ‘45. I had to go to Winnipeg. Get discharged. Then when I got back I thought well I’ll go to the university. Maybe I’ll take a course in agriculture. So I went. I saw the, I had an appointment with the Dean of Agriculture and he said, ‘Well, Harrison,’ he said, ‘We’ve got over two hundred, most of them ex-Air Force and some Army,’ he said. ‘They’re all going to graduate,’ he said, ‘And I don’t know. I’m sure there’s not enough jobs for them,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what they’re going to do,’ he said. ‘You told me that you had an application in for the Public Service and you could have an opportunity to go to work for the Veterans Land Administration which would be settling veterans on farms. So —’ he said, ‘If I were you I think you should take that job,’ he said, ‘Because I’m sure that all these fellas that are going to graduate from agriculture there’s not going to be enough jobs for them so —’ I took his advice, started to work for the Veterans Land Administration. Not only did they settle veterans on farms they also built houses for them and then if you didn’t want to farm or didn’t want to build a house they also had what they called Re-establishment Credit. You got seven dollars a day for every day you served in Canada and fifteen dollars a day for every day you were overseas, and then you could use that for buying furniture and so on. So that’s how I used mine. But I think the Federal, the Canadian Government, I think they had one of the best, one of the best programmes for veterans that came home from war. So that, then I worked then for the veterans. I worked from November ’45 in Regina until, when I got back from, from marrying Jean they called me in the office. They said, ‘Well, we’ve got good news for you. Oh,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a, have I got a promotion?’ ‘No. We’re going to transfer you to Saskatoon. To the District Office. You’ll have the same, get the same salary as here.’ So I started working in Saskatoon in January ’47 and retired in 1984. So I probably worked for the Veteran Land Administration for thirty eight and a half years. I started near the bottom of the ladder when I was one of the younger ones and kept my eyes and ears open. And a lot of them had university degrees but I worked my way up the ladder and when I retired my job was Regional Director for the Far Western Provinces so I often thought well I probably just as well there as if I’d gone to university.
DE: Yeah. Probably did.
RH: So, I just, I think those, for the times that I spent in the Air Force I think in many ways the times they were the most exciting. Sometimes the most interesting and I have to admit sometimes they were a bit scary. So I have, I guess you could say I had mixed feelings about the war but overall for me they were favourable because I was just, it was just luck I guess that I survived some of those plane crashes because they weren’t normal.
DE: No. No. Quite.
RH: Plane crashes.
DE: Yeah. Your nickname was well deserved I think.
RH: Yeah.
DE: So, we’ve been talking. Well, you’ve been talking and I’ve been listening for well over two hours so I’m quite happy to end there. Just there’s, there’s a couple of other questions that I always ask before I end an interview and, you know the first one is there any other story that you have in mind that you can think of that you’d like to tell before we, before we wind this up?
RH: I just wanted to ask you when, when Kevin goes back to my place when he has time and takes pictures like when you walk into my place I have a hallway. I’ve got lots of pictures of, of aeroplanes and so on, but in 1944 the Canadian press went around to all the Canadian bomber stations and they took pictures. You may have seen them but they, they were, oh here’s a book. They took pictures of, of all the squadrons and there you can see them. You can see them all standing on the top of the Halifax. And —
DE: Yeah.
RH: So that shows how much, how strong those things were built, eh?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
RH: Because now when you get on an airliner the first thing they see is, ‘Don’t step here.’ [laughs]
DE: Yes. Yeah.
RH: Yeah. So, so what, what I plan to do is I’m going to, I’m going to get your address from, get Kevin to give me your address and then I’m going to, I’m going to send you a copy of this. This article was written by a, by a Mr Gray and I met him at a, at a Allied Air Force reunion in Toronto in September 1990 and he was a retired High School teacher, also a former RCAF pilot and he had a, there was another teacher there too, a High School teacher who also a pilot. So when they had a going away luncheon on the Sunday he noticed my Caterpillar and my Guinea Pig Badge. He wanted to know how I got those and I told him the rest of my story and he said, ‘Did you ever write a book?’ I said, ‘No. I never considered myself a writer.’ And apparently he, he liked to write and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Would you mind if I wrote up your story?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I’ve got all my documentations. Copies of all my records.’ I said, ‘They came in an envelope,’ I said. I measured it. It was twenty two inches long. It was fourteen inches wide and well over an inch thick.
DE: Yeah.
RH: So I said —
DE: Well, I would —
RH: I said, ‘Thirty pages,’ I said. ‘Thirty five pages in the, in the Board of Enquiry into the crash on take-off,’ I said, so —
DE: Yeah. Well, I mean anything you could send like that would be absolutely wonderful and I’ll have a chat with Kevin about how we can get copies of photographs and things.
RH: Yeah. So what I, what I’ll do when I, when I go back to the offices, go back to the offices, there’s the endorsement. So I’ll send you a copy of that.
DE: That would be fantastic. I think we’ll stop the recording but we’ll keep chatting for a little bit longer.
RH: Ok. Yeah. I’ll get one of those books too and send it to you. As they say, ta ta. Ta ta for now, love [laughs]
KA: We’re done.
RH: We’re done.
KA: Good job, Reg. Holy smokes man. You talked for a long time.
RH: Too long, eh?
Other: Ok. Here. I’ll stop that.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Reg Harrison
Interview with Reginald Wilfred Harrison
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-02-27
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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:21:35 Audio Recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AHarrisonRW210227, PHarrisonRW2103
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
England--Northumberland
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Warwickshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Hull
Manitoba--Virden
Ontario--Ottawa
Saskatchewan--Regina
Saskatchewan--Yorkton
Ontario
Saskatchewan
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942-11-11
1943-04
1944-07-05
1944-07-06
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
Description
An account of the resource
Reg Harrison grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan and enjoyed watching aircraft when they flew over. He had his first flight as a youngster when he was lent five dollars by a shopkeeper. He volunteered for aircrew as soon as he was of age and began his training as a pilot. He had four crashes which earned him the nickname, Crash. The first incident took place while he was on his second dickie trip and the aircraft crashed. He and another member of the crew then heard the pilot shouting for help and returned to get him out of the aircraft. Reg sustained burns and was treated at East Grinstead Hospital. On their thirteenth trip his rear gunner was worried and suggested they call this trip 12A rather than thirteen. They crashed on take-off. On another occasion he and the crew had to bale out over England. Again, on another occasion while on an operation they came under fire from a Halifax who had mistaken them for a German aircraft. They just managed to get the stricken aircraft back and crashed at RAF Carnaby.
When he had leave, Reg would often go and visit his family who lived near Hull. He completed nineteen operations before he was screened, as his Wing Commander felt that he had been lucky too many times and might not be so lucky the next time. Reg has always been mindful of the loss rate in Bomber Command. He has a photograph taken a day after he got his wings. Of the four airmen in the picture he was the only one who returned home.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Steph Jackson
431 Squadron
434 Squadron
6 Group
aircrew
bombing
Caterpillar Club
crash
crewing up
FIDO
Guinea Pig Club
Halifax
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
love and romance
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Carnaby
RAF Croft
RAF Dishforth
RAF Gamston
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1286/20097/PSutherlandD1901.1.jpg
7fdbcf2e8591da39d9bec6c5cb887d77
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1286/20097/ASutherlandD191211.1.mp3
aaf42e489f40275ed15b16ed9b7f62ba
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
Sutherland, Don
D Sutherland
Sutherland, Donald
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Don Sutherland (1919 - 2022). He was conscientious objector during the war and worked on a farm in Lincolnshire.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-05-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sutherland, D
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So, this is Dan Ellin. I’m interviewing Don Sutherland at his home in Lincoln. It’s the 11th of December 2019 and this is for the IBCC Digital Archive. So, Don, I’ll just put that there. You were, you were talking about your father and, and his work in, in the First World War. What is it you, you think that made the first and the Second World War so, so different?
DS: Well, the first, the First World War I think could easily have been avoided. Certainly, in comparison with the Second World War which the way things had developed in Germany it was quite inevitable that it would lead to so many countries becoming involved and, and there was certainly much more of a drive from the Germany who had become the enemy so to speak. And it became so inevitable that it should lead to war because the way Hitlerism originated and developed its prime intention was, was to make them masters of the, of a huge area which would, would, would together lead to quite a different sort of civilisation really.
DE: So why was it that you chose not to fight?
DS: It’s a very good question because it, it was something which in, in Newcastle where I I was brought up and first, first worked for, I’d say half a dozen years the fact was that we had this annual thing going on in the, in the town moor there where all sorts of meetings were held. And this was an opportunity which the, the Pacifist people used to talk about alternatives to war and it was through a meeting that took place there just before the war began more or less, a year before the war began that gave me any ideas about, about the history of war and what you might say the inevitability of war and that there was a possibility that the idea of war was something that was a historical fact that people had learned to accept as being inevitable and that there was no possibility of any objective. Any alternative to, to war. And when the idea came to me that you could refuse to accept war as being inevitable and that certain people had made that part of their life to devote themselves to propagating that, that purpose in life to oppose war rather than to accept it as an inevitable thing. And until, until, until that time in in nineteen, was it 1939 it began — ?
DE: Yes.
DS: That, and it began in such a sort of a mixed way from what, what was done in Germany and then the surrounding countries in a gradual way. And of course, we went to war. Germany didn’t declare war on Germany, on England as you know but we became involved because of promises we’d made to, to support the country that Germany had invaded.
DE: Yes. Poland. Yes.
DS: Yes. That was, that was the reason we went to war because Germany had never actually declared war on us and so I, there was a feeling of sort of, a ridiculous feeling I think that, that Britain wasn’t really interested. And they had no idea or I should say we had no idea that, that war was inevitable and would involve us as it involved all the other countries. And in the way, the way Hitler had little by little, and country after country become such a powerful set of people by using the most violent means which were completely foreign to us really. Germany had a set up a system which was, was quite unique and he was able to engage so many different people and, and use so many terrible methods gradually to dominate the areas which led to such a huge powerful and of course this was partly too with the, with the help of the other people with similar ideas who had already set up in Italy to, to dominate other countries. And it just became such a powerful theatre for war I suppose. It’s, it seems so foreign to us to understand how it could happen because we, we find now that that the so-called enemy is as much a friend as, as anybody else. And, and in fact is leading the way to try and keep people together and not to have one nation dominating another.
DE: So, I mean we spoke about this in the other interview when I was here a few months ago. So, we have on tape the process that you went through and the tribunal you went to. I’d like to ask you a bit more about your time on the farm in Lincolnshire. I wasn’t quite sure. Was it, where was it at? The farm.
DS: Well, there were two. Two farms, communities in, both in Lincolnshire. In Lincolnshire. And also there were similar types of communities involved in other parts of the UK. But I think the place at Holton Beckering which was the first place I went to was a set up by various prominent Pacifists. Pacifist people who centred in London and one, one section there by advertisement if you like to call it one way and, and by interviewing individuals set up, set up a very organised and financed thing. So that was, that was, that was at [pause] at Holton and it involved two separate farms. And I think that came more or less at the same time as two individuals, using their own finances set up a separate place right next door to it and I I joined first this main big one and I was interviewed in London to go, to go to that one because one of the, one of the the conshys who was a Quaker in [pause] where, where I lived and I went, I went and stayed with him when that community had started. So that was my first. It was just like a holiday there. I hitchhiked there and then when I happened, it turned out that I got the sack from work that’s where I applied to go. In the first place they said no. I didn’t, they didn’t, they interviewed me in London and took one look at me and said he, he’ll never make a farm worker. And then later on the same year when I, when I got the sack from my job I, I wrote. I wrote to them again and when I, one of the executive members of the committee came and talked, talked in Newcastle and I told him I’d lost my job and I’d already applied to them and been refused. It was a possibility that they might reconsider it you see.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Well, I got a reply straight away nearly. ‘Yes. We’ll take you.’ They’d set this place up and they were short of men you see and so they decided that they would take me. So, I went there straight away and joined. Joined one of the places which was adjoining but it was not, the other place was supposed to be the main place because they had the very highly skilled bloke, a local chap who was the, the boss, plus a local ex-farmer who was a Pacifist. And I worked there for two and a half years and that covered the time of the war because I didn’t start until 1941. I I was employed at work as I got complete exemption.
DE: Right. Ok.
DS: And then when, when the end of the war I I was somehow out of touch with, with, with what had happened to the first community because the fact that we, we had, I then moved on to the, the other one because the second community was just run by these two men and they were in charge so to speak. But not in charge in a dominant way but they, they’d financed it you see so it was completely independent from the first community I belonged. And, and that’s that first community slowly died off so to speak. I’m not quite sure exactly what happened because I was so much attached to the, to the new community and unfortunately it didn’t stand ground on its, on its own. Key people left who had been quite important in keeping it together and eventually it, it ended up in in the hands of two people who were, who were financially dominant. But we, those who wanted to were carried on, carried on as ordinary farm workers but, but we still felt it was a community. Very much so actually and so, I was working there for about twenty five years and then because of my health didn’t seem strong enough for the job I was doing I I changed my work and the house I was living in. We were able to buy it. So, although I was living in the area I had no direct attachment to the community. Although I was still attached to some of the people who were working there.
DE: And what was, what was life like in the community? What was, what was the sort of every, every day like? Or what was it like across the seasons?
DS: Well, we, we had married and unmarried helpers and we had, certainly in the, in the section that I lived and there were, there were in, in the second community we had, had separate houses but they were more or less adjoining. And the married couple were in charge and they sort of looked after us and we were just like a part of a family the rest of us. But it slowly, it slowly disintegrated unfortunately but we had young, quite young children there with us. But as I say that, that, that community lasted a lot longer than the much larger first one which was more or less organised in London. So, it was quite sad really. We had a, we had a very large farm. A farm with a very good quality flock of pedigree sheep.
DE: So, what was, could you describe what a typical day would have been like?
DS: Well, a lot of the work I did and of course on the farm it varied according to the time of the year what you had to do.
DE: Of course. Yes.
DS: And so, in the wintertime I would be working chop, chopping the hedges down, keeping them in track, digging out the ditches and that sort of thing. And in the early days it was all so run by human labour. We didn’t have many, many tools at all really to use. It was only latterly that we developed to a size where we became much more mechanised. So it was, it was quite tough work but we got used to it. I mean, I never dreamed that I would become so used to hard work. I just, it wasn’t in my, my training at all and so it was a completely new life for me as it was for most of them really and the thing was that this, this place where I belonged, the second place there was quite a tendency for the people there to, to have an upbringing in art and three of them or four, four altogether I think were, had already been training to get degrees in art. So, when they finished work for the day, farm work they would then go, go to their room at night and spend another few hours working at what was really their, their chosen ambition. So they, they were quite quick to leave when they had the opportunity to do so and that’s what they ended up doing.
DE: And what did, what did you do in the evenings?
DS: I think we just sat and talked most of the time. I I had a little cottage to myself. I don’t know what it was built for originally but it was big enough to, to have a bed in it and so I suppose I read a lot and —
JS: There wasn’t any electricity was there?
DS: No. Not at first. Not at first. But —
JS: So, you read with candles or oil lights?
[pause]
DS: Yes.
JS: I remember when Uncle Bill, which was my mum’s brother said when you worked with the horses you would throw the windows open wide very early in the morning and wake everybody up.
DS: [laughs] Yeah. We, yes, well yes. My favourite job was wagoning. Driving. Driving horses. But we had to get up quite early to give them their food because they were not, they were not as well looked after as they [pause] A lot of people would have their horses in stables overnight. Particularly in winter time but our horses were kept out in the open air right through the winter. So, we had to go out and they would reluctantly come with us so they could get fed properly before we put them to work in the day. And then later on they would have to go back outside again so it was a bit of a rough life for them but they were used to it.
JS: And you’d harness them up to the plough.
DS: Pardon?
JS: Did they go with the plough or did they just pull carts?
DS: No. We did have, we had tractors as well and the really heavy work was done by tractors. But when the land was prepared for sowing and it had to be worked down to get the right, the right place for the, for the seed to grow that was, a lot of that work was done by horses.
JS: So that was harrowing and —
DS: Yes. Keeping, keeping it clean. Clean and that sort of thing and of course in those days, those days too we didn’t have, we didn’t use a lot of manure. The, we would keep, keep the ground clean by dragging, dragging harrows over the ground to keep it clean. And, and then we’d also go over it by hand with, with hoes as well to clean the land. It was very much manual.
DE: Yeah.
DS: And hand, and hand working in the early days. And it was some time before we, before we had the combine harvesters.
DE: So very very very hard work.
DS: I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe when I when I saw the first combine harvester that they would find a method of harvesting without using the old fashioned way of, of using a plough system.
DE: I know, I know some farms used prisoners of war to help. Did, did you have any of that?
DS: Yes. Well, first of all because when the war, the war ended in two different stages because first of all we, we stopped being at war with, with —
DE: Germany.
DS: No.
JS: Italy.
DS: Another country.
DE: The Italians.
DS: Yes. That’s right. Yes. But Italy, you see that war finished first you see and so they were released from the, from the prisoner of war camps in the country and, and were allowed to go home before the Germans and the Germans were kept behind for three years after the war finished. They weren’t allowed to go home because there were so many troops, British troops still involved in in the countries that we were at war with. They were kept there and so we were short of people and employed the Germans for two or three years after the war finished. And we had four. Four working for us. Three, three were people who we got on well with and the other we thought he was a lazy beggar which he probably was and two of the others were they had both been teachers or heads of schools, junior schools in Germany and on the section of the farms that I belonged to we had one who we got to know very well. He had, his wife had one child who he’d never seen, this child and so the father was looking forward to be allowed home so that he could see his first, first baby. And we later, I later on went over to Germany and stayed with them.
JS: And his children came to stay with us, didn’t they?
DE: And then the, the son came over and stayed with us on more than one occasion and, and I still get Christmas cards from him but he —
JS: And they did a play didn’t they? The Holton Players. They put on a play.
DE: I wanted to talk about that a bit. Yes.
DS: Yes. Yes. They, they put on a play at Holton. This was where, this was where they were kept. At the ex-Army base there. And they had liberty during the day. They, they would walk around and have complete liberty but they weren’t allowed to go home so it must have been pretty tough for them. I think some of them must have tried [laughs] tried to escape but others felt that they were probably much better off where they were than going back to Germany because Germany was in a pretty raw state when the war finished. It was not a, not a very pleasant place to be because they were starving. A lot of them were. Because the, Germany treated the people so badly. It’s all so forgotten now, isn’t it?
JS: And the Holton Players you, they, they were the pre-the Broadbent Theatre weren’t they because they did plays in the Nissen hut that then got burned down.
DS: That’s right. But that was, that was a little time afterwards really.
JS: In the ‘50s.
DS: I’m not quite sure what, what year it was because the place we, the place we used at first was part of the place which the German prisoners of war had lived in. So it was a little time before the Players got, the Players got together and it was, it was some of the people in the, in the original community that I belonged to who were extremely good at theatre work and —
JS: Phil Walshaw. Her aunt was Sybil Thorndike.
DS: Yes.
JS: And she’d been to RADA for a year before she had to leave.
DS: Yes. Well, several people who, who were very experienced at theatre work.
JS: And Roy Broadbent, who was the father of Jim Broadbent he was a big part of the theatre wasn’t he?
DS: Yes. But it was, it was when he left, he left the community that I joined second of all. It’s when he left that I, that there were vacancies and they were getting the extra people in that I joined from the first, the first community.
JS: So, you went to Bleasby then?
DS: That’s right. Yes.
JS: With Dick Cornwallis and Robert Walshaw.
DS: Yes, but Walshaw wasn’t there. Walshaw had been there and left because he had the opportunity of joining a farm right in the southwest of England and it didn’t work out. And after I’d joined that second community he wrote to us asking if he could come [laughs] Come back. And we decided that he, that he could. He was welcome to come back.
JS: And his son still lives on the farm. He’s farmed it.
DS: Pardon?
JS: Chris is still, still lives on the farm and he’s farmed it hasn’t he?
DS: Yes. He has. Yes, well he lives on the farm but he doesn’t really do much.
JS: Any more.
DS: Work. It’s been passed, passed over for use by somebody who, who just developed a huge dairy farm.
DE: So, the communities were, were quite democratic. You sort of had votes about whether people could join or not.
DS: That’s right. Yes. The first, the first was. Was, we had we had a rough say in what happened but the second we were, we were all classed as equal people although we knew that the money was in the hands of mostly two people who eventually took it over and we were, we were told we could stay on with the terms which we could agree to. Which I did for quite a time.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Until I got this other job.
DE: So, if we can just go back a little bit to during the war you said that there were, there were Italian and then German POWs that sometimes worked alongside you. Did you have anything to do with any of the people from RAF Wickenby which was quite close I believe?
DS: No. What happened was that you had different groups of people among the Pacifists. Some were used to a different type of living and some were in the habit of going to pubs and some weren’t. Some were quite reversed and religious and you know they became preachers locally. Part time of course. And, and some of the others and they mostly came from the second community that I belonged to but some of them moved in to the, in to the other one which had developed into a, a varied group with different ideas and just fizzled away gradually. So, I didn’t have much, much contact with the err I never went to, to any of the of the pub gatherings which the others, others did and they really became much more in touch with the airmen and got on reasonably well with them apparently. But I never, I never saw that side of it at all because the aerodrome, you know the aerodrome disappeared soon after the war finished.
DE: How did you feel about being so close to, to the aerodrome?
DS: Well, it was more the Bleasby, the Bleasby farm that was really close and parts of it, gradually more was taken off the farm to be used by the Air Force. So because I I belonged to the community which was further away I didn’t see very, very much of the Air Force really.
DE: Ok.
DS: No.
JS: But you’d hear the aeroplanes.
DS: Oh yes. Yes. Of course, they took off at night time mostly and where they took off, and the direction they were going on the way to Germany would be, they would not pass where I was staying you see. So we didn’t see as much of them as you, as you might, might think really. We would hear them but not see them necessarily. And as far as I know there was not much bombing took place in Lincoln itself and very little where, where we were. I don’t know why but that seemed to be the case. There wasn’t much bombing took place but there were quite a lot of aerodromes all, all over Lincoln that, that did get, did get bombed. It was quite a, apart from the armament places which were one of the main places and the bombings that were done purely for the sake of killing as many people as possible which took part in London and other big cities. And that was sort of quite a long way from this area you see.
DE: Yeah.
DS: They just went for, for the big cities. I don’t think that Lincoln, you see we didn’t see much of Lincoln. We would never think of going in to Lincoln. There was no way of getting there. No, no coaches to take us.
JS: You worked very long hours, didn’t you?
DS: Pardon?
JS: You worked very long hours on the farm.
DS: Very?
JS: Long hours.
DS: Well, we had double summertime then. We had, we had, we had, so, so in the wintertime we we we were using the hours that we now use in summertime. So we changed, changed our clocks at the usual time but we were an hour ahead, an hour earlier in starting our summertime.
JS: And then you had to lock up the chickens later, didn’t it? I remember.
DS: It was midnight.
JS: Because you worked with the poultry later on. And that was your job.
DS: Yes.
JS: But pea harvest was quite something wasn’t it?
DS: Oh yes. Yes. That was, that was hard work. We used to have special things which we, we had props that we put up in the field and when we, when we cut the hay the [pause] would you call it hay? I don’t know. My memory.
JS: The pea stalks.
DS: Yes. We put, and take them into big round sheds so that the wind would get through and dry them all out more quickly than if you just left them on the ground. So that was all hand work. It was all hand work early on so, it made me stronger I suppose. Not that, I’ve never been big. I’ve never been, never weighed ten stone but I’ve, I’ve managed. It was a great experience really. It was a fine life. A fine life working together really. So, it was, it was a blessing to me really. But then I was also in the position of being in a safe, comparatively safe situation whereas so many of my friends at work had gone into the different forces in time and one in particular who was, hadn’t been married very long but was very tempted to register as a, as a conshy. He decided to join up and not long after he’d joined up he was killed. And I don’t, still don’t know how many of my friends at work came back. [pause] Unless this is something which people haven’t experienced they won’t, won’t understand. What war does to people. And why some people still think war is the answer.
DE: And you continue to campaign against war. I noticed on your door you have have an anti-war —
DS: Yes. Oh yes. Yes. I hope people will take the message but we leave it to other people now to do our dirty work [pause] And it tends to be romanticised.
DE: Can you tell me some of the ways that you’ve protested against war and tried to spread the message?
DS: Well, we, we still go down to the RAF and spread propaganda there.
JS: You’ve flown kites there haven’t you in solidarity with the Afghani kite flyers at Waddington, haven’t you?
DS: Yes. Yes. We go to Waddington.
JS: And you went to the different peace camps. You went to Molesworth.
DS: I don’t go anywhere now really.
JS: But you went to Faslane as well, didn’t you? When you went to the Quaker conference a few years ago in Scotland.
DS: Oh yes. Yes. My daughter, my daughter took us on a nice holiday in Scotland last year and the group fairly recently set up, we’d been to the performances. Have you been to any of the performances?
DE: I haven’t. I didn’t know about them until it was, it was too late. But can you tell me a bit about them?
DS: Well, it was, it was because this, this chappy who was I think the oldest member of the group who came to the area and met some of the original people in the community and since he, since in the few years that he’s been the area we’ve now only got one friend. One. One friend and there’s not just myself and one friend left who belonged but when he came there were two more alive who, who had belonged to the community. And so that’s how he’s been able to get all the information that’s gone in to the creation of this, this play which he’s written.
JS: Some of the other children from the community, one was a journalist and she’d done a lot of recordings. Sarah Farley who, who I grew up with and also one of the Makins did also some interviews. He wrote about it. So, Ian Sharp used these memories as well as interviewing you and Arthur Adams and Phil Farley to make the play.
DS: Well, I, it’s a little uncertain at the moment as to, as to whether there will be another production but I’ll be sure and let you know.
DE: That would be wonderful because it, it was, it was shown at the Edinburgh Fringe and it was shown at the Broadbent Theatre as well, wasn’t it? It was put on there.
DS: It’s been several times at the Broadbent Theatre and that’s where its likely to be shown again.
JS: And recently it’s been on at Quaker meeting houses. And this autumn we went a fortnight ago, didn’t we to Doncaster meeting, the Quaker meeting house which was the last performance.
DS: Yeah. It’s been held at various Quaker meeting houses.
JS: The meeting would have known about it.
DS: Not with, not with the large attendances as we might have had.
JS: In Chesterfield there was a very good turnout. A lot of the people from CND were there and one of the men was ex-RAF that we spoke to that’s a big part of CND because when we were children you belonged to CND and we used to protest didn’t we then?
DS: Yes.
JS: Carried placards and that was how you carried on campaigning for peace.
DS: Yes. I don’t know to what extent young people are interested in peace making. What do, what do you think? Do you think they take a real interest in peace making?
DE: I think it’s because to a lot of people wars today are, are quite far away. They’re quite removed and they don’t have the real experience. I think that’s probably the problem. It’s something that happens to other people who it’s too easy to forget about. I don’t know. What, what do you think?
DS: Yes. I agree with you but I’m not so much in touch with people as you probably are and I might see one, one side of it.
JS: Well, when we’re in a recession the rise of nationalism is always worrying, isn’t it? You know, like in Germany the war started because of recession and when you get a current situation that’s very much saying you know people from other countries aren’t welcome even though they, our country wouldn’t function without them it’s, it can make people fearful that that people from other countries are enemies rather than just our neighbours.
DS: Yes. I, I’m very disappointed with the general attitude of people in the UK now that we should think about ourselves and not about the world as a whole. And we’re all so interdependent. I think it’s only now when we, it’s been revealed to us the dangers of not working together. And yet we’ve still got people fighting one another. Actually, wasting the parts that are valuable.
JS: Well, the politics and the economics of war where countries sell arms to countries that are then used against them is totally absurd.
[pause]
DS: I I don’t know much about it but you’ve probably heard the report of what, when we’ve had meetings at Bomber Command. Have, have you, do you, do you get a note of what’s happening there as far as our meetings there go?
DE: Sometimes I do. Yes. I think mostly its Heather gets involved with those. Those things. But yeah, I know there have been several meetings because we’re thinking about changing parts of the exhibition up there.
DS: Well, it’s the room upstairs which is, the idea is to develop that more isn’t it?
DE: That’s correct. Yes. Yeah. I mean that part of the, that gallery at the Bomber Command Centre has tried to tell the story about how the war has been remembered and how that feeds in to wars and conflicts today.
DS: Yes.
DE: I’d just, I’d just would like to have a go at it and try and make it a bit better.
JS: I mean the title to me is so to me alienating of the place that —
DS: Well, you haven’t been to it, have you?
JS: No. No. But if it was combined with, with something that was promoting peace as well.
DE: Well, that’s what we’re trying to do —
JS: Yes.
DE: In part of it and we have tried quite, well, you’d, you’d have to go judge how successfully but we’ve not tried to glorify war.
JS: No. No.
DE: We’ve tried to show it from all perspectives and we’ve tried to show the shared suffering and sacrifice —
JS: Yeah. Absolutely.
DE: Of people in the air, on the ground and on both sides.
JS: It’s not about who’s right and wrong.
DE: No.
JS: It’s not a, you know —
DE: No.
JS: It’s not a divisive thing, is it? It’s —
DS: It’s unfortunate that my, my, I had my stroke, stroke it’s affected my memory so much that I can’t express myself as well as I would have liked to.
JS: But for a hundred years old you don’t too badly.
DS: A hundred years [laughs] years young you mean.
JS: And we had, we had three versions of the play to celebrate your hundredth anniversary, didn’t we? There were special performances where you had, where the play was adapted. It’s been a changing thing but it’s —
DS: It’s not been very well lately.
JS: The theme of it became more climate. The threat now of climate changes.
DE: Right.
JS: So, it’s like it’s a changing movement towards what is most close to, to causing harm to populations.
DS: Yes. And you’ve got, you’ve got countries which are a long way from here much much bigger than us and it must be extremely difficult for those people to feel they’ve got any say in in what happens. [pause] Whereas I don’t know how, how much the countries in the, in the UK area and a bit further away from us how much feeling we have of any sort of control of what the future is going to be. Are we just dragged along by some invisible force? Out of control. Is there a meaningful, meaningful force bringing us along in the right direction or are we at the mercy of something the invisible which is hiding us from the right direction? [pause]
DS: What difference do you think the election will make or could make?
DE: I I have no idea. No.
DS: I’m very disturbed at the number of people who don’t use their vote to say where they want to go. And I think that’s the most disappointing thing about the present day that people don’t feel how vital it is that we have a say in what, in what future we’re going to have.
DE: Yeah. I think, I think I’m going to pause it there.
[recording paused]
JS: Well, we got a knock on our door one winter night by Malcolm Bates who wanted to re-establish the theatre. He was an adopted son of a Lincolnshire family. So, they started rehearsing didn’t they at Faldingworth and did, “Oliver.” You were in “Oliver.”
DS: Yes.
JS: And Helen was in Oliver, my sister and a lot of the community people were in it as well as others.
DS: But it was in the big sort of big building which was used for accommodation for the for the conshies working at the other area of Lincoln. That was, that was where some of the first meetings and the cinema items items were done in the, in the early days because there were several people who had been used to performing as actors or actresses. So we were very fortunate that we had these people who were quite experienced and very very able and were able to draw other people in who hadn’t actually belonged to the community but were interested in plays that it was able to be, to to fill up and then to have our own theatre which was the generosity of one particular person that we got, got the place when prices were not so high as they, as they’ve become now that we were able to to get this which is still on the go. How long it’ll last for I don’t know because I think all the original people now must have died because it’s a long time since it began. They used to have a theatre at, at the [unclear] at least theatre company at at the main place. [pause] Well, I’ll be very interested in hearing what ideas you have about developing the complex. I, I’ve never actually got as far, so far as going through all the list of deaths shown at the Memorial.
DE: There’s only a few people who have because there are, there’s fifty seven thousand names there so.
DS: I know, but I mean I know the names of all the people who, you know, the full names of all the people who, who were with me when I worked and who, who were called up. And I know some of them went into the Air Force so I might have a record as to whether any of them were killed or not. But then there must be, if there’s a complete list of, of soldiers and other types of people. I don’t I don’t know what that would be. How much room it would take up to put all the names of the various soldiers who were killed. It would be a huge list wouldn’t it because I would, I would think there were probably more of other different types of soldiers than the Air Force.
DE: Yes. I don’t know if they’re all collected in one place actually physically but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission would have —
DS: Yes.
DE: All the names available on the internet. Right. I I think I’m going to, I’m going stop the recording there so I will just say that also present in the room, the other voice on the recording was Don’s daughter Janet Sutherland. Thank you very much, Don. That was absolutely wonderful. Thank you.
DS: My pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Don Sutherland. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-12-11
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASutherlandD191211, PSutherlandD1901
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:07:34 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
Description
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Don was brought up in Newcastle, where he worked for a number of years. He attended a meeting a year before the war began, about alternatives to war and that war didn’t have to be accepted as inevitable. Don joined a community which organised work on a farm in Lincolnshire. After two years he transferred to another similar community, where he remained for about 25 years. Everyone was classed as equal and could vote on who could join this community. Don described everyday life in the community and farm work throughout the seasons. His favourite job was looking after and driving the horses. He worked with poultry for a while and also remembered the pea harvest. RAF Wickenby was one of the nearest airfields to the commune. They had four German prisoners of war working with them, one of whom kept in touch with Don after the war. Don campaigned against war and would sometimes go to the RAF Waddington with anti-war propaganda. A play had been produced about the pacifists, which was shown at the Broadbent Theatre and also at Quaker Meeting Houses.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
animal
entertainment
faith
home front
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Waddington
RAF Wickenby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1287/17229/PHarperL1901.1.jpg
b15c864ba39a5f20db6c24984d37c6c5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1287/17229/AHarperL190521.1.mp3
46073482bffd601b5d01a9f978128194
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview with Len Harper for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. My name Is Dan Ellin. We’re in Len Harper’s home in Chapel St Leonards. It’s the 21st of May 2019. Put that there and then we’ll try and forget about it. So, Len could you tell me a little bit about your early life before you joined the RAF?
LH: Yes. Well, before I just went to the ordinary primary school, which I enjoyed and I left school at the age of fourteen, and from then on I was out of work but I managed to find myself a job and by the end of 19 — Come on. Come on.
Other: Alright.
[recording paused]
LH: I decided that the RAF was the place for me. So having worked in a shop Wednesday afternoon was always our half day off and I told my brother, who worked with me, I said, ‘Tell mother that I shan’t be home for this afternoon.’ Instead of that I went off to Hanley in the Potteries and joined the Royal Air Force. That was in the April of 1939. From then on that’s where it started. I joined the Royal Air Force and I went down to Cardington where I did all my foot slogging, and then from Cardington I was sent to the Wireless Training School at Yatesbury in Wiltshire, and that’s where I took my course on radio repairs etcetera and I passed the course at the end of 1939. Of course, then the war had started in the September. And from then onwards I was posted from, from Yatesbury. I went to RAF station Wittering which was a lovely RAF station and I was there for two years when I was posted to India and Burma. That is a short account of my RAF.
DE: Okey dokey. What was, what was training like? Can you remember?
LH: Training was very, very good really. It was very good indeed. We did, we did learn and it was, it was easy to learn. I mean nothing was too complicated. I know I started, I started at the RAF Wireless School at Yatesbury in the September, and a three month course took me through to the end of December which was then supposed to have passed us through to the, to the training that we’d had. And of course I went straight on to radio maintenance, which I enjoyed very, very much indeed and that’s how it started with me. I had two years. Two years in, at RAF station Wittering. And from then I was posted to, overseas to South Africa and from South Africa to Bombay, India.
DE: Ok.
LH: And Burma.
DE: So what, what did your work entail when you were at Wittering? What was, what was your, what was the job like?
LH: It was repairing radio. Repairing. Mostly it was damaged radios that were damaged during the overseas work and we had a real full time job in trying to get everything going as quick as you could when the aircraft came down. This wanted doing, that wanted doing, and it had to be done.
DE: So was it lots of soldering and changing valves and things like that?
LH: Absolutely. That.
DE: Yeah.
LH: Oh yes. A lot of that. It was good really. I don’t know why I didn’t take it on after the war but I didn’t and that was it. And then in the February 1942 I was on leave to go abroad when I went to South Africa for three days strangely enough. And then from South Africa I went through to Bombay where I was there for what should, what should I say? About two years there and then I was posted to Burma. And from Burma I went almost down the east, east coast picking up various jobs that were required of me to do with regards to radio repairs. But India was quite nice. Well, what shall I say? A rare place. It wasn’t what I expected. We were looked on, some of us were looked on as fighters and what not. We wanted to get rid of India, sort of thing. Others thought the world of us. And we went on like that. And then of course I was posted overseas to Burma where I spent eighteen month. And it was illness that brought me back from Burma, back in to India and then I came back and did another year in India doing the same job that I’d done right the way through.
DE: What was the illness that you had?
LH: It was, what was it? Oh, I can’t think [pause] I’m just trying to think of it. I can’t —
DE: Dysentery or —
LH: It was dysentery.
DE: Right.
LH: Dysentery is correct. Yes. Yes. I had dysentery which I had, I’ve never even got rid of it. I even get yet touches of it nowadays. At my hundredth birthday. But it wasn’t that that took me out of the Force. I automatically left the Force in 1945, and my wife didn’t want me to go back. And having plenty of conversation I thought well she doesn’t want to go back in to the Women’s Royal Air Force so I tore my papers up and that was it and I went to work on the railway.
DE: What did you do on the railway?
LH: I was a railway signalman on the Derby-Crewe line. I enjoyed that. It was very, very nice. I could have stayed on there but once again lines were being taken up and we were knocked out and that was it. Good old days. And from then onwards I went in to various industries. I did work in the man-made fibres division with the ICI. I was there for approximately eleven years, and after then I didn’t see any sense in stopping. I learnt what I wanted to learn and I left and I went into the newspaper business. And that’s how it went on. Going from place to place. It was a good life really because I’ve always been interested in trains and —
[pause]
LH: I’m trying to think what else happened.
DE: That’s ok. We can, we can go back over some of this stuff and you might, you might think of some more things to say. I’m rather interested in why you decided to join the RAF.
LH: Yes. Well, it was rather strange because my brother joined the RAF in January 1939, and he came home after a while and said how good it was, this, that and the other. I said, ‘Oh, I might have a go myself.’ Which I did. I liked the idea of it. So, in the April of ’39 I decided to go and join the RAF, which I did and I’m glad I did. I could have stayed in the RAF for years if, if my wife would have liked the idea. But she didn’t want the idea of being [pause] well, what should I say? Being under the RAF.
DE: Sure, yes. When did you meet her? When did you marry?
LH: I met her long before I joined the RAF. We were married. We married in February 1942 but I met my wife long before that. And she joined, she joined the RAF. She was from Nottingham and there we were.
DE: So it must have been fairly hard. Only getting to see each other when you both had leave, I imagine.
LH: Oh, yes. Yes. We always managed to get together when leave was on the records. Yes. We did.
DE: What did she think when you got your posting to India?
LH: She didn’t like the idea at all but of course she was already in the Women’s Royal Air Force so it didn’t make much of a difference to her. We were, she put up with it and I explained to her that it was all for the best, which it was really. But to go out to India was rather strange. I never thought I should be sent out to India because I went to Bombay where we [pause] and then from Bombay I went [pause] I went to Quetta. I was at Quetta for three, four months taking a wireless course. And then we were posted. I was posted down to Calcutta. And from Calcutta I went through to the postal region, and I went into Burma. To a place called Dohazari. A very nice place. And I was there for two years until I got this dysentery and I had to go back in to India and I went to central India, to Agra where I was hospitalised there for eight months.
DE: What were conditions like in the hospital?
LH: Pretty good. Pretty good really. Oh yes. They did look after us. There’s no doubt about that [pause]. I had plenty of time to get about and I had some good times. I had, well I met a lot of people in India. I went to Bhopal, to Agra, to Quetta and all various places. And I got to know quite a lot of the Indian people and to me they were, they were quite, quite a nice lot in my opinion. But of course there was this time when they were wanting to get out of the British Raj and this, that and the other, and you didn’t know who you could really rely on for a friendship. And there it was. But Burma was a strange place. The Burmese didn’t like us. They liked the Japanese more than they liked, liked us. However, we got over that and as I say the third time I had to, I was posted back in to India with dysentery.
DE: So, were you part of the Third Tactical Air Force over there in Burma?
LH: Yes. Yes.
DE: Yeah.
LH: Definitely. Went down as far as Rangoon and it was quite good out there but Burma seemed a funny place. They didn’t like us. They liked the Japanese. They were more fond of the Japanese than they were of the British troops and I thought, well, that’s what I thought. That was my opinion.
DE: What were the living conditions like out there?
LH: Out in —
DE: In, in Burma.
LH: Pretty jungalised. We more or less lived like we should have done in the, in the jungle but it’s quite good. It was. We had some good food. We had our own, we had our own cooks and what not, so we didn’t do too bad. I suppose if I hadn’t had dysentery I shouldn’t have got back out of Burma.
DE: So, it was, it was airstrips in the —
LH: Yes.
DE: In the forest.
LH: Yes. Yes, it was. Actually it was a very interesting time. I mean people said oh this, that and the other, it was terrible but I didn’t find it terrible. I mean, you took it as it came and that was it. You knew what you’d got to put up with. You knew what you had to do, and you did it. And then of course when I went back in to India I was posted to a place called Santa Cruz just outside Bombay which was more or less, well it was like being on the Underground in London. It was very very good. And then from then on of course I came back in to, in to England.
DE: What was, what was the transport like? I mean, you say you liked trains. You must have used trains a bit and then obviously the, the troop ships.
LH: Well, trains. I could do with trains all the time. I was really a train man. I was brought up on the railways. I mean I was in a signal, signal box on the Derby-Crewe line for eleven months and I really got to know the railway. And I liked it very much. Training was good and you could move about if you wanted to or you could stay where you were. I moved from Derby-Crewe down in to Uttoxeter, and then back to Ashbourne and then from then it was wiped out. The junction was wiped out altogether and I was made redundant.
DE: Was that the cuts? The Beeching cuts.
LH: It was Beeching’s cuts.
DE: Yeah.
LH: Yes. It certainly was.
DE: What were the troop ship transports like that took you out to India and brought you home again?
LH: They were pretty groggy, let’s put it that way. As long as you did as you were told you were alright. But I didn’t like it at all. But then again if you did as you were told you were alright. The troop ships. No.
DE: Were they long journeys?
LH: Well, we started off from South Wales. Went up to Glasgow and from Glasgow back down to the, what was it, the Mediterranean. Then we were sent in to Freetown. We were there for a week because the Germans were outside waiting for us to get out and make after us. But we did go and we finished off going down to South Africa. South Africa we went to, to Bombay, and that’s how I got to know India. Karachi was, Karachi was quite nice. I liked India actually.
DE: What in particular?
LH: I liked the country. I liked some [emphasis] of the people. I met some very nice friends. And that was the main reason and I could get about the country which I did, and that was it. I could have stayed in India.
DE: You didn’t, you didn’t mind the climate then.
LH: No. No. The climate. No. Never worried me a little bit. Not a bit. As I can say I never wore, never wore a sunhat all the time I was in India. I still wore my old RAF hat. And I got some very nice friends.
DE: Was that other RAF personnel or, or —
LH: Well, Anglo-Indian most of them.
DE: Right.
LH: Most, most of the ones but I worked with them. We were BBC but we had taken a part of the Indian radio over and of course we met a lot of the Anglo Indians who had been drafted in to the Force and we got to know them very, very well.
DE: And this was, you were still working on the wirelesses, the radios from the aircraft.
LH: Oh yes. Yes.
DE: Yeah.
LH: Yes, definitely.
DE: So what sort of aircraft were they flying?
LH: We were flying, well mostly it was, what shall I say? We saw a lot the Bedfords, Blenheims, and Spitfires. Anything that came down that wanted repairs to radios we did it.
DE: Did you ever fly?
LH: Not to the extent of work flying. No. I did fly. We often used to manage to get lifts, you know around the countryside but I wasn’t aircrew.
DE: No.
LH: No.
DE: Did you ever consider it?
LH: I did think about it. As a matter of fact I was offered the chance to take a commission. The only thing that stopped me was the fact I knew I should have to do another two years out in India and I didn’t want to do that so I didn’t take it.
DE: What was the contact with your wife like?
LH: Oh, she was, she was in the RAF and of course she could get home from Nottingham back in to Ashwood. She was quite happy and she left the WAAFs before I left the RAF, and it was through that that I didn’t go back.
DE: Yeah.
LH: I wish I had have stayed in the RAF.
DE: But did you used to write to each other?
LH: Oh yes. Yes, we had. We did.
DE: How long did a letter take?
LH: Not too long. About a couple of, a couple of weeks sometimes. Sometimes you got a quick reply. Your answers would come a lot quicker. Correspondence was pretty good during the war. And then of course when I finished, I finished up with going to work on the railway [pause] which I did between Oxford and Uttoxeter. Pomfrey Junction, Leek and various places.
DE: I’ll just pause this.
[recording paused]
LH: But India is the fact that I only saw India, the places that I visited. I mean New Delhi, Delhi. I went there. Fatehpur Sikri, the forbidden city. That was all boarded up.
DE: What was it like?
LH: Pardon?
DE: What was it like?
LH: Well, we never, we never managed to get in to Fatehpur Sikri. We could go around it. I don’t know why it was, it was, it was shut off from the country. It was really quite a nice place. There was the pink city. Jahal. The best place I liked was the central India, was Agra, and of course I saw places that they advertise in the papers nowadays. It costs thousands of pounds to get there whereas I had it all free. Especially through the Taj Mahal. I did enjoy that.
DE: So you did some sightseeing then.
LH: Pardon?
DE: You did see some sights then.
LH: Oh, yes.
DE: Yeah.
LH: Yes. I did.
DE: Did you take a camera?
LH: Yes, I had a camera, and I had a bicycle which I bought to get around the countryside, where ever I wanted to. And I got in with some very nice friends who had been to India for years. And they took us in alright. We got on very well.
DE: So, you went, you went exploring when you had some leave then.
LH: Oh yes.
DE: Yeah.
LH: Yes. I went all over the country, even right down as far, as far as Ceylon [pause] They were good old days, you know when I look back. Really, really good holidays. You can come in Mike, don’t worry about upsetting us.
Other: I was looking to see where your photographs are.
DE: I’ll just pause it again.
[recording paused]
DE: So, I’ll just start recording again. I’ve —
Other: I’ve got the tea coming.
DE: Ok. I’ve been suggested that I should ask you about being chased out of Burma.
LH: Oh yes. We were chased out of Burma soon after we got in there. We’d just got in, more or less settling down and we were chased right out again. But we went back and that was it.
DE: What was it, what was it like when you were retreating from the Japanese?
LH: It was rather strange because the only thing they had between us was about a four foot wide, four foot, four hundred foot river. The River Ramu. And that was as far and they used to shout across to us across the river and they got two of our fellas because we brought their, all their stuff back with us when we left.
DE: So it was quite, quite a close run thing then at times.
LH: Oh, yes. Yes.
DE: Thank you. I’ll just pause it again because there’s tea.
[recording paused]
LH: [unclear] was the place in Burma that we went to. Cox’s Bazaar. That was a place. Ramu, The River [unclear]. That was all on the, all on the west coast.
DE: So, were you involved in the Battle of Kohima then? That sort of —
LH: No.
DE: No.
LH: No. I’m not really involved in any of the big battles. We had times when we, we had to be careful and this, that and the other but, no. It’s, I was pretty lucky actually. I’d say very lucky. I don’t know. [pause] Yes. But like everything, I mean say you think about these things. You try to remember all that you’ve seen and it’s impossible to remember everything. Oh, I liked Delhi. I liked Mandodari. That was very nice there. And what was it? Agra was very very nice. And so was Bhopal. That was nice. We were there just before they had that trouble in Bhopal.
DE: Going back to to Burma what did you think about the Japanese? What was your attitude to them?
LH: Well, we didn’t see a lot of them. We heard a lot of them but we didn’t see a lot of them and we were sort of one side the river and they were the other side of the river and that was it. And then we were suddenly moved off and we went back, we went back in to India. Well, I’d say we were pushed off really.
DE: When you were, when you were being pushed out of Burma. Burma. Were you, were you worried about being taken prisoner?
LH: No. No. We were lucky in that respect in as much that we, Burma we, we did hold the border. We held the border very well there and it was just a hop across on to the ferry and back into India. But then the second time when we went in of course we went right down as far as Rangoon, and of course the Japanese were pushed right out. But I did meet a few Japanese. A few Japanese prisoners. They didn’t like being taken prisoners. They seemed all right. I mean, they were only humans like we were but they seemed to be funny people. They thought nothing of committing suicide and things like that which we wouldn’t even dream of. I’m just trying to think of the point where we were stationed.
[pause]
LH: A lot of it has gone through my head and that. I can’t just recall it.
DE: Yeah.
LH: It’s seventy years ago.
DE: It is. Yeah. It’s a fair old while.
LH: But it’s nice of you to come and have a talk about things. Is there anything else that’s —
DE: Well, I’ve got, there’s other things we could talk about. So, where were you when the war ended? Where, were you on —
LH: When the war ended I was in central India. That’s when, that’s when it ended in India and Burma and we were, I was then enroute back to England and I remember passing, passing Malta and then we went through, right through until we got to England.
DE: So, did you, did you hear about Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
LH: Oh yes. We heard all about that.
DE: Yeah.
LH: Yeah.
DE: What were your thoughts?
LH: I thought it was scandalous. I’d never ever even think that they used bombs like that but of course that was it.
DE: So, did you celebrate the end of the war then?
LH: We did, yes. We celebrated well. I finished up at Morecambe strangely enough. We were all posted off to a camp outside Morecambe and we did a real good celebration there. A very good celebration. And from Morecambe I went home on disembarkation leave and I went there. I was there in 1940, ‘45. Christmas. I never went back. Never went back, which I ought to have done. I never went back in to the RAF.
DE: What was demob like?
LH: Ok. I went straight on to the railway when I, when I came out of the RAF [pause] But I did, I met quite a nice lot of people.
DE: Sure.
LH: In India.
DE: What did you think about the Partition of India?
LH: Well, we didn’t know really a lot about it. We knew what was happening and you could tell at the time that you’d got to be careful what you said and what you did and that was that. You never used to mention politics. You thought it better to remain silent. I mean you was always the British Raj this that, the British Raj that and they were going to do this and they were going to do that, but it never came off. I know there was a very good hairdresser in Agra I got to know. He used to do my hair pretty well.
[pause]
A place called Juhu, just outside Bombay. That was a very nice place. I could have stayed in India.
DE: So they offered you a promotion.
LH: Yeah. I could really have stayed in India.
DE: What would you have been doing then if you’d have stayed?
LH: I don’t know what I should have been. I should have had to take a commission I think. I think that was the only way that I could have stayed in.
DE: So then would you —
LH: It was when they said it would mean I would have to do another extra two years in India I thought oh no, that’s not for me. Bombay was a nice place in parts. I’ve got some photographs there which I took because I always had the camera with me.
[pause]
LH: Well, I think that’s about all I can recall.
DE: That’s really interesting. Thank you. Just one other question that I usually ask is is have you any thoughts about the way the Second World War has been remembered? I mean you said it’s seventy years ago now.
LH: In the way that, well I don’t remember very much of the end of the Second World War because as I say we were coming home from India at the time when it had happened in India and Burma, and we were getting back to England. But with regard to celebrating should I say, the end of the Second World War in England, it had already been done more or less. We all went back to our normal stations. I went, I went back to Cardington and then from Cardington back to Wittering and from Wittering I was demobbed. But it didn’t seem a lot to us, the celebration of the end of the Second World War.
DE: But what about the way it’s been remembered in the history books and on television?
LH: A lot of it was true. A lot of it was false. A lot of it was just made up as one might say. I know, my experience, the fact that I came out and I was posted back to the Army in Yatesbury, to the RAF in Yatesbury and I went back to my Unit and everything went just as normal. It was there that I was recommended I should stay in the Royal Air Force, but of course you know what. It didn’t happen. The one thing about it, we did see the world.
DE: Yes. Because you said you had three days in South Africa.
LH: Yes. That was a strange lot. We got off the boat, went walking around the city and this, that and the other and back to the boat. Back again in to the city. And on the third day we weren’t allowed out. We knew we were moving. We knew we moved from South Africa. We went on to Bombay then. Mumbai as it is now. All I remember of Bombay is the fact that in the harbour when we got there we’d nothing but a sea of floating turbans. Everybody had thrown their turbans into the sea. They were good old days, they were bad old days but I think [emphasis] the good seemed to mix in enough with the bad for it to say well it was just as you saw it.
DE: So even with retreating from the Japanese and being ill for eight months it was a, it was a good time.
LH: It was. It was, yes. It definitely was. The only Japanese we actually saw were prisoners. We didn’t see many of those. I had some good times, had some bad times. Taking it, taking it all in it wasn’t all too bad. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. I did enjoy it. It was an experience. An experience which thousands of people would never experience. The only thing was, as I said if it hadn’t been for my wife I should have stayed in.
DE: Yes.
LH: Full time. But I didn’t.
DE: What did she do in the, in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force?
LH: She was a typist. She was just outside Newton. Outside, just out Nottingham and of course she wasn’t far from home. She could get home when she had a couple of days off and she was very, very happy about that but she left the Air Force before I did. Aye.
[pause]
DE: And I’m just wondering why you’ve, why you’re living here now? When did you move?
LH: Pardon?
DE: When did you move here?
LH: From [pause] I went to, I was born in Reading, and we moved down into Reading from Derbyshire. We were there for ten years in to the cottage where I was born. My aunt who lived in it bought the place and she left it to us in her will when she passed away. The only thing about Reading was the fact we couldn’t get a bungalow to suit my wife. She couldn’t climb stairs so we decided that we’d see what Lincoln had got. But having been six or seven months at Wainfleet during the war we went to Wainfleet. We went all around and we found this place in Chapel St Leonards and we liked it. My wife liked it so we decided that we would stay and we did.
DE: Right.
LH: I’ve always enjoyed it here. I still like it. I still like Chapel St Leonards. I like Lincolnshire.
DE: We haven’t talked about your time at Wainfleet. What were you doing there?
LH: Oh, at Wainfleet I was on the bombing range.
DE: Right.
LH: I was doing radio repairs on the bombing range. It was a crude place but mind you we didn’t half soup up some aircraft. It altered quite a bit after a while. It was just, it was just like a hut on the bombing on the side of the runway [pause] and we we held the radio communications for the station. Mango, Mango. That was our call sign.
DE: Was it, was it very busy then, the bombing range?
LH: It was very busy indeed. Very, busy. It was.
DE: And were they, were they dropping live, live bombs or —
LH: Practice, yes. Live bombs on the proper bombing range but practice bombs. They dropped quite a few of those. That was the days of the Blenheims. Most of them were Blenheims, and the Wellingtons. I always remember all those.
DE: And how accurate were they? How close to the targets did they get?
LH: They were pretty good. They got pretty good at it.
DE: So were you in communication with them when they were doing?
LH: Yes.
DE: Right.
LH: Yes. Oh yes. Radio communication. I can see it all now.
DE: So, how did it work? Were they told how well they’d done and how close they’d got to the target?
LH: Yes. Yes. They were given a report sheet as to what they’d missed and what they’d hit and it all added up I suppose to whatever they did. Of course that was the days of, like I say the American heavy bombers, our Blenheims and what not.
DE: Yeah. So, I suppose being posted to India when you were you, you didn’t see the big bomber fleets of Lancasters and Halifaxes.
LH: No. Only Halifaxes. Halifaxes. Saw all those aircraft in the hangars at the base.
DE: Did you ever work on radar?
LH: Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes, we had radar. We had a lot of radar repairs to do. We went down to the Isle of Wight for that.
[pause]
DE: What was that like to work on?
LH: Quite good really. You could see how things were developing. You could see as it was going to be the, well the means of communication in the end which it was.
DE: So, did you do any work with the navigation aids like Gee and H2S and things like that or —
LH: No.
DE: No.
LH: No. We used to go up in the bombers and test radios when we’d repaired them or when they wanted repairing. We used to go up with the, with the bombers. It was very [unclear] But I never really wanted to, to be in the flying crew. I don’t know why. I didn’t mind the odd journey in an aircraft. That was great. Absolutely was wonderful. Has it been of interest to you?
DE: It’s been fantastic. Thank you very much. Yes.
LH: Anything, anything else you would like to know?
DE: Well, usually the last thing I say is is there anything else that you would like to tell?
LH: Not really. Not as, not as I know of. Except I’ve had all the encouragement with my in-laws and family in doing the jobs that I wanted to do and, and there we are. But with regards to finishing with the Royal Air Force well it just, it came as I’ve told you if it hadn’t been for my wife who didn’t like the idea of [pause] what should I say, being out with me in the aircraft, and having our own, our own aircraft err our own houses, she didn’t like that idea at all. That’s what really put it down.
DE: Yeah. Right, well, I shall, I shall switch the recording off. Can I just say thank you very much again for —
LH: It’s been a pleasure.
DE: For the interview.
LH: I only hope I’ve told you enough to make you realise it was worth coming for.
DE: Well, there’s, there’s nearly, nearly an hour’s worth on the tape so—
LH: Oh.
DE: Right. So thank you very much.
Other: I want to ask you a question.
DE: Oh, ok. I should —
Other: You’ve mentioned Wainfleet.
DE: We have mentioned Wainfleet.
Other: Right. And was it the sergeant or the corporal coming on the motorbike?
DE: Oh, not had that. Is there a story about a non-commissioned officer on a motorbike at Wainfleet?
LH: Oh yes. Yes.
DE: Right.
LH: We, we were on a radio station and this corporal, Corporal Green he had a BSA motorcycle, and he often wondered I think why we were always busy working when he came. We got the beat of his engine, you see. We knew somebody was there so we were all ready for him. That was the —
Other: You used to speak to him on the radio.
LH: The good old days. The good old days.
DE: I shall leave it there then. Thank you very much.
LH: Thank you.
DE: Cheers.
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 Len Harper
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-05-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHarperL190521, PHarperL1901
Format
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00:55:02 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Len Harper registered for the air force in April 1939, influenced by the positive experience of his brother who had joined in January. Upon completing training at the Wireless Training School, RAF Yatesbury, he was posted to RAF Wittering, where he undertook radio maintenance for two years. Harper was posted to India in 1942, after marrying his wife, a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force typist based at RAF Newton, in February. He describes servicing radios for Blenheims and Spitfires, sightseeing with his friends, and sensing the political tensions. After two years, he was posted to Burma, where he completed radio maintenance for the Third Tactical Air Force. He recalls his impressions of the country, the living conditions in the jungle, and retreating from the Japanese. Eighteen-months later, an illness caused him to return to India, where he was hospitalised with dysentery for eight months. Harper returned home and despite enjoying his work, left the air force in 1945 following the wishes of his wife. Finally, he describes his service at RAF Wainfleet, his post-war career, and how fondly he remembers his time in India.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tilly Foster
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Burma
Great Britain
India
South Africa
England--Bedfordshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Wiltshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942-02
1943
1944
1945
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
Blenheim
ground personnel
love and romance
military living conditions
RAF Cardington
RAF Newton
RAF Wainfleet
RAF Wittering
RAF Yatesbury
recruitment
Spitfire
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1286/17212/PSutherlandD1901.2.jpg
7fdbcf2e8591da39d9bec6c5cb887d77
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1286/17212/ASutherlandD190517.2.mp3
47da768b39dc7c33486ee97313aa9ee1
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
Sutherland, Don
D Sutherland
Sutherland, Donald
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Don Sutherland (1919 - 2022). He was conscientious objector during the war and worked on a farm in Lincolnshire.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-05-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Sutherland, D
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Right. So, this is an interview for the International Bomber Centre Digital Archive with Don Sutherland. My name is Dan Ellin. We’re here today at Don’s house in Lincoln and it is the 17th of May 2019. Don, could we start with you telling me a little bit about your, your early life and childhood and where you grew up and those sorts of things.
DS: Yes. My father was a Scot from Sutherlandshire. My mother came, came from the west coast of England and my father travelled quite a bit before he arrived in Coventry and that’s where I was born. I lived in two places there and moved up north to Newcastle upon Tyne when I was eight years of age. And I continued there, living there until I was twenty one. So, I had my, I went to about four different schools in Newcastle before getting, going to the Grammar School and leaving at fifteen and a half after I’d passed my O Levels and went to work for a few years at one insurance firm and then for three years at another insurance firm. But when the war came I wasn’t at all sure about it. I’d heard nothing of the idea of Pacifism at that stage which is, it sounds strange but that’s the way things were. My, my father was working in armaments at a local arms factory in Newcastle so I was brought up to the idea that, you know armaments were arms and therefore war was a natural thing and there was absolutely no alternative to it. But so, when I, when I was in, supposed to resign at the age of twenty I wondered which one to go into. The Army, Navy or the Air Force. And I eventually decided I would join the Army and one, I suppose it was about teatime, I remember I went into the, into one of the places for recruitment where they were actually going in and getting, getting ready. Ready to do the necessary work. Work to get them fit for the job. I went inside with the intention of joining. I think it was the [pause] it was certainly one branch of the Army. I just forget what it was now and I went in and saw what was going on. I didn’t actually speak to any of the people in charge there but I could see the officer there working and I just sort of, it just struck me that this wasn’t the thing for me. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. It was as straight as that and so I registered as a Conscientious Objector. By doing that I was able to meet a group of people who had quite a different attitude to war as what I had. And quite, quite a few of them belonged to the Religious Society of Friends and that influenced me eventually to join the Society of Friends. But there was quite, quite a variety of people and some living locally. Some women as well as men. So I, I belonged to this, to this group for a time and I was still, because I’d registered and had had an interview, an examination by somebody who I found out later on was supposed to be one of the toughest chaps in charge of examining, examining COs I got, I got conscientious objection. Complete exemption. The chap at the church I went to, the, one of the teachers who I knew fairly well I asked him if he would give me a reference. He came in and spoke for me and incidentally he had two, two sons and two daughters. I knew the daughter quite well. I didn’t know the sons quite so well but I knew that one before the war started had volunteered and had gone in to the Air Force. And in fact, when it came to it his older brother also went in to the Air Force. They both, they were both killed early on during the war. That was one shattering thing. A cousin of my mine who lived in the south, the only son of my father’s, one of my father’s sisters he was killed during the war. And at the office I worked in when I was so called called up, called up he, he was the only married man in the staff but fairly young and I knew both him and his wife fairly well and he was in two minds whether to register as a conchie as well. And he decided to and very soon he was, he was killed. So, I had some really shattering experiences of people who’d gone. Who’d joined up. Who’d got killed. I mean the loss was, they wouldn’t feel the loss of course but those who were connected with them must have felt a terrible loss and that was happening on a huge scale. Especially in the Air Force because there was a large number of Air Force were killed. But I ended, I ended up, what happened, I’d been working for nearly a couple of years and I was more or less about the last male member of the staff left by then because they’d all been called up. And then they brought a regulation in that we had to register for, for fire watching. So, I was already fire watching in, in the arrangement in the street, in the, in the place where I worshipped and also, I did, I was in the road where we stayed so many nights a week. I stayed the night in the office where we worked you see and, but that wasn’t enough but I refused to register as a matter of principle and the officer came along and warned me that I was, I’d be charged with this, an offence and did I realise that? So, I said, I said. ‘I’m not changing my mind.’ So, I went, I went to a police court and I was, it was quite ridiculous really because there were about six of us and we were all found guilty because we had to be because there was no doubt we’d all committed an offence under the law and I I my parents paid. Paid the fine. There were three, three young lads who, who were a different type to us. They weren’t quite so well educated. I say that in a, [pause] it doesn’t mean that I am any superior but they, they wouldn’t, wouldn’t pay the fine. I suppose it wasn’t a lot of money in those days but the money side hadn’t cropped up with me because it was paid anyhow. Because they wouldn’t pay the fine they were put in to prison which was ridiculous. The fact that you could get out of prison by paying a fine. I thought that’s absolutely ridiculous. Anyhow, went there and in those days prison was much worse than it is today. They were in the prisons south of Newcastle and when they, when they came out another chap and I, we cycled. They were let out at 6 o’clock in the morning. We cycled and met them when they came out and they’d had a very rough time so it made us feel quite bad about it. Does that cover that? That side.
DE: Yeah. Do you know how long they were in prison for?
DS: Well, it was about, about nine months I think it was. It was probably a twelve month sentence and had been reduced to nine months.
DE: And this was because they refused to sign on as fire watchers or civil defence. That kind of thing.
DS: No. Yes, it was just refusing to sign. They might have been doing it but they wouldn’t sign.
DE: Right.
DS: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
DS: If you disobey the law it’s a crime. So, I [pause] the boss went to the, to the hearing but when he heard the result we got back to the office and he said, ‘I think we’d better write to Head Office and tell them.’ He said, ‘If we don’t probably somebody else will. So, it will be better if we drop them a line and tell them about it.’ So, we wrote a letter together and by return of post came — given the sack [laughs] So I was out of work for a bit wondering what to do and one of the chaps I’d met who was, he was a member of the Friend’s Ambulance. Not a member of the Friend’s Ambulance Unit, but he was a member of the Quaker organisation and he, he joined this farm down in Lincolnshire. So, I went. I’d already been over there to have a look at the place because I knew somebody who was working there. But two farms in Lincolnshire set up, one was set up on a very sort of formal basis in London by a group of sympathetic people who had money. They put, and they appealed for money towards the cost of getting an estate in Lincolnshire. But in addition to that there were two people with wealthy patients, wealthy parents who also had a farm. So I first worked in the, in the farm that was put up by this, this group. Group of sort of financially wealthy. They weren’t necessarily Quakers. They were, I don’t know whether any of them were Quakers. They were either farmers themselves or sympathetic. So I joined first one and then luckily I joined the one which was much more privately read, privately run because we were, our whole, whole group, the two who put money into it were completely equal to us. They didn’t run it any superior way themselves. It was run jointly by us all. So, I thought it was a very good place and I moved in to that which was fortunate really because when the war went, was finished that one carried on and it wasn’t carried on in shared hands for twenty five years but I worked there for twenty five years.
DE: Ok. And where was this one?
DS: It was just between here and [pause] about fifteen miles away towards Market Rasen. Yes. Well, about three miles north of Wragby. And it’s no longer run by conshies [pause] I don’t know whether you want me to say anything more about my, that side of my future.
DE: Yes, please. Yeah.
DS: So, I worked there for twenty five years and I didn’t think that I was physically up to, up to up to the work and I left that place and because we’d, we’d got a house through the farm as well we had a house that we owned so we were able to stay in the same area for quite a long time. And I, I then worked for eighteen years in Lincoln in one of the factories which is on the, on the far, far side of [pause] as you go out on the right side of Lincoln to where a lot of the shops, the big shops are it was right on the outskirts near the, where the trains go. And it’s gone now. It was, it was two kinds, two kinds of foundries. One was, one was quite mechanised where I, where I worked. The other made very large castings. Big. Big, big items for boilers and that sort of thing. So, I worked, I worked there ‘til I was sixty two and the government brought in a scheme which no longer exists where you could leave and get, get paid a certain amount. Not your full salary but a fair amount until you were sixty five when you then go on to your normal pension. And it had started being reduced to sixty four, and then it came down to sixty three and sixty two. So, at sixty two I decided, had the idea because I had a big garden at home and my wife is a professional gardener so I left work at sixty two and a half and I’m still here [laughs].
DE: Ok. So you, you started out. You worked in insurance in an office I presume and then, then in farm work.
DS: Yes.
DE: And then in in industry in castings.
DS: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Well, I wasn’t actually in, I wasn’t doing manual work. It was, it was the organisation really. Planning. Planning of the work that was being done and that sort of thing really. Not, I wasn’t, I wasn’t doing any manufacturing work itself.
DE: Right.
DS: No. No. That was a, that was a different grade of staff. They were paid weekly. We were paid monthly, you know.
DE: Right. And what sort of work did you do when you in, working on the farm?
DS: Well, I finished up by, by working with poultry. We, we did different, did a lot of work. We had the eggs, the hatching eggs sent to us and we produced the chickens and then we we then supplied the eggs back to the, to the firm for hatching. Quite a lot. We had built a large commercial workshop which I helped to build and etcetera. So that was my life. I I did a lot of other kinds of work as well. I I was, I worked horses quite a lot in the first farm ploughing and a lot of other work with horses. Sometimes two together. But I enjoyed that. I loved working horses. I remember one day I was, I was working among the chickens on the farm near the road and the neighbouring farmer had three daughters or four daughters and one went by riding this, this hunting horse. And about ten minutes later I heard a galloping noise and I was quite near the road and it was such a bend in the road and it was sort of out of sight and I could hear it coming louder and louder and louder and it was coming back to where it had come from you see. And so it came around the bend and I stood in the middle of the road and stopped it and I thought well I’ll get hold of it and go back and see what’s happened to, to the rider you see. So nothing. Nothing happened. No sight. I thought dammit I might as well get on. So, I got on board and rode it and eventually what she had done is, it had, it had it was like a round route and it was quicker for her to walk home by continuing in her direction. So, I caught up with her eventually. So, she said, ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘You’re on board. You might as well ride it till you get, get to the farm.’ Where she worked. Where she lived and then she ran, went running back to my car. It was quite funny. But I couldn’t horse, never rode a proper riding horse and I don’t think, I didn’t gallop. It’s quite a different matter just, just riding a working horse when it’s empty. I really enjoyed my work on the farm. [pause] Then latterly I, I’ve been trying to keep fit by, by swimming in the local swimming pool and I I was, I was swimming until I had this stroke six months, six years ago. Six months ago now. I’m not quite sure of the date. It was perhaps about five months ago now. But I went on holiday with my family last year. There was a convenient lake where people swam and I dived in to, in to the lake without any problems at all and swam. But I I joined the local swimmers. They probably still have it at the pool quite close to here just one afternoon a week for people of a certain age and ability and when I, when I did it seven years, years ago. I was doing it seven or eight years ago one of the helpers there also taught diving so she gave us the opportunity, I think there was three of us who were interested in diving so she taught me diving. And then I’d, I’d never dived off a board properly before but she got me diving off the high board and somersaulting and that sort of thing. So, I was able in my nineties to go to various parts of the country including going over the, over the coast once to dive in my nineties.
DE: That’s incredible.
DS: It’s good to keep active when you get older. Yes. I had an allotment until this year down the road there.
DE: Oh, near the church. Yeah.
DS: Yes.
DE: Yeah. I know.
DS: That’s kept, that’s kept me active.
DE: So that’s the secret. An allotment and swimming and diving, is it?
DS: [laughs] Yes.
DE: Is it ok if we go back and ask you a few more questions about particularly the, the time when you were a Conscientious Objector? You mentioned that you had an interview or was it, was it a tribunal or —
DS: A tribunal.
DE: Yes.
DS: That’s right. Yes.
DE: Yes. Yeah.
DS: Yes.
DE: And you said the gentleman who, who was in charge was one of the more strict, stern chaps.
DS: Yes.
DE: What sort of questions was he asking you? What did he want to know?
DS: Well, would I do this and would I know that? Sort of gradually working me to a situation. And I I think I said no, which seemed rather, to questions which seem rather tame now, I should have said yes to. But I probably, as far as I was concerned I was using my replies as a defence rather than necessarily giving him the answers that he would then use to get, move me further off the off the station. Saying I was not justified in doing what I was, I was doing. But it was quite unusual for some reason I got exemption. Because my elder brother he also registered and he got the sack from his job straight away but he was married and he had a child on the way and he went in for a non-combatant service. Ended, ended up in not the very Far East but near. It was a British colony. A large British colony at one time. What did they call it?
PW: In India?
DS: Russia. Not Russia. No. Further east than Russia. But it’s now two separate countries which are at war with, potentially at war with one another. You know who I mean.
DE: Korea.
DS: No.
DE: No.
DS: No. They’re English speaking.
DE: Oh right. Ok. I’ll have to have a think.
DS: Right across the other side.
DE: So, this, this gentleman at the tribunal he was, he was convinced that you weren’t just making it all up and it was, it was to do with your, your religion, I suppose.
DS: It was on Christian grounds. Yes.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Yes. My, the chap who was the, the minister at church I went to in Newcastle he was a CO. But you see all the other chaps at church who were eligible had joined up so I think he was in a difficult position in a way that that because you see they were automatically exempt.
DE: But they joined up anyway.
DS: Not necessarily. Well, no. No. No. But he, but he, he didn’t register as a CO.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
DS: But they were not obliged to join up. It was up to, if you were in, in the police force. Not the police force —
PW: The ministry.
DS: The church. In charge of a church.
DE: Right.
DS: You weren’t automatically, you were automatically exempt. You could just keep your position. I suppose it was keeping the, keep the home fires burning.
DE: But at one point you had intended that you would, you would join the Army.
DS: Yes. I went. I went along and —
DE: Yeah.
DS: I went in the room and saw what was going on anyway and I thought well I, I’d been encouraged by so many people you know that joining up was the automatic natural thing to do. There was no alternative. You couldn’t be opposed to war without joining up. Of course, I don’t know what your attitude is now and it’s one thing that people today don’t have to face of course. There’s no calling up because war has changed in its nature now. Well, wars, wars were fought in the old days by the poor people who couldn’t get a job. They were in the Army for, for lack of a better thing to do. That’s what the Army was. I think it was, I think it was only in the First World War that the idea of recruiting lots of people came in to it. And the second of course as well.
DE: So, you’d been under a fair bit of peer pressure that it was the right thing to do to join the Army and you went along to the recruiting office.
DS: Well, it wasn’t. I didn’t, I didn’t feel it as pressure. It was just the natural thing to do because one had never heard of anything else you see. I’d, I’d never heard of a Conscientious Objector before. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of them, have you?
DE: A little. Yes. Yeah. So, you, you went along and you were in the recruiting office and it was, it was then that you changed your mind.
DS: Well, it wasn’t a recruiting office. It was actual, a serving office where they were actually already started. I suppose, I don’t know, I don’t know what would have happened if I had have stayed, what the procedure would have been but the men there were being worked. But in my work I’d, I’d also, this is another thing that has affected me because when I, when I was working and the war had been on for a period one of the local places that was normally used for amusement was set aside for training and, and the men, the men showing the training there. Being encouraged to to fight. Fight one of the officers and you know and you trained. You get you used to hitting people in the face etcetera etcetera. And also using bayonets etcetera you know. So that affected me quite a lot as well. I thought I can’t do this. It's strange how people can be made to think it’s a natural thing to kill your fellow men. Mind you, I think the reason, the idea of being against war in the Second World War was different. I think in the First World War it was a war that should never have started in a way. It was quite different. Whereas the Second World War was a was a devilish business. One unearthly gang trying to kill all the rest of the for the sheer sake of power. I don’t know what you’d call it really. Fascism. You hate to hear the word spoken now. We have, we it’s forty years now isn’t it since the war finished? Nineteen, fifty, fifty odd years.
DE: And a few more. Yeah.
DS: Yes. And I don’t know. We’ve still got this struggle between [pause] oh I can’t think. My mind, my memory just goes.
DE: Never mind. Never mind. So you say you had no idea that you could refuse and you had never heard of Conscientious Objectors. How did you find out about them?
DS: Well, it was very strange really. In Newcastle there’s an annual event. There’s a really big, a big moor in Newcastle, a public moor and you could play private cricket there if you wanted to or just walk across it and that sort of thing. And every, every year they have a big gathering where where people can speak as well and it was a Quaker, or a Pacifist gathering there where I first came across the idea of Pacifism.
DE: And did it, was it a help to meet other people who thought along similar lines?
DS: Oh yes. It was a tremendous help to meet other people who, who had been more or less brought up in the idea. The Quaker idea of Pacifism. Yes. But not necessarily. Conscientious Objectors weren’t necessarily Pacifists. They, they were just grounds of common sense I suppose really. It was the idea of killing people. Whereas Pacifist is slightly more complicated.
DE: Can you explain the difference a bit more?
DS: Well, it’s, it’s a religious basis whereas a lot of people who were, who registered as Conscientious Objectors weren’t necessarily, didn’t belong to any church. Didn’t do it for any religious. Just on, on humanity grounds really.
DE: Right. I see.
DS: How anybody could object to it.
DE: Yeah. Well, I suppose in the eyes of the authorities it’s easier to prove that that your motives for not fighting if you can say it’s for religious reasons.
DS: Yes. Although at that time I didn’t belong to a religious church. I was the only person in that church who, who didn’t believe in fighting.
DE: Right. Ok. So, you also said that as soon as the, your, the insurance head office had, had found out that you’d, you’d been fined that you lost your job.
DS: Yes.
DE: Were, were any, did anybody else have a sort of negative attitude or —
DS: Well, nobody, nobody, nobody at work at all. I I didn’t get a lot of ill words said to me at work when I registered. Which I was very pleased about really.
DE: What about from anybody else?
DS: Well, I, after I’d registered there was a chap whose father was a, he worked at the local hospital. He was a very well-known doctor there and he was, he was this young young fellow who was training to be a doctor too and he decided, he’d registered as a conchie and he decided to write some letters out about it you see to give away. So I, I was still at work actually when I was doing this and I, on a Saturday morning I wrote. I was handing these out down the town in Lincoln and definitely, definite Pacifist letters and a young woman I’d given, given one to she must have read it. Walked and reading as she went away and she came back to me and slapped me on the face and said, ‘How dare you?’ That’s the only time I have had any ill treatment although I know there was a chap at the office while I was still working there he found out that I was a conchie and asked to see me and boasted about the number of men he’d killed in the First World War. That’s the way it was.
DE: That’s an odd thing to boast about.
DS: Not really. Not really. Well, if you were called up what would you do?
DS: I won’t ask, expect you to answer that question.
DE: Well, my, my son has already decided that if there was ever that situation again that he would, he would refuse to fight. I think I’m in the position now where I’m old enough that they wouldn’t want me but I don’t know. I suppose probably I would have gone with the crowd and I would have gone.
DS: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
DS: It’s not easy. No.
DE: No.
DS: It should have got cooler by now [pause] It’s quite tasty this, isn’t it?
DE: It’s nice. Yeah. So, I believe that the reason that I’m here today is because you had visited the International Bomber Command Centre.
DS: Yes.
DE: With lots of, lots of other Quakers. Could you say a little bit about what you were, what you were doing up there?
DS: Well, we’ve got, we’ve got a couple who you probably know, they were the couple that I’m referring to. Do you —
DE: I don’t know.
PW: Myself and my wife.
DE: Oh, I beg your pardon. Right. Yes. Ok.
DS: We’d been going there for a bit. I don’t know what inspired them in the first place to go there but, but we could see that that this organisation for some reason or other which I understand was setting it up in this area because I know a lot of them, a lot of the bombing came from this part of the, part of the world. So, we’re, we’re privileged in a way that we know because so many of the men who joined the Air Force lost their lives which is a, which is tragic. And the fact that it seems to be also committed to the idea of not necessarily justifying war by having this, having this Centre but at least, at least it tells you what war has done and what people have done to defend the country which is in ordinary terms a very unselfish and sacrificing way to do so. I’m pleased that they, they’ve got interested and I understand that there are people who support the organisation who aren’t necessarily very Pacifist inclined but they appreciate what the Air Force has done. But not necessarily I hope support the future of an Air Force which now apparently is working in areas to the east of Germany [pause] which is not, not defending England. You know that, don’t you?
DE: Yeah. Well, the Centre is supposed, is about remembrance and hopefully also reconciliation.
DS: Yes. Yes. It’s a very. It’s a good idea. But it’s bringing people from all over the country and all over the world.
DE: All over the world. Yes.
DS: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Yes. Its remarkable really and it’s not, it’s not really sort of visible where it is from a distance. Here you can see the, part of it.
DE: The Spire. Yeah.
DS: But it’s quite hidden as you go up the hill.
DE: Yes. It is. Yeah. Yeah.
DS: It’s quite a big large space isn’t it really? A lot of work put into it and I gather, I gather the the white poppies have landed up inside instead of being outside.
DE: That’s right. So, you were up there. You were making white poppies.
DS: Yes.
DE: Yeah. Ok.
DS: Yes. There were quite a group, a group from your meeting wasn’t there?
[pause]
PW: Yes.
DS: I wasn’t able to stay. I had something else on that afternoon. I didn’t stay ‘til the very end when they were put out but I’ll have a look the next time I go there.
[pause]
DE: Just looking at my notes. Why did you choose to work in a farm rather than join the Non-Combatant Corps or any other alternatives? Or ambulance driving or anything like that.
DS: It was because I knew that, that some of the Quakers I’d got to know were in farming you see. And so it seemed to be a very suitable thing to do.
DE: And what was it like moving away from Newcastle? Coming all the way down south to Lincolnshire.
DS: I was warned by one couple who said, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t go down there. It’s all, it’s all foggy and cold.’ It’s one of the warmest counties isn’t it? No. I, it was, it was strange at first but I soon, I soon got used to it. I enjoyed it very much but it was quite new because I’d never done any physical work before. It was, it was all physical work for a start. Miles and miles going with a sack on my, on my tummy and putting, putting stuff on the, to make the crops grow, that sort of thing. Or clearing the ground with horses and rakes and things. I enjoyed it. And harvest time was great. It was all so simple and done by hand. We didn’t have combined harvesters at first you see.
[pause]
DS: And we had, we had local farm workers teaching us so we learned to do things the way they should be doing, should be done whereas when I moved to the other farm which was run by people without any outside help. I was quite staggered by their lack of knowledge of how to do things properly. [laughs]
DE: So, the other farm you’d become the expert then.
DS: Oh yes. Yes. Well, what happened, sometimes we did, on the first farm this, this farmer who was on the committee used to come up and, and quite a crowd of young, young men and he, he would when you were lifting beet he, he would organise it in a, in such a clever way by using different groups in different ways that was much more efficient and then the second place I went to they had no idea how to do things properly [laughs] Which was quite annoying really but quite amusing at the same time. But then I went in to, in to poultry and I ran that myself.
[pause]
DE: Well, I think we’ve probably just about covered everything unless you can think of any other, any other stories or anything else you’d like to, to tell me.
DS: One interesting thing is on the second farm which was closer to the village itself we had, because we, having horses we had to have them —
PW: Shoed.
DS: Shoes. Shoes put on them. And this chap he had, had a couple of daughters so when you went shoeing you’d probably meet them. But one of our chaps he married one of the daughters. Actually, he lived to be well in to his nineties. About ninety seven when he died or ninety eight when he died. So, we had one person who married in to, in to the village. But several of, several of them at the second place I went to for some reason or other the staff seemed to be mostly people who were learning to get a degree in art. Four of them were.
DE: Right.
DS: And naturally when things became normal and the war finished they wanted to go back to what they’d been started at you see so we lost them and eventually the population declined. But the eldest, not the oldest member, the most mature member whose father had been a, a [pause] employed by the government in a very big position in, not Egypt, in the south, in the north of Africa. One of those cities there. He had got some peculiar illness and he’d, he died young so we lost one of the best members of our community which was very sad. So, there were very few of the original members there but the son still lives, lives in the village. You know who I mean, do you?
PW: No. I don’t.
DS: Well, he’s, he’s chairman of the village committee at Bleasby Moor. He lives at Bleasby Moor in the original centre of that community and they are trying to revive the little church building there but they’ve got, they’ve got a proper chapel but near the chapel is a small low building in severe disrepair which we used to use when I lived there. Used to use it quite often. But they won’t, the committee, the church committee locked it up now and we’re raising funds to buy it and convert it into a, like a village centre. Nearly got enough money now to do it. It’s quite, quite an active group of people there. Have you heard of Bleasby Moor?
DE: I haven’t. No. I shall look it up.
DS: Yes. It hasn’t got many villagers. It’s got a very healthy little Infant’s School there. Way beyond the numbers in the area. They come from quite a distance there.
DE: Right. I shall, I think I shall leave it there. What I should have said when I started the interview was also in the room is Peter Alan Williams. So that was the other voice that you may hear on the tape. Thank you very much Don for telling me some of your stories and recording your memories. Yeah. Thank you very much.
DS: Well —
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 Don Sutherland. One
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-05-17
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASutherlandD190517, PSutherlandD1901
Format
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00:56:59 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
British Army
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Market Rasen
England--Lincoln
England--Newcastle upon Tyne
Description
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Don’s father was a Scot and his mother came from the west coast of England. They moved to Coventry, where Don was born. When he was eight, they moved to Newcastle-on-Tyne where his father worked in armaments. Don left school at 15 and half and went to work at an insurance firm. At 20 he decided to join the Army but registered as a conscientious objector instead; a trial followed, and he got exemption on Christian grounds. His brother also registered, and immediately lost his job. A regulation was brought in that he had to register for fire watching at his place of work. He refused to register as he already did fire watching duty at his place of worship. He was charged, and his mother paid his fine.
Don then joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) and worked for a farming network run by farmers and pacifists. He stayed at one near Market Rasen for 25 years working with poultry and horses. He finally worked for 18 years, until he was 62, in foundry offices on the outskirts of Lincoln. Don would give out printed materials in Lincoln on pacifism and one woman slapped him on the face saying “how dare you”.
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Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
faith
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1261/17134/AMacKenzieR190509.2.mp3
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MacKenzie, Roddy
R MacKenzie
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An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Roddy MacKenzie about his father, Ronald MacKenzie who served in 166 Squadron with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He is the author of 'Bomber Command: Churchill's Greatest Triumph' Pen and Sword, 2022.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Roddy MacKenzie and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2019-05-09
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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MacKenzie, R
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DE: What is today? The 9th.
RM: It is. So —
DE: The day after VE Day.
RM: Yeah. So, my name is Dan Ellin from the International Bomber Command Centre. I’m here today to interview Roddy Mackenzie. It’s the 9th of May and we’re in Canwick, in Lincoln. So, Roddy could you tell me a little bit about your father’s service in Bomber Command please.
DE: Yes. My dad is Roland W Mackenzie, DFC and he flew thirty four combat sorties in World War Two with 1 Bomber Group, Squadron 166, based in Kirmington which is now the Humberside International Airport. He flew all thirty four combat sorties from that base and he was the pilot of Lancaster L for Love and his flights were from April to August of 1944. Now, I was born and raised in Calgary in Canada. I was born in 1948, three years after the war and I was born in a city that was really starting to move ahead in incredibly optimistic and major ways and I was raised in an environment in Calgary where we knew virtually nothing about the war. My Grade Twelve textbook at Queen Elizabeth High School was published in 1938. I got the trophy as the best person in Social Studies but the war was never really addressed as I was growing up and my dad spoke virtually never about the war so it was mainly a mystery. But I had three situations with my father. We were not emotionally connecting. He did have anger issues and unfortunately he also had perfectionism issues which were not helpful to me as an adult because burdened with this idea of perfectionism I steered away from areas that had high probability of failure. In other words perfectionism gave rise to a fear of failure. In recent years I’m discovering that a lot of people I’ve known also had a dad in Bomber Command and had exactly the same experience as I did. They can’t emotionally connect with their son. They have anger issues and they have perfectionism issues and that this is quite widespread. Now, my dad’s younger brother they were ten years apart, flew a Spitfire with Fighter Command and in the last year of, I’m sorry the last month of my uncle Bruce’s life which was January, June, June of 2017 I had four major meetings with my uncle because he knew he was dying. I wanted to learn everything I could possibly learn about my dad before the war. My uncle welcomed that opportunity to really search his memory from times past and also his love for his eldest brother. His children welcomed it as well because it really gave my uncle more of a sense of purpose and it was a really good experience for him as well as for me. And ultimately although he was ten years younger than my dad I got quite the picture of a very happy, a very humorous, a very generous person who did a lot of nice things. He was a young banker at that time in the Great Depression up in the Peace River District which for me as an urban Calgarian he might just as well have been at the North Pole. I mean, it was so isolated. Dad has often said to me those were his happiest years with the Royal Bank of Canada. Up north. But my uncle painted this picture that was just not consistent with my personal experiences with my dad and so in that I’m a lawyer I was forming the view that something extraordinary had happened in Europe while he was overseas. I have virtually nothing in the way of documentation. My dad died in 1991 and in his will he very clearly gave to me all of his war memorabilia including the model aeroplanes he had made of every plane he ever flew and they were all in correct size to one another. But I had an uncooperative stepmother and she simply ignored all of that. Worse still she discovered that my dad and my mum had written to each other quite a bit while dad was overseas. I had thought my parents didn’t even meet until he returned home from the war in January of ’45. It turns out they had been good friends for years prior to the war and they wrote to each other all the time during the war and the loss of that correspondence is just, I think a criminal tragedy of terrible proportions. It would have given me the clearest possible understanding of my dad’s evolution and his relationship with his wife, my mother. The other problem that our family experienced is that when I was about three years old my mother was struck with Polio which was an epidemic in Canada at that time in the early 1950s. So she was removed from Calgary, sent up to Edmonton, put in that dreadful iron lung at the University Hospital and was gone for quite a while. I was looked after by housekeepers when my dad was working. So now I have a father who I’m of the view was totally traumatised by Bomber Command, a mother who was totally traumatised by being completely paralysed by Polio living in a city which at that time was not good with anybody who was disabled. They were referred to as cripples. People really thought they should be kept out of sight, out of mind. It was a very unpleasant situation and neither of my parents got any kind of psychological help, any kind of emotional assistance of any kind whatsoever and ultimately I feel developed quite a strong dislike for one another. So I was raised by these two people in this situation that was emotionally a desert and where anger issues trained one not to ask much in the way of questions about anything that was in any way sensitive and that definitely included the war. Virtually nothing was said about the war. The one thing though that was interesting in Calgary at the time was Lancasters. The major city between Calgary and Edmonton is Red Deer and at the entrance to Red Deer there was a Lancaster I always looked forward to seeing as we’d go up to Edmonton to see my mother. And then in 1960 a Lancaster appeared in Nanton about an hour south of Calgary and also we had a Lancaster that flew in to Calgary which then spent thirty years on a spire right outside the main terminal of the Calgary International Airport such that it formed almost like a traffic circle. You had to go around the Lancaster to get in and out of Calgary’s airport terminal. So these Lancasters made quite an impression on me. They were obviously regarded as being very very important. The most powerful experience I ever had with my dad was quite a number of years after my mum had died, she died in 1970. In about 1985 my dad and I were driving alone from Calgary to Lethbridge and at that time Lethbridge was Alberta’s third largest city. My mother’s sister and her family lived in Lethbridge so we went there fairly often and I always looked forward to seeing this Lancaster that simply sat by the side of the road in Nanton. So we stopped there in 1985. I’m not sure we’d ever stopped before but we actually stopped and at that time I was a thirty seven year old lawyer living in Vancouver and raising, with my wife two young children. But I just happened to be in Alberta, happened to be with my dad and the two of us happened to be alone which was extremely unusual and there we were on our way to Lethbridge. So we stopped at this Lancaster. Now, the Lancaster Society in Nanton, it’s gone on to become the Canadian Bomber Command Museum etcetera with Carlsberg was not created until 1986. So this was a year before and the plane was simply sitting there. I proudly announced to the three or four people who were milling around looking at it that my dad flew one of these in Bomber Command and two of the men looked up in interest and one of them said to my dad, ‘Is that true?’ And they exchanged a few words and then this man said, ‘I’ve got the keys to the Lancaster. I’ll open it up and you and your son can spend as much time in there as you want.’ So we climbed in to this Lancaster and what makes it unique or one of very very few is it still had its World War Two interior configuration. A lot of Lancasters got reconfigured after the war for other purposes post-war but this one had the original World War Two configuration. So there we are inside this Lancaster. My dad made a few brief comments about where people sat and in particular where he, as pilot, sat. A few brief comments about flying the plane but he really didn’t say very much. Mainly we just sat there and I’m not sure how long we sat there. It could have been fifteen minutes. It could have been fifty minutes. We were there until my father suddenly said, ‘Time to leave.’ So out we go. One of those gentlemen was still there and we did the thank you’s, the goodbyes and we were back into the car and off to Lethbridge at which point as we were leaving Nanton my father started talking. It was in a very low, measured tone. He was strictly looking at the road. I don’t think we ever made eye contact and I simply sat there. Now, I tend to be the one that talks a lot. He tends to be very taciturn but in this situation for whatever reason I didn’t say a word, didn’t ask for any clarification on anything. I just simply sat there and my dad talked for the duration of the drive which I suspect was close to an hour and essentially he talked about flying Lancasters, and how you got one of those Lancasters into the target, how you managed to actually hit the target and how you managed to get yourself out again without getting killed. He’d had an extraordinary amount of experience flying. He was with the Royal Bank of Canada and of course Canada in all of its wars only fights with volunteers. For World War Two we had about nine and a half million people and so many people volunteered that we actually ended up putting one point two million who were accepted into our armed forces. One point two million volunteers and a lot of these were in the Air Force. My dad volunteered in late 1941 and I believe was accepted by the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942. So he began his training but he was a thirty year old and he seemed to have a real gift for flying planes so he got the Gold Medal and was kept in Canada to train others to fly planes for an extended period. Another person that was there was actually James Middleton. The grandfather of the Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William’s wife was stationed in Calgary actually. James Middleton. And he was doing exactly the same thing. He was teaching people how to fly. My father told me that his greatest admiration within the Air Force in that war was for people who were instructing others how to fly. He said it was, he thought far more dangerous than anything that ever happened to him over Germany. In November of ’43 the Royal Canadian Air Force decided to send my dad over to England and by that point he had a staggering number of hours. I believe it was over a thousand and they started training him on the big heavy bombers. And then in the beginning of April 1944 he found himself in Kirmington as a member of 166 Squadron which interestingly is the Royal Air Force’s original bomber squadron. It was created in April 1918 only three weeks after the Air Force itself came into existence. So 166 was the original bomber squadron. It was in 1 Bomber Group and it was based in Kirmington in what we now call North Lincolnshire and it was abandoned for about thirty years after the war but ultimately re-emerged as Humberside International Airport. So the runway that my dad used for every sortie in World War Two is being used on a steady basis especially by KLM going to Amsterdam. So he arrived and flew his thirty four sorties with 166 squadron and got the Distinguished Flying Cross, the DFC for his work as a pilot and it’s a very glowing report on him. It also refers to him as being deputy flight commander. I don’t know what that is but it’s in the DFC citation and they talked about his tremendous ability to keep people’s morale up in that base. Which is interesting because I didn’t know that part of him when he was raising me but it was very consistent with what my Uncle Bruce had been telling me about him prior to the war. Squadron 166 had nine hundred and forty four young men killed. Nine hundred and forty four men killed. Average age twenty three. My dad when he arrived in England was thirty. When he flew his first combat mission he was thirty three. But the average age of those dead was twenty three and of those a hundred and thirty three were Canadians and approximately sixty five were Australians. My dad was part of the twenty eight percent that got out of that in one piece. The problem is he didn’t get out of it in one piece and something that I’m very very critical of is the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Air Force and their use of that dreadful concept lack of moral fibre. And it’s particularly annoying now that I discover that the United States Army 8th Air Force and even the Royal Australian Air Force were actually much more enlightened on that issue than the RAF or the RCAF. With the RAF and RCAF essentially if you were starting to fall apart you were simply out and it was LMF. The others had rest homes. They had psychological care. They had a number of things but this LMF was, I think a horrible thing and I think we’re really paying for it with the next couple of generations of people that returned from Bomber Command. My work in doing a book on what Bomber Command accomplished has been drawing a lot of attention in Canada. Particularly the Sir Winston Churchill Society, the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Royal Canadian Air Force at its ninety fifth anniversary where I became the guest of honour and the feature speaker and my remarks had a profound effect on all present at that dinner on the 30th of March 2019. So I’m now one of the newest members as of January 2019 of the Australian Bomber Command Association and as of April 2019 of the New Zealand Bomber Command Association. My RCAF paper has struck a major nerve cord in both of those nations and I’m learning a lot from them about Bomber Command. Now, Australia had twenty thousand fliers in Bomber Command and they now have the concept of the Bomber Command family which they say are the children, the grandchildren and the great grandchildren of Bomber Command aircrew. The Bomber Command Australia family is two hundred and fifty thousand Australians and these people have been angry about Australia’s reaction to Bomber Command and they have carried out a complete paradigm shift in how Australia regards Bomber Command. The first Sunday in June is now Bomber Command Sunday in Australia and New Zealand. It’s now, I’m told become the third biggest military event of the whole year in Australia. I think July 2017 one of the issues of the Sydney Morning Herald, one of the great newspapers of Australia the headline was essentially Bomber Command aircrew were not shameful. They were among our greatest heroes. And I think that captured the complete paradigm shift in Australia. A paradigm shift has not happened so far in Canada. Now in Canada one out of every four Canadians killed in World War Two was killed in Bomber Command and yet my experience, I was born in 1948 is that pretty much anybody younger than I am has literally never even heard of Bomber Command. Its absolutely unknown and most people who are older than I am in Canada what they know about Bomber Command is wrong. There’s been some spectacular sensationalist negative assertions about Bomber Command that were completely rebutted by credible sources but nobody seems to remember the reason of the rebuttles. They only remember the scandalous assertions. Two of the biggest, one was January of 1992 which thankfully was six months after my dad had died the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, national TV network and the National Film Board hit their all-time low of irresponsible journalism and broadcast, I believe it was on the 19th of January 1992 an episode of the, “Valour and the Horror,” about Bomber Command in which Brian Mckenna who was the producer of this travesty more or less said that Bomber Command spent the war bombing innocent civilians in cities of little or no military value and Bomber Command’s contribution to the war was minimal if any. Well, it created a huge stir at the time and it really shocked a lot of people. It totally shocked me. Bomber Command aircrew formed a class action to sue both the CBC and the National Film Board but the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed the action saying they did not think Bomber Command aircrew constituted a class action. Well, if they’re not a class then they really have no action at all because for individuals what damages to that particular individual suffered it had to be a class action. And yet in March of 2019 that same appeal court ruled that Uber drivers get to be a class action but in 1992 Bomber Command aircrew did not. The Senate of Canada however did take a full look at this, a full examination and they said that that journalists are entitled to their point of view and should be able to express it. But in looking closely at what this documentary says there is nothing to support what they are saying. The whole situation was just an absolute travesty but nobody remembers the Senate’s full report. Everybody remembers that scandalous TV show. And likewise in 2007 I was in Ottawa and the National War Museum had just opened a Bomber Command exhibit in which they call Bomber Command aircrew war criminals. While I was in Ottawa I saw it as a headline in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. So the first thing the next morning I was down there as soon as the place opened to see this exhibit and I got in to a very spirited discussion with museum staff members because I was absolutely furious. There was no truth to what they were saying. They were the worst imaginable defamatory statements and did they want the grandchildren of my dad to think that he was war criminal? It was infuriating. Now, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation happened to have a TV crew for other reasons there at the time and so they asked if I would like to speak to their television network and I welcomed the opportunity. Made my full speech. My understanding is they did broadcast it and my memory is people had mentioned that to me afterwards but I’m uncertain. I hope they broadcast it and I hope it influenced people. What I do know is I was one of quite a number of Canadians that were totally outraged so the war museum completely changed its presentation and I’m told two or three people lost their jobs. I hope that’s true. But again, most people just remember those incredible headlines. Bomber Command aircrew being war criminals. Nobody remembers how anything got sorted out thereafter. But what bothers me the most is I don’t think anybody has really properly focussed on what Bomber Command actually accomplished and that’s what bothers me the most. As I said one out of every four Canadians killed in World War Two were killed in Bomber Command but I think they were killed doing something that was incredibly important. In World War One we make a big fuss now that the last of the World War One veterans are dead, we make a big fuss nowadays about the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Militarily it was expertly carried out and every element of the Canadian Army for the only time in Canada’s history all fought together and it was a decisive Canadian victory and we took the Ridge. It turns out that taking the Ridge really didn’t make much of a difference one way or the other. The Germans said the battle was just a minor footnote but we had as many casualties in five days taking Vimy Ridge as we had fatalities in five years in Bomber Command and my submission is Vimy Ridge accomplished not much of anything other than to give us a sense of self confidence whereas Bomber Command I feel was decisive to the Allied victory in World War Two. But now I’m discovering that there is a great deal of difficulty getting accurate information on exactly what they accomplished because so much of what is written about Bomber Command is either criticising them or just heart-warming reminiscences of particular people in Bomber Command aircrew. Nobody is really focussing from what I can see on what they actually accomplished. Now it’s difficult to know exactly what they accomplished because even though photographs were taken by each aircraft as they were leaving bombing sights those photographs didn’t do a whole lot more than prove that the plane was actually at the bombing site and not unloading its bombs in the middle of the North Sea and then just heading home again because what could they actually tell you? And so increasingly I’m of the view that the people that have the most accurate knowledge of what Bomber Command accomplished are the Germans. And they have had a lot to say about Bomber Command. Most of their leading generals have said that Bomber Command was decisive to them losing the war. That losing control of the air and the endless bombing depriving them of their means of making war was decisive in World War Two. And the one person that has the most to say of course is Albert Speer because Albert Speer was the munitions minister that had to keep quickly rebuilding all of these places that were bombed. He was the one that was busily trying to move all the factories that were bombed in the countryside places which created all kinds of other issues of transporting stuff and people etcetera etcetera. But he was in very very deeply in this whole situation and what he said was Germany’s failure to defeat Bomber Command was Germany’s greatest lost battle of the whole war. The strategic bombing offensive did more damage to the German war effort than losing every battle in Russia including the surrender of Stalingrad because bombing continuously damaged with ever increasing ferocity and then ultimately destroyed Germany’s ability to produce the means necessary to make war. That’s Speer. Rommel is possibly the most famous of the generals and after D-day Rommel said to his superiors, ‘If you can’t stop the bombing we can’t win the war.’ And the other major German leaders also talked about the devastating, absolutely devastating impact of Bomber Command. It also condemned close to two million people many of whom could have been at the various fronts but nobody ever knew where Bomber Command was going to strike next. So they had to man these anti-aircraft guns all over Germany and maybe Bomber Command would only come to a particular place once or twice in the entire year and other than that these people are paralysed there but they can’t leave because they have to be there if Bomber Command does show up. And also probably the most valuable gun that Germany had in World War Two was the, I think eighty millimetre dual purpose anti-aircraft, anti-tank gun. That was their most useful gun in the war according to Albert Speer. They had forty thousand of them. They had to pull twenty thousand of those guns back from their Fronts and particularly the Russian front in order to shoot down Bomber Command aircraft. They did manage to destroy nine thousand Bomber Command aircraft. We lost nine thousand at any rate. Well, pulling those guns away from the fronts and especially the Russian Front really seriously hurt because those guns were the only ones that penetrated Russian tanks and yet fifty percent of them had to be brought back into Germany. Nine hundred thousand soldiers were manning these guns all over Germany when they all could have been fighting on the Fronts if they weren’t forced. And also just a fraction of those that were fighting Bomber Command could have actually destroyed Bomber Command if Bomber Command had restricted itself to a small number of clearly defined targets. It’s the fact that Bomber Command was bombing all over the place that paralysed the nation. And they say with the skilled and unskilled workers to keep rebuilding everything, with the soldiers that were doing various things in these cities to deal with Bomber Command bombing and then the nine hundred thousand that were locked in to the anti-aircraft equipment two million people were paralysed. Also, Lord Trenchard, Hugh Trenchard, the person that is called the father of the Royal Air Force says the number one role of any Air Force is to put the other air Fronts on the defence. Well in the early years of the war the Germans had a lot of easy victories all over Western Europe with the Luftwaffe in the air busily bombing everything and then the Armies just moving in and taking over. But Bomber Command forced the Luftwaffe off the offence and into an unsuccessful defence, forced the production of endless fighters when what they really wanted was bombers, forced everyone into producing pilots that could fly fighter planes etcetera. The Luftwaffe was withdrawn in large part from all three fronts, the Mediterranean, the Western and the Russian Fronts to cope with Bomber Command and that was absolutely enormous. Bomber Command also had a huge impact at sea. Whereas the Royal Navy sunk three of the seventeen major ships of the German Navy Bomber Command sunk eight and could have sunk two more except they were withdrawn by the Admiralty of the Royal Navy just before they did so. Bomber Command according to Albert Speer wiped out about three thousand U-boats in their bases and made the production of U-boats extraordinarily difficult. So the other area where Bomber Command was incredibly helpful was the helping the Armies. Very very helpful with the Canadian and British Armies in Normandy. Very helpful with getting the Americans across the Rhine River and very very helpful with the Russians at Dresden. Yalta of a dying franklin Roosevelt, a depressed Winston Churchill and a jubilant Joseph Stalin was only about four or five days before they bombed Dresden. Stalin asked point blank for the bombing of Dresden. It was a major marshalling yard. It was a major communication centre. The Deputy Supreme Commander of the Soviet Forces, Anatov had said they had to destroy those communications and Stalin did not want the Russian Army which was already hopelessly overextended, extremely vulnerable, lost in the swamp of a city the way in which Canada was in Ortona in Italy which we call Canada’s Stalingrad. Where we were fighting those Germans building by building and room by room. It’s called [unclear]. So Bomber Command bombed Dresden for the Soviet Red Army. Now, after the bombing of Dresden just two days later on the 17th of February 1945 the Associated Press of the United States which had incredible respect among Americans as being incredibly accurate started to speculate that Dresden looked like terror bombing. Immediately the most respected person in the entire United States Armed Forces, General George C Marshall issued a personal statement. Dresden was a military target and the bombing was requested by Joseph Stalin. There was not a word about Dresden from that day forward in America even though they had about five hundred and thirty bombers participating with our seven hundred and sixty odd bombers in the bombing of Dresden. But what we got in Britain was dead silence until Churchill issued a very unfortunate signal which he later reputed on the 25th of March. So the Americans instantly quashed any criticism of Dresden and we allowed Dresden to fester into something that bears no connection with reality. Two of the biggest lies the Nazi Germans told in World War Two concerned Dresden. The morning after the bombing the local authorities in Dresden signalled to Berlin that about twenty thousand people had been killed. The Americans, the United States Air Force, in their 1953 report says that there were fifty thousand war workers in about a hundred and twenty war related plants in Dresden. Also, a huge number of German soldiers in Dresden at the time of the bombing because that’s where they were marshalling them to defend themselves from the Red Army. Anyway, the signal to Berlin was that about twenty thousand were killed. Goebbels simply added a zero and said two hundred thousand were killed. All he did was add a zero. And I was one of the many that believed that outrageous lie until February of 2015 when German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the real number was less than twenty five thousand and she could hardly believe the west would actually swallow a Nazi lie of that magnitude. Well, I was one of those people that swallowed that lie of that magnitude. It got me wondering just how much else about Bomber Command that I was told wasn’t true. I think of Mark Twain. Mark Twain says, “It’s not what you don’t know that’s going to hurt you. It’s what you do know that aint so.” And overwhelmingly what Canadians know about Bomber Command aint so. The second lie that they told, Goebbels told was that it was just a quaint medieval town with beautiful architecture but no military value. In fact, as I say it had fifty thousand war workers, it had about a hundred and twenty factories and other places that produced war material. It was a major marshalling yard of great importance for Germany’s defence of the homeland against the Red Army and it was a major communication centre. But those two absolutely appalling German lies on who was killed and the military value of the city are still believed today and all of this is very very very disturbing. So getting back to my dad he comes back to a Canada where an awful lot was not properly understood about Bomber Command, where Churchill’s appalling failure to even mention Bomber Command in his VE Day speech kind of opened the works for all kinds of people publishing books saying the most sensationalist things imaginable all of which gave a really erroneous, erroneous impression of Bomber Command. Now, Churchill did to some extent come to his senses by 1951 when he was doing his histories of the Second World War and he does conclude there in “Volume Five, the Closing the Ring,” Churchill does in that book say, “But it would be wrong to end without paying our tribute of respect and admiration to the officers and men who fought and died in the fearful battle of the air the like of which had never before been known or even with any precision imagined. The moral test to which the crew of a bomber were subjected reached the extreme limits of human valour and sacrifice. Here chance was carried to its most extreme and violent degree above all else. They never flinched or failed. It is to their devotion that in no small measure we owe our victory. Let us give them our salute.” And I think that is so true but that is not what is happening. Bomber Command has been badly defamed. It is not understood. My submission is Churchill was vital to Bomber Command and Bomber Command was vital to victory in World War Two. My father was part of all that but it was never really discussed after the war and it wasn’t until 2017, my dad had died in 1991, 2017 somehow on my computer I penetrated a wall in the Royal Air Force and like magic all this information came flowing forward about my father. Right from the day he was born in Westfield, Nova Scotia in 1912. All this information came flowing forward and it gave me the two things I needed to know. I needed to know Kirmington, that’s the Air Force base he flew from and I needed to know the squadron that was 166 Squadron and 1 Bomber Group. So in the summer of ’17 I showed up at Kirmington, I saw things there and they had a guest book for 166 Squadron. They’d stopped having their annual reunions in 2014 which was a tragedy for me but I took pictures of the pages because they left a lot of email addresses and I emailed everybody and people started contacting me. Then in the spring of 2018 CTV, the other national television network in Canada, the private network, Canadian Television network wanted me to come to the Prince Harry’s wedding in Windsor to explain that CTV was not just covering the marriage of some celebrities, they were covering a marriage that was part of the constitutional monarchy which was the basis of both the law and the governance of Canada. And of course, Queen Elizabeth is the Queen of Canada. So there I was in Windsor to comment on this wedding and to make these speeches about the constitutional importance of the event but my half month got completely hijacked by the Royal Air Force and I found myself being introduced to all manner of people and seeing all manner of things. And that led to my being summoned back to the United Kingdom in August of 2017, I’m sorry 2018 to participate with my sons as the official representatives of Canada at the ceremonies honouring 166 Squadron. Ceremonies that were taken sufficiently seriously that the Royal Air Force was represented by Air Marshall Sir Christopher Coville and Air Vice Marshall Paul Robinson and they were extremely interesting people for me to meet. And Air Vice Marshall Paul Robinson has evolved into a major part of my life and is the key reason that I am now back in the United Kingdom for a month researching Bomber Command because I feel I must write a book about what Bomber Command accomplished and how our failure of remembrance is wrong and how these aircrew, a hundred and twenty five thousand air crew, eighty thousand of which became casualties, fifty seven, fifty five thousand seven hundred and some odd were killed are some of the greatest heroes in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the four countries that constituted Bomber Command. That the truth needs to be told about this and I feel a strong compelling thing to do that. My concluding remarks are what I have learned from 2017 has caused me to have a complete paradigm shift on my father, on his life and what he had to cope with etcetera. He and so many of his colleagues, these people were men of extraordinary character, bravery, determination and what they did was absolutely essential to our winning the war. They need to be remembered with gratitude. Thank you.
DE: Thank you, Roddy. Well, I had a list of things and I’ve ticked them all. Could you talk a little bit more about the conversation you had with your father in the car? What sort of things did he tell you about?
RM: Well, I understood from what he was telling me that perfectionism was essential to survival when you’re in the process of bombing heavily defended German targets. That the slightest error generally tended to mean death and so therefore you had to do things essentially perfectly and even then of course there was a high risk you were going to be killed. But he told me that Lancasters were remarkable aircraft and if a person knew enough about how to fly them which evidently took a tremendous amount of physical strength and sometimes the flight engineer had to actually assist in the flying just because of the enormous strength it took to move some of the levers that needed to be moved, especially in evasive actions that the Lancaster was an absolutely extraordinary aircraft for doing that. He explained how the night fighters functioned and where they came from and how they tried to be invisible until you were dead and they liked shooting pilots because that was a good way of shooting down the aircraft at the same time. He talked about their guns. Those incredible anti-aircraft, anti-tank guns that were incredibly effective. It was extremely difficult once you got locked into the cones of the spotlights. The floodlights that they had. But corkscrew manoeuvres of various types could save the day if you were incredibly lucky. He talked about the extreme difficulty of actually hitting the target and sometimes you had to fly over more than once. In his citation for the DFC what they say in this this citation is, “This Canadian officer has now completed thirty four faultless attacks on enemy targets ranging from Germany to occupied Europe. He has consistently shown himself to be a pilot of great skill and has displayed high leadership qualities of courage and has been determined to press home his attack regardless of the opposition and has always been successful. His tenacity of purpose was magnificently displayed on his last sortie in August 1944 when on proceeding to the target an engine failed. He made no less than three runs over the target despite heavy flak to ensure that his bombs fell in the target area.” They go on to say, “On the ground as deputy flight commander he has shown willingness and enthusiasm which had been an inspiration to the whole squadron. For his determination and devotion to duty he is strongly recommended for the award of the DFC.” So he was explaining how all of this had to be perfect and he also explained this lack of moral fibre which he thought was part of the insanity of the Royal Air Force High Command most of whom had never actually flown in Bomber Command situations so they had no idea what was being experienced in these horrendous casualties of Bomber Command aircrew. He said that once a young pilot on one of his first sorties got out of that Lancaster totally traumatised, totally shaken to the core and the next night virtually at gunpoint he was put back into the cockpit of a Lancaster. The insanity was just overwhelming and of course for huge flights they flew in tight formation. This youngster completely lost his nerve, pulled forward his joystick, the Lancaster shot upwards and ripped out the belly of the one on top of it and in the ensuing chaos six Lancasters crashed because the Royal Air Force High Command had this insane policy of lack of moral fibre. He also talked about approaching the targets. The long flights into Germany. Some of these places were a long way away. It was freezing cold in the Lancaster except for the navigator who was sitting next to the heater and was at risk of being burned. He talked about how difficult it was to get out of a Lancaster if you are being shot down. He talked about how you had to be aware of all the other planes that you were flying with, of these night fighters, of the flak, of the guns. He had enormous respect for those 88 centimetre, millimetre anti-aircraft, anti-tank, he said those guns were incredibly effective. And how difficult it was to get into that target, to have your perfect timing and to make darned sure those bombs fell exactly where they were supposed to fall and not anywhere else. He talked about the incredible pressure that was on people within an aircrew and the camaraderie and he was one of those that agreed with Canada. A huge conflict between Canada and the United Kingdom and Bomber Command is Canada felt very strongly every person in that aircrew should be a commissioned officer. It was ridiculous that half of them were non-commissioned, and they were treated totally differently back at base and my father felt that very very strongly. That everything about that was wrong. He essentially said you had to keep total focus. You couldn’t let anything distract you because there were so many things happening at once you had to rely so heavily on the other people within your aircraft for what they saw, for how they described it in order to take evasive actions that would actually work and how the entire exercise was absolutely extraordinary. A nightmare that was virtually unimaginable.
DE: Thank you. I’m just struck. You just mentioned that that Canada was very keen on all aircrew being officers. So there was obviously strong support for the Royal Canadian Air Force and Bomber Command during the war. When, when did that support ebb away in your opinion?
RM: Well, that’s a really good question of how support fell away and by who and by where. Part of the problem was after the war we seemed to have this culture of not talking about the war very much. Canada is an unusual country because it’s both French and English and this country almost split in half in the First World War on the whole issue when conscription came up in World War One. They had a referendum where English Canadians were about ninety percent in favour and French Canadians were about ninety percent opposed and it was catastrophic. Our Prime Minister in World War Two, William Lyon Mackenzie King was really determined that was not going to happen a second time. Now, if somebody was conscripted they never had to leave Canada. They were actually called zombies but in both wars they did have to get into some element of conscription towards the end of the war to at least free up volunteers that were doing things in Canada to get them over to the front. But it raises a very very important point that isn’t well understood and that is William Lyon Mackenzie King, the longest serving Canadian Prime Minister first got elected Prime Minister in 1921, was out of office for five years during the Great Depression so he never had to take responsibility for it and then resigned in November of 1948 after becoming very sick at a Commonwealth Conference in London where King George the 6th, Nehru, Smuts, Jan Smuts from South Africa and other people came to his bedside to say their farewells. Mackenzie King had known Churchill since 1900 when they had more or less equivalent positions in their respective governments. So he had known Churchill for forty years before Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940. They were born just three weeks apart so these men were essentially exactly the same age. They were both great leaders in their own way but Mackenzie King was a virtually invisible leader whereas Churchill was the exact reverse. He loved the limelight. He loved the spotlight. So they functioned well together in that regard. But Mackenzie King entered the Second World War absolutely determined this was not going to be a rerun of the First World War and slaughters over battles like Vimy Ridge. That this was not going to happen. And he recognised the only way we could avoid a rerun of World War One is we had to take control of the air. Mackenzie King was absolutely definite we had to take control of the air and his theory was the only way we’re going to take control of the air is by having the world’s finest aircrew. And so in December of 1939 Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand signed an agreement in Ottawa creating the Commonwealth Air Training Plan which trained about a hundred and thirty one thousand of the world’s finest aircrew. The United Kingdom put fifty four million dollars in to that and also about a hundred and sixty million dollars in used equipment that was used for training purposes. Australia which only had about five and a half million people put in sixty eight million and New Zealand which probably only had about a million people put in forty five million dollars. Canada with nine and a half million people put in one point six billion dollars into that training programme to create the world’s finest aircrew and it was very much that way in the war itself as well. Canada’s support of the Bomber Command was rock solid. From January 1st 1943, we got our own bomber group. Bomber Group 6 but the majority of Canadians were flying in the other squadrons like my dad. They were all seconded by the Royal Canadian Air Force to the Royal Air Force. Now, two things happened after the war. The first one is of course that Mackenzie King resigned in November of 1948 and was dead in July of 1950. But he never was one to rally the flag much anyway. He never made speeches people could remember except maybe his most famous speech because it was the most decisive issue in Canada and that was the possibility of conscription. Mackenzie King’s position on conscription was conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription. And that was probably the most famous speech he ever made but it held the whole country together. But he died and he was replaced by Louis St Laurent from Quebec City, a French Canadian and the French had a very different attitude towards the war. And then he was defeated by 1957 by John Diefenbaker, the first Prime Minister of Canada that was neither English nor French but he was regarded by the establishment as very outsider. Heavily heavily criticized. He may be the only honorary member of Bomber Command Association. He was definitely that. But then after that we got into Pearson who got the Nobel Peace Prize and then we got into Trudeau who amalgamated the armed forces and virtually destroyed them in the process. So other than Diefenbaker right from the end of the war there was nobody in Canada to speak up for Bomber Command. And in 1968 they actually amalgamated the Army, the Navy and the Air Force into one unit. We’re the only Navy in the world that didn’t even have the word Navy in its name. So there was never anyone to kind of speak up for Bomber Command. It was never talked about much and then we get this scandalous CBC and National Film Board January 1992 deal which just ripped Bomber Command to shreds. But we didn’t have any national leader that really spoke up for it and it just sort of fell into the mists of confusion and misinformation.
DE: Thanks. I mean, you said about your father’s role in, as an instructor and you’ve hinted at the importance of Canada to aircrew training. What happened to all the heritage? I mean there are hundreds of old airfields where training took place. Are they, are they not remembered or are they not memorialised?
RM: Most of them just went into total disrepair. Just got completely grown over. The whole situation in Nanton, Alberta it’s a little tiny town of three thousand people it is almost unique. Everything just sort of, just somehow ceased to exist. There was no effort really to maintain anything other than the fact that the Lancaster somehow had a very distinctive hold on the Canadian population. And now the city of Toronto last Fall has given its Lancaster to the city of Victoria in British Columbia and I’m in continuous communication with the people there who are rebuilding it. British Columbia finally has a Lancaster again after decades. The Lancaster has been the one reminder of the war that resonates very very powerfully with Canadians. But virtually everything else just simply evaporated. I mean our National Bomber Command should not be in Nanton, Alberta. It should be on Wellington Street in Ottawa across from the Parliament Buildings. That’s where it should be. Our remembrance is terrible. Now, to its credit the government of Canada at least on its website, if anybody ever actually looks at the website, the Governor, this is what Canada says on the internet. The heading is, “Canadians in Bomber Command.” Canada states, “The efforts of the approximately fifty thousand Canadians who served with the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Air Force in Bomber Command operations over occupied Europe was one of our country’s most significant contributions during the Second World War. The men who served in Bomber Command faced some of the most difficult odds of anyone fighting in the war. For much of the conflict the regular duration for a tour of duty was thirty combat sorties. The risk was so high however that almost half of all aircrew never made it to the end of their tour. Despite the heavy losses Bomber Command was able to maintain a steady stream of aircraft flying over U-boat bases, docks, railways and industrial cities in Germany as well as enemy targets in occupied Europe.” That’s what the government of Canada says.
DE: That’s pretty good I think.
RM: But nobody knows they say that on the internet but even I was astonished when I saw it there. And then the Canada Bomber Command Memorial says, “The bomber offensive mounted by the Commonwealth countries during the Second World War,’ notice they’re actually focussed on the Commonwealth countries and whatever monuments you do find in Canada it’s always talking about the Commonwealth countries has been described as, “The most gruelling and continuous operation of war ever waged. It lasted for some two thousand days. Bomber Command until the tide turned offered the only weapon capable of waging war against Hitler’s European fortress and then it concludes saying Bomber Command’s successes were purchased at a terrible cost. Of the volunteers who flew,” over fifty five thousand were Canadian err, “Fifty five thousand were killed and almost eleven thousand of these were Canadians.” And that’s in Nanton, Alberta. So yeah, the official statement of the government of Canada actually catches people by surprise. I’ve done a number of major speeches now in the last few months in Canada and every time I read that everyone is very surprised. But essentially our government since the war have not been supportive of the military. Most of them are totally focussed on electoral situations in Quebec. Quebec does not like being reminded of the war. And we have just been sitting ducks for things such as that documentary and that War Museum. I think in a single sentence my friend, Brother Maximus said, ‘Regarding Bomber Command Canadians have become a people who are forgetful, ungrateful and easily deceived.’ And I think that’s precisely what’s happened.
DE: Ok. I think Roddy unless you have anything else to add we’ll leave that there. That was just over an hour. 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 Roddy MacKenzie
Creator
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Dan Ellin
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
2019-05-09
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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AMacKenzieR190509
Type
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Sound
Format
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01:01:31 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Roddy MacKenzie’s father, Roland, joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1942. He trained as a pilot and worked as an instructor in Canada before being posted to RAF Kirmington, where he joined 166 Squadron and received the Distinguished Flying Cross for completing thirty-four operations between April and August 1944. Born in 1948, Roddy grew up with little knowledge of his father’s wartime role. He describes a rare encounter in 1985 when, after sitting in a Lancaster together, Roland opened up about his time as a pilot. He conveyed his respect for flight instructors, the difficulties aircrew faced during operations, and the dangerous consequences that lack of moral fibre caused. In 2017, Roddy met with his uncle to learn more about his father, who died in 1991. Upon hearing a pre-war description that was inconsistent with his own experiences, he postulates that Roland had been traumatised by his service in Bomber Command, thereby explaining Roddy’s struggle to connect with his father. Roddy expresses his opinion regarding the mistreatment of Bomber Command in Canada, compares this to remembrance in Australia, and cites the negative media portrayals that have tainted national memory. He suggests that as discussions are either heavily critical or romanticised, society lacks an understanding of Bomber Command’s contribution to the outcome of the war. In 2018, Roddy visited RAF Kirmington to attended a ceremony to honour 166 Squadron as the official representative for Canada, which introduced several new contacts that allowed him to conduct further research.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Julie Williams
Coverage
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Second generation
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Canada
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
2017
1991
2018
Language
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eng
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
166 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Distinguished Flying Cross
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
military service conditions
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Kirmington
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1099/11558/ARobinsonH150527.1.mp3
d053952e3290b17f5cd912c1dc26e837
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
Robinson, Hilary
H Robinson
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Hilary Robinson (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). She served as a driver at RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-27
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Robinson, H
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Right. This is an interview with Hilary Robinson. I am Dan Ellin. It is the 27th of May 2015 at just about half past twelve and we are in Elmfield Farm in Braithwell near Rotherham.
HR: That’s right.
DE: Right.
HR: Correct.
DE: Thank you. Hilary could just tell me a little bit about your early life? And we’ll start from there please.
HR: Well I had a very happy childhood. I had one brother who was older than I was. He was four years my senior. But we had a very happy childhood. Mother and father were very good to us. I don’t mean we had an elaborate childhood but we were encouraged to, you know, think up games and that sort of thing and to use our imagination which, very few people have an imagination today. It’s the television that’s killed it I’m afraid. But anyway I had a very vivid imagination which was a curse sometime because I sort of imagined sort of awful things in the night and things. However, we got over that. And so I went to school in Rotherham. And I used to walk to school in the morning and walk back again and then came the day when I had to do something a bit bigger and so I went to Bridlington High School as a boarder. Which was eventually a very happy period in my life but it was a very unhappy period when I started because I was very homesick. But I suppose if you’ve had a happy home it’s quite a wrench to be severed from that. But anyway I eventually liked it very much. And I played quite a good, although I shouldn’t say it but I played quite a good game of lacrosse which very few schools played in those days. Which was a netted thing on the end and you ran with your ball and things in that. And so I was in the team for that. I was also in the team for cricket in the summer time. I wasn’t a bad bowler actually. Anyway, I have to confess that I was very homesick when I first went but then I got used to it and I was very happy. And I stayed there until I was of an age to leave school. And then I came home and what was to be done with Hilary then? Because it was wartime by this time you see. And anyway my, my uncle was an estate agent in Sheffield. To do with one of the steel works and their properties. And so it was. I was destined to go there to work in the office and to go around rent collecting down the streets in the back of beyond in Sheffield. Which I am very grateful to that period of my life because I met some very interesting people and they were very kind. I wasn’t the most popular of visitors. Coming for the rent. But they were all very kind to me. And you know, ‘Come inside love. Have a cup of tea.’ And the mug was a bit mucky and, ‘I wonder what I’ll get from that,’ you know [laughs] I never did get anything. And then, anyway I enjoyed that period of my life and I met some very nice and very interesting people. And I’ve always been grateful for it because they were, you know, I saw how other people lived and I think that’s very important. For people to know that everybody doesn’t have the same opportunities that you’ve had. Not that I had a lot of opportunities but you know there’s a sort of, lot of difference —
DE: Yes.
HR: Between people. So I stayed there. And I really enjoyed that period of my life. And then of course the war came. And Uncle Fernie, who was my father’s brother, he ran the business. That was his business. And he thought he’d be able to keep me there but of course the powers that be thought that I was not important there. So I was politely told and went into the munition works and made bombs.
DE: Right.
HR: Which, I’d seen the sort of people who made bombs on the tractors when I walked, when I went to work, you see. And they were a bit, sort of, I mean they were very nice I’m sure but they were a bit on the sort of rough side. So I, Uncle Fernie thought he would be able to keep me there but the government thought differently and I that was not an important person.
DE: It wasn’t a reserved occupation you were in.
HR: No. So I was politely told that I went in and made bombs in the steelworks or I joined one of the forces. I would very much have liked to have gone in the navy but the navy was full of people. Everybody wanted to go in the navy.
DE: Yeah.
HR: So my next choice was the air force. And I was accepted for that and so I went. I was sent off to Gloucester where you were, you know, put in [pause] well told how to march and told how to salute and told how to behave and one thing and another and drilled and so on. And then to be decided what I would like to do. What occupation I would like to do. Well I’ve always loved motor cars. Ever since I was a little girl and had a pedal car so I thought I would like to be a driver. So I was accepted for that and so I went to Blackpool of all places to learn to be taught to drive the way that the air force wanted me to drive. I didn’t drive the way they liked. So I went there and I had a nice time at Blackpool. I quite enjoyed that. I don’t think I’d ever been to Blackpool before. But all my fourteen shillings a week went on going on rides on the [laughs] on the dipper and so on. Which was quite a horrifying experience. So then it was to be decided what I wanted. What trade I wanted to follow. Well I’ve always loved motor cars and I wanted to be a driver so that’s what I volunteered for. So I was sent to driving school and I was taught to drive the way that the air force wanted me to drive. The way I drove they didn’t like.
DE: Could you already drive then?
HR: Pardon?
DE: Could you already drive?
HR: Yes. So I was taught to drive the way they wanted me to drive. And so I was on one of a light sort of van to start with but I drove everything up to a three ton lorry eventually. And after a period of time of learning to drill and march and sort of knocked into position and doing things they wanted me to do the way they wanted me to do I went to to driving school. Which was near Blackpool. Wheaton. A place called Wheaton. So I was sent there. And they taught you to drive. The way I drove the way they didn’t like at all.
DE: Yeah.
HR: It wasn’t acceptable.
DE: What was, what was the instructor like?
HR: Oh they were very fair and very nice. They were. I’ve no criticisms about them and it was a very thorough course. You had to learn to do your own maintenance. You had to go down in the pits and do all the greasing around and everything. And it was very, it was a very good course. I’ve no criticism about it. And I had a nice time at Blackpool because when I had any money I went in to the Fun City place and went on the big dipper and one things and another. I never had any money. We only got fourteen shillings a week I think. Father and mother were quite good — sort of subbing me a bit.
DE: Right.
HR: Anyway, I stopped there until I was as they wanted me to be. And then I was posted to RAF Elsham Wolds.
DE: Can we, can we —
HR: In Lincolnshire.
DE: Yes. Can we talk about that in a little bit? I’d like to talk a little bit more about, about your training in Blackpool.
HR: Oh yes. Well, I have to say that it was a very very good training. You were taught to maintain your vehicle and to go down in the pits and grease around and every day you had to look at the oil amount levels. You had to make sure you’d plenty of petrol in. You had to look at the tyre pressures. The water. And, you know if you ran out of anything during the day you were in terrible trouble immediately. And, anyway having done all that at Blackpool, I had quite a nice time in Blackpool, when I had any money to go on the dipper and things. And then —
DE: What was, what was the accommodation like in Blackpool?
HR: It was quite good. Everywhere I went we were quite adequately housed and there were baths. Bathing facilities and that kind of thing. And I met up with all sorts of nice people. And then I stopped there until I took my test — in Blackpool of all places.
DE: Were you in, were you in billets then in Blackpool?
HR: Yes. We had Nissen huts. So then I came, I was posted to a place called Elsham Wolds.
DE: Yes.
HR: Which was a bomber station with Lancaster bombers which I became very fond of. I admired them tremendously and I admired the men that flew them. Because it wasn’t a happy excursion going off with a load of bombs underneath you. But they were very very stoic. They were remarkable chaps. And so I stayed at Elsham Wolds all through the war really and I became acquainted with The Oswald [laughs] which —
DE: [laughs]Tthat was a peculiar face. What expression was—?
HR: The Oswald was in Scunthorpe.
DE: Right.
HR: And everybody went to the Oswald.
DE: This is a pub.
HR: And, yes, and there I learned to drink pints of beer. So I grew to an enormous side because it’s very fattening. If mother had known that I went there she wouldn’t have been best pleased but she didn’t know. So what she didn’t know she didn’t grieve about. So, but I had some very happy times in the Oswald and we sang and everybody was happy for a little while. And the aircrew used to go and sing and for a few short hours they were happy. But they were very very brave men to be shut in one of those things. Seven of them with all those bombs underneath them wasn’t a bundle of laughs.
DE: No.
HR: Well, no aspect of war is a bundle of laughs really. But then I was posted there to this Elsham Wolds place in Lincolnshire. Which, I was very very happy at Elsham Wolds. And I met lots of nice people. Some of whom are still alive and I see occasionally. And the MT officer was a stickler for everything. You know, he drove out of the yard in the morning and there was this face at the office window and sort of, sometimes there was a beckoning and you thought, ‘Oh what have I done?’ You tottered in you see and you’d done something that wasn’t acceptable and you were told to put it right. It was a very good training. And Mr Barnes was a very fair officer I have to say and we all got along quite well. And we had to do all our own maintenance. You went down in the pits and did your greasing around and everything. And then I moved on to staff cars and I had to drive officers about and look after the staff cars that the officers used when they went out on their own without a driver. We had to make sure they had plenty of petrol and if anything sort of went wrong well, you were up the creek without a paddle you see. Straightaway. But anyway I enjoyed being at Elsham Wolds although there were a lot of sad times because we had Lancaster bombers there.
DE: Yes.
HR: And they went off nightly on their excursions. And they were only very young, a lot of those boys that went in there, and you know you could see they didn’t really much care for being shut in there with this load of bombs. And I admired them tremendously because they didn’t complain.
DE: Did you have a lot of contact with members of aircrew then?
HR: Well I drove, you see. I was on the, on that part of the MT section which served the planes. So I had to drive them out to, to get into their aeroplanes and then of course when they came back, or if they came back then I went and fetched them in again. When they came back. But sadly very often they didn’t come back. Which was very upsetting. But anyway they were happy days at Elsham Wolds on the side. And I became acquainted with this Oswald as I say. And I have often thought I would like to go back to the Oswald but I think it might be a mistake because it wouldn’t be the same you see. And we sang there. And I learned to drink pints of beer and I grew to an enormous size. And mother was very disapproving. She didn’t agree with women folk drinking. But anyway everybody did it and so but we had happy times and we sang and you couldn’t blame them for what happiness they could get there.
DE: No. No.
HR: These men that flew in those aeroplanes because it wasn’t a happy business at all.
DE: Did you, did you go to the Oswald with a particular group of people then?
HR: Well with the rest of the MT section, you see. Everybody went to the Oswald. I’ve often wondered, I’ve thought I’d like to go back and look what it’s like. But I think that would be a mistake because it wouldn’t be the same you see.
DE: No.
HR: It is still there. I’ve rung it up to see whether it was there.
DE: Right.
HR: But it wouldn’t be the same. We sang. And for a few short hours everybody was happy.
DE: Can you remember the sort of songs that you sang?
HR: Well those particular things that were sort of in vogue at that particular time. We sang cheery things and I, as I say, I could down several pints of beer which was not a good thing for me at all.
DE: No.
HR: Because it was very fattening you see. I grew to an enormous size. Anyway —
DE: Was, was there a piano in the pub then? Or were you singing unaccompanied?
HR: Pardon?
DE: Was there a piano in the pub?
HR: A plan?
DE: A piano in the —
HR: Oh piano. Yes. There was always a piano in the pubs. They played tunes and things for us to sing. And for a few short hours the aircrew were happy because it wasn’t, I used to drive them out to their aeroplanes which was not a pleasant duty because —
DE: No. Did you drive a particular crew to a particular aircraft? Or —
HR: No. It just so happened you were, the MT officer told you what duties you were on, and you – but I was on that duty for quite some time and they were different crews you took out. But you were always glad when you saw them back again because it wasn’t a happy thing —
DE: No.
HR: To be shut in one of those things. I’ve never forgotten how brave they were really.
DE: Quite right.
HR: Because it wasn’t a happy occupation. Well no aspect of war was a happy thing really.
DE: So did you drive them out to their aircraft in the evening?
HR: Yes.
DE: And picked them up when they came back. What did you do in between?
HR: Well you hang about. You hung about sort of thing.
DE: Throughout the night sometimes?
HR: Yes. Until such time as they came back. And then you went out and sometimes, very sadly they didn’t come back. And that was very sad.
DE: Yes.
HR: Indeed. And so there was a lot of sadness really. And then you had to do all your own maintenance on the thing. And Mr Barnes was a very strict MT officer and he was always in the window and [beckoning] and then you knew you’d done something wrong and you tottered into the office.
DE: Yes.
HR: ‘Yes. Yes sir.’ You know. Anyway, I stopped at Elsham Wolds and we had several satellite stations which we went to from time to time. You were posted out to serve on there. But I have some very happy memories of the friends I made and I have to say which mother wouldn’t have been at all pleased about the Oswald. I have a lot of happy memories. Mother didn’t agree with ladies going into Oswald’s and things.
DE: Yeah.
HR: But it was — well you couldn’t blame them for going drinking.
DE: No. Quite.
HR: Because they were very brave. Well, all the people were very brave that took part in war.
DE: So when when you were on duty and it was your job to drive crews to and from the aircraft what, what hours did you do? Did you work shifts?
HR: Yes. You were either on sort of late turns or early turns. Or whatever. You were told what you had to do. Mr Barnes drew a sort of plan up for you.
DE: Yeah. Was it a big section then? The MT section.
HR: Oh it was quite an appreciable size yes. Mr Barnes, well Flight Lieutenant Barnes to give him his full title. He was very fair but everything had to be right. And if it wasn’t right well there was a knocking on a window and a [beckoning] like that and your heart sank to your boots. And you tottered in to see what you’d done wrong. You know. But he was a very fair officer.
DE: Did you get into trouble then?
HR: Pardon?
DE: Did you get into trouble?
HR: Oh I got in to trouble yes. With various things but nothing serious.
DE: What sort of punishments did he give out if any?
HR: Well, sort of, you know you were confined to billets or something. You couldn’t go out and that sort of thing. But for the most part, I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but I didn’t. I didn’t really have any very — I was a bit too canny for them. I kept out of view.
DE: You kept your nose clean.
HR: Yes. But I shall always have the most tremendous regard for those boys that went off in those aeroplanes because it wasn’t a bundle of laughs.
DE: No.
HR: To get in there with a great big load of bombs. We had Lancaster bombers.
DE: Did you ever go in one?
HR: Yes. Illegally. But I did a lot of illegal things in those days.
DE: Oh tell me more about the illegal things. That’s interesting.
HR: No. Well we used to drive the crews out when they were doing you know maintenance work and they said, ‘Would you like to come up with us.’ And I used to say oh yes, please. You know. So I did have several illicit journeys. And so —
DE: What was that like?
HR: Oh, it was, it was wonderful but it must have been dreadful for them because there wasn’t a lot of room.
DE: No.
HR: For each person to sit. There was seven of them I think.
DE: So when when you were sneakily having a flight in a Lancaster where did you sit or stand?
HR: Sorry?
DE: When you were in, when you were having a flight in a Lancaster where did you sit or stand in?
HR: Oh I sat right in the front. Looking out. You know you could lie, lie on the front.
DE: Oh, in the bomb aimers position.
HR: Yes. And look out. And I have, shall always have tremendous respect and regard for people who flew them because it, well — whatever aspect of war it was not nice and, but to be sent off in one of those things with a load of bombs underneath you wasn’t a bundle of laughs I’m sure.
DE: No. Quite.
HR: But they were very brave and they, and as I say we sang and things. Everybody tried to be happy in the few short hours that were available to us.
DE: Did you go to dances or the cinema with people?
HR: We had, we had films on the camp sometimes. We had dances on the camp and that sort of thing. But if my mother had known the things I got up to she wouldn’t have been best pleased. But she didn’t know so I used to go to this Oswald.
DE: Yes.
HR: In Scunthorpe. And I thought the Oswald was marvellous. I mean my eyes used to come out like chapel hat pegs at what went on in there.
DE: Oh. What sort of things went on in the Oswald?
HR: Well I mean this singing and for a few short hours everyone was happy. And they sang songs. And I drank pints of beer and grew to an enormous size. It’s very, very fattening. Beer.
DE: It is. Yeah. It is.
HR: So anyway, I stayed at Elsham until the end of the war I think. And then I finished up at Bawtry which was Group Headquarters. Number 1 Group Bomber Command Headquarters.
DE: Yeah.
HR: I didn’t like it there. I was sort of fastened in and couldn’t get out. And, well I had to behave nicely. Not that [laughs] anyway I was there until [pause] and then the war finished. And mother, my mother was very poorly and she had to have an operation and so I was given a compassionate leave and so I finished then. The war was over by that time. But I have very happy memories of —
DE: Yeah.
HR: Of Elsham. Happy and sad memories and I shall always admire those wonderful chaps that went up in those aeroplanes because it wouldn’t have been a bundle of laughs to go with all those bombs underneath you. But they were a very plucky lot. Well, all —
DE: Definitely. Yeah.
HR: Aspects of war — people had to be very plucky to do it.
DE: So there was a sort of difference in atmosphere was there? Between Elsham Wolds and Bawtry. Was it to do with—?
HR: Oh Bawtry Hall was.
DE: Bawtry yeah.
HR: Was the headquarters and it was all sort of, you know toffee nosed at Bawtry Hall [laughs]
DE: Right. So uniform had to be had to be right. And drill and that sort of thing. Was it?
HR: Yes. I didn’t like Bawtry Hall very much. And I couldn’t get out there you see. Used, I found a war memorial which was quite a convenient place and I could climb over the railings and get out. Until one evening I unfortunately slipped somehow or other. Caught my handle on one of the spikes on this thing and sort of cut it right down there.
DE: Oh dear.
HR: Oh it did bleed. I didn’t know what to do. I daren’t go anywhere, you see to say because they would say, ‘Where have you done this?’ So I bound it up and did — I was in a great deal of distress for some days really. But no I wasn’t a very well behaved WAAF. I was rather naughty I’m afraid.
DE: [laughs] Even though you managed to get to the rank of sergeant.
HR: Corporal.
DE: Corporal.
HR: Corporal was the best I’d been. Yes. But I’ve always enjoyed driving. Since I was a little girl and I had a pedal car. And I loved cars very much. So that was what I wanted to do and we were allowed to drive everything up to a three ton lorry with a gate change. You won’t know anything about gate changes.
DE: Tell me about a gate change then.
HR: Well you had to double de clutch in order to get the gears in without making that [noise] noise. And no, I have to say that the training we were given in the air force was very good. And I’ve always been grateful for it. It stood me in very good stead for many years. And my, one of my sort of pet likes of cars and that sort of thing. Driving. But I don’t do much now.
DE: No.
HR: Because it’s, well it’s not for the elderly I don’t think.
DE: So you had compassionate leave at the end of the war.
HR: Yes.
DE: And then were you properly demobbed then?
HR: Yes. I was demobbed then. And then I went home. Back to the office and rent collecting down the back streets of Sheffield which was also an eye opener. I used to like doing that actually. I was quite, I wasn’t a very popular person coming for the rent but —
DE: No.
HR: Anyway, they were all very kind to me and gave me a drink of coffee or something, you know and [pause] no. I in my little way I’ve had a reasonably happy life really, and have a lot to be very thankful for. Then of course the war finished, and I met Brian who was to be my husband and he had, he was going to be a farmer and was at Agricultural College. And we got married and eventually we came here to this house and the farm. And then Jean and Gerald — they’ve been wonderful support. They live over the wall and they still keep an eye on me. I’m a nuisance to them actually. And I’ve retired now.
DE: Yes.
HR: So I’m ninety something I think.
Other: Ninety one and three quarters.
HR: Pardon?
Other: Ninety one and three quarters.
HR: Ninety one.
Other: And three quarters.
HR: Anyway so I don’t do so badly, but Jean and Gerald are very very good, and their daughter is very good to me. They look after me. And of course my parents are both long since gone unfortunately. And I’ve still, I think [unclear] not here now is he?
Other: No.
HR: My brother’s gone now as well. He was in the forces. But I’m very happy in my little world really, and Jean and Gerald are ever so good to me. And they keep me stocked up with gin and everything [laughs] which Jean doesn’t approve of really because she doesn’t drink, quite rightly if she doesn’t want to.
DE: No.
HR: But —
DE: So when did you get involved in Elsham Wolds Association?
HR: Oh, almost at the start of it, sort of beginning I think and I mean I must say that I had in-between times, I had a happy time in the services because you made a lot of good friends, and there were a lot of happy times as well as very sad times.
DE: Yeah.
HR: And so I‘ve kept in touch but it’s all fizzled out now of course because well most of us have died off or something. There isn’t the –
DE: But you used to go to, to reunions. Do you still, still go?
HR: Oh yes. Well I don’t think I go much now. But I don’t think they have very many reunions do they?
Other: No, your daughter usually comes and takes you doesn’t she?
HR: Sorry?
Other: Rosamund usually comes and takes you doesn’t she?
HR: Yes, Rosamund who is my elder daughter. I have two daughters, Rosamund and Caroline, both of whom are married and live elsewhere. They don’t live close to me. But Jean and Gerald are very, very good to me. They look after me and Jean keeps an eye on me over the wall and sees that I don’t get drunk too often sort of [laughs]
DE: Marvellous. I could do with someone looking after me like that.
HR: Yes.
DE: Did you have a particular close friend at Elsham Wolds?
HR: Yes, I had Margaret.
Other: And Rose.
HR: And Rose. And both of whom I kept in touch with but I think sadly they’re both gone now.
Other: No. Margaret’s still alive.
HR: Margaret’s still alive.
Other: Joe’s dead.
HR: Rose has died.
Other: And Joe.
HR: And Joe, yeah.
Other: Margaret’s husband.
HR: But I don’t get about much now.
DE: Were Margaret and Rose in the MT section?
HR: Yes. And Mr Barnes was our MT officer.
DE: Yes.
HR: Flight Lieutenant Barnes, who tapped on the window and you knew you’d done something horrible.
DE: You mentioned you cut your hand when you were at 1 Group Headquarters. Did you ever have to see the medical officer at Esham Wolds?
HR: I think so. I think I had to have a stitch or something in it. I can’t really remember now, it’s a long time ago but. No, Elsham Wolds was, I mean it was a sad place but it was a happy place as well really. As long as you behaved yourself and you did what you were supposed to do — well you were, you were alright. We had to do all our own maintenance on our own vehicle. To go in the pits and everything. And if you ran out of anything like the oil or anything, you were up a creek without a paddle. But Mr Barnes the MT officer was a very fair man I have to say. You know he never punished you if you hadn’t done anything wrong. And so I had a happy time at Elsham Wolds really.
DE: Smashing.
HR: And I landed up at this Oswald in Scunthorpe. I mean to go to look at it, still, I think it is still there. I’ve rung up once or twice but there’s no one of a like mind now to go with you see.
DE: No. Can I just go, go back in, and ask you a little bit more about when you joined the WAAF. You said that you really wanted to join the Navy.
HR: Yes I did.
DE: Why, why was, why was that?
HR: Well it was fully booked up. Everybody wanted to go in the Navy and there weren’t any places at my particular time, they were full.
DE: But why did you, why did you prefer the, the WRENS over the WAAFs at that time?
HR: I don’t know. I think probably the uniform and boats. I’ve always been rather fond of boats. See, I went to school in Bridlington, boarding school.
DE: Yes.
HR: And so I became rather addicted to the sea and I quite felt I would quite like to do that. But that was all fully booked up. Everybody wanted to do that.
DE: So, so the WAAF was your second choice?
HR: I’ve always loved aeroplanes. I was very happy to go in the WAAF and I really had an – well it’s a terrible thing to say that you had an enjoyable time. I mean there were a lot of terribly sad times but the camaraderie was wonderful really. And I made some very good friends. A lot of them are dead aren’t they now? They’ve passed on. But I keep batting, at the moment. But I’m – [coughs] how much longer that’s going — Jean keeps me batting.
DE: Excellent.
HR: She comes round every morning and beats me up to [laughs]
DE: So, you joined the WAAF. Did you say that it was Gloucester that you went to first?
HR: Gloucester. Yes you —
DE: What was that like?
HR: Well you learned to drill and learned all your rules and regulations and to clean your buttons and your cap badge and everything. And then from there you decided what you wanted to, what trade you wanted to follow. Well I’ve always loved motor cars.
DE: Yes.
HR: So that was my obvious choice.
DE: Did they — did you do any tests to choose your trade? Or were you given a choice?
HR: Well you, you were given a choice of what you, provided it wasn’t full up.
DE: Right.
HR: It depended. Some things were more popular than others you see. But anyway, when I chose the driving I got in there alright. And I went to Wheaton which is near Blackpool.
DE: Yes.
HR: And I have to say that we had a very comprehensive driving course and you had to do all your own maintenance.
DE: Yes.
HR: To go down in the pits and do everything. So it stood me in very good stead for the rest of my life and I was doing something that I enjoyed doing.
DE: Yes.
HR: And from there I went, well I went to Wheaton for the driving school to learn, because I didn’t drive the way they wanted me to drive, you know. Didn’t do the hand signals and one thing and another.
DE: You said when you were in Blackpool you were in, in billets. What was the accommodation at Gloucester?
HR: I think, I think they were sort of air force things, I think. We were in there, sort of. It’s such a long time ago I can’t really remember.
DE: What about the accommodation at Elsham Wolds?
HR: Oh well that was very nice. I liked it at Elsham Wolds. We lived on the WAAF site which was away from the bomber station. And there was a bus, well it wasn’t a proper bus, but it was a crew bus that fetched us up and down from. Or you could have your cycle if you wanted to. And you went up in the morning, depending what shift you were on and then you stayed up at camp all day. Then you came down again at night.
DE: Yes.
HR: You see. Mr Barnes the MT officer was — he was a stickler for everything being right, quite rightly so. And as long as you did what you were supposed to do, you didn’t fall foul of him. But you had to do all your own maintenance.
DE: Yeah. The, the huts that you lived in at Elsham Wolds — was that a mix of trades in there? Or were they all MT people in there, in—?
HR: Well there were mostly MT people. There were twelve of us I think in a Nissen hut, and six down either side. Then we had a sort of little toilet thing at the end that you could use in the night if you got taken short. But then you went into the woods in the morning to have your shower or a bath or whatever you went to do. To use the proper toilet. So, it was all very well run I have to say. I have no criticism of anything that they provided for us.
DE: And, and the food was alright. What was — was it?
HR: Oh the food was quite good. And fortunately I had a mother who insisted that we ate everything. She couldn’t be doing with people, ‘Well I don’t like that.’ ‘I can’t eat that.’ She said, ‘You will eat it.’ And so as a result of that, I had a father who was very faddy and I think mother had had enough of it sort of thing. She insisted. I don’t think she was successful with my brother, she didn’t make much of him, but she certainly — there are very, very few things that I don’t — dislike. That I do dislike I should say, so I can eat most things, somethings obviously I like more than others. But there are one or two things people give me, the more I eat them and that’s it.
DE: So did you eat in the mess, or did you go somewhere else for food?
HR: Oh you ate in the mess but sometimes we went, as I say to, into Scunthorpe and had food in the pub you see.
DE: I wonder was, was there a NAAFI on Elsham Wolds?
HR: Oh, we had a NAAFI. Yes. We had a NAAFI. And they were very good, I have to say. The looked after us very well, they were a wonderful band of people. They really were. My time at Elsham Wolds was, you know it was very sad with people not coming back from operations and that sort of thing. But my time at Elsham Wolds was reasonably happy and Mr Barnes the MT officer who was a bit of a so and so but he was very fair. And as long as you towed the line you didn’t get into trouble. My days at Elsham Wolds were very happy really. And as I say we frequented the Oswald in Scunthorpe. I think it’s still there. But I don’t think I shall ever go again because it wouldn’t be the same, you see and my memories of it would be shattered.
DE: Have you, have you gone back to Elsham Wolds very often?
HR: Oh I go back. We have a reunion every so often. But I mean the bomber station’s not — I mean it’s all gone back to farming now sort of thing. But I have one or two colleagues still left.
DE: Yeah.
HR: That I keep in touch with. I would like to go back to the Oswald once more but nobody is willing to take me so I don’t think I shall be going [laughs]
DE: So after the war you became a farmer?
HR: No, after the war I went back to doing what I was at this — with my uncle with the estate agency thing. Then I met up with Brian and we got engaged and subsequently married and he was at Agricultural College learning farming. And then eventually he passed out as a farmer and we came here. Well, I am very happy here. And I did run the farm with Jean and Gerald’s great help after Brian died. But I’ve packed up now.
Other: Yes.
HR: I’m old and decrepit. I’m ninety something I think.
Other: Ninety one and three quarters.
HR: Ninety one.
DE: Yeah.
HR: Yes. So but I still live here very kindly Jean and Gerald see to me and see I don’t get into any mischief or anything. Don’t do anything naughty you know.
DE: Yes.
HR: So, anyway.
DE: Ah that’s smashing. One last question I think. What How do you feel about the history of, of Bomber Command and how it’s been remembered?
HR: Sorry?
DE: What, what are your feelings on how Bomber Command has been remembered?
HR: Well I don’t think it’s been sufficiently remembered personally if I’m honest about it. But I think it’s very difficult because it’s a changing age and I mean most of the people that took part in the war are either very, very old or have passed on. You can’t expect these younger people to be interested really in what was given up for them. But as I say I go, go up one. I go once a year don’t I?
Other: Twice a year.
HR: Twice a year to Elsham. And we, we have a service and things round the —
Other: Memorial Service.
HR: The Cenotaph. Cenotaph thing. And, but I would like to go back to the Oswald but nobody’s prepared to take me so I can’t go by myself so. I don’t know, but, no I made a lot of good friends, but many of them have passed on now. I think I’ve not got many left have I?
Other: You’ve got Margaret left.
HR: Margaret, yes. But they still keep in touch and so, anyway then I came back to going to the office and doing the rent collecting again down the back streets of Sheffield. Which was a very interesting job and I met some very interesting people. I wasn’t the most popular of visitors coming for the rent. But they were all very kind to me I have to say now. ‘Come inside love and have a cup of tea or a cup coffee or something.’ And so I’ve always — I think I’ve had a , in a way, an interesting, to me — life. Don’t think it’s very interesting to anybody else but I’ve enjoyed life and I enjoyed my days in the WAAF. Certainly I enjoyed going to the Oswald and singing and things, but —
DE: Yes.
DE: One last question. Before I pressed record you were telling me about your pedal car.
HR: Yes.
DE: Can you tell me a bit more about the pedal car?
HR: Well I don’t know why, I’ve no idea why but I really always have loved cars. I mean my first question to anybody to whom I was introduced, ‘Have you got a car?’ And if the had a car well, they were my friend forever. I don’t know why I’ve loved cars so much but anyway I did. And then, we didn’t have a car when we were growing up, my brother and I but then it was mother. Mother was the sort of go-getter in our family. Father was, you know, he drifted along in the slow lane. He was ever such a nice person and had a wonderful sense of humour but mother was the sort of go-getter. Eventually it was decided we would have a car and she moved hell and high water to get this car. And I can remember its number. It was BWB 773 and it was a Wolseley, and, oh it was ever such a nice car. It had leather upholstered seats inside. Cars in those days were really nice. And so, of course, I wasn’t old enough to drive then but my brother learned to drive. He was four years older than me. And then eventually I learned to drive. I was in the seventh heaven then. Mind you it’s not as nice now as it used to be because it’s so busy everywhere. People are so rude and they don’t want to give way and one thing and another so I don’t do very much now because I think I’m beyond it, and it’s rather foolish if I don’t have the opportunity to do it regularly. I think you lose touch with things, and at my age it’s not sensible.
DE: No.
HR: So, anyway.
DE: Lovely. That’s, that’s marvellous. Thank you very much.
HR: Well thank you for coming and talking to me. I’m very grateful. I’m sure it hasn’t of been of great interest to you.
DE: I’m sure, I’m sure it will, thank you.
HR: Right.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Hilary Robinson
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Dan Ellin
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-27
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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ARobinsonH150527
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Pending review
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00:51:30 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Hilary Robinson grew up in Yorkshire and volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She trained as a driver and served at RAF Elsham Wolds and at 1 Group Headquarters at Bawtry Hall. She married and lived on a farm after the war.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
1 Group
entertainment
ground personnel
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Bawtry
RAF Elsham Wolds
sanitation
service vehicle
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1055/11434/AOveryR171127-AV.1.mp3
f8aff92a5a69f46817e706fcca7340fd
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Overy, Richard
R Overy
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Two interviews with Professor Richard Overy.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-11-27
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Overy, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: Ok. Could you speak a little bit on how Bomber Command has been remembered? How and why Bomber Command has been remembered the way it has in the UK?
RO: In Britain Bomber Command has been remembered in a rather ambiguous way. There are people who see Bomber Command performing a necessary and strategically useful task in the Second World War against an enemy that deserved its bombing. But there are other people who see the death of German civilians in very large numbers as somehow or other a violation of the rules of war and so they tend to see Bomber Command differently as a force that was doing something strategically unimportant and involving the mass killing of civilians.
DE: And what about the way it’s been remembered in Europe?
RO: In Europe Bomber Command is obviously remembered, sorry I’ll start again.
DE: Ok.
RO: In Europe Bomber Command is remembered very differently. In Germany there is still I think quite strong resentment at the extraordinary level of damage inflicted to German cities and on German civilians. But I think Bomber Command is remembered perhaps most bitterly in places like Italy and France. In later stages of the war they were on the Allied side and yet their population suffered extreme levels of loss and damage in the course of their liberation.
DE: Could you talk a little bit about the way memorials and commemorations are springing up in Europe at the moment? Over the last ten or fifteen years or so.
RO: It's only recently that the bombing has really been remembered in Europe. For the first time you start to see memorials to those killed in the bombing. Start to see memorials to the civilian dead and not just to the soldiers which is a more familiar form of memorialization. I think it’s taken an awful long time for Europe to wake up to the reality of the bombing war and I think now people are more willing than before to look at this as a, as a, sorry. I'll start again. People are willing more than before to see this, sorry, I’ll start again. People are willing more than before to see civilians as part of the war effort. To see civilian losses as something we need to remember as well. And that’s true I think in Britain too. In Britain there are almost no memorials to the Blitz and yet forty three thousand people lost their lives during the course of it.
DE: Could you talk a little bit about your role with the museum in Hamburg?
RO: In Hamburg a new museum to the bombing has been established and Hamburg of course was a city that suffered the firestorm. Eighteen thousand people killed in one night. There I think the museum has made a great effort to try and see the bombing from every side. Not to disguise the fact that Germany was a dictatorship which practised all kinds of international crimes but at the same time to recognise that the death of German civilians was something which needs to be recorded and explained. I think this has been a very good experiment. I think what it has done is to put the bombing war properly into a modern context [pause] If that’s useful.
DE: Yeah, I think so. Could you talk for ninety seconds, like just a minute isn't it, talk about the use of resources and bombing. I know you’ve written quite a large amount on that.
RO: About what? Sorry?
DE: The bombing and the use of resources and how, you know, it’s impact or not on German industry.
RO: Right. Ok.
DE: A big ask in ninety seconds.
RO: One of the reasons for bombing Germany was to try to undermine the German war economy and stop production for the German armed forces. In the end large resources were diverted from the military to defend Germany but in the end Germany carried on producing armaments in large quantities almost until the end of the war.
AP: It would be better if you asked again the same question.
DE: Yeah, because there was a siren went past.
RO: Do it again?
DE: Yes, please.
RO: One of the reasons for the bombing campaign against Germany was to try to undermine the German war economy and to deny Germany’s armed forces adequate number of weapons. In fact what happened was that large quantities of weapons were diverted to Germany to defend against the bombing which didn't have that effect but the impact on German industry was always more muted than people had hoped. Germany continued to produce very large quantities of weapons until almost end to the war.
DE: Smashing. Thank you. Recently you published an article about propaganda and leaflets. Why has the story of the Nickel operations not been told and how effective were they?
RO: One of the least known aspects of the Bomber Command, sorry one of the least known aspects are for Bomber Command campaign was the leaflet campaign that often they carried with the bombs very large quantities of political propaganda which was dropped over Germany. I think this has not gained much publicity because in the end the political propaganda didn't achieve very much. Actually, billions of leaflets were dropped over Europe during the course of the war and at the end of the war British intelligence chief argued that he didn't think it had shortened the war by a single hour.
DE: You’ve also talked about the mismatch between what people believed bombing could achieve and what it actually was capable of doing. Could you talk about that?
RO: In the Second World War there was a huge gap between what people thought bombing could do and what it could actually achieve and the problem is really technical. People imagine that bombing would be precision bombing. That you could pick out a factory, you could take out a military installation quite easily. In fact, even the American Air Force which prided itself on having a decent bombsight and better training wasn’t able to hit a precise target with all its bombs. The problem was the aircraft flew at a great height, there were no laser or radar guided bombs and so on. You just dropped your bombs and hoped.
DE: Could you expand on that a little bit and sort of explain why? Why they thought that, you know bombing was going to be accurate?
RO: At the beginning of the Second World War the general view was that bombing was bound to be accurate. You would just get your aircraft over the target, you would drop the bombs and you would destroy things. Bomb trials were held before the Second World War to try and demonstrate this but the bomb trials themselves were conducted of course under conditions of peace. Actual bombardment involves not only the technical problem of getting over the targets accurately, identifying it and dropping your bombs but coping with anti-aircraft fire, with enemy fighters and so on. It was impossible in the circumstances of the Second World War for any bombing to be remotely accurate. You dropped a hundred bombs on the target, you dropped them at a target area and you were lucky if two or three bombs actually hit the right thing.
DE: Ok. Thanks. So from 1942 the aim of Bomber Command became to de-house populations and to break the enemy morale. Why didn't, why wasn’t that successful?
RO: By 1942 Bomber Command had been directed really to attack the morale of the German population and particularly the urban population. The working class. The idea was that if you bombed them enough, bombed their houses, destroyed their milieux, that they would then rise up and resist the regime and it would be like the end of the First World War. But this was not the First World War. This was the Second World War. This was a dictatorship. This was a dictatorship which penalised defeatism and social unrest. And the other thing I think is that on the whole people came to depend on the state even if it was a dictatorship in order to get their houses repaired, provide welfare, to provide food. They became more dependent on the state not less and the British misjudged I think the capacity of the German urban population to absorb the bombing. They might have drawn a lesson from the Blitz because although the Blitz killed forty thousand people, destroyed large areas of London and other port cities British society did not collapse. There was no question during the course of the Blitz of a social upheaval or revolution. If they had looked at that more carefully I think they might have judged the morale bombing of the German population rather differently.
DE: Fantastic. Are there any lessons that we should be learning from the bombing war in the Second World War?
RO: If we have any lessons to learn from the bombing war I think the most important lesson is that civilians don't make a good target. In the Second World War the American air chiefs were rather critical of Bomber Command and the British. ‘What are you trying to do? Trying to kill people? What does that do strategically?’ And I think there, you know there is no answer to that. In the end to defeat an enemy decisively you have to defeat your enemy’s armed forces.
DE: Yeah. That’s fantastic. I think you've answered all the questions that I really wanted for the, for this section.
RO: Ok. Can I just do the first question again because —
DE: Sure.
RO: I’m on about how it's remembered.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
RO: But I don’t think I’ve done that as clearly as the other question.
DE: Yeah. Fine. In your own time then.
RO: There's no doubt that in Britain memory of Bomber Command is divided. It’s divided for the following reason because Bomber Command in the course of its campaign killed very large members of civilians. Now, there are some people who would say well they were civilian workers, the effect on German industry was profound and this was an entirely justified campaign. On the other hand there were those who say well this is a liberal state trying to demonstrate how different it is from Nazi Germany. You know, you shouldn't have conducted a campaign which was directed at civilians. And this is a debate which is, you know not capable of compromise. You’re either one side or on the other.
DE: Yeah. That was better.
RO: Better?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
RO: Yeah. Ok.
DE: Are you alright, Alex?
AP: Five seconds
DE: Wonderful.
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Interview with Richard Overy. Two
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Richard Overy discusses how Bomber Command has been remembered. Extracted audio from video interview
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Dan Ellin
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-11-27
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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AOveryR171127-AV
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00:12:12 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Julie Williams
bombing
perception of bombing war
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1055/11433/AOveryR171127.1.mp3
fe378cd79b2ef7523a3db12b08007f93
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Overy, Richard
R Overy
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Two interviews with Professor Richard Overy.
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Overy, R
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DE: Right. So this is an oral history for the IBCC with Professor Richard Overy. My name is Dan Ellin, also in the room is Alex Pesaro. It is the 27th of November 2017 and we're in Newcastle. Right. Could you tell me a little bit about what started your interest in air power and the bombing war?
RO: Well, my interest in air power really grew out of my doctoral research at Cambridge where my subject was German aircraft production in the Second World War. And that immediately broadened out to, you know, broader strategic questions about what did bombing achieve and so on and what effect did it have on aircraft production. And then from that to look at bombing policy de de de. The impact on the home front. The impact on civilians. So, it was quite a natural progression I think probably from my original topic. But I started out as an economic historian and now I've become a military historian.
DE: Yeah. I’m kind of, I'm being more and more seen as a military historian but I see myself as a cultural and social one.
RO: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Persuading either, either group —
RO: Yes.
DE: Where I belong is quite tricky. So why, why did you go with your dissertation on, on German military aircraft production?
RO: Well, I wanted to do something on the economy of the Third Reich which interested me when I was an undergraduate and there was almost nothing written on it on the basis of archive material. But the archive, recently the archives were all stuck away in warehouses and print had all been taken by the allies at the end of the Second World War. When I mentioned, you know they said. ‘Well, you know we've got this stack of stuff on, you know German aircraft production. We've got all these records from German aircraft firms stuck in our archives and nobody has used them. So I said, ‘All right. Well, I'll do that.
DE: Ok. So, yeah, you've been, you've been top of the field for quite some time. How have your views changed over the, over the years and why?
RO: I think the biggest change over the years has been my growing appreciation of the importance of tactical air power. I spent a lot of time talking about bombing and, and touching bombing and I think for too long I've assumed that strategic air power was really the key question in the Second World War and afterwards when you’re talking about air power. And that's what air power leaders wanted people to think. But in fact, tactical aviation both in the First World War and the Second World War proved really critical because at the end of the day attacking the home front didn't work. Didn’t work the way they thought that it would work. Destroying the enemy’s armed forces was the only way in fact to achieve victory in the First World War and in the Second World War and that's really been true I think ever since. I've observed this in the crisis in Syria and Iraq. People saying, well you know if you just send some bombers out there and start bombing them and so on but in fact it's tactical air power and support for troops on the ground that's actually produced the defeat of ISIS. So that’s, I think that’s quite a big change and there’s a lot of very good historical research done now on tactical air power which I think has underlined that. That shift in my own thinking. Tactical air fire is critical.
DE: So, what about those that argue that the strategic bombing was effective in diverting German industry and German military capability to effectively form a second front?
RO: Well, there’s no doubt that, that diverting German military resources to defending the Reich was an important but, it has to be said, unexpected because it wasn’t part of the argument in starting a strategic campaign. It was important in staffing German fighting fronts of aircraft, anti-aircraft guns and so on, radar material etcetera. I think that although, although that was important in explaining Germany’s ultimate military defeat at the fighting fronts you could also argue that there were other ways in which those air power resources were used. I mean, you could actually use them to build up big tactical forces much earlier to attack a range of tactical targets, communications, stores etcetera much more effectively than what was done at first and that, that, might well have had the same kind of effect. The critical thing was defeating the Luftwaffe and that was defeated in German airspace largely by the American Air Force. But in fact, you could have defeated the Luftwaffe in the field of course if you’d just diverted large tactical forces to, to the battlefront. There’s no point looking back at the Second World War of course and, you know re-fighting it. Fighting again. That's the choice they made and we can understand why they made those choices, but, but I do think that, you know thinking hard about it in the 1930s as for example the Germans did when they had no strategic grasp of air power. Their air power was tactical because they thought that would actually bring dividends and for the first two or three years of the war it did.
DE: Yeah. So, can you explain how it, how it was that the RAF ended up with a strategic force?
RO: I think if we, if you want to explain why the RAF became a strategic force and essentially abandoned tactical bombing in the 1920s and ‘30s one of the, one of the key explanations is the failure of the three British armed services to cooperate. Both the Army and the Navy wanted in the 1920s to break the RAF up and have an air component for the Army, an air component for the Navy and in order to defend their position the RAF had to find some kind of alternative strategy, some way of justifying why there was a separate Air Force and that naturally meant two things. It meant home defence which the Army and Navy couldn't do, they couldn't defend against air power and it meant city bombing which the British had started in the First World War and where they thought that, you know, if, if in a small way the First World War had shown what bombing could do and the Second World War they bombed, they didn’t know what, really what effect it would have but they assumed it must have some major effects on the enemy’s civilian population or on the enemy economy. That gave them a kind of strategic independence from the Army and Navy. It was only in ‘39 when the Army really woke up to the fact that it didn't have an air component. That the RAF was being told, ‘No, you've now got to send your Hurricanes and Spitfires to France. You now have got to send your bombers to France and see what they can do there.’ And the RAF was just not prepared for that.
[pause]
RO: A long winded answer.
DE: No. That's just fine. Great. I'm just, you know going back to the video interview why did, what led people to believe that you know, bombing civilians would, would damage their morale and would win the war? I mean that’s the key thing. What led them to think that?
RO: The British belief that bombing would somehow undermine the enemy’s home front, would demoralise the enemy population stemmed a lot from the experience of the First World War. The First World War German bombing of Britain was not very heavy but where it occurred it produced mass panic and the regime was uncertain about how to react to that. When the British began bombing German targets in the later stages of the war they got intelligence back saying this was having a demoralising effect and so on and I think that the Air Force leaders in 1918/1919 came to persuade themselves that one of the factors that led to the Armistice was the onset of bombing of German cities. Well, it’s simply not true because the, you know, we dropped a handful of, you know less than a hundred tonnes of bombs on German cities and killed a few hundred people. But I think that the 1919 we then looked for evidence from German cities from official reports and so on to show that they had been effective in demoralising. And of course, bombing is demoralising. We don’t want to be bombed but it’s a long step from that to the speculation that if you bomb them enough you know the whole, the whole society would collapse. There would be a revolutionary upheaval or whatever. There was no evidence for that —
DE: No.
RO: In the 1920s and ‘30s before Bomber Command began its assault on German civilian morale.
DE: Yeah. And if they had looked at the evidence from the Luftwaffe bombing —
RO: Yeah.
DE: London and Hull and places like that. They would have also gone, well, it doesn’t, it doesn’t break morale.
RO: Do you want me to say that?
DE: Sorry? Yeah. Yeah.
RO: There’s a curious moment in 1941 where the Air Ministry and Bomber Command are beginning to think about how they could crank up their operations. What they, what they needed to do and they thought maybe they would begin the assault on German civilian morale and the directive of July 1941 suggests that as a primary target and so on. Now, there were people around both in the Air Ministry and outside in ’41 who were saying, ‘Hang on a minute, you know, let’s just look what happened to the bombing of the British cities, you know. Maybe the Germans were terrorising the British in to defeat or surrender. Maybe they were hoping there would be a demoralising impact but look what actually happened.’ You know. No, the British cities survived and people took terrible losses but in fact there was no broad movement to end the war and so on. There were no, no protests to, to government and maybe this is the wrong kind of target and Air Ministry officials wrote back and or argued back well the Germans are different. The phrase, you know, the Germans are bullies by nature. Basically, if you punch them on the nose they’ll give up. Or you know the Germans are held in thrall in a fragile totalitarian system. You start bombing them and it’ll expose all the fault lines in the totalitarian system. So all kinds of rather specious arguments were produced on the basis of almost no evidence to suggest that if you bomb the Germans it will have a different effect from bombing the British.
DE: And of course, the German state had the machinery in place to —
RO: Yeah.
DE: To look after their, their —
RO: Yeah.
DE: Do you think that perhaps they used the bombing of the East End in London as evidence as to what could happen because there was, you know strong movements of people to force their way to underground shelters and things like that.
RO: Yeah. I mean if, if [pause] if the RAF had looked closely at what impact the Blitz had had, had had they would in the end realise that this was a temporary panic. You know, there was a moment when Plymouth and Southampton and Hull, you know thousands of people decamped from the city because they didn’t want to be bombed again. But all the research carried out by the Home Security Ministry showed that workers came back at a remarkably swift pace. Production was up and running again within days and people carried on trekking out of the city because they didn’t want to be bombed at night but they kept coming back in again and working during the day.
DE: Because they wanted to be, wanted to go home even if home was —
RO: Well, they wanted to go home.
DE: Yeah.
RO: But they wanted work of course. They wanted money. Wages. And as long as the state, I think the important thing is in the Second World War as long as the state is capable of providing welfare provision, teams of people to repair housing, adequate food supplies and emergency furnishings and this kind of thing then people will, will put up with the bombing. The situation where, you know there is no food supply and no welfare and you know the health system breaks down and so on, take Italy for example where bombing clearly did have a very important role in undermining popular war willingness in 1942 and ‘43 but there the state was almost incapable in fact of coping with the evacuation and situation of providing adequate welfare and so on. Even providing half decent shelters and the population reacted accordingly. And I think there’s quite a good case study actually where you, where the state doesn’t manage to do it then of course it does actually have you know an increasingly demoralising effect.
DE: Yeah. In Italy of course the bombing war has been remembered totally differently to any other, other country.
RO: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. Alex has done a fair bit of work on that.
RO: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. They’re both invaders, destroyers and saviours at the same time.
RO: Yes.
DE: So it becomes very tricky. What do, what are your thoughts and views on the way Harris has been remembered?
RO: Well, Arthur Harris has had a pretty bad press over the years. I think there’s, there are, there are two things [pause] Harris was wedded too much to the idea that if you bomb civilians continually they were bound to give up. I think he was quite impressed by the bombing of London in the First World War which he witnessed actually, eye witnessed and I think from that point on he assumed that, that, you know if bombing was going to achieve anything that was the thing it was most likely to achieve. And he he stuck rigidly to that without, without deviating even when many people in the RAF wanted him to change in late ’44 and ’45 in the way he was conducting the campaign. The second thing of course is that Harris was not doing it himself. You know, he was doing what he was directed to do and I think that too, too often people assume this is Harris’ policy. It was not Harris’ policy. It was the policy of the chief, of the chief of the air staff, and the air staff endorsed by Churchill and the war cabinet. Harris is carrying out what needs to be carried out and he thinks he’s doing it more effectively than any of his predecessors as indeed he is. But he’ll go on doing it until somebody tells him to stop and so I think much of the, you know the flak, if you’ll excuse the expression that he has received has been misplaced. Actually, the person most responsible for endorsing and supporting the bombing campaign in its early stages even when it shifted to the bombing of civilians was Winston Churchill who was a great enthusiast for bombing and assumed that if Britain couldn’t build up a large and effective Army maybe if America didn’t come in and so on it was really Britain’s only option and he had absolutely no scruples about bombing German civilians in German cities. In his case mainly on the argument that Hitler and Hitlerism was so wicked that you know they deserved anything that they got. You had to find some way of defeating them and if that involved killing large numbers of German civilians I don’t think that Churchill lost much sleep over it.
DE: Yeah. I’m quite taken with the sort of, the plot of the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp where, you know it was a propaganda film.
RO: Yes.
DE: And the story is if we are going to defeat this —
RO: Yeah.
DE: Evil that is the Nazis and of course this is being told by a refugee.
RO: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: If we’re going to defeat them we have to be as ruthless and as efficient —
RO: Use [unclear] yeah.
DE: And that’s, that’s a narrative I think that has just been totally forgotten about.
RO: Yeah.
DE: Since the war.
RO: Yeah.
DE: And even that had a lot of people behind you. That was —
RO: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
RO: Do you want me to say something about that?
DE: So, yeah. Yeah. Please, yeah.
RO: I think if we’re looking for explanations about why Bomber Command conducted the campaign it did or why a great many people in Britain thought that killing civilians was not a bad thing was that you have to remember the 1930s view of future wars was dominated entirely by the development of the concept of Total War. The First World War was an unexpected war. Nobody thought it would last four years, involve whole societies, destroy Russia, bring Germany to revolution. The costs were enormous and after it people began to think that the nature of modern warfare, industrialised warfare and so on, massed mobilisation meant that any future war would be the same. A war of total mobilisation. The total, a total war in which you had to use any method in order to ensure your survival. And that mindset was already well in place by 1930/1940 and I think it plays a very important part in allowing people to justify the assault against civilian society as well as against the military. And it had the curious effect I think in both Britain and in Germany of persuading the civilian population that this is what war was like. They didn't resent it in that sense. There's very little discussion about the legality of bombing for example in either Britain or Germany. A strong sense that that this is the nature of modern war. So you had to adjust to it, adapt to it. You have to find ways of combatting it but, but that's what modern war between whole societies is about.
DE: So why didn’t they go the extra step and use gas?
RO: Well, there's a lot of discussion about why gas and biological weapons weren't used in the Second World War because both sides had them. Germany had more lethal gasses and worked on biological warfare earlier than the British and Americans but, but they had these, these weapons to hand. I think one of the reasons they were not used is that there is a natural deterrent there because both sides realised the other side, you know possessed the same capability or thought they possessed the same capability. And I think there's something about the dropping of gas and the use of biological weapons which seems intrinsically different from artillery shells and bombs which are, you know at least a familiar weapon. Familiar weaponry. Otherwise, it is, I think very hard to explain why Germany with its back to the wall, Hitler desperately looking around for some way out doesn’t think well why don't we just start dropping germ bombs on London. In the end, of course firebombing a city like Dresden or Hamburg, you know eats up civilian lives and kills in horrible ways anyway. So you know one is tempted to say what difference would gas have made? But there is something about the culture surrounding gas, I think and biological warfare. That's why that was outlawed by the Geneva Agreement in 1925 and bombing wasn't. There was something culturally about gas that resonates from the First World War how awful gas was and so on. Something about biological warfare deliberately spreading disease or for example dropping poison into people you know, into reservoirs and the water system which I think for politicians and the military seemed a step too far. And I think we have to be glad it was seen as a step too far. The Allies by the end of the war had developed sophisticated plans for the gas bombing of German cities and the first whiff of gas on the battlefield they said you know they were dropping for two weeks gas canisters over sixty German cities. And that would have been, you know pretty horrendous.
DE: Yeah. So, at some, at some point during the war the sort of the political backing for the bombing campaign lessened. Can you talk a little bit about, about that?
RO: As the bombing went on during, sorry as the RAF bombing went on during the Second World War that, although popular enthusiasm for bombing was kept up by the press and so on among political and military leaders in Britain there was a growing sense that it hadn't delivered. I mean bombing would have been good if it had been short, sharp, clean, you know, undermined the German war economy and brought the German people to the point of collapse but it wasn't. It was a long war of, a messy war of attrition on both sides. Attrition of bomber crews. Extraordinary attrition of bomber crews. And I think there was a growing sense that that bombing had really in a sense overstated its case. [unclear] stated its case but it wasn't able to deliver the things that it had promised. And as it became clear that the British and Americans would have to invade Europe so tactical air bombing became much more important. Using bombing for tactical purposes became much more important. When bombing resumed again in September 1944 after the invasion of France there was a point at which there was a lot of criticism about the bombing, efforts to rein Harris back. Public, growing public unease actually about the evidence of civilian damage being done in in Germany. And of course, by the very end of the war Churchill himself was gone around a hundred and eighty degrees and saying, you know don't terror bomb any more. Why are we doing this? Forgetting I think that the whole campaign and the nature of that campaign has been dictated by Churchill and his war cabinet years before.
DE: Gosh. My questions are a bit confused because half of the ones I've got written down we've already covered in the —
RO: Ok.
DE: In the video clip. Is there anything that you'd like to talk about?
RO: Well, I could talk about the legality of bombing.
DE: That would be good.
RO: One of the awkward things about bombing in the Second World War was the issue of legality. Not whether it was moral or not but whether it could be regarded as legal in terms of international law or in terms of the established laws of war which most militaries observed. There's no doubt I think that in the British case the government and the military leadership was clear that it was legal if you were deliberately targeting civilians. If you were bombing at night and couldn't see a military target, if you couldn't clearly identify your target i.e. bombing through cloud and so on and both the British chief of Staffs and the Chamberlain cabinet told the Air Ministry that. But they had to be very careful about how they bombed because, you know under, under these other circumstances it was illegal. Illegal was, illegal was the term that they used. So, 1940 the RAF and Bomber Command and of course the British government had to find ways of of changing that orientation either saying it didn't matter that you did things that were illegal because of the nature of the war you were involved in. That was really Churchill’s argument. You know, that you were fighting a deadly devilish enemy and you had to use any means in order to be able to overcome him. The other was an argument that the RAF has been using since the 1920s. Trenchard's argument which is that Total War had changed the nature of combat. That you could now combat the weakest part. By implication the civilian home front and hope that that would break morale and so on. And that, you know everybody, the train driver from a factory worker, even the farmer in the field they were all helping the war effort therefore they were all a legitimate target. And that shift in the basis of what could be regarded as legitimate underpinned RAF Bomber Command’s campaign during the Second World War that there was nothing wrong with bombing war workers because war workers were contributing just as much as the soldier ignoring the fact of course that war workers are not armed and ought to have been protected by the Hague Convention as civilians. And it was quite interesting that after the war the British prosecution team wanted to include bombing, the Blitz in the indictment of the German war criminals and the Foreign Office said no, you certainly can't do that because we did the same and it’s going to raise very awkward questions. Legal questions at the tribunal. And four years later in 1949 the Geneva Convention, a new Geneva Convention gave special protection to civilians faced with the threat of bombing. So, I think, you know it was the Second World War was an exception, it was a gap where people legitimised the illegitimate because of the nature of the conflict that they were fighting.
DE: Yeah. I mean you see it struck me as well when Bomber Command is remembered in this country it's often either in the context of Dresden if you’re in one camp or the Dambusters in the other.
RO: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: And of course, the bombing of dams.
RO: Yeah.
DE: Then became illegal.
RO: Yeah.
DE: So, yeah, I don't know where I'm going with that.
RO: Well, I mean really I think that there was quite a lot of writing defending the bombing and saying that there was no body of international law which said you couldn't bomb and that the Hague rules of air warfare drawn up in 1922 were not valid because nobody ratified them though in fact they were generally regarded as having the force of international law. But I always argued that if you go back to The Hague Conventions the whole purpose of The Hague Convention was to protect civilians from the effects of war and there's no doubt that you know that's, that's what the Hague Convention intended. The spirit of international law in other words is that you know you don't bomb civilians and involve the home front but those thresholds had already been crossed in the First World War.
DE: Yeah.
RO: With the blockade of Germany. The British blockade of Germany, German bombing of Britain, British bombing of Germany and so on the thresholds were crossed and nobody really asked, you know important questions about it so that by the Second World War the assumption was that, you know whatever international law said, you know under certain circumstances total war legitimised what you were doing even if, you know the body of international law didn’t.
DE: Yeah. I’ve forgotten now where it was but I’ve read ideas of having an international police force that were you know armed with bombers that, after the war would, if a country stepped out of line —
RO: Yeah.
DE: That would be the immediate response.
RO: Yes. Yeah.
DE: Very strange.
RO: Well, I mean you could look at the campaign against Serbia which would be a classic example of that regarding the international police campaign.
DE: Yeah.
RO: Or indeed in Afghanistan or in the Syrian conflict as well. The idea that somehow the rest of the world gets together and then uses its bombing planes to achieve a political end by stopping Serbia in the Balkan wars or, you know destroying ISIS and so on. But I think that’s still an important way in which bombing is viewed as somehow or other it’s a tap you can turn on and it will have, you know an immediate political dividend.
DE: Yeah. Well, the evidence still, you know doesn’t stand up does it?
RO: No. It doesn’t. No. To scrutiny.
DE: No. Yeah. Still need boots on the ground [unclear] Well, I'm very much aware that time is pressing so, you know.
RO: Well, you can ask me a couple more if you want [unclear] of course.
DE: Well, it just, it would just be going through the ones that we've asked for the —
RO: Right.
DE: For the video interview but I suppose it would give you some more yeah you don’t have to do it in quite such short sound bites.
RO: Well, I could say something more about the impact on the German economy if you want at the time.
DE: That would be good.
RO: When we think about the impact of bombing on the German economy in the Second World War the British focus is always on city bombings. What that must have done. It must have demoralised workers, it must have kept them away from work and so on but recent research in the German manufacturing has shown actually that bombing was not responsible for more than a fraction of absenteeism in German factories and so on and that workers continued to work because they needed to. They needed the wages. They needed to feed their families which was true of British workers during, during the Blitz. The critical thing with the Americans, I think the Americans were much more strategically aware about air power and what it was capable of doing and once they realised that in’43 daylight bombing of industry targets wasn't very effective which it wasn't they shifted in ‘44 to bombing communications as a key factor but secondly to bombing the big capital intensive industries. Chemicals, oil for example and oil in particular because they, they reasoned that for all the possible targets those were the most vulnerable. You could do the most damage to them and so the German economy was critically dependent on explosives, chemical products and so on. And oil. And so what was really decisive in those last four months of ‘44 when the bombing began seriously again was the destruction of German communications and the assault on the big capital projects and Harris never really bought that. I mean, he had to do what he was told and he did bomb the oil refineries and so on but he never really bought that but there’s no doubt if you look at the way in which the German economy becomes completely dysfunctional in the last months of ‘44 and the early months of ‘45 it was because of transport and because of the lack of oil and in the case of explosive production of course you know the key chemical ingredients for keeping your guns firing is just disappearing.
DE: And Harris saw those as panacea type [unclear]
RO: Panaceas.
DE: Yeah. And then of course you’ve already mentioned the importance of, the Americans were doing daylight operations.
RO: Yeah.
DE: With fighter cover.
RO: Yeah.
DE: To bring in —
RO: Yeah.
DE: The Luftwaffe.
RO: Yeah. Well, the critical thing in ’44 is really was the decision by the commanders of the 8th Air Force to shift the way they conducted daylight bombing. I mean, they saw the obvious thing is you have to defeat the German Air Force first. In fact, what they were doing was doing what the Germans wanted to do in 1940 in the Battle of Britain.
DE: Yeah.
RO: And the Americans had the advantage of really high quality and very robust new generation of fighter aircraft. They were given long range by putting drop tanks on to the fly, fire into Germany. And they were given permission to seek out the Luftwaffe where they could find it. Their stores, their hangars, the airfields and so on and to engage in combat any German aircraft that appeared in the sky. And that was, you know within weeks they had taken very high losses because they were willing to engage in direct face to face contact with the German Air Force. The German Air Force took crippling losses and for the next nine months the American Air Force suppressed German air power because it was quite easy to re-construct it once new aircraft start coming through to the units, to suppress German air fire comprehensively so that Germans had no air cover any longer over the Reich and they had no air cover of course over their fighting fronts. I think of all the contributions that bombing made this was an unexpected one. An indirect one if you like but it actually did prove critical of course in terms of Germany's military capability.
DE: Going back to your idea of tactical —
RO: Yeah.
DE: Policing of air power. Yeah. I mean it's, it’s a what if but it seems to me that the RAF were doing the best they could with the equipment that they had.
RO: Yeah.
DE: And that goes back to the policies that were put in place before the war with, you know the which bombers they chose to produce.
RO: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Would it have been any different do you think if they’d have had a long range fighter?
RO: Well, if the British had had a long range fighter, an effective long range fighter they may have thought about switching to daylight bombing which might have allowed them a greater degree of accuracy because for much of the early part of the war they couldn’t even find the town often that they were detailed to, to attack. Certainly, it might have made a difference. In technical terms of course what Bomber Command needed at the beginning of the war was a decent bombsight which would also have increased accuracy. Better navigation aids and better bombs. Thirty or forty percent of bombs dropped were duds in the early stages of the war. They were very small calibre. Now, what everyone thinks about the legality or illegality of the bombing campaign the problem that Bomber Command faced was that it was, you know it was, it was technically backward in 1940/41 and incapable of conducting the kind of operations it wanted to conduct. Long range aircraft I think would not have made much difference at that point. Later in ’44 the Spitfires were used sometimes to accompany the few times that Bomber Command flew during the day but, but Harris was adamant that he would stick to nights. He didn't want, he was worried about becoming a subsidiary to the American air effort. He didn't want to be, play second fiddle to the Americans and so bombing at night, continuing to bomb at night gave British, British Bomber Command a distinctive strategy. Distinct from the American one.
DE: And of course, the aircraft were different and the aircrews were different. They were trained differently.
RO: Yeah.
DE: That would have meant, that would have meant a whole restructuring of the, of the force, wouldn’t it?
RO: Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. I think another, sorry I —
DE: No.
RO: Another thing to consider about Bomber Command and its decision to bomb at night and to carry on bombing, you know bigger targets and so on is the fact that it had an extraordinary effect on the crews. People who had been trained. They were being trained to do the most difficult kind of flying in technically backwards circumstances against the most heavily defended parts of Germany and occupied Europe and although Harris and others were aware of the costs, they couldn’t not be aware of the costs as they saw the casualties mounting up the crews didn't really know because they didn't see the casualty list. They didn’t know the accurate figure. They were told that what they were doing was essential. They were bombing, you know, military and industrial targets and so on. And crews, the British decision to bomb at night long distance against enemy targets really put them into more or less a suicidal situation all the time and I think it’s, it’s extraordinary the extent to which crews came to accept that that was the nature of things. That was the job they had to do. It was a difficult and dangerous job. One of the most difficult and dangerous jobs that allied forces had to do.
DE: Yeah, I mean it strikes me that the use of air power was always supposed to stop the slaughter of the trenches.
RO: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: And then of course, it killed tens, hundreds of thousands of civilians.
RO: Yeah.
DE: And at great cost to the crews.
RO: Yeah.
DE: Who certainly, by the end of the war were —
RO: Yeah.
DE: Were performing wonderful skilled work.
RO: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Under the most appalling conditions. I guess that leads into how bomber crews have been remembered and how they perceive that they have been remembered.
RO: Well, bomber crews after ‘45 felt a certain resentment of somehow their sacrifice was not appreciated by wider society. Partly because wider society began to say well perhaps bombing wasn’t the right thing to do, you know. Either it didn't work or it was immoral and so on. And therefore, you know bomber crews you know shouldn't stand up and say, you know, ‘Look at us.’ Whereas Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain was, you know a classic heroic story. Very easy to do that. The Dambusters also another classic heroic story. Tactical air power in 1944 you know, you could see that that was securing dividends. I think really the problem is that ambiguity never went away for seventy or eighty years and bomber crews I think became very defensive and began to fall back on, you know into a world which they constructed for themselves and so on where the rest of society didn't really appreciate that they did. I think the problem there is that we have to separate out the strategy, you know and who had originated it and what was wrong with it and so on from the work that the crews did. They did what they were directed to do. They were, they did it under difficult circumstances. What [pause] they followed what orders they had to follow and they did so with extraordinary heroism and I think that nothing can detract from, from that. These were men of extraordinary courage day after day when they did what they did. After the war that courage ought to have been acknowledged more than it was.
DE: [coughing] excuse me.
RO: Are you ok?
DE: Yeah. I’ve got a really bad tickly throat.
RO: I think we’ll have to start packing up I think.
DE: Yeah.
RO: To go off to [unclear]
DE: Right. Well, because I can hardly talk to ask you another question. We’ll call it an end.
RO: Ok.
DE: Thank you very much.
How will you do [unclear] you will put your questions in.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Richard Overy. One
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Dan Ellin
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-27
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Sound
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AOveryR171127
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Pending review
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00:39:10 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Overy discusses the bombing war. Richard became interested in air power whilst doing doctoral research at Cambridge, studying German aircraft production during World War Two. He started as an economic historian but became a military historian. Richard goes on to talk about the theories of air power, and then the theories behind the bombing campaigns in the Second World War and goes into the British strategies utilised during the war and how they had their routes in World War One. Richard also details the legalities of the bombing campaign in the Second World War.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Benjamin Turner
bombing
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
perception of bombing war
-
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Lapham, Rosemary
R Lapham
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Lapham, R
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. An oral history interview with Rosemary Lapham, the daughter of Roy Chadwick, family correspondence, congratulations on being honoured, personal documentation as well as photographs of family, acquaintances and aircraft. The collection also contains a thank you letter from Barnes Wallis to Roy Chadwick and a note from Arthur Harris to Robert Saundby about the in-feasibility of the Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation, some conceptual aircraft drawings and other mementos.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Lapham and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
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2015-06-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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.
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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 Rosemary Lapham
Description
An account of the resource
Rosemary Lapham was the daughter of Roy Chadwick, the designer of the Lancaster along with one hundred and forty other aircraft. He secured an apprenticeship with AV Roe and eventually became the chief designer. Rosemary has wonderful childhood memories of her father’s imagination and flare and his achievements.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Creator
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Dan Ellin
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALaphamR150622
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Pending review
Format
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00:58:58 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Chadwick, Roy (1893-1947)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/915/11157/AKoudysM160518.2.mp3
1cefead60aa09ee12d6cba4bb4e66d08
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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Koudÿs, Maarten
M Koudÿs
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Maarten Koudÿs. He researches aircraft crash sites in the Netherlands.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-10
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Koudys, M
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: Right. So that is recording. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin and I am interviewing Maarten Koudӱs and Urna [unclear], and it is the 18th of May 2016 and we’re at Riseholme Hall. Maarten, just very quickly could you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do and why you’re interested in, in the RAF and the crashes?
MK: I’m fifty years old. I work in a bakery factory in [unclear] and I’m interested in metal hobby and World War Two. This, I find the story behind the story behind pieces of crashes and I want to tell children about it. Children forget it. Children heard nothing about World War Two.
DE: Smashing. How did you find out about the, you mentioned earlier about several crashes in your area. How did you find out about them?
MK: I find, I find it on internet. I contact people in England. I go to the Archive. I go to the boys of [unclear] and the stories came behind me. I go to start it up. I come to find places with a metal detector. Yes.
DE: How have, how have these sites been remembered locally? Do, do people know about them?
MK: No. I hunt. I heard it from old people. They are old people. Seventies. Seventy five. Second generation. She said, ‘Oh, I heard from my dad. I heard there were some plane crashes. I don’t know. I don’t know.’ She never can tell me what is —
UO: What the war story was.
MK: Yeah. Because I’ve —
UO: Just pieces of —
MK: Pieces of the story. I go with the metal detector. I find. I find. I find. In a hole a [unclear]a navigator, bullets, planes of the plane, pieces of the plane
UO: Glass.
MK: Glasses. Parachute [unclear]
DE: Parachute harnesses.
MK: Yeah.
DE: Yes.
MK: I must find it. What’s the story from the Halifax was and I contacted the internet. I find Julie and Julie has the story.
DE: Ok. So, can you tell for the, for the tape can you tell a little bit about the story of the Halifax and—
MK: Oh, the Halifax is fifth of the planes a raid on Bochum. On the night —
UO: In Germany. Bochum is Germany.
MK: On the night of 12th of 13th June 1943 the Halifax came back and the Halifax was shot down with flak. It was no gunning, no gunning [unclear]
UO: He had to put the plane on the ground.
MK: Yeah.
DE: He crash landed.
MK: Yeah. Crash landed. First of all we requested the facts and the Halifax is shot down near the Ijessel.
UO: Ijsselmeer.
MK: He broke. He broke. And three of these men cannot going out. They are burning alive and is buried in [unclear]
DE: And you found the site where the crash was and you detected it.
MK: Yes.
DE: What sort of pieces did you find?
MK: Bullets. Glass. Harness caps from the parachute. [unclear] [pause] antennae. You know antenna?
DE: Radio aerials. Yes.
MK: And money. I gave it to Chris.
DE: Yes. I’ve seen it. Yes.
MK: Smolt aluminium. Burnt aluminium from the plane.
UO: Melted aluminium
MK: Smelted aluminium.
DE: Yes.
MK: Many. So much there.
DE: Yeah. They’re big aircraft.
MK: I have my metal detector. I go. I only have my hands though so I found navigation.
DE: Yeah.
MK: It was at the time was still for me. I run to the car. I give to Urma. I come too.
DE: And is it a big area that you’ve been, been looking at?
MK: [unclear] of the places and highway now. On a, on a site from the highway.
UO: There’s the, there’s a river. And there’s a green plot.
DE: Yes.
UO: And then you have to hike it.
DE: Right.
UO: And that green plot behind the highway in the river there. It was there.
MK: Yeah.
UO: And part of this was part of the highway.
DE: Yes. What, what do you think happened to the big parts of the aircraft like the engines?
MK: I don’t know. The plane is [weeks] by the crash next to the [pause] four or five weeks the crash —
DE: After the crash.
MK: After the crash the plane is burn. Burning. Ashes. And the German have the plane bringing to that border a place and off the train bring it to Utrecht.
DE: Right.
MK: And there is it destroyed of that.
DE: Yeah. So I’ve seen on, I’ve seen on YouTube the video that —
MK: Yeah.
DE: You made. Who filmed you?
MK: My stepson. I have a Facebook page.
DE: Yes. Why —
MK: Halifax Earthed.
DE: Yes. I’ve seen that as well.
MK: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. Why do you think, why have you made the Facebook page and the You Tube video?
MK: For the children.
UO: For the younger people and the story must be alive.
MK: Children must know what happened there. There the info boards.
UO: Yeah. Info boards.
MK: Yeah. That the plane —
DE: Tell me about the info boards. Yes.
MK: The info board. That is very important. I started when [unclear]
UO: Yeah.
MK: [unclear] but I told the Bürgermeister there I was coming.
UO: In memory.
MK: A remember board what’s happened there.
UO: Yeah. A monument.
MK: We have now three. One, two, three.
DE: Yes.
MK: Remember boards [unclear] Holland.
DE: Right.
MK: One of the Spitfire, one of the Halifax and one of the Hampden?
DE: Wellington.
MK: Wellington. We have three memory boards and people on the bicycle can read it. Children can read it what’s happened on that place.
DE: And who, who paid for the notice boards?
MK: [unclear]
UO: Yeah. The —
MK: The people in the area of the —
DE: So —
UO: I don’t know the word.
MK: Yeah. [unclear] Where we lived [ unclear] the area we all people paid it.
DE: So, it, it was charity donations. People gave money.
UO: No.
MK: No. No. Just government.
DE: Oh.
MK: Government.
UO: [unclear]
DE: We’ll get that translated.
MK: Yeah [unclear]
DE: And who did the research for the stories that go on the boards?
MK: I.
DE: You did.
MK: Yeah. My stepson they got the artwork and I made the story.
DE: Yes.
UO: My son is a graphic designer.
DE: I see. Right. Ok.
UO: [unclear]
MK: [unclear] ok. Now there are three boards there with the story.
DE: So you said you know of the seven aircraft.
MK: Yeah.
DE: Within that small area.
MK: Yeah.
DE: Do you, do you plan to do more then?
MK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: More boards.
MK: I planned it and I know in [unclear] there is crashed a Wellington of [pause] I didn’t know. There is a, it crashed there in nineteen, next year the village [unclear] we made board there. What’s happened there. That’s seven English people just dying there. Yes. That is [unclear]
UO: The two.
MK: The brothers were there.
UO: Brothers.
DE: Oh right. Yes. ok
MK: Yes [unclear]
UO: Questions about the crashes. Yeah.
MK: Come just the four boards.
DE: Right.
MK: Then was only three to go.
DE: Yes.
MK: Ok.
DE: And you intend to do.
MK: Yeah.
DE: The same for all. Yeah. Wonderful. Have you, have you met or found people who have memories of these aircraft crashing?
UO: No.
MK: No.
UO: Just from the Halifax.
MK: Yeah.
DE: Just from the Halifax.
MK: Yeah.
DE: Ok. So can you tell me a little bit about, about meeting the family members and how that came about?
MK: Well, but I meet Chris.
DE: Yeah.
MK: Julie.
DE: Yes.
MK: And I meet new graves. New graves is his uncle, his old uncle was Frank Oliver. Frank Oliver was the bomb aimer. Chris uncle was [unclear] and Julie was [unclear] his father [unclear] and I meet her. It’s very nice. Very peaceful. The story is spherical. Is round.
UO: [unclear] we are in contact with [unclear]
MK: Via internet I meet him and now we find.
DE: Yeah.
MK: And first time in England she sorted out everything.
DE: I’ve seen the [unclear] t-shirt. Yeah.
UO: Last year they came over to Holland.
MK: And now we are coming to here.
DE: Yes.
UO: And we took a few days off from work to let them see what, where is what happens.
DE: Yeah.
[unclear] the story [unclear]
UO: So we become friends.
DE: Yeah.
MK: It’s very nice. It’s a big story.
DE: So you know this one event as you say the circle’s complete really.
MK: Yeah.
DE: This one event and it’s brought these people together. Yeah. It’s fascinating.
MK: Yeah.
DE: How, how does it make you feel that you’ve been able to do all of this?
MK: I’m very proud. Why? Children heard about story. The story behind the story. I’m very proud that I can now tell it. What’s happened with boys from twenty years old.
UO: And what happened to Julie’s father.
MK: Yeah.
UO: Chris’s uncle.
MK: It’s very nice to do.
UO: People want to know what happened.
MK: People want to —
UO: Especially —
MK: Want to see what happened. People want to hear what happened.
DE: Yeah.
MK: The boys in the planes were heroes. Boys from twenty years old.
DE: Yeah.
UO: Almost children.
MK: Almost children. And family of that boys she never heard what had happened with their son.
UO: They all have a mother, a father, brothers.
MK: All she heard, she heard my son is killed in action. She never knows what really happened.
DE: Yes.
MK: And that’s, that’s —
DE: And you’ve been able to tell that story.
MK: I will find that out. Yeah.
DE: Ok. Yeah.
MK: And tell it. So the good work to do that. I’m very proud of that.
UO: Gives, gives you a good feeling.
MK: Yeah.
DE: It’s, it’s probably an odd question but how, how is the war and Bomber Command remembered in your country?
MK: Who is the war? And the bomb?
DE: Yeah.
MK: Yeah. We have not, we are the second generation. [There to ‘45] Only the second generation interested them.
UO: Yeah. [unclear]
MK: Oh yeah. Four of my, in Holland we [unclear]
UO: We remember the dead people.
MK: After the second, World War Two. The thought of my, and we think of all the dead. We can [ring] about the boys in the Halifax.
UO: May 5.
MK: Is Liberation Day.
UO: Liberation Day.
DE: Yes.
MK: You know that? In Holland. [unclear] yeah.
UO: We remember all the people who died in the war.
MK: Yeah.
UO: During the war.
MK: [unclear]
UO: [unclear]
MK: [unclear] as many people interesting for the monuments and the [unclear] very good work therefore. I can tell about them. I cannot speak.
UO: Because [unclear] all our people are interested in what happened in their village.
DE: Yes.
UO: Just it’s go on further. It’s not only this story but in our place.
MK: All places.
UO: People think, ‘Oh, what happened in our village?
MK: Yeah.
UO: Let’s see what we can do about it and give them a monument.
MK: Gives monument. Yeah.
DE: Wonderful.
MK: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So other people are sort of following your example.
MK: Yeah.
UO: Yeah.
MK: [unclear] village. I can know five villages have a memory started.
UO: Yeah.
MK: It’s very nice.
DE: Smashing. Thank you.
MK: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. I think you’ve answered all the questions I have to ask.
MK: Ok.
DE: Thank you very much.
MK: Thank you.
DE: Anything that you would like to add? Anything more that you want to say?
UO: [unclear]
MK: Yeah. Yeah [unclear]
UO: Do you know it?
MK: No. No. Its good.
DE: Ok. Smashing. Thank you.
MK: Ok.
DE: I’ll just press stop.
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 Maarten Koudÿs
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AKoudysM160518
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:18:40 audio recording
Language
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eng
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Civilian
Description
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Maarten has a keen interest in the Second World War which wants to pass onto children. He visits crash sites interviewing elderly people and research aviation history. Maarten tells of a Halifax which was shot down on 12/13 June 1943 and crash-landed. The airmen climbed out burning alive. Maarten went over the site with a metal detector, finding glass, a parachute harness, radio aerial, money and smelted aluminium, among many other pieces. The aircraft was then taken away by the Germans. Maarten made a YouTube video and created display boards which were paid for by the government and displayed around the village. Maarten felt proud that he had been able to tell the story of the Halifax and the young airmen to children. He said the war and Bomber Command are still remembered in his country.
Spatial Coverage
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Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
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1943-06-12
1943-06-13
Contributor
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Julie Williams
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
crash
Halifax
perception of bombing war
shot down
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/895/11135/AIndgeRC180131.1.mp3
0f432d9f2b49c42322b8456882eab8c6
Dublin Core
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Title
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Indge, Ronald
Ronald Charles Indge
R C Indge
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ron Indge (b. 1924, 2203016 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 578 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-01-31
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Indge, RC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: So this is an interview with Ron Indge. My name is Dan Ellin. The interview is for the International Bomber Command Centre. It is the 31st of January 2018 and we are in Mr Indge’s home in Woodhall Spa. So, Mr Indge could you start by telling us a little bit about where you were born and your early life, please?
RI: Yes. Well, well, I was born in Worksop and my early life was spent very happily I believe. A small family. My father had a business and life was very good to be very honest. I became very active in sports, particularly tennis and I met all sorts of people that all bore relevance later in life into the RAF. I perhaps ought to start by the end of the school time was Grammar School and I was in a mixed form in a Grammar School in Worksop. There were three forms in every, there was a male, female and a mixed form. I was lucky enough to be in the mixed form. And I think in 1939 which is when I left the school, the grammar school employment was very, very difficult to find or at the least employment I was looking for and, however I’ll now refer to a book that was written by a friend of mine. This chapter is called, “Early life.” It gives you the date of birth, and it reads as follows. “There was no work available. He wanted to work in a solicitor’s office or something similar. After he had not found work after two or three weeks his father found him a job as an apprentice joiner. He became a bound apprentice. The only way he could escape the apprenticeship was by becoming a sub mariner or by flying.” You could only break, that was a static thing. “Ron’s friend — ” now, I had a friend who, we used to tennis together most nights when it was suitable. He decided to volunteer for the Royal Air Force so I went with him to Sheffield on a Saturday and we both joined up at the same time. Neither of our parents knew until the Monday what we had done. “Ron was seventeen and three quarters years old at the time and felt some guilt but it was going to become more important as it got later. Ron says he joined,’ I think this is on one of the one in your, anyway, “Ron says that he joined the RAF for the glamour.”
DE: Right.
RI: Which I’m sure you’ve already got on one of your —
DE: A lot of people did. Yeah.
RI: I think that. Yeah. An important thing in early life which affected my life particularly was it was decided that I should learn to play a musical instrument. This was my parents. After, after a year of piano lessons my father decided that enough was enough and a waste of time and money so that was the standing. However, going up Gateford Road in Worksop which you know there was a furniture shop called Baldry’s , and in the window was a piano accordion and up there I saw this and it was fourteen pounds. What on earth made me so keen it was so I went in and a had twelve pounds in the bank at that stage. In the Yorkshire Penny Bank as it was then. And I withdrew the twelve quid. I went up and I got Arthur Baldry who owned the store and had a long talk to him and in the finish he agreed to sell me the thing for twelve quid. So that was how, that’s how the piano accordion business started. I got a fella to come and give me a few lessons to start with and it was sort of a, I don’t know I think to be one of my grandchildren is in the musical industry but I think to be in the music you’ve got to be keen anyway. I think it’s got to be. So it became for me and there are letters here which I’ll let you see that relates. I’d better not show you right now but I will. There is a letter that relates to one of the concert parties I was in anyway. But I’ll show you that that’s a letter of thanks as regards that. The thing’s falling to pieces. Right. That more or less covers the entrance in to the RAF and and to why I went and —
DE: So was, was —
RI: One can only imagine what my parents and my employer at the time thought when they found I’d volunteered to fly.
DE: Yeah. Was it, was it deferred entrance or did you go in straight away?
RI: That was a deferred entrance. Yes. I went into the ATC. Just for a few months.
DE: Right.
RI: And then of course we all went to an Aircrew Receiving Centre in London. That’s where we all joined in the eventuality.
DE: What was that like?
RI: Well, it was, it was good really because we used to eat in the London Zoo. They marched us from about 6 o’clock in the morning out of the billets and they were massive blocks of flats we were in. What they would be like now I’m not quite sure but they were beautiful places and I don’t know where all the people had been moved from but the Aircrew Receiving Centre was full of people of course. And London was being bombed at the time but however as I said we used to march to the, what was the old London Zoo and still is and we ate in their restaurant. They catered for us down there. There’s, I’ve got quite a lot of details about the Halifax which —
DE: Can we, yeah, can we talk a little more about reception and training before we move on to, to Halifaxes?
RI: Well, yes but I think probably that’s very commonplace for, that was, the training was universal really, was it not? And —
DE: Where did you train?
RI: I got drifted all over the place. I had eyesight trouble. I wasn’t, like everybody else I was going to be a pilot and all this carry on, and that. However, when I was examined I have and funnily enough my son’s got the same problem when I try and put my, I don’t know if it still does but when I put one finger to my nose the eyes, the eyes go in but one won’t stay there. It goes back. So they wanted all sorts and so I agreed then to change the entry into being a wireless op which is what I did at Yatesbury. The wireless school was at Yatesbury in those days. Near Calne in Wiltshire. So that’s, that went on there and I came out of that quite successfully and then the question came of where we got sent. I got sent all over the place funnily enough. I was, I even got up to Stranraer and then further up into Elgin in Scotland. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what that’s like there. And so that initial training was really in some ways it was I suppose was pleasurable because we got a fair amount of liberty and the hours in the rooms were fairly long but you have to try and remember that our ages at eighteen, life was very different now to looking at age of ninety plus. So the values are entirely different at that age rather than the values that we have now. There was no thought of long livity in those days where there is now. We all think about trying to live longer now but that didn’t happen in those days. We, we just took things as it was and made the best of a bad job and from becoming boys just having not long left school we became men very, very quickly. Going down to the boozer and fraternizing and things that we probably hadn’t done at home. I certainly hadn’t. But that’s the sort of thing we did at Yatesbury. We used to go down the pub in Calne where, famous for sausages of course. So that was the training really. And you passed out there with three stripes. Then of course you immediately it tended to go to our heads a bit I think [laughs] because I remember we threatened that if we could find any of the corporals that had given us big stick we would make sure that they had to suffer. But the night we went away from Yatesbury we went down to Calne and we couldn’t find a corporal anywhere. So the PTIs got away with that very fortunately I think.
DE: I think they probably were expecting it. Yeah.
RI: That had happened before obviously. That wasn’t new to them. So that was training over really.
DE: Did you —
RI: Then the next thing really is crewing up I suppose. I suppose that’s, I can’t just remember where the hell I crewed up now. I can’t just remember. And I’ve no mark on that so I can’t remember.
DE: Did you, did you do Morse when you were at Yatesbury?
RI: Yes. Oh yes. Yes.
DE: How many words a minute?
RI: I can’t remember now [laughs] It becomes a, I just, I just cannot remember now. I really can’t.
DE: I’ve read about something called Morse headache.
RI: I never suffered with that. Some did get some Morse Madness I heard of. I think one or two did fall by the wayside. But of course that was commonplace I think, wasn’t it, during RAF training? Some people took to madness or near madness and things because there was a place near Sheffield where some aircrew bods used to get sent that they couldn’t deal with otherwise and, but that’s sort of in the memory I think to be very honest. So then the crewing up came and which I can’t just remember where the hell it was now. But I sort of then was going to be crewed up on Halifax which now seems to be, it’s very little heard of. When we talk to people these days about the Halifax some of them have never heard of it. They’ve only heard of a Lancaster. Or in the case of a fighter a Spitfire in the case of a Hurricane. But that’s life. So that really was the training and then the commencement, that was the commencement of, we did a lot of when we were crewed up we then did a lot of cross countries and a few, I think we did a few leaflet raids as well. I think, while we were, while we were still in the u/t, under training but we certainly did a lot of cross countries and long ones to Ireland and right back down into Yorkshire. Yeah. I think we were. I know we were now. The thought has come back. It was at Riccall. At Riccall where, where we crewed up, because there was a runway at Riccall just between some trees because we pranged an aircraft down there. In fact, I’ve still got part of it in one of the drawers in there because I pinched the clock out of it at the time which lead to a big inquest from the, they had the coppers came around to us in our billets at night trying to find who’d stolen it. Who’d stolen the clock out of the aircraft. So, they won’t prosecute me now. It’s too late [laughs]
DE: I think you’ll be alright now. Yeah. I hope so anyway.
RI: Yeah. But there’s bits of it in there. Yes. So that, that was training at Riccall and then we eventually got posted along to 578 Squadron and which is where it all started and all the RAF career really ended. Or at least that part of it did. So probably the flight that involved the crash isn’t really relevant at this stage is it?
DE: Oh, I think. Yes.
RI: Is it?
DE: If you want to tell us about it then, yeah.
RI: Is it?
DE: Yeah.
RI: Well, the flight was to Gelsenkirchen which was an oil refinery. By this stage then in ’44 they had, much to a lot of people’s disgust Bomber Harris had then thrown everything to the wind really. A lot of the raids that we took part in I think into the Ruhr particularly were done in daylight where they actually could have been done in the dark with a lot less loss of life I think. However, we pranged in in Gelsenkirchen but we were hit at the rear of the aircraft and the rear gunner was killed. We were going to, when we found out he was, he was dead we left him there but the idea originally was to get him out, put a ‘chute on him and chuck him down because we were only minorly damaged really but enough that we lost some control of the aircraft. So when we found out he was dead he was left in there and went down with the aircraft. Now, I landed. On my way down I heard a big tear and the parachute, obviously they’d been aiming at me and they’d hit the parachute. This was broad daylight of course. They’d hit the parachute and just torn one panel. I’d forgotten that they weren’t in, they were only in panels which of course was the safest. So I probably descended a little bit quicker than normal but I got down quite safely and landed about, I don’t know about as far as from here to the, to that hedge. I don’t know how far that is. Down at the bottom. And about that far away from that ack ack site.
DE: Just a matter of yards then.
RI: Yards really.
DE: Yeah.
RI: And they were, I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were all young kids. Or they seemed to me to be young kids on there and just two who, who were officers. And eventually [pause] this is not in here I don’t think. It’s just coming back to me now. Eventually they handed me over to the civilian police who along came a German copper, handcuffed me to a bike, took me down to the local village and locked me in a cell and came, and through the bars of the cell said, ‘Essen?’ Now I thought when he said, ‘essen’ I thought he was asking me if I’d flown on a trip to Essen and my imagination running wild I thought he must think we’d dropped bombs on Essen. Perhaps killed some of his family. So I shook my head and said, ‘No.’ Of course later on when I learned what essen was [laughs] I’d then refused all the forms of food so of course they didn’t give me any. So, so that was that. And then of course we all were sent then to this aircrew, I forget the name of that. That’s in here somewhere I think. But there was a centre. There’s a picture of the, of the bod in there I think somewhere, however we’ll find that.
DE: Dulag was it?
RI: Yes. No. No. That’s dulag. No. There was a reception centre for all aircrew where you were put in small cells and questioned at all hours of the sort of nights and things. But by 1944, in September ’44 there was a great, a lot of the Germans were beginning to think that they weren’t going to win the war and so perhaps the interrogation wasn’t as bad as it had been previously. I spent, I think I spent three weeks in there I think, and then we were transported by rail out of there to various camps. And in my case of course some of the, it was due to German guards really that I think we would have all lost our lives I think. Because in some of the, some of the major stations we went through on the line back to Stalag Luft 7 the lines were broken and so we ended up walking through one bit, some bits of some of the Ruhr towns and then re-trained and went further on down the line. But the, the Germans if it hadn’t have been for the guards I’m sure we would probably have been executed. I’m sure we would have been executed anyway. The bitterness was, from the, in the cities was terrible of course. So that was the story. And then I’m now then in in Stalag Luft 7. And in there this is where the piano accordion business all came to fruition on my part really. What happened was two or three days after I’d been in there I heard a chap playing the piano accordion so I made my way around. I found him. And there was also a bod there had bagpipes funnily enough [laughs] God above. However, I got [Leo Mackie] I remember the man’s name now. [Leo Mackie], I think. I don’t know what nationality he was, however he played the squeezebox so I had a word with him and he gave it me and I had a play on it. So he said, ‘What about we try and get some more squeezeboxes?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Let’s have a — ’ So we asked some of the Germans and they wouldn’t play ball with us. However, we got through to the Red Cross and eventually we got sent six brand new piano accordions which, which was brilliant for us and a drum kit and a double bass and a guitar I think. Yeah. That’s right. I think they’re all, and there’s a picture involved which I’ll come to shortly because how we got that picture was later on. So, it bore fruition in many ways in that we started it. We got together. We used to play every day all day of course. Nothing else to do really. Or walk around the camp which so that was really a saviour for me because whilst I’m loathe to admit it now we went out on several nights under supervision to the German officer’s headquarters and played for them to dance and [emphasis] they gave us a meal which of course was a big thing. I’m a bit ashamed to say that now but however it is part of the truth of the thing and of course as we said at eighteen, nineteen things look very different and self-preservation is, becomes very important. So that was that of which we’ve got a photograph which we’ve only recently acquired. It was sent to, it was sent to Hollis. This photograph on there of course there’s a conductor. He was a professional musician and the lady at the end of course was just another bod all dressed up in lady’s attire [laughs]. So we used to give concerts both in the camp and we occasionally went out to give the Germans, so that really was a really big help for my part in the prison camp. A big help. And then of course eventually 1945 arrived. We spent Christmas in the camp of course which really wasn’t to be [laughs] However, 1945 arrived and eventually we could hear gunfire at nights which was of course the Russians advancing. Well, there wasn’t, Stalag Luft 7 was a virtual new camp when I went in it because when I first went in it was hen huts. Really hen huts. That’s what it was. But it was rebuilt not long after I got there so it was very tolerable living conditions really. Nothing like as bad as some of the other people had suffered I think, because of course the SS had tried very hard to take over Luftwaffe camps but the, but their Air Force wouldn’t let them. So their camps were run naturally by, by Air Force personnel, or their Air Force personnel which was a lot easier I think to what I’ve been told from the SS run camps. The SS tried to run them but couldn’t. However, they marched out by being turfed out which I can refer to later on and it’s all detailed down in some of these books anyway. After, I think there was about fifteen hundred of us in Luft 7, and but when we got to a thousand we got a doctor. Our own doctor then who was an ex-kriegsgefangene, he was a prisoner as well. He was, he was in the army actually. And as we, as we assembled out to march away we didn’t know what we were going to be doing but that’s, obviously we’d heard the gunfire at night and particularly, and so the doctor addressed us and said, ‘Now, unless you’ve got adequate provision stacked by and or can speak fluent German don’t try and escape and don’t carry anything that you don’t really need. And I mean anything.’ Well, this part you won’t believe anyway but I’ll tell you. I had a piano accordion and I read through the line and I thought that’s out definitely. And it was snowing now, down to about, well the temperature on that part of the march was between minus twenty and minus forty. It did get to minus forty once. Minus thirty most of the time. So I tried to flog this piano accordion for anything I could get hold of and eventually I couldn’t sell it at all. I could not get, you are not going to believe this. It’s gospel truth. I couldn’t get one cigarette for it. So why we hated the Russians so much I don’t quite know. So I kicked it to pieces and so did several others as well. So, these were brand new squeeze boxes and so that was, that was the end of that part of the story really. And from then of course they marched us on the Long March which there’s been much reference made about and there’s all sort of information in these books which I’m sure some time you’d like to have a copy of or whatever. It was, we straggled, but we were told really not to escape because if you got tired and laid down you certainly wouldn’t, that would be the end of the story. How many [pause] quite a lot did escape or did elect to leave the, the throng. So how many actually died on that march I haven’t the faintest of ideas. All I know is that there were at least half were sort of in Stalag 3a at the end. But whether or not they’d lost their lost their lives or gone elsewhere I was never quite sure. The only thing that happened in Stalag 3a was that the Russians liberated us and the Americans came with transport to take us over the river and take us back home. But the Russians wanted an exchange of prisoners over the river. They wanted some of their prisoners bringing back in to their land and then they were going to exchange and let us go. So we were held five weeks in which time they never, they never gave us any rations. Nothing. We had to go down the village and so we went down there. And another story, down the village which is only just coming to light now. I used to go down with John Tregoning down the village to steal food and if you couldn’t get into the houses you just, the Russians were up and down there on motorbikes and things. Riding about like children they were actually. They hadn’t seen such things and they used to ride down there firing guns through the windows and all. It’s unbelievable really. But John and I, walking down the street in the local village could hear either ducks, geese or some form of livestock and we knocked on the door of this property and they wouldn’t let us in. So we got hold of a Russian eventually who came past on a motorbike. We waved him down and pointed to this noise and pointed to the [laughs] that we wanted, and so he broke the door down and got us I think it was a duck. I think. Certainly, yes I’m sure it was a duck and so then he chopped it’s head off and gave us the body. So we took that back. John and I took that back to the camp and had a feast. But that’s how we lived for those, for those few weeks and eventually it became a bit more liberal and so John and I whilst we were still waiting for transport we decided to make our own way and we eventually made our own way from 3a as far as Brussels from where we flew home. So that was the end of that story really.
DE: Yeah. You mentioned before we started the recording about a crew member and a sledge. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
RI: Well, that’s Johnny. It’s in that book. It’s in the story that John’s written isn’t it?
DE: Yeah.
RI: That was done because John Tregoning had gone on the march. John had gone off his legs and, but that’s all been, he wrote that of course actually when we were on the march. This is a copy that he wrote afterwards. John. John did. He’d gone off his legs and found it very difficult to walk and we were terrified we were going to lose him and he thought he was going to die as well. So we fabricated some form of sledge by like two lengths of timber. I think John got them somewhere one night when we were locked in a farm I think. We then lashed a sort of a sledge if you like. Whether you’d call it a sledge or, I really don’t know. All it was two lengths of timber lashed together with a space between. And we took, one of us, it took two of us we took one end of each length of timber if you like and walked, and John laid in that and then the back two ends we dragged because of course it was, it was snow laden so it was very slippery anyway. It wasn’t hard to pull in any case. It would have been had there been no snow but with it being snow and ice it was reasonably easy to pull. So we did that for several days for which John, I’ve visited him in Plymouth many times since, he’s dead now but he thanked me very much because he said, ‘I’d certainly would have died, Ron if you hadn’t have given me that, if you hadn’t dragged me on that sledge down there.’ So that was that bit really on the march. Really. Yeah. But as I said you have to remember how old we were. You know the thought nowadays was you can’t even imagine it now at forty let alone ninety but it was relatively easy speaking I suppose at that age because I was back home for my twenty first birthday, of course.
DE: Ok. What was, what was the journey to Brussels like?
RI: Alright. It was great really because we, we, I saw Glenn Miller’s band. We used to stay in various camps. They made us very welcome. It was funny really. They never sort of thought that we were traitors or anything. Or anything of that sort. Coming to traitors. That’s another thing I’ve completely forgotten about, which is also in these books anyway and in the official book as well. I might retrace my steps a minute then.
DE: Ok.
RI: In the prison camp when I first went in the senior NCO, there were no officers in that camp, I was in Stalag Luft 7. At that stage there were no officers. They were all NCOs and the senior NCO he’d, he’d sort of taken charge of the whole thing, and you were told to go and have a word with him. And so going and having a word with this, this body we were warned that there was a traitor among us and that, he told us who he was, what his name was and all the rest of it and to beware of this because he was going around with bogus Red Cross forms. Wanting you to know and all the rest of it. However, I did see this bod and one night. This was in the early, this was before the camp was, before the new camp was built. This was in the old camp we used to sit around at night and play cards or whatever we did. I think some form of game. We got hold of some game. We used to sit around in candle light. There was no electricity of course. In candle light. We’d made our own candles out of whatever you could. Anyway, we got made, made up candles. And this bod came in. Now, I think there was about six of us in this and so he tried to enter conversation and nobody would speak. None of us would speak to him. This sounds impossible but its gospel. So this bod came in and, and then he said, ‘I’ve got a photograph of my lady friend here.’ Now this is unbelievable. So he passed this photograph around and when he got to me I said, ‘Oh, I know that girl.’ He said, ‘I don’t think you do.’ I said, I said, ‘She’s one of a twin in Worksop.’ And so she was. So to go forward again now so that was that. But he used to disappear. He used to go to Berlin and he used, he was a big friend of Lord Haw Haw in those days. He used to go to Berlin. Disappear, come back all well dressed and all the rest of it. So we all knew but of course he was shunned in the camp. But at the end, of, at the end just at the end of our stay in the prison camp he disappeared from Luft 7. He disappeared altogether and that was the last I heard of him of course at that time. So we didn’t know whether he’d been killed or, we didn’t care either. That didn’t matter too much to be very honest. However, after the war was over and I was in Worksop I had a lady friend who, we were married afterwards, Joyce. And she worked in the Co -op. We used to walk, I used to take her for, I had about three months leave altogether. However, that’s another story. I used to slip down to the Co-op. We used to go out for lunch together of course. You’ve got to imagine I’m twenty then [laughs] So you can probably, I’ll leave that to your imagination. And we were walking up Gateford Road near to where I bought the piano accordion funnily enough. Walking up there and I see this bod coming down with a lady on his arm and it was him. That was in Gateford Road in Worksop. So I said to Joyce, ‘We don’t speak to this man. Walk past him.’ Which is what we did. I wouldn’t, he did try and speak but we wouldn’t speak and so that was the end of that. And that was the end of it so far as I was concerned except later on when I got a news bulletin he’d been, he’d got five years hard labour I think. Eventually when all this, because of course we all made reports about him at the end of the story and so he got five years hard labour. So that was, we all clapped or at least I clapped. That was after the war that was. I clapped hands then when I found that out of course. That was it. But so that was a great coincidence in there really. But as I say the piano accordion made my life that bit better more than most. Well, it did anyway. There’s no question about that. So that was very fortunate really. Yeah. It was. Yeah. So that ends the story really as regards the prison camp I think. I can’t think of anything else.
DE: You were just about to tell us about the walk to Belgium and what that was like.
RI: Oh yeah. It was, we were gobsmacked really because we used, John being a navigator and a very intelligent one at that he knew the way right enough and so we used to make our way from camp to camp. It sounds impossible now but that’s what, we actually went to one, we got in one American camp one night or one day rather and they made us awfully welcome. And food we’d never had for ages and Glenn Miller’s band was there. He wasn’t there of course because he was dead but his band were there. They played all day every day. That was wonderful that was really. I’ll never forget that really. Being in the musical business myself as well. Yeah. So that was that but we went from place to place. Army places and all sorts but from there we enjoyed it I suppose in a way because we’d eaten. We ate plenty you see and that sort of thing. Yeah. The only thing about the remnant of the outcome of all this was when I was in 3a I got yellow jaundice. Now, yellow jaundice in the hospital there all it was was a mattress on the floor and there were loads of us. It was caused by eating too much fats we think. Or I think. At the time when we were liberated we were liberated then and we were eating all these fats and that came one way or another. And so I had yellow jaundice. I was five days in there. Now, when I came home, I’m going on a bit now I’m back in the UK, having flown back from Brussels. I’m now back in the UK. Now, I’d never heard from my parents through that nine, ten months I was away. And I arrived, I get a leave warrant and I come, I’m coming home now with my kit and a leave warrant. I got a month’s leave I think to start with. And when I got off the train there was the station master in Worksop then was a man called George Taylor who was a large friend of my father’s and when I got off the train George was waiting for me and he said, ‘Oh, Ron. Let me just have a word.’ He said, ‘Before you go home I want you to go up to the shop and see your father.’ So I said, ‘Whatever for?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t really know. Your father wants to see you.’ So I think that in Worksop from the station up to the top of Bridge Street is about a mile so I walked up there to right where the Town Hall is in actual fact. So I walked up there to the thing and saw my father was there waiting to see me. And they knew, I’d sent a telegram I think to say I was coming home and then he knew. My father knew. So he said, ‘Well, before you go home you’ve got to go and see Dr Anderson down Potter Street.’ So I said, well, that was just a bit further down the Town Hall. Down Potter Street. So I said, ‘What for?’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t really know.’ So I put two and two together and I thought now this is yellow jaundice. I’d had an x-ray by the way after, after. So I thought this relates to yellow jaundice. It’s given me heart trouble. That’s all I could think of because actually yellow jaundice has, does give all sorts of problems. So that was, that was, so I trooped down and sure enough Dr Anderson’s waiting. He had two sons then running his business but he was there waiting to see me. So he got me sat down and he said, ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you.’ I said, ‘Ok. Thank you,’ thinking, still thinking, I mean I’m in now dead stuck. So he said, ‘Your mother’s very ill.’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon.’ He said, ‘Your mother’s very ill and one of her sisters is looking after her and,’ he said, ‘I think she’ll probably live two weeks. She’s purely alive to see you.’
DE: Oh crikey.
RI: Which [pause] so I then made my way home and of course all that he’d told me was true. My mum was in a bed in the front room and had been there for months. And she did die about a fortnight after I got home. So that was home coming [pause] I’m sorry.
DE: No. Do you want me to stop it for a minute?
RI: Yeah.
[recording paused]
DE: Ok. So we’re recording again.
RI: The worst part of it really was that I had no need in the first place. As I was in a Reserved Occupation being a bound apprentice I was a fool to go. I’d no need to have gone in the Service until I’d done my apprenticeship. Five years. Or seven years, I think. And I’ve, in some respects I’ve held myself responsible for my mother’s death.
DE: You think it was something to do with her worrying about you.
RI: Well, I’d no need to have gone in the Services. I could have stayed out. And I think with hindsight it was what I envisaged the Service offered as against what I’d got at home. I’d got a marvellous home but at the same time you were subject to sort of home discipline I suppose in one way or another. And of course by going in to the RAF I envisaged all sorts of things which some which materialised and some didn’t but I’d [pause] people have said what a fool I am to think that I caused my mother’s death. I still don’t know to this day what she died of.
DE: Right.
RI: I don’t know what the death certificate was made out of. I don’t. I’m not quite sure. I went, I went to pieces actually for a while. I went back to Church Fenton which was, after I had this month and was interviewed by a wing co or whatever. I can’t remember what rank he was but it was an interview and he said, ‘What do you want to do with the rest of your stay in the RAF?’ And I said, he said, ‘Do you want to go on a pilot’s course again?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know really.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, we can put you on a Mosquito course if you like or — ’ I said, ‘What’s the alternative?’ he said, ‘Air traffic control. Flying control.’ So I said, well I then went out and then explained to him about things at home and all the rest of it and he said, ‘Well, take some more leave. Take us much as you like.’ I had actually about three months leave in total I think. But betwixt times I got talking to some friends, ex-RAF friends and as they said, ‘Think twice before you start talking about flying because the Japanese war is still on and the Japanese don’t take aircrew prisoners. What they do in actual fact [unclear] I speak to you. They cut the goolies off and sew them to your mouth and kill you.’ He said, ‘That’s what happens to all if you get shot down.’ But I think and I’m nearly sure that people that flew over Japan at that particular time towards the end of the war were given suicide tablets anyway. I’m not a hundred percent sure about that but I’m nearly certain that’s what happened. Yeah. Because the death rate they just didn’t take prisoners. Aircrew prisoners anyway. So that was that. So then the air traffic control business came in then. And the only row I had in, in my RAF career I think ended up by, I went on a course for air traffic control business which really didn’t amount to much. I got all the rudiments of it anyway and I was, I got eventually sent to Spitalgate near Grantham and there was a flight lieutenant there that was in charge. I was a WO1 in those days. The overall bod in that flying control at Spitalgate was the lieutenant and he’d, he was a pre-war bod who hated aircrew anyway because of the rapid promotion. [laughs] Not unusual. And, but I was the senior NCO there and the station warrant officer was also an ex-aircrew bod which was a blessing. So Christmas came in ’45 and there was a list arrived on the notice board of people on duty over Christmas. Of which I was one. So my father was now of course on his own and I spent the last Christmas in the POW camp. So I got hold of this flight lieui who didn’t like me anyway and I, mutual and I said, ‘I find that very hard to take.’ I said, ‘I think,’ I said, ‘And there are one or two more NCOs who’ll take my place anyway because I’d already broached it with them,’ and I said, ‘There’s one or two NCOs that will take my place so that I can have Christmas leave.’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘It’s all been done fairly. That’s the end of it. And you’re on at Christmas.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘In that case I’ll put an application in to see the old man,’ who was an ex-aircrew bod you, see and I knew, I knew he was on a loser. So one thing led to another and then my name disappeared off there and I got Christmas leave and some bod took it on. But when I got, when I came back after Christmas leave a couple of the bods said, ‘You want to be ever so careful because he hasn’t half got it in for you now.’ I said, ‘That won’t matter anyway,’ I said, ‘No chance.’ He didn’t know I’d got a car anyway and he didn’t know that. Cars were very scarce in that time of course but I had my own car. And he sent me out to Coleby Grange which was in Lincolnshire here and I I ended up stopping there and closing that place down ready for the Yanks because they were going to put nuclear weapons in there eventually. In Coleby they were. And so I had a great time at Coleby Grange unbeknownst to him you see, yeah because I was a senior bod there. There was supposed to be a commissioned officer but we never hardly saw one. But we had a great time there. A really great time. And another part, another story which, this is hard, you’ll find this hard to believe. It became a storage place for the RAF when they were closing stations down we’d get all sorts of tackle then. And I got landed with the job of putting all this stuff that appeared on lorries and trailers and things into these hangars that were empty then. And of course one day, I hope you believe this, one day a lorry arrived and he came. I went to talk to the driver and he wanted to know where to take it. So I said, ‘Well — ’ And they were balloons they were. Air sea rescue balloons but not, not the land ones. The water ones. Over the water. So he said, ‘They’re all barrage balloons I’ve got.’ So he said, ‘Do you want one?’ Now, this sounds too silly for words but it’s, so I said, ‘Well, I don’t know really. Yes. Yes.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve got one spare if you want one.’ So he give me one of these balloons. Bloody great thing of course. So I got one of the ground crew lads to take one of the seats out of the car and I got it in there and I eventually took it home for all the ladies to cut it up and made clothing for themselves after this. This was of course when clothing was scarce. So that was really the end of all that and I stayed there until Coleby closed down. Then I managed to get, I was demobbed then and came home. Since when of course a lot of these other things have born light now. And which I’ll probably go into now with. When you’re ready. Yeah.
DE: Okey dokey. Yeah.
RI: So really that covers, sort of I don’t know if I’ve done right.
DE: No. That was wonderful. So what did you do after you left the RAF?
RI: Well, the RAF. When I, as I was coming out of the RAF the RAF informed me by letter I think that certainly I was communicated somewhere or other, the RAF would pay a third of my wages to complete my apprenticeship. Which is what they did. And there’s a completion of apprenticeship papers in there somewhere. There is. Well, there is. It’s in there. And so I did two years and I did very well to be honest. I got, and I got on very well with, with the employer and who gave me a magnificent twenty first birthday I might add too. Gold cufflinks and everything which I’ve still got of course and, but I was obsessed with self-employment rather than somebody to, I’ve never liked people telling me what to do. That’s unfortunate. So I was obsessed with the idea of you know getting on my own sooner or later and [pause] And I hadn’t the money to set up in business but the Yorkshire Penny Bank I knew the manager in there. The Yorkshire Penny Bank as it was in those days. And I eventually took a shop in Chesterfield that sold news and it had, there’d been that, it was a big shop actually for a new starter but I borrowed money from one place or another and what money I had and we went into this. There was, we had a thousand paper customers. I’d never been in the shop in my life before. With bacon and everything in but it progressed but there’d been thieving going on terribly and the place had lost money. However, I soon put a stop to that and I got some of the family to come and help and so we progressed from there and then I eventually sold that. And because I wanted to go and live, oh I did have, I suffer with catarrh. Still do. And the doctor said, ‘You want to go and live by the coast.’ So eventually I went to have a look at the coast and found a piece of land and built half a dozen bungalows on there which we then let in the summer time and then eventually sold. And then through the Chesterfield business a chap arrived where I lived in, in, down on the coast and introduced his self. He said, ‘I’ve had a word with — ’ I think the Heinz representative, he said, ‘Who met you in Chesterfield. I said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ He said, ‘You wouldn’t be interested in coming along with me would you?’ So I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. In what respect?’ So he said, well he said, he was a man just a bit older than me, he played the organ as well by the way, Johnnie did. And one thing led to another and he said, ‘Look, why don’t you come and take the store over in Sutton on Sea for me?’ Why this all came through a traveller that had been to me in Chesterfield and then met him in Sutton on Sea. So I said yeah. So I took over and ran that and put it, it was losing money, we put it back on profit and sacked a lot of the staff because they were all at it. And yeah, so that was, so well my kids came and helped in there as well. So that, that was going, and then Johnnie was getting to the, he got caught with his, well that’s another story but he, he his wife left him and then he got married again. She was a great woman too I might add. However, things progressed and then he opened an organ shop. She came from Derby and he said, he was thinking of retiring and one week he came, he came down to, and had a word. He said ’Look,’ he said, he used to come to our house in Trusthorpe and he came and he said, ‘Look, Ron, can I have a talk with you? Can we come Sunday night and have a talk to you and I’ll bring Edna with me?’ I said, ‘Of course you can.’ So he came around, we had a meal together and all the rest of it and he said, ‘Look, he said, ‘I’m thinking of retiring.’ Now, he’s got a business there or had then and employed about two hundred people in the summer time. He had a Rootes group, a car place, spray shop, loads of restaurants, fish and chip restaurants. You name it he’d got them. He’d really got it. He’d been in the RAF too. But he’d really, he was a gruff man. You’d never believe with some of his language but the best business man I’ve ever met in my life. So we sat and he said, ‘Look Ron, he said, ‘I’m not looking for money,’ he said, ‘I’m looking for you to take it over lock stock and barrel,’ he said, ‘And you can pay me back.’ He said, ‘We’ll put it through a solicitor but I want you to pay me back gradually. A bit at a time.’ So I said, ‘Well, ok. Let’s think about it then.’ So off he went thinking we’ve already agreed to this. So when he’d gone I said to Joyce, ‘Look, I’m not really too sure about this. We’re going to, this, this business is a seven day a week thing from eight in the morning ‘til 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock at night when we close up.’ So I said, ‘Look, I think, I think not.’ So I went to see him down at his house in Mablethorpe and I said, ‘Ray, I’m ever so sorry but I’m going to turn you,’ Oh he couldn’t believe it.’ He said, ‘You’re never turning it down.’ I said, ‘Yeah. I am. Because I want to be on my own.’ So from there that was that. And I’ve always been interested in antiques as you probably look around you’ll see. And I said when we built these bungalows, I said to Joyce, ‘We haven’t had a holiday. Let’s bugger off and have a holiday.’ So we grabbed the kids and took the car and went toured around Scotland. We’d arranged to stay away two weeks and after about, I can’t be still anyway, after about twelve days, no. Less than that. After ten days we were back around as far as Stranraer and we got, I said, ‘Let’s have another two or three days before we go home. So I said, ‘Let’s go across to Ireland and find John Tregoning,’ who was the fella I’ve referred to already. He was a customs officer on the border. Now, I didn’t know where he was unfortunately so the first morning we were there we went into the customs headquarters in, in Dublin. No. In Stranraer sorry. Yeah. In Stranraer. No, it was over in, no, the headquarters of, it was in Ireland somewhere where the headquarters. Anyway, I went to see this bod in there and I said, ‘I’m looking for a man called John Tregoning.’ And he said, well we wouldn’t tell me where he was, he said was because, ‘The reason I don’t tell you is I don’t know whether you’re looking for retribution or whatever.’ So I said, well, so I explained it to him and then he said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, ‘I’ll get in touch with him and I’ll have a word with him,’ he said, ‘And then if you come back I’ll tell you either yay or nay.’ So we do this and we went back and he told us Ray lived in Auchnacloy down on the border, you see. So we get down to Auchnacloy and we have festivities as you probably can imagine. And walking through, through the village we see a fella who obviously knew John, called George Taylor and we eventually go across to his place down in, he was dealing in antiques and horses and horse and carriages and things. I couldn’t believe the stuff he’d got. So, anyway, one thing led to another and so I formed a friendship with this George Taylor in Auchnacloy and it lasted, well until I packed the antique business up. We used to go to Ireland weekly, virtually. But he, he had some carriages and all these things that you see on the TV with these fancy carriages and stagecoaches and things and he’d all these. He’d over a hundred in one field. Traps. So I ended up buying some bloody traps you see and bringing them home to the UK [laughs] and landaus and all sorts. So that bore fruition, and went very well until to go back to my son he, he wanted to go, he wanted to go into navigation in the Merchant Navy. But when he went for a medical examination he found, they found he’d got the same trouble with his eyes I have. And so we had a, they rang me up from, from Grimsby actually. Been for this test in Grimsby and they rang me up and said this problem and they said that you could probably get him cured by getting him going to the relevant people. But he said, ‘We must warn you that he’ll have to undergo the same eye test every year. Now, he said if it deteriorates he’s never going to be out of trouble.’ So I went over and I told Robert what all this was and he said, ‘Well, I don’t know what to do, dad.’ I said, ‘Well, do you want to come and work with me for a while?’ So he joined me and that’s how it all ended up and it’s still the same thing now.
DE: Right. Ok
RI: He’s still, still doing now. He’s got some bungalows. So that’s another. So that, so that was that story really. How that all came about. My son came to work, to work with me and that’s how. Then of course the family all then we all amalgamated and got together and poor old, poor lad then we put him in we had a hot dog stall in Mablethorpe so we put him in there at nights. I think he gave more away then he sold but if you ever meet him. Oh, you met him anyway because he was with me when we went there.
DE: Right.
RI: Robert was. Yeah.
DE: So you mentioned that you met up with some of your crew.
RI: I did yes. I did. Well, I used to see John regularly because he was in Auchnacloy and we used to go and stay there you see. So we used to see John quite regular. Now, Tom Coram, came over from Australia and he wasn’t a very nice chap so that was best forgotten really. So I then decided to go to Canada to see, to see John Callingham. So we went and had a ride down the, you know, down. Did all the trip and I went and flew over on Concorde and all the rest of it we did because [laughs] So, so that was that. And so, yeah. So we had, we had a great time with John. There’s photographs of him somewhere which we’ll come to shortly. So we discussed all this. What we’d done and of course we were much older by this stage of course, you see. So things take on a different light really. But we had a lot of, he was a hell of a nice man and he’d taken a big part in in Canada in in Toronto in the ex-Service Associations. They used to fly him over to France every year to the, to this thing there. So he’d taken a big part actually after. He was a, what did he do? He was a [pause] he weren’t an engineer. No. He was a surveyor I think. Yes. He was. Yeah. So I saw him and the mid-upper gunner. He went. He played the clarinet by the way, the mid-upper gunner and, but he went to live in Australia and so I lost touch with him. The last time I talked to them on the phone he’d got dementia and so he didn’t really know anybody and all this tragic story. So that ended, and that finished that. John Tregoning, who was the navigator was the bod who we became very, very friendly with. We used to go and see him in Plymouth. When he came back from Ireland he took a big job in Plymouth so we used to go down there and have a few days with him in Plymouth. And he used to, hadn’t been on the Hoe and this Plymouth Hoe and all this business. So we had great times down there. Yeah, yeah, so that. And the Eddie Gaylor, the bod who was the spare rear gunner I met him regularly then of course because he used to walk past with his little dog and so forth. So I met him quite regularly. So, but the rest, for the rest, it sort of it disappears doesn’t it? The engineer that we had he had joined us latterly of course after, after we’d crewed up originally. He joined us last but he was a married man and he was twenty eight. Lived in Liverpool. But to us this is incredible.
DE: He was an old man.
RI: We thought he was an old man. He’d got kids. So we never sort of mixed with him at all whilst he was a good engineer so far, but he never sort of became part of us at all. And Christ he was only twenty eight [laughs] This is unbelievable really now.
DE: Yeah.
RI: You’ve disturbed all this news you have [laughs] you’re the one that’s responsible now. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So when did you start going to Squadron Association meetings and reunions and things?
RI: Do you know, it was only through him. Through Eddie that I went. Meeting him. That was. Oh, it must be —
DE: Eddie was the spare bod gunner.
RI: Yeah. He was the spare bod gunner.
DE: Yeah.
RI: Yes. Yeah. And that of course at the reunions was where I met the fella who sold all the books. I will show you. I won’t let you read them now but I’ll show what he’s written. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Of which he’s put copies in the museum in Elvington. But you can’t get at them unless you get permission but they’re there to be read. All of them that he wrote on my behalf. Yeah. He became a great friend. A great friend, he really did, a real nice. What a nice man. He really was. Yeah. Really is rather. I must ring him, because going back to the rear gunner’s memorial at your place when your helpers told us that his name wouldn’t be on there because there was only Lincolnshire names on there I had to tell you that didn’t I? And then we find out from your good self that, that wasn’t true and of course the names that I imagine that the two Ridleys on there weren’t him but of course they are.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. One of them is. Yeah.
RI: Yeah. That’s right. One of them is Bert so I‘ve now got to ring around some of his family because they want to, they’ve seen it all at Elvington but they’ll certainly want to see this at your place now. So I’ve got the, one of them, one, his cousin he lives in a castle up in [pause] his two lads. One of them’s a test pilot for [pause] in France. And his wife flies the queen. And the other one is, is in charge of building the new airport in Hong Kong. So you can guess what they are.
DE: Yeah.
RI: Yes. So they all want, they send hampers to us at Christmas and all this sort of thing now. So it’s all, just to tell you the story about his family about the rear gunner’s family that’s written down. But you’ll see this but if you want to record it while you’re here. What happened was, I forget how many years ago it is now, but it does tell you in there anyway. How many years ago I get a phone call one Sunday afternoon and a bod saying, ‘Is that Mr Indge?’ Now, I don’t like being disturbed Sunday afternoons and I thought it was somebody trying to sell me double glazing or some silly bloody thing so I said, ‘Yes, it is,’ I said, ‘What do you want?’ I wasn’t very courteous I don’t think. So he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘All I can say to you Mr Indge does the name Ridley mean anything to you?’ I said, ‘Yeah. It does. It means a lot to me.’ I said, ‘Why? Do you know him?’ And he said, ‘No. But,’ he said, ‘I’m one of the Ridley family.’ So then we start to converse then and one thing led to another. So then he got in touch with his brother and his father who then ring me up and all this. So then eventually they want to come down here and have a look at a Halifax, you see. Now, I’ve been in the one in Elvington several times, and they normally in those days and still, as far as I’m aware still do, you can go in. You go in. Of course we didn’t, we didn’t come out that way. We came out via a hatch but the side of the Halifax is well back.
DE: Yes.
RI: But they won’t let visitors turn right down to the rear turret. They only let visitors go left up in to where the engineers and everybody else was sat. So they arranged then to come on holiday for which I never coughed a penny. They paid for my hotels and all this they did. These three did. And so then I rang Elvington and arranged that I could take them and they’d let them go inside the aircraft probably and have a look. Now, I’d been in several times obviously, and there was usually young men that were there to show you around the aircraft because it’s really a job for a very young man climbing in and out anyway. So when I went with these three Ridleys, it was an old man. Well, old. I say oldish. I suppose sixty five, seventy perhaps and he was going to take us into the aircraft. So he climbed into the aircraft first followed by perhaps myself and these other three bods and he then starts to, I said, ‘They would like to look in the turret.’ He said, he said, ‘You know that I can’t let you go down there.’ I said, ‘No. But — ’ I said, I told him who they were and he said, well he said, ‘All I can do,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk up the front,’ he said, ‘If they’d like to go down to the rear turret but,’ he said, ‘If I catch you,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to say. I’ll have to say.’ I said, ‘That’s fair enough.’ Now, perhaps this is unbelievable but they all went down. They went down into the rear turret in turns. Three of them. And they even say now how, how Bert’s cousin got in there because he wasn’t young of course by now. How the hell he got in there is beyond belief. But you’ll perhaps, you’ll find this out, they all came out crying. I’ve been and sat in the rear turret. They all deserved a VC. It was an awful job. An awful job. You were sat with nothing. It’s awful. Terrible job. Terrible. So that was really, so we’re now big friends and all the rest of it and so they all now want to come to the new one at Lincoln and have a look at the one of Bert’s name on the —
DE: On the wall. Yeah.
RI: On the wall. Yeah. They do.
DE: They’ll be most welcome.
RI: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. I’ve not, I’ve not been inside the Halifax at Elvington. I’ve been inside a couple of the Lancasters.
RI: Yeah. That’s funny. I never have been inside a Lanc ever in my life.
DE: Have you not?
RI: No.
DE: There’s not meant to be as much room is there as there is in a Halifax?
RI: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. There was very little. They could get another thousand feet in height roughly. But their bomb load was a little bit more. But there weren’t a lot in it. A lot of the bods that had flown in both reckoned that the Halifax was the better of the two. I don’t know. I’ve no idea. I don’t really know. They were there just for a job weren’t they?
DE: Yeah
RI: They weren’t designed for comfort. They were designed to do a job weren’t they?
DE: Yeah. You were talking a bit earlier again before we started recording about how the Lancaster has been remembered and the Halifax less so perhaps.
RI: Yes.
DE: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command has been remembered over the last seventy years or so.
RI: Well, it’s got you see, even at Elvington now there’s some young men how this should be done now. They’ve rebuilt a Mosquito up there and they were hoping to get, we became very friendly with the bod that was building it. He reckoned it had cost him his marriage. And he used to get some young engineers from right from down south to come up there in the holidays and help him to rebuild this thing. And his second wife, Sotheby’s have an aircraft sale once a year and she, for some reason or other went to see them at this whatever in, up in Leeds. And they said to her, ‘If he wants to sell it we’ll get, could get him a million for it. But,’ but they said, ‘If he can get it airborne we’ll get him two million.’ But of course he won’t because he’s had bits to rebuild this thing from all over the world actually. I haven’t been for a while so it’ll be finished now I presume. But what a nice man that rebuilt this Mosquito. Yeah. Yeah. So you know and so it’s all progressed from there now and a lot’s happened since of course finding where the aircraft crashed and all the rest of it. Do you want to go down the route now? Or —
DE: Yeah. Fine.
RI: Or later?
DE: No. If yeah if you have a story to tell about that then yes please. Yeah.
RI: Well, when, I don’t know how this started now. How the hell did it? [pause] Well, we went. I went myself and Hollis’ went to Germany to Bert’s grave on several, three or four occasions because there are in Reichswald Forest there are several 578 bods buried. And when we used to go there’s always brought two little wooden crosses and we used to not only go to Bert’s but go to all the others and put a little cross on them. This was on Reichswald Forest, and so that went on for several years and I then started going down. I lost my wife and I started going for, the RAF have got some places, recuperation places. I don’t know what you’d call them. There’s one down on the south coast, there’s one in Scotland, and there’s several of them. I went to one of them down on the south coast and some bod down there got in touch with the National Lottery. This all sounds, but however it’s true and eventually I hear from a lady in, the National Lottery then had an office in Nottingham in that time of the day and I had a letter from them. Would I be, did I want any lottery funding for anything that I might? So I said, ‘Yeah, I do really.’ So, however the outcome of that was they sent me a thousand pounds. The National Lottery did. So I gathered together and there’s pictures now of this. There’s pictures of them all somewhere in this somewhere which I’ll give you before we go too much further.
DE: We’ll find them.
RI: We’ll find them. Yeah. So I then, so we gather, so we got this funding from the National Lottery but at the same time a German who worked in Germany, an Englishman who worked in Germany who was aircraft mad had discovered in Gelsenkirchen where there was some aircraft, aircraft had crashed. Now, he’d gone as far as sorting out that there was a Lanc and a Halifax. Now, they couldn’t decide which bits belonged to which except all the crew of the Lanc were killed and in our case only the rear gunner was. Now, we’ll get to this bit in a bit. The rear gunner was still in the, in that, in the back bit of the aircraft. And what happened was this, this bod who was Air Force mad but worked in Germany he, he found out that going back a little bit he found out that they’d been widening a dyke and they’d found all these bits of the aircraft and the turret with the body of Bert still in. Or what remained of him. And also he found out that there’s an old man with dementia, well it’s all fell foul now, but there’s an old man in that village that had got a photograph of it when it first came down. Before it, and actually there’s good photograph of Bert in it actually. Or what remained of him. But he won’t part with it. But they’ve promised us that they will part with it eventually but when the eventual will be I’m not, I’m not quite sure. But this is, this is part of the epilogue of course and this refers to it. This is what I’ve been meaning to give you, and let you look at. Now, I think, I think you’d better take the recorder off.
DE: Ok.
[recording paused]
DE: Recording now. You were saying about petrol.
RI: Yeah. Well, we were aware, I was aware that, and of course we all were, all aircrew members that once you were on ops you could get a petrol allowance for pleasure. And so far as I’m aware, and I’m certain we were the only people in the UK that got actually a petrol allowance purely for pleasure. Not involving business. So that, that, I never registered the thing. I never taxed it or anything. I’d no driving licence or anything of course but nobody bothered us in those days. There was nobody about. So when we were shot down they sent a list which they’re all here still. Those lists are still here. You’ll see them if you want to. Those lists told my father what, what behind, what was mine. There was a bit of money. There was several things and they would be forwarding this stuff to him. But there was no mention of a car. So of course my father apparently panicked and then rang about this car because there was a bike. That got sent back but there was no mention of a car. So my father actually went up to Burn I think eventually and some of the bods there had pinched the tyres and the battery [laughs] So eventually they got it squared up and my father was friendly with a garage and they got some tyres from somewhere and managed to get it. And so the Ministry wrote to him to say that the car was available for collection. So that’s, so it was here. When I got home it was there. All taxed and ready and on the road it was. Yeah. So that was another thing out of there really that I hadn’t told you about which it’s only you coming here that disturbed all this information.
DE: Made you think of it. Yeah.
RI: It has. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: So it wasn’t a bad life when you were on the station on ops then. You —
RI: No. No. Because I used to go out. We used to, we got in with several pubs locally. We used to take the squeezebox down. Never had to buy any drink because we just used to use the squeezebox and that was it. Yeah. No. That was good really. Yeah. From that point of view. Yeah. Yeah. You never thought of what might happen I think did we? You just, your name just got rubbed off [coughs] excuse me. Your name just got crossed off when you didn’t get back. So yeah. That was it. So that, that was the end really of the of the escapade until, a lot of it came to light with the grant from the Lottery Fund and when we all went and met among these others. Well, there were pictures of that too. We met this Roman Catholic padre and a member of the press came around and wanted to take pictures of us and all assembled. It was, it was remarkable how they found bits and pieces of the thing really but, but there was I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet there’s a vague picture of the remnants of the turret.
DE: I did see it. Yeah.
RI: Did you see it? Yeah.
DE: A black and white one.
RI: Yeah, it is. Yeah. So whether we shall ever get any more we don’t know but there’s nothing so sure that in my mind that that was actually him. Yeah. Yeah. So, but they took us for a ride around the old oil refinery at Gelsenkirchen where we were shot down and it’s a lot bigger now than it was then of course. But whether it was all in vain I’m not quite sure. I don’t know. I remember us all saying at the end of it all we’ll never buy anything Japanese or German ever again.
DE: Right.
RI: And look at us now.
DE: Yeah.
RI: We’re all riding about in them now.
DE: Yeah.
RI: But we all said that you know. We’ll never buy anything from Germany again. Yeah. I know the March reflection, you know. You’ve brought all of these reflections up. The March. Now really it’s unbelievable that we were straggled out for miles but the cold weather. I mean we couldn’t, I couldn’t live through it now any more. I suppose you’d [emphasis] struggle perhaps.
DE: I’m sure I would. Yeah.
RI: With twenty to thirty below. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
RI: Yeah. But we were lucky because the Germans marched us through the day normally and at night time locked us up in farmyards and things. But we were a bit lucky because John Callingham, he was, he was of farming stock so he was able to, where a few nights we did manage I think he managed to get us milk and all sorts of things. Having been a farmer’s son and the rest of it. So that was very useful really this extra milk and things like that. Yeah. And then we, yeah, so there we go. So what else you would like to know about I’m not quite sure.
DE: I think we’ve ticked off just about everything that’s on my list.
RI: Good.
DE: Yeah [pause] No. So unless you have anything else that you’d like to tell me I’ll draw the interview to a close and thank you very much.
RI: Well, only that I’ll just get a couple of the books out and show you. Not that you’ll want to read them.
DE: I’ll just pause this then.
RI: If you ever do want to see them you know where they are.
DE: Smashing. Thank you.
RI: I don’t, you know one way or the other.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ronald Indge
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AIndgeRC180131
Format
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01:24:29 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Great Britain
Poland
Belgium--Brussels
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Worksop
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Tychowo
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Indge was a wireless operator on 578 Squadron and became a prisoner of war after his Halifax aircraft was shot down.
Upon leaving school, and unable to obtain employment in his chosen career, his father arranged a bound apprenticeship with a joiner. Attracted by the glamour of the RAF, when almost eighteen, and without his parent's knowledge, he travelled with a friend to Sheffield and they both enlisted in the RAF. Entry was initially deferred until Ron was at the required age. He describes his route through training, on successful completion of which, his crew joined 578 Squadron. In February 1944, Ron’s aircraft was attacked from behind, killing the rear gunner. With limited control of the aircraft, the remaining crew was forced to evacuate and Ron was immediately captured. Following interrogation, he eventually arrived at Stalag Luft 7. Whilst there he met a fellow prisoner playing a piano accordion. Having learnt to play in his younger days, Ron describes how further instruments were obtained and the formation of a concert party which enabled them to entertain their fellow prisoners. However, they were also required to entertain the German officers which caused some concern to Ron, but they received meals in return. There was a known collaborator amongst the prisoners, and care had to be taken to ensure no loose talk gave away any information. In January 1945, the advancing Russian army forced the evacuation and the prisoners were forced to march to Stalag 3A. This took several weeks in temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius, and improvised sledges were used to pull weak prisoners. Following liberation, Ron returned home to discover his mother was terminally ill. He spent some time on general duties before being discharged and with support from the RAF, was able to complete his apprenticeship. Contact with some of his crew has been maintained in conjunction with 578 Squadron Association, with several visits to the grave of the rear gunner. The site of the crashed Halifax, with the body still in position, was located when civil engineering was carried out in the area.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1944
1945
578 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
entertainment
final resting place
Halifax
military living conditions
prisoner of war
RAF Burn
RAF Riccall
RAF Yatesbury
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/734/10732/ACattyMA180822.2.mp3
56b4756625ebdbc6366c390a3d646d10
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
Catty, Martin Arthur
M A Catty
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. An oral history interview with Martin Catty (b. 1923, 1802887, 164193 Royal Air Force), log books, photographs, service documents, maps, and folders containing navigation and Gee charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 514 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Martin Catty and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Catty, MA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: Start. Yes.
DE: Start so this is an interview with Martin Catty. My name is Dan Ellin. It’s the 22nd of August 2018 and we are at Riseholme Hall. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. So, Martin would you mind telling me a little bit about your early life and what you did before you joined Bomber Command?
MC: Yes. What I can recollect. I lived in Hendon in London and went to a prep school locally and then afterwards to a prep school in Surrey, at Crowthorne and then on to Highgate School in London where I was until we were evacuated to Westward Ho at the beginning of the war and we took over mostly what United Services College had left at Westward Ho. You know, Stalky and Co and all that. There was the Kingsley Gymnasium and places like that and we took over certain cafes for classrooms and, and so forth. And then after I had taken my O levels we got this visit from the RAF offering us a short course at university to do the Initial Training Wing stuff at, on the short course and study either engineering or other, other more academic subjects I suppose. Anyhow, and therefore that was lasting six months from, from April ‘42 to about September ‘42. I was at Pembroke College, Cambridge for that and then after that course where I apparently did, compared to some of the others quite well which meant that at the end of the war I was invited to go back to Cambridge University although to tell the truth I hadn't got the qualifications to do so. But I was invited back. Anyhow, so then I went to St John’s Wood where we joined the RAF proper. Got kitted out, inoculated and God knows what. Queued for about three hours in the basement of a St John’s Wood block of flats and then got posted to Sywell outside Northampton for grading. Pilot grading, you know. Where I was successful to be graded for pilot training. Then went up to [pause] No. We didn't immediately go up there. They had got all the transport at that time was being used for building up the Second Front. Therefore, we were sent up to Whitley Bay. The RAF Regiment place where they loved to get their hands on aircrew chaps [laughs] We were, I was very fortunate in being with a young Sergeant who really wanted to teach us things rather than take the Mick out of us. So we had a fortnight there and were promised Christmas leave afterwards. It was pretty awful actually because the quarters were bombed out houses, no windows, no hot water and just a blanket. So, it was and we were up in the morning, freezing morning in about December holding rifles, no gloves [laughs] Anyhow, it was. And then we were sent after that, after Christmas to Brighton which was the RAF Discip School where naughty pilots were disciplined and so forth and we spent about a fortnight there I think waiting for transport to turn up. The only, well visible thing I think [pause] I remember being put on jankers for something but I can't remember what it was for [laughs] And we won a drill competition so we were allowed leave to go to London where my parents lived. And then in, we were sent up to Heaton Park in Manchester which was a sort of transit camp on the way to Canada. And from there we went to West Kirby somewhere where we were, no, to Liverpool. We were taken out on a tender to a big ship on the, well a small ship on the horizon but as it got nearer and nearer it turned out to be the QE which of course was never fitted out as a passenger ship. It was fitted out immediately as a troop ship because it had only just been launched before the war. So we went out to Canada on that. About six hundred of us jammed into this little batch of cabins in the middle with about four bunks high. Twenty four to a cabin, I think and the whole ship, rest of the ship was empty except for the officers wives upstairs where I fortunately got as a duty baggage party which meant I went down the hold to get a trunk that some officer’s wife had said she didn't want during the journey and suddenly realised she did [laughs]. So we, well we, it was very easy manhandling because as the ship came down you could take a great big trunk, jam it on the companionway and then you could handle. It had the advantage that at the end of the trip when we landed at New York the rest of the people went straight up to Canada but we were given an extra day in New York to get the luggage and so forth and then taken up to Moncton in New Brunswick in Canada the next day. Or taken up, we were put on board a plane where the Canadian flight lieutenant wanted to impress us how good Canada was and we were treated very well. Then we walked into the camp and I remember being greeted by some corporal, ‘Oh, Catty MA. Martial Arts are you? Oh right.’ [laughs] So all my life I’ve been, wanting to be, I am now Master of Arts anyhow [laughs] but, and then we were posted to Virden in Manitoba. EFTS where we did the, obviously the Elementary Flying Training. We got through that alright. No problems really.
DE: What aircraft were you flying there?
MC: Tiger Moths.
DE: Right.
MC: Yeah. The Tiger Moths at Grading School of course was one without a canopy. Open cockpits. The one in Canada had canopies because of the very low temperatures we flew in even at low heights. I mean it was sometimes minus forty below. Things like that. So anyhow I got through that alright. In fact, I got the Ground School Award which I think stood me in bad stead later on but be that as it may [laughs] and got posted on to SFTS at Brandon which was not far from Virden actually. And then I was within about a month of completing the pilot’s course when I unfortunately was in the flight hangar when somebody arrived from Central Flying School to do, to grade the station and the chap they had selected to go up with him wasn't there so they sent me up with him and he didn't like it. In the end he said my flying was too mechanical. So I ceased flying training as a pilot, went to a manning depot, also in Brandon which was a terrible, well we were in a cattle market with about, God knows how many, four hundred people sleeping in a cattle market with bunks about four high and they’d got nothing to do with us except send us for route marches [laughs]
DE: Not very pleasant then.
MC: No. And of course, because we’d ceased flying training you lost your flying pay so we were on two thirds of the pay we were used to. So you could hardly afford to have a beer let alone anything else. However, that lasted about a month before I eventually got a posting to Winnipeg. Number 5 AOS. Where we flew Ansons which was not the plane I was on at the SFTS. That was a Cessna Crane. And well, I suppose I spent the usual course. When we graduated at the end of it we were not sent home because all the transport again was tied up with Second Front sort of thing and then they sent us, most unusually on leave.
DE: Right.
MC: Went to Niagara, went to New York. I had an uncle who lived in Stamford Connecticut so I went with him but they dressed for dinner so I couldn't stand that [laughs] I don't know why I'm telling you all this.
DE: No. It's interesting. It’s great stuff.
MC: Really? [laughs] And so, eventually we got on the Andes to come back from, I think it was, was it Halifax? I can't remember the port. Whatever. Which was basically an almost flat-bottomed thing designed for going up the Amazon and rolled like mad. Again, because I forgot to say this but when we went on the short course one of the promises was that when you graduated you'd be commissioned so of course we did get commissioned which meant of course we didn't get our uniform. So the people who didn’t get commissioned got flocked around by all the ladies of New York whereas we looked like erks and didn't get any.
DE: Oh dear.
MC: That didn’t matter. Anyhow, we left, I think on the 30th March ’44. The day of the Nuremberg raid because as we were sailing out of the harbour the 9:00 o'clock news came on and it said ninety odd of our aircraft were missing or something and we said, ‘Turn it around.’ [laughs] However, we eventually got back and went to Harrogate to get kitted and get the uniform and so forth. Just arrived in time to be best man at my brother’s wedding. My elder brother who was also in the RAF. I'd only had my uniform for about a week and then got posted to OTU at Chipping Warden. And there as I mentioned to someone else some of the aircraft were pretty ropey. They were Wellingtons. We called them Wimpies.
DE: Yes.
MC: 1Cs and things like that and one of them actually the wing fell off in the air, you know. So it’s, but I don't know, one I’ve accepted these things. And I crewed up, of course at that stage and I crewed up with this Canadian skipper, Flight Lieutenant Ness, Johnny Ness. There’s a photograph of him. I don't remember the actual process of being selected. Who went with whom. I think the skipper probably said, ‘Oh, that chap.’ I don't know but, so after getting crewed up etcetera at OTU, one or two weren’t because the Wimpy would not take seven people of course as crew. I think the gunners joined us later. Went to Con Unit, conversion to four engine aircraft at Stradishall and then on to Lanc Finishing School. LFS at Feltwell. Then got posted to Number 514 Squadron at Waterbeach and that's how I have arrived at Waterbeach.
DE: Right.
MC: And then we, I mean quite frankly at the time I got there which was about October ’44, somewhere like that it was, the chop rate had fallen right down to a very low rate. Something like five percent. Something like that. Whereas it was of course at times very, the chance of finishing a tour of opps was very [pause] but we were. So I’ve got to say it was a fairly easy time we had there. It was 3 Group and 3 Group concentrated on GH bombing. I don't know if you are aware of that. Basically, Gee was navigation which I think relied on ground stations sending out signals which the aircraft reflected and we bombed on GH which was the aircraft transmitting the ground through reflecting. I think I've got that the right way around. I'm not sure. So, in fact, as navigator since we did a lot of daylight raids over the Ruhr I used to release the bombs more than the bomb aimer. I think I did more daylights than night trips. I'm sure I did. The logbook will —
DE: We’ll have a look at your logbook.
MC: But I think I finished my tour in March, something like that and I joined, Waterbeach was also number 33 base which controlled two other stations. Mepal and Witchford I think, and I joined the base test crew which tested all Lancasters coming in to the base whether Waterbeach or going to one of the others as navigator which of course wasn't a very great amount of navigation to do. And that's where I more or less was when as I hear [John Toddy], the chap I flew with on Lancasters who I was very pally with said to me, ‘I volunteered you for ferrying aircraft, Lancs out to the Far East.’ And it was going to be done in three stages. UK to Egypt, Egypt to India and India to Burma or wherever they were going to be used. But in, so having been sent to Morecambe to get kitted out with, I mean, you know, shorts and everything else and having inoculations, Yellow Fever, goodness knows what else they cancelled it because it was obviously getting to the stage, getting near VJ Day and it wasn't needed anymore. But we were, being in [unclear] by that time. We went to Talbenny in Wales first. I think, I can’t remember, again, it was number 1630. Anyhow, whatever unit we were and then that was transferred to Dunkeswell in Devon which was an American base up to that stage. One of the things of course that may be amusing I don't know but we found a whole lot of lovely American leather boots. You know, booties or whatever you want to call them. They were wonderful. And they were all left foot. There wasn’t a right foot amongst them [laughs] which wasn’t very [laughs] Anyhow, that’s just in passing. From there on our crew got selected to take a ground crew from Air Ministry out to the Middle East to train all the various Middle East ground crew stations how to service Lancs. So we took the Lanc out to [Khormarksar]. Whatever. Wherever we landed we’d say goodbye chops see you in a fortnight's time. They did their job teaching the crews and we did well when we went where we liked. More or less. Although it was the time of the troubles. We had to wear sidearms. You know, the Palestine and Israel. Palestine troubles. Went to several stations out there. Shaibah. In fact, I had my birthday at Shaibah if I remember rightly. And well eventually got back obviously at Christmas. And a little tale, I don't suppose it’s really amusing but we, in Cairo a Liberator landed and we knew the crew because they were from Waterbeach. And so we got flown back supernumerary crew to Waterbeach. So we went out to the brewery tap there where we knew the landlord and the skipper produced a bottle of Curacao or something like that and said, ‘Here you are lad. This is for you.’ And the voice from the back, which turned out to be the Customs man said, ‘That doesn't look like fresh fruit either.’ [laughs] Right. So thereafter my skipper got demobbed and I was, well in time I got crewed up or went as navigator with Wing Commander Tubby Baldwin who, we were flying an Anson 19, I think it was, out to Cairo to Misr Airlines. It was fitted out as a passenger aircraft. So we lobbed down in several places on the way obviously. Got to Cairo and ended up, I ended up training as instructing pilots in BABS, Blind Approach Beacon System. The radar system that had just been brought out and I went to Melbourne in Yorkshire and Bramcote in Warwickshire, you know. Obviously, there was a pilot with the pilot training. We were telling them what to do and how to use it and so forth. And that's how I ended my career in the RAF.
DE: Right. So when were you, when were you released? When were you demobbed?
MC: Either September, October. I think it was October ‘46 when I went up to Cambridge because they’d asked me if I’d like to go back.
DE: Right.
MC: And I managed to do it on normal release. I didn't have to take out Class B release did they call it or something where you went for early release. But anyhow I spent three years at Cambridge which I did some studying. But I really wasn't qualified because I hadn't got the maths training. It was really necessary. Particularly at Cambridge for an engineering course because not only did you now have to use a formula. You knew how to, you were taught how to derive the formula. You know, you were never taught really how to use things.
DE: Right.
MC: So, anyhow that was my, the end of my service with the RAF.
DE: So, what did you do after university?
MC: I went as a, to GEC in Birmingham, Witton, Birmingham, on a graduate apprenticeship course and then took jobs in management supervisory sort of rather than using my engineering studies as such where more my training to be able to think things through. And stayed in, if you like in management until we moved around once or twice but I stayed with GEC the rest of my career.
DE: Ok. Wonderful.
MC: I think I held the very rare distinction of turning a Tiger Moth upside down.
DE: Oh, you must tell me about that.
MC: Well, I was out solo. Out solo and I saw this black line on the horizon. I thought that's a bit strange. What's that? And then it got bigger and bigger and I suddenly realised it was a dust storm approaching. Fortunately, I was upwind of the station so I just landed as the storm hit us. The wind was so great that my ground speed landing was something like five knots or ten knots and it was very [pause] and you know you, and you were surrounded so as I turned across wind to go towards the flight hangar, the wind got under the tailplane, lifted the tailplane, got under the wing and the tailplane went over so slowly. I heard the, there was a fuel gauge on the top wing of a Tiger Moth and that went and then the prop broke and there I was upside down. Nothing on the clock. And the ground crew came out and said, ‘Oh, okay. Are you alright?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, I'm glad as you came you didn't release your belt. The last chap who did this fell down and broke his hip.’ [laughs] So, and then I was released out and then the doc came out, the MO. ‘Taxiing accident?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you feel alright?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Cheerio.’ By that time the ground crew had gone. There I was in the middle of the ‘drome with my parachute slung over my shoulder walking back all the way to the flight. Fortunately, I was greeted by the flight commander who said. ‘Don't worry Martin. I’ve done it in a prop myself.’ He said, ‘The ground crew should have been on your wing almost as soon as you'd landed. It wasn't your fault.’ So I didn't get any trouble from that.
DE: So, no black mark against you.
MC: No. So I don't think there are any more interesting, well if that's of interest I don't know but be at that as it may.
DE: Is it OK if we just go back through a few things?
MC: Yes. Certainly.
DE: I’ll ask you a few questions.
MC: Yeah.
DE: You know, you said that when, I think you were in Brighton you, you were put on jankers.
MC: Well, I can't remember why I was put on jankers. I think some cheeky remark I made of some sort and some Warrant Officer heard it and it wasn't too bad. It was peeling potatoes and things like that you know but of course the other thing I don't know what the local population said because we were up early and the PE instructor would take us for drill before breakfast and he sang, ‘Come on you wankers.’ [laughs] And the local population [laughs] had to listen to this. However, and then at Brighton we, as I say we managed to be the Flight that did the best drill so we were given a pass to have a forty eight hour pass for the weekend in London. But the actual reason I can’t because we were stationed in the Grand Hotel but we ate in the Metropole Hotel. I can't remember much more about it.
DE: Never mind.
MC: Yeah.
DE: Could you tell me a little bit more about what life was like at Waterbeach?
MC: Yeah. Well, it was very pleasant. The food was good. Mind you I was obviously commissioned so in the officer’s mess and therefore we were just, I would say we had twice as good food as the general population if not more. We were looked after very well from that point of view. You could get in to Cambridge very easily. There was transport in to Cambridge. It was an enjoyable life I’ve got to say. Ok. And at that time the operations were not that scary, you know.
DE: What were they like?
MC: Well, most of it I was, being a navigator I was immersed in my charts and Gee screens and things like that. Never looked out of the aircraft from one moment to the next and therefore, it was quite easy. Because of my flying experience and pilot training I used to give the skipper a bit of relief once we were over friendly territory and takeover the aircraft. In fact, there’s a picture of me sitting in the pilot's [pause] which was all very good but I’d be there for about half an hour or so until we were getting a bit nearer the station, the ‘drome and I had to get busy, get back and cook my log like mad as if I’d been actually navigating. Which was alright at times except a lot of the logs have comments on them. ‘You should have done more.’ Got more. And the reason I didn't was because I was piloting the aircraft [laughs] Which was alright. There was one time. Oh, by that time we had H2S, right, which the bomb aimer could was using to navigate us if you like while I was not navigating which was all very well until the one time he mistook, I'm not sure where maybe the Dutch thing. Anyhow, for Brussels and we arrived half an hour earlier than any other plane from the squadron which took a bit of [laughs] the nav officer said, ‘Why are your winds in a different direction to everybody else?’ However, that was life. It didn't worry one at all and I've got to admit that our operational life although we were doing, the tour was forty ops at that stage not thirty and in fact, the pilot used to do forty ops because his first op was one flying with another crew to get used to it. And the rest of the crew did thirty nine. Except I didn't of course because I volunteered to be a navigator to an Australian pilot who had, his navigator was ill. So I actually did forty trips. And that was a bit of a strange crew. However —
DE: What way was that strange?
MC: Well, I'm not sure that I should tell you [laughs] In the sense that once they got up to operational height they all lit fags. Now, that was completely verboten basically but, so I didn't join them I might say partly because I probably didn't have any with me [laughs] So what? They were still a very efficient crew. Darby Monroe was his name.
DE: I know there was some American aircraft and the stories go they had ashtrays.
MC: Really? Yeah. Well, of course one of my problems which were, you know, I’ve always from my very early days I had bladder problems and it was great that the Lanc had an Elsan at the back. When I, it's very strange, probably the first half hour I would want to go about four or five times. The rest of the trip I didn't. It didn’t happen. However, and of course well I've got to say that by and large it was a very enjoyable time on operations. The only thing I ever really saw was to feel the ack ack you know under the aircraft and so forth. We lost an engine once but nothing more than that. So we had a very good, I mean he was a good skipper, Johnny Ness and he was considerably older than I was but we got on very well together and I wonder what has happened to him since but, and of course as soon as we finished the tour he got posted to Canada. Back to Canada whereas I stayed on the station. [pause] Anyhow, that’s my war experience.
DE: Ok. You mentioned it was very easy to get into Cambridge. What, what sort of things did you do when you weren’t on ops and you had some, had some time?
MC: Went to pubs [laughs] I was not a dancer so I didn't go dancing. And well, went to one or two films and things like that. But I don't really recollect that much about it except one used to drink quite a lot in those days and if you weren't going to Cambridge you went to the bar and drank it there [laughs]. But I actually met my wife at a mess party at, in the officer’s mess and when I went back to Cambridge we hooked up again and eventually got married. In fact, I got married as an undergraduate because I was on a grant of course and you got an extra, you got a married grant if you got married. I mean we —
DE: Makes sense.
MC: Were really looked after. No. We were looked after very well. But obviously partly because at school I went up the Classics side of things and only swapped to the science side because I was looking at the stage or my father was looking to get me in the Navy but in the end I went and my brother being in the RAF anyhow, and he was stationed around here. Fiskerton, I think. 49 Squadron. Which I think Coningsby maybe. Fiskerton. Scampton. Somewhere. I think all those names ring a bell to me.
DE: Right.
MC: To me.
DE: Yeah. So he joined the RAF a few years ahead of you.
MC: Two years to the day. Our birthdays are the same. Two years apart.
DE: And that's what? 13th of November.
MC: November. Yes. I was born on his second birthday.
DE: Oh wow. Easy to remember then.
MC: Yeah. But it had the snag that we got joint birthday presents.
DE: And it's close to Christmas as well.
MC: Yeah. However, but he had a very, much more, he was squadron nav officer anyhow. I think for 49 Squadron.
DE: And he flew Manchesters as well as Lancasters.
MC: Well, yes I think he started on Wimpies and then went on to Manchesters and then of course fortunately the Lanc came along and they were very glad to see the end of the Manchester. It was underpowered. The only other aircraft I think, aircraft that had a bit of a quirk was the Stirling which had gravity feed fuel feed. So if you turn the Stirling at a very steep angle or even upside down the engines would cut out [laughs]. Oh well. Anyhow you've got me talking a long time.
DE: No. No. Yeah. You’re doing, doing fantastically. You've been going nearly forty minutes. A couple of other questions. When we were looking at some of the things that you've brought in you said, you mentioned the intelligence officer, was it Tommy Thompson?
MC: Yes. Yes.
DE: Could you tell me a bit about him? What was he like? What was his job?
MC: Well, basically, of course, he came to every briefing and gave any intelligence about extra dangers on the way across or anything like that but he also he and his staff interviewed us as we, after we landed and he went through the trip and so forth. But he was a very good friend and we used to play snooker and have a drink together. But he was a nice chap. He wasn't aircrew. He was ground crew but he was, I got on very well with Tommy. I didn't, well I’m just trying to think of what other interaction there was with him. I don't [pause] No. Just a good pal in the mess.
DE: Right. Yeah. Did you know any of the other ground staff?
MC: Well, there was, the other person who wasn’t ex-flying was of course the adjutant. He was, I didn't know him very well but knew him by name. And probably the, we were exceptional in the RAF that we used to take our ground crew out for drinks in the village at Waterbeach. Meet them at a pub and take them for an evening drinks which was un, sort of other Services the officers would not socialise with other ranks whereas we were quite happy to do that. I mean we knew we relied on them anyhow. The only time I had any other problem with, I think ground crew was, I'm not sure which raid it was, a long distance one and the bomb aimer was doing the bombing because it was out of range of GH. Out of the range of Gee. And we, he opened the bomb doors and I actually said, ‘We're not there yet.’ You know. So he closed them again until we got to the target area. He’d seen a dummy target of some sort and unfortunately the camera took a picture of the bombs away when it actually opened the bomb doors and didn't. The bombs weren’t away. So when we got home we were accused of being umpteen miles short of the thing and we said, ‘No. No.’ And it came around to this why you stick to your story and the corporal photographer will be put on a charge or you don’t. So, we did stick to our story [pause] I don't think there's anything else I can add.
DE: Did you have anything to do with the medical officer there?
MC: No. I wouldn’t think so. No. No.[pause] I can't recollect anything to do with him anyhow.
DE: Again, just before we started recording we had a little discussion about there was an explosion there. Can you —
MC: Yeah.
DE: Could you tell me any more?
MC: We were in briefing at the time actually. In briefing, and we suddenly heard this explosion and of course the op was cancelled, briefing was cancelled and so forth and we heard afterwards it was a bomb that had dropped and exploded. And of course, there were casualties. In fact, I did ask Peter Smith I think who was showing us around the IBCC whether he, he knew of that and he did seem to know of it.
DE: Yes. I believe the names of the people who lost their lives in that explosion are on the Memorial.
MC: Are they? Oh.
DE: Still on with, with things on the ground you said you took the, you went out with the ground crew for drinks.
MC: Yeah.
DE: Did you always have the same aircraft and the same ground crew?
MC: No, but we, there was one aircraft we flew more than others, I think. Probably, was it C for Charlie? I can't remember. But there was that particular ground crew that we knew anyhow because they were, you know, in attendance when we got to the aircraft and so forth. So, we knew. We knew them and we used to invite them up probably once a month or something like that, you know. Not that regularly but just locally to the village, you know where there were plenty of pubs [laughs].
DE: Fantastic. What happened to your brother? Did he manage to finish his tour?
MC: He did finish. In fact, he seconded to BOAC and then in fact joined BOAC and flew with them out to South Africa as navigator and so forth and other places. But, South America mainly actually he flew come to think of it and on, oh, I don't know. What was it? No. I don’t know what his aircraft was but, and then he I think he was still with them when they became British Airways. Then they didn't want navigators anymore because the navigation in the Western Hemisphere had got to a stage, beacons and so forth and therefore he emigrated to New Zealand and joined Air New Zealand to train other navigators out there. But he, he had a far more torrid operational experience than I did.
DE: Yeah.
MC: Without a doubt. And he was 5 Group in this area.
DE: Yes.
MC: Whereas I was 3 Group, of course in, around the Cambridge area. And it was 3 Group who did the GH bombing basically.
DE: Yeah.
MC: So, as I said earlier I think I released the bombs as much as the bomb aimer did on [pause] but it was something one did. You didn’t have to think about it too deeply. And I suppose we all thought Bomber Harris was a hero and he stuck to his guns. But —
DE: What do you think about the way the Bomber Command and Harris and the campaign has been remembered?
MC: Well, it was, I've got to say that after a year or two one did wonder what one, what one was doing. Was it right or was it not? And, and of course that was general. I mean, that’s why Bomber Command took a long time to be recognised. Because people didn't want to talk about it and they were of course one or two instances where things, the firestorms and so forth were shocking. But actually, at the time one did what was one’s duty sort of thing but afterwards one wondered was it right. Anyway, who can tell? After the war of course, after VE Day we flew some food out or food parcels to the Netherlands and took about, about a dozen, I think Belgian refugees back to Brussels. Flew them back. One of whom was Mrs five-by-five and really because she was quite a considerable weight the skipper insisted that she go forward of the main spar. Now, I don't know if you know the main spar but like I say —
DE: Yes.
MC: But there was no way she was going to get over this and so we had to get hold of her leg and put her leg over to one side and then lift her up and rock her over it. The number of petticoats she was wearing [laughs] Oh dear. We got there anyhow but to see their faces and their joy when they saw they were over their own country was fantastic. But that was quite an exercise. Then of course we flew back some prisoners of war. Twenty four on a trip I think. And, and then it, I can't remember the name of the station we landed at but anyhow —
DE: What was that like? Flying them home?
MC: Oh, ok. They were, they were quite subdued I'd say really and obviously one was doing one’s own thing and therefore one didn't really get that much to talk to them. Again, of course they were very happy to come back home. In fact, my wife's, my brother’s wife’s brother-in-law was a prisoner of war in the RAF. Yeah. He, and when he came back we used to, he lived in Malvern and we used to go out with him, He ended up as my bank manager [laughs] which was quite useful. He studied while he was actually a prisoner of war and [pause] That must be the end I think. I must have dried up by now surely.
DE: Ok. Well, unless there’s anything else that you can think of to tell me.
MC: Well, I can't think there's anything else that would interest. Well, I mean, with John Tully in Devon. He could drink a pint of scrumpy and a pint of bitter and all the locals were waiting for his legs to fold. They didn't. And he had us lost in town. He drove us back to Dunkeswell. The next morning he would say, ‘Martin, what did we do last night [laughs] You know. Before any drink driving. But in fact, there was nothing on the roads really at that stage.
DE: No.
MC: One often wonders where they, what happened to them since and so forth. I went to one or two squadron reunions but in the end I went to them and I hardly knew anyone there. So they’ll say they were at Waterbeach or [pause] and Waterbeach of course was taken over by as an Army training place. We did have a little museum there but what's happened to that I don't know. Right. Well, I can't think.
DE: Well, I’ll switch it off. It’s just quite often what happens is I’ll press stop and then you'll say, ‘Oh, there's another thing. Thank you very much.
MC: Well, I –
DE: It's wonderful to talk to you.
MC: I don’t think it’s been much use to you but be that as it may. It’s memories disjointed and so forth.
DE: No. It's been marvellous. Thank you very much.
MC: Oh right.
DE: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Martin Arthur Catty
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACattyMA180822
Description
An account of the resource
Martin Catty grew up in London and was evacuated to Westward Ho! with his school at the beginning of the war. He completed a short training course at Cambridge University in 1942 and joined Air Force. After training he flew 40 operations as a navigator with 514 Squadron from RAF Waterbeach. He describes how many of his operations were in daylight and using GH, so he often released the bombs. He mentions turning a Tiger Moth upside down after landing in a dust-storm during training, and how he ‘cooked’ his navigation log after he had taken control of the aircraft to give his pilot a rest. He recalls flying with another crew who smoked in the aircraft and discusses using the Elsan. Discusses some of the ground personnel and an explosion after a bomb fell from an aircraft at RAF Waterbeach in 1944. He became the navigator for the RAF Waterbeach base test crew after his tour, and after the war he flew as part of a ferry crew, taking ground crew to the Middle East, and also was an instructor for landing using the blind approach beacon. He was demobbed in October 1946 and completed a degree in engineering. Discusses his elder brother who also flew as a navigator and then flew for BOAC. He worked in management roles for The General Electric Company until he retired.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Manitoba--Brandon
Manitoba--Virden
Manitoba--Winnipeg
New Brunswick--Moncton
Egypt
Egypt--Cairo
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Westward Ho
England--Yorkshire
Israel
United States
New York (State)--New York
North Africa
New York (State)
New Brunswick
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Devon
Manitoba
Format
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00:51:53 audio recording
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
3 Group
514 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
entertainment
evacuation
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
Manchester
military discipline
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Feltwell
RAF Stradishall
RAF Waterbeach
sanitation
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/608/10282/AMcDonaldEA150918.2.mp3
0f2d6ecf3f91adbe56622e816552729a
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
McDonald, Edward Allan
E A McDonald
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McDonald, EA
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. Two oral history interviews with Edward Allan McDonald (1922 - 2020, 1076170, Royal Air Force), a memoir, his log book, documents and photographs. He flew 28 operations as a rear gunner with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Edward Allan McDonald and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-13
2015-09-18
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
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Right. This is an interview with Edward Alan McDonald or Alan McDonald, by Dan Ellin. We’re in Riseholme Hall. It is the 18th of September 2015. So, Mr McDonald could you tell me a little bit about your early life, your childhood and how you came about to be in the RAF?
AM: Yes. I think I can. I was, unfortunately it’s a bit of a miserable story this. My father was killed when I was four and so of course my mother had to bring us up. But anyway after that misfortune my mother looked after us very well as best she could. And I always fancied —my uncle he used to take me to Hedon Aerodrome which was just outside of Hull. And it was a landing field. It wasn’t, no runways on it. And it was where Sir Alan Cobham used to visit and give his displays. And I used to go there on my uncles crossbar and we used to come on the outside of Hedon Aerodrome and watch the various displays that Sir Alan Cobham went through which fascinated me. And from there onwards I wanted to be a pilot. And it’s a long story this because with me wanting to be a pilot I went to the recruiting office at what I thought was the right age. The war was on now. And they sa said ys, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘I want to be a pilot.’ ‘Have you got a secondary education?’ ‘No.’ ‘No. You haven’t. Well you can’t be a pilot so forget about aircrew. You can’t be aircrew. You’ll have to be ground staff.’ So I said, ‘Is there any way I can get —?. ‘No. There’s no way around it. You either have or haven’t passed in to a secondary education. You’ve not. You can’t be aircrew.’ So, anyroads I went on now to a place in Ireland to a place called Nutts Corner which was a Coastal Command station. And it was Fortresses and Liberators flown by the RAF and I enjoyed being there. I enjoyed being connected with the aircraft and getting trips home in any aircraft which was empty. And I worked on flying control at the station and I was putting the angle of glide out. What they called the glims out. Which were small three legged lights down the runway and down the perimeter tracks. Sorry, I’ll correct myself there. It wasn’t on the runway we put them in. It was on the perimeter track.
DE: Right.
AM: Back to the dispersals with these small lights that were battery driven. And then down the runways we had like the old type watering can.
DE: Yes.
AM: Full of paraffin and a very thick wick down the spout and we put them one every hundred yards at each side of the runway. And then we had, at the beginning of the runway, a chance light which could be used. And we also had an angle of glide which was for the oncoming pilot to see if he was in the right position for descending on the runway. Anyway, that episode passed very nicely but the next thing was they asked me to work with control. In control. So I did. I worked in there and I was in there one day and they said to me, ‘You’re going on leave on Monday aren’t you Mac?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. Why?’ They says, ‘Well there’s an aircraft going somewhere near. Near Hull. Do you know, have you ever heard of Leconfield?’ I said, ‘Oh yes. That is. That’s just outside Hull. It’s near Beverley. Oh if I can get a lift there I’m as good as home.’ So the next day we had to be there for 9 o’clock. And I’d taken three of my mates with me and they also were included in the load for this Wellington which was coming there. But anyroads as the day arrived and the time arrived it was cancelled. And so they monitored all the around aerodromes and at Aldergrove, sorry at Langford Lodge there was an American Lockheed Hudson going to the mainland that day and they would take us if we could get there. So we hitchhikes from Nutts Corner to Langford Lodge which was on the banks of Loch Neagh. And having got to Langford lodge the American guard outside with a rifle and a bayonet on said, ‘What do you guys want?’ So, ‘We’ve come to get a lift on a Lockheed Hudson through to the mainland.’ ‘You aint going from here bud.’ So we said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Well there’s been an accident and the two pilots have been killed and they’re in the runway.’ And anyway I don’t want to relate the story which I do know about but anyway they said, ‘We’ll ask around the different ‘dromes if anybody’s got aircraft going to the mainland.’ Yes. The station we’d come from — they had. Another Wellington was coming in. So they put a jeep on. And I’m sure the jeep passed any aircraft. He certainly got this clog down did that American. They’re a grand lot to me. I think that we owe a great deal to the Americans. In my opinion they were the best people in the world. Some of the best people in the world. They really helped us a lot. That’s my opinion. But, anyway, regardless of that we got through to Nutts Corner and there was a Wellington just ticking over at the end of the runway. We get on to the Wellington and off we goes. Now, he, the driver of this jeep that brought us, he stopped I’m sure two inches from the side of the Wellington and I mean two, I’m serious when I say two inches. That’s the distance he stopped. But anyroads, we got in to the Wellington. Off we goes and we flies out over Bangor and we goes across the Irish Sea across to Scotland and across the Scotch coast. We head south and we goes along the Scotch coast. Then we go along the English coast. Then we go along the Welsh coast and then we eventually comes to Lands End. And we’re out at sea all the time. Not over land at any time. And now we’re going out in to the South Atlantic as far as Britain is concerned. And then we turns to the east towards France. And going along the coast or to that particular position we had glorious sunshine all the way, and I was stood in the astrodome. The other three were sat on the floor of the Wellington. I should have mentioned this but I’ll mention it now. And I had a good view from the — where I was stood. Anyway, we’re now going along the south coast past Southampton and those places until I estimated, we were in and out of cloud all the way along the south coast, and as we were going along past Southampton I thought well we must be getting somewhere near to the coast — Dover now. And if we are near Dover I should be able to see France with a bit of luck. I’d never ever seen France before then and I was looking forward to seeing it. Anyroads, we gets, comes out of the cloud and lo and behold at the side us, and within about fifteen yards of us, no more, that was the maximum, was an ME109. So I had no means of communicating with the pilot. So I ran to the front of the aircraft, tapped the pilot on the shoulder and this is what I did.
DE: [laughs] the Nazi salute and a Hitler moustache. Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. I went through all the motions to let the pilot know that there was a fighter there.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And so he stood up and looked through a panel at the back of the Wellington which I didn’t know he could see through, above the top of the fuselage but he could. There was about ten inches or so where he could look through the canopy for anything behind him. I saw his face change and then he dashed back to the controls, put us straight into a dive and we went into a cloud. And then we headed for Dover. And then when we got to Dover we headed then inland and went to a place called Nuneaton and landed. Now, we get out of the aircraft and we’re walking along to exit the ‘drome. Nuneaton drome. And somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Thanks lad.’ [laughs] with a smile on his face. So —
DE: I’ll bet.
AM: It was, it was nice to hear him say that. But anyroads, it worked. So we got away from Fritz there. Very –
DE: Yeah. That was lucky.
AM: Very fortunate. Why I turned around there on that particular second to look at France I don’t know. I don’t think we were anywhere near France. But anyroad I had done.
DE: Yeah.
AM: It was a mistake which turned out to be our advantage.
DE: Yeah. Very lucky.
AM: So that was that little story. But anyroads, from there on I had my leave. I went back. I went down to Dublin and I got chased in Dublin. We arrived in Dublin, my girlfriend and I, and I says, ‘Oh,’ we’d just got off the station and there was a big meeting not far from the station. Maybe hundreds of yards or so. And I says, ‘I bet that’s the IRA.’ She says, ‘It will be the IRA. Don’t go near it.’ I says, ‘Well I want to know what they’re saying about us.’ I says, ‘All we get is the newspaper reports about the IRA but I want to hear what they say myself.’ So she says, ‘Don’t go to the meeting. You’ll wish you hadn’t.’ So, anyroads, I says, ‘Are you staying there or are you coming with me?’ She says, I’ll come with you.’ Well when I was at school I used to run in the school sports each year. I liked running. I liked it but I never put my back into it and I should have done. But anyway that’s beside the point now. But anyroads, what happened was [pause] I’ve lost my place now.
DE: The IRA meeting.
AM: IRA meeting. That’s right. Yes. What happened with that was that as I was walking towards the meeting there was several hundred there. The man in the middle pointed straight at me and I couldn’t understand why. Why he’d done it. And the crowd turned around and then they surged. Actually surged. ‘Come on. Run.’ So we ran. She was from Ireland and she says, ‘Run.’ She says, ‘It’s the IRA.’ Anyroads, we did run. I held her hand and we both ran down O’Connell Street in Dublin and I won’t say where we got but we got somewhere where they didn’t find us. And anyroads we evaded them and now it was dusk. And we went along the street, O’Connell Street and there was a cinema at the end of this street. I went into the cinema and, ‘How many seats?’ She says, ‘There’s only two left. They’re on the front row.’ I says, ‘They’ll do.’ So we got the two seats on the front row. And the young lady that I was with was called Myrtle and the picture was an American picture. And there was a man sat in the chair as I’m sat here and a door there and a man comes in, ‘Now then Joe,’ he says, ‘How’s that gal of yours?’ He says, ‘Do you mean Myrtle?’ ‘Myrtle,’ he says, ‘I didn’t know they called her Myrtle,’ he says, ‘If I’d a gun I’d have shot her.’ She’d got a name called Myrtle and there was Myrtle at the side of me. But I thought that was funny that. They were going to shoot her if they called her Myrtle. But that was just one little thing, little episode in Ireland.
DE: Yes.
AM: But there was many others of a similar nature. I was on a bicycle going from a place called [Sleaven Lecloy?] Now [Sleaven Lecloy?] was a dummy aerodrome and I was on that dummy aerodrome. And what happened on that dummy aerodrome was that when we used to come away from the place you had two ways to go. We could either go, come up a long lane which led from the dummy ‘drome to the road, which was only a narrow road in any case and when they got to this road they could turn left and go to the station and then to Belfast. Or you could go to the right towards Lisburn and then go down towards the Falls Road. Well in Belfast there’s two roads. There’s the Falls Road this side and the Shanklin Road that side and they’re both parallel with each other. The Falls Road is a Catholic road. This road here, the —
DE: Shanklin.
AM: Shanklin Road. That there is a Protestant road. And of course the dagger’s drawn. They never should be. They should be good friends.
DN: Yeah.
AM: But unfortunately they’re not and if you were seen in the Falls Road by people in the Falls Road you was liable to be stripped naked of your uniform and everything, tied to lamppost and they’d pour tar over you. A bucket of pitch. And then they would give you a good lashing. And then they’d leave you there for the —that was the Catholics. They would leave you there to be dealt with by the police. They would come along. Well I was going the Falls Road which, from where I was at [Sleaven Lecloy, Sleaven Lecloy] is up here in the mountain and you come down all the way to Falls Road. All the way down in to the centre of the town. It’s all downhill. Every inch of it. Now, I’m going down the Falls Road on a pushbike and on the right hand side I noticed a chap stood outside a cinema with a sten gun. I thought well that would be the IRA. As I got near to him he set the Sten gun on to me. Fortunately for me a tram car came between him and me. And of course I kept pace with this tram car. I didn’t lose the tram car for quite a way. I got full steam up and went downhill with the tram car on the bike. So I escaped from that but this is just some of the little hitches in your stay in Northern Ireland. And in Southern Ireland for that matter. And it’s all silly nonsense to my way of thinking.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Nobody’s doing anything for any good. It’s all a lot of nonsense that they’re encouraging. To kill people that they don’t know. Anyway, I won’t go on that tack but anyway, fortunately I got out of it and fortunately I made many friends there. And I had a great time in Ireland. In Northern Ireland and I did in Southern Ireland. But there was this here, what shall I say? Shadow hanging over all the events. And anyway that was just one of the things that happened. And then whilst I was in Ireland I decided I would have another try at being aircrew.
DE: Yes.
AM: I’d had a lot of dealings with aircraft there. With Fortresses and Liberators at dispersals. Anyway, the warrant officer says to me, ‘Mac,’ he says to me, ‘Don’t you understand what I’m saying?’ ‘Yes,’ I says, ‘I do,’ I says, ‘And I still want to be aircrew.’ So he says, ‘Can’t you think of any other words but you want to be aircrew?’ So I says, ‘Well that’s what I want to be I says. I’ll stop pestering you when I become air crew.’ So he says, ‘Is that a threat?’ You know. I can’t remember his exact words but he implied that I was threatening him by saying this which I probably was. But anyroads, he says, ‘I’ll see what I can do for you.’ Because I’d been so many times he says his hair was falling out. But anyway, a tannoy went, ‘Would E A McDonald report to the station education officer.” So I went and, ‘Anybody know where he is?’ So somebody gave me directions and I found him. And he says, ‘You’ve been plaguing the life out of the station warrant officer. You want to be aircrew. Well,’ he says, ‘If you’re sincere and mean what you say and put your back in to what you’re going to get you’ll become air crew. But otherwise you won’t.’ So, he says, ‘To start with — do you want to be aircrew or don’t you? Let’s get that straight because,’ he says, ‘I don’t want to waste my time with you if you’re not going to put your back into it.’ Words to that effect. Maybe they were not the exact words but they implied that to me. So I says, ‘Well, I do want to be aircrew,’ and I says, ‘And I will put my back into it.’ So anyroads he says, ‘Right.’ He gave me a programme which I had to abide by and I spent quite a bit of time being schooled there. So the day of reckoning came. Well I was trembling. I thought, I bet I’ve failed. I feel sure I’ve failed. And I was saying it over and over to myself and getting worked up. Anyroads, when I went to see him he says, ‘Congratulations.’ So I says, ‘What for?’ So he says, ‘You are McDonald aren’t you?’ I says, ‘Yeah. I am.’ ‘ So he says, ‘Well you’ve matriculated.’ Well the word matriculated. To me I’d never heard the word before and I thought what’s he on about. Matriculated. What does that mean? He said, ‘You’ve matriculated.’ So anyroad when you get back to the billet there was a man in our billet called Fred Hillman and this Fred Hillman you could ask him anything and he’d always — he was like King Solomon. He knew every answer to every question. And he says to me, ‘How have you gone on Mac?’ So I says, ‘I don’t know really. I don’t. Honest. I don’t know.’ He says, ‘Are you meaning that you haven’t passed?’ I says, ‘No. I’m not meaning that at all.’ I said, ‘I hope I have,’ I says, ‘Because he shook hands with me and I thought was a good indication but he also said I’ve matriculated, and I’ve never heard that word before.’ So he says, ‘Well I’ll tell you what it means. It means you’ve qualified to enter a university.’ So I says, Are you joking?’ He said, ‘No. I’m not Mac. That’s what it means.’ So I says, ‘Thank you very much,’ I said, ‘Then I’ve passed.’ He says, ‘Yes. You’ve passed.’ So I went back. What happened was I was there for a fortnight and there’s a part of this story I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you why and it’s not something I’ve done wrong. It’s something that happened to me and I don’t know how it came about. But anyroads it happened and I’ll leave the matter at that. But what it was when I arrived there, at the station at RAF headquarters there was a WVS van outside. And this place was I would say as big as Buckingham palace where I went to RAF headquarters. And the young lady in the WVS van said to me, ‘You’re McDonald aren’t you?’ So I says, ‘How do you know my name?’ She says, ‘Oh I know a little bit about you.’ I says, ‘You know a little bit about me?’ I says, ‘I’ve never been here before,’ I said, ‘You can’t know anything about me.’ ‘Oh but I do,’ she says, ‘And they know about you in there.’ So I says, ‘In where?’ She said, ‘You see those two doors? You go in the right hand door. Don’t go in the left hand door. Go in the right hand door and when you go into that room you’ll be there with seventeen WAAFs and three airmen, and you’re one of the three airmen.’ So I says, ‘What about that then?’ She says, ‘Well you’ll find out when you get in.’ She said, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’ So I says, ‘I don’t get this,’ I says, ‘I’ve never been here before.’ So she says, ‘Well maybe you haven’t but,’ she says, ‘I know about you. And you’ll find out why when you get inside.’ So I says, ‘This is funny this is. I can’t make head nor tail of what’s going on.’ So anyroads I went into the room and nothing was said. Not a word except, ‘Hello.’ That’s all. Anyroad, I thought well this is funny, what’s she on about. They haven’t says anything. So this — I had to for an interview with an officer there and he says, ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘You’ve come here for some exams haven’t you?’ So I said, ‘I understand so.’ So he said, ‘Right, well we’ll deal with that while you’re here but we’ll explain to you that while you’re here what we want you to do maybe wont occupy all your time. So your time that you have surplus to our requirements — it’ll be yours and you’ll not be expected to do anything in that time, but otherwise you’ll be taking documents from office A to office B. And you’ll — I want a signature from office B to take back to office A and maybe to office C and so on. And these documents want signing for.’ Anyroad, I was doing this and then I got a funny comment. ‘Oh it’s you is it Mac?’ I thought, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Oh it’s you is it Mac?’ And this was a WAAF and I thought, I can’t get this. They seem to know a bit about me. So I says, ‘Have you got the right Mac?’ She says, ‘You’re McDonald aren’t you and you’ve come here for some exams?’ I said, ‘Yes that right.’ I says, ‘How do you know about me? ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘Oh never mind. I do.’ So I thought well this is blooming funny and they made a mystery to me of myself and I didn’t know what was happening. Anyroads, in the end this person came up to me and said, ‘You’re bringing my tea and my cakes and we’ll have a squaring up.’ So I says ok. Thinking that I would I would pay for mine and they would pay for theirs. And this person that I’m talking about, I didn’t know who it was. I hadn’t a clue who she was. And she says, ‘I’ll pay for the tea and the cakes.’ I says, ‘You will not.’ I says, ‘I’m an LAC,’ and I pointed to my arm which was like a little propeller on my arm.
DE: Yes.
AM: I said, ‘I’ll be on a lot more money than you.’ So she says, ‘I’ll pay for you.’ I said, ‘You won’t.’ She says, ‘I will.’ So I said, ‘You’re not paying for my tea and cakes. I’ll pay for yours or we’ll pay for our own. Whichever way you want it but you’re not paying for mine.’ So she says, ‘I’ll pay for yours and don’t argue with me.’ I thought you’re a bit bossy. Who are you? Anyroad, I’ll not go into that. I’ll leave that as a blank, blank cheque as to who she was. Now then, I left there and I started as air crew. Training that is.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And I went to, to St John’s Wood. And whilst I was in St John’s Wood the sergeant came to me. He says, ‘Stores. You.’ I said, ‘Stores? What am I going to the stores for?’ He said ‘you’ll take your uniform off you’ve got with you and you’ll put a brand new uniform on. Brand new shoes, brand new cap. All brand new.’ He said, ‘And then tomorrow you’re going to meet someone.’ So I said, ‘Who?’ So he did tell me who it was. It was the queen. The queen mother. The queen at that time. And we were all lined up and it come to my turn to be introduced to Her Majesty The Queen. And I started speaking and nothing came out. And it had never happened to me ever before but it did then. And I was trying to speak and nothing happened whatsoever. So she passed on to the next one. And so that was a little experience there. And from there I went on to [pause]was it Bridlington or Bridgnorth? Bridgnorth? Bridlington. I think Bridlington we went to. From Bridlington to Bridgnorth. Bridgnorth through to Evaton. They called it, in Scotland Evaton. I called it Evanton. E V A N T O N.
DE: Yes.
AM: But they called it Evaton. I asked on the, the man on the station, the worker there. He says to me,’ Are you lost?’ I says, ‘I think so,’ I says, ‘I don’t know which platform to get on the train for Evanton.’ ‘There’s no such place as that around here.’ So he says, ‘Let’s have a look at your pass. Oh you mean Evaton,’ he says. ‘Oh ok then. Evaton.’ So I went to Evaton and we were flying there with the Polish pilots. Every pilot there as far as I’m aware. I never saw and English pilot there but there may have been one that I hadn’t seen. But any roads I was flying with the Polish pilots. We were machine gunning dummy tanks.
DE: Yes.
AM: And I had quite a good experience there of flying. And on a morning each day as we came out the billets the Polish pilots were coming out their billets which was next to ours or near enough to us and of course the first thing they would say was, ‘Dzien dobry.’
DE: Good Morning. Yes.
AM: And I would say, ‘Dzien dobry,’ And in the afternoon I think it was, ‘dobry wieczor.’ And all because I could say, ‘Dzien dobry,’ only by mimicking them. Could I do it? I didn’t actually — I couldn’t have spelt it.
DE: No.
AM: Or maybe I could but maybe I couldn’t. But anyway they were ever so friendly towards me. And when I went into the aircraft, ‘Oh he’s here.’ You know. You got a nice welcome. And we were doing machine gun practice and all sorts of exercises with them and then we progressed from there and we went to Bridgnorth. And then from Bridgnorth we went to Syertson — not Syerston. Winthorpe. Winthorpe to Syerston. Winthorpe was Stirlings and on the Stirlings we went on leaflet raids over Germany with the bomber stream.
DE: Yes.
AM: Now we could only reach four thousand feet and they were up at ten thousand feet and more sometimes. But with a Stirling it was called the flying coffin. And it was a coffin. It was a coffin. It was a nightmare to fly in.
DE: Yes.
AM: And we came back once with a Stirling and put the undercarriage down. And the starboard wheel went down and the port wheel went up and came out at the top of the wing and it shoved out the dinghy. And as the dinghy floated down to the ground it landed. It just missed a WAAF who was walking across the grass. And it just went, I’m sure, no more than, I doubt if it was six inches from behind her where it landed. And of course it would burst I should think and it would frighten the daylights out of her. I would think anyway. Because there was all the dinghy equipment with it as well. The transmitter and other equipment. So now we had to go to a place called Woodbridge and that was that. But I have missed that the first place we went to when we were flying was a place called a Market Harborough which was an OTU. This was after flying up in Scotland. And when we were flying in the OTU we were on night bombing exercises and we got airborne and I said to the skipper over the intercom, ‘Skipper, there’s a strong smell of petrol in the rear turret.’ So, he says, ‘Well keep me informed.’ So I said, ‘Ok skipper.’ So I rang up a bit later, I says, ‘It’s getting stronger, the smell of petrol.’ So he says, ‘Well it’s still reading ok Mac. I can’t understand what’s going on.’ So I called him a third time. I said, ‘It’s getting even stronger.’ So the fourth time I called him up I was soaked to the skin in petrol. I said, ‘My vest’s soaked in petrol. All my clothes. My flying clothes.’ And I said, ‘The bottom of the turret is full of petrol floating about on the floor.’ So he said, ‘Oh we’d better get back to base.’ This is night time. So we gets back to Market Harborough and coming in, in funnels.
DE: Yes.
AM: And almost about to land when the aircraft did an about turn. The engine cut out. One of the engines caught out. We did an about turn and she skimmed over the top of a building. Anyroad, we come down behind this building and we ran across two or three fields and as we were coming to slowing down I got the turret opened. I thought, well I’m not going to be in this. If it catches fire I don’t want to be about. So I sat on the turret the wrong way around. I’d got my legs dangling outside. And I had my parachute just in case it was needed. But this was before I landed I put it on but I’d still got it on. So anyway as we’re going along it was, it hit some bumps did the aircraft and the turret went up and down and threw me out. And as it threw me out the parachute caught on something. It caught in the wind and I got blown across this here field that I was in. On my back in the field. Anyroads, I managed to, you know just jettison the equipment.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And get up. And I was alright. I hadn’t got damaged in any way. And then I picked up my parachute up and I went to where the crew were congregating and the pilot, the farmer came up and he says — he used a bit of strong language. I won’t repeat that. I’ll leave that unsays. So I can leave that to anybody’s imagination. But what happened was, he says, ‘If you people,’ that’s the skipper he’s referring to, ‘If you people would get on with the war instead of playing about. Look what you’ve done to my corn field.’ He says, ‘You’ve nothing better to do than destroying my cornfield.’ He says, ‘We’re crying out for us to make production.’ And so he went into a blur about how he was being badly done to by aircrew not respecting him as though we’d come down there from choice which we’d not.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyroad, it had got quite flattened quite a bit. I would agree with him. But, and it was the middle of the night. It was dark. It wasn’t daylight. It was dark. Anyroad, we waited for transport to come and we went back to, to our place.
DE: Yes.
AM: We had to report it and give an explanation. Anyway, if we remember that. In a future episode of something this comes up again.
DE: Right. Ok.
AM: But it was on over in France where it occurred. We’d been on a raid in Germany and our route took us over Belgium at night time. And as we got crossing Belgium the anti-aircraft gun opened up on us and it hit the nose of the aircraft and blew a strip of aluminium off which was about fifteen to twenty foot long and about three to four foot wide. That was from behind the front turret right back to the where the pilot was. Not the pilot. The flight engineer who was sat next to the pilot. A great piece about that width stripped from the front turret right back to where he was. It had wiped out his controls on his dashboard. The skipper. It had ripped, the shrapnel had ripped through them. It had cut the navigator’s top of his flying boot, cut a big gash in it but didn’t damage his leg. Didn’t scratch his leg. And a piece of shrapnel went through the mid-upper gunner’s pannier of ammunition which was under his arms. One at each side. Went through it and stopped just below his arm. This big lump of shrapnel. And the aircraft, a piece had jammed in the controls when we were in a dive. And it had jammed the controls in such a way that the more he was pulling it to get us out it was getting tighter in the dive. So it wasn’t getting out the dive. It was getting us worse in to the dive.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
AM: So anyway, cut a long story short the skipper decides, ‘Well our time’s up now. Bale out.’ Well he gives the word bale out but I was, I didn’t find out then but I found out later, my intercom wire had been cut with the shrapnel so I didn’t hear the word bale out and I’m still looking for fighters in the rear turret. Getting my turret going from side to side to side to side. Up and down. Looking for fighters and that. We were in the searchlights. And we were going down. I thought we seemed to be going a long way down [laughs] anyway. Anyway, what happened was he decided after he’d told us to bale out he’d put it into a steeper dive and see if that would do any good. Which he did and the piece of shrapnel fell out. Because afterwards when we landed I went and found the piece of shrapnel that had caused the trouble. And I threw it into a field. I thought, you’ve done enough damage. We’re not keeping you anymore. So I threw it into the field. And anyway it got us out the dive and he cancelled the ‘Jump. Jump.’. But before he cancelled the, ‘Jump. Jump,’ Dougie who was at the front nearly got cut in two with this big piece of shrapnel that ripped the sheet of aluminium from the side.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And it just went above his head somehow. I don’t know how but this is what we were told. And Dougie baled out and landed in a wood. Now, Dougie the bomb aimer was a New Zealander. Also the skipper was a New Zealander. Hughie Skilling, the skipper —
DE: Yes.
AM: And Dougie Cruikshanks, the bomb aimer, were both from New Zealand and they both knew each other very well. And we had a crowd which was next to none. There was none, none to equal us. The friendship among us was unbelievable. It was absolute paradise to be in with them. They were a great crowd. The others as well as the skipper and the bomb aimer. The bomb aimer had gone now.
DE: Yeah.
AM: He’d landed in a forest at night time. And he says, I got, a lot of things he told me about what he did but they’d take too long to tell. He buried his stuff, his equipment. What he had. And came out of the wood. He didn’t know which way to go. He says, ‘I just picked and came and I came across a road.’ There was no traffic on the road whatsoever. He says, ‘I started walking and I thought am I walking the right way? I think I am.’ Anyroads, he says, ‘I’m walking west. I think. And arguing with himself. ‘Am I going west. Am I going east?’ And he says, ‘I had quite an argument with myself what I was doing.’ He says, ‘Until I come to a bend in the road. When I turned the bend , lo and behold just round the bend was two Germans there with rifles with fixed bayonets.’ He says, ‘Now what do I do? He says, ‘If I turn around and run away they’ll shoot me in the back.’ He said, so he said, ‘I pulled my shoulders back,’ he says, ‘And I marched past them in military fashion and they never says a word to me. They carried on talking.’ He says after marching past the two German sentries he says, ‘I came to — ’ I think he said it was an American sentry but I could be wrong about this. It might be a British sentry but I understood it to be an American sentry. And he took him in at bayonet point. Took him to his commanding officer. And his commanding officer said, ‘Oh, you’ve got another one have you?’ So Dougie pricked his ears up. Another one? Another one what? And he says, ‘We’ve got two of you Germans tied up outside. We’re going to, you’ll be tied up out there with them and the three of you will all be shot together.’ So he says, ‘You’re going to shoot me? What for?’ So they says, ‘Because you’re only pretending to be a New Zealander.’ He told them he was New Zealand. He says, ‘You’ve only told us you’re New Zealand but we don’t believe you. Not the way you’re talking. You speak better language than that in New Zealand.’ So anyroads they got him outside and were about to tie him up and shoot him with the other two that were supposed to be Germans in RAF uniform. So Dougie come out with some language. And the officer said, ‘Let that man go. The Germans couldn’t know such language. And so, Dougie, as I say, everything’s got a purpose. Well bad language had a purpose there.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And it saved Dougie from being shot. Now, they let him go and he went to Brussels from there, and when he got to Brussels he came to a meeting of squaddies and [pause] what do they call the announcer? Richard Dimbleby.
DE: Yes.
AM: Richard Dimbleby was talking and sending messages back. New Year messages back from the front line. And one of the soldiers says to Richard Dimbleby, ‘We’ve got an airman here why don’t you interview him?’ So he says, ‘Where is he? Put your hand up, the airman.’ So Dougie put his hand up. So he invited him to come to him. So he says, ‘How do you come to be where all these soldiers are? Where’s all your crew?’ So he says, ‘I’ve baled out of a Lancaster and I’ve been in a wood and I’ve walked so many miles on the road and I’ve been taken prisoner by,’ whether it was American or whoever it was, and he says, ‘They’ve let me go because I’ve used such bad language with them.’ So he explained this to Richard Dimbleby and Richard Dimbleby says, he says, ‘Where are you from then?’ He says, ‘I’m from New Zealand. From Christchurch.’ Which he was then. But after the war, since the war, I’ve been to New Zealand. The skipper invited me for a fortnight’s holiday at his place at Christchurch. And then when Dougie knew I was there he wasn’t, we were real good mates Dougie and I, and I met Dougie. We had to go to Dougie’s from Hughie Skilling’s place in Christchurch and it was a fair way. I should say it was twenty miles from where the skipper lived. But Dougie wanted to see me.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And when he saw me he put his arm around my shoulder and he says, oh, ‘Thanks for being our rear gunner.’ So that, that was Dougie. Anyway, we had a nice little natter did Dougie and I, and Hughie Skilling. We had a natter about things. And I think I mentioned about what the Germans said to Hughie. They called us Skilling’s Follies.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they’d sent word back that they would soon be having Skilling. So he said, ‘Before you get me you have to get our two gunners first.’ So he said, ‘You’ve got to get through them and then you might get me.’
DE: Was, was your aircraft painted up with the name on the side?
AM: No.
DE: No.
AM: No. We had. We didn’t have our own aircraft. The commanding officer used to let Hughie fly his aircraft which was VNG-George. But we didn’t always get his aircraft because other people were using it as well.
DE: Right.
AM: So we — sometimes we’d get T. T-Tommy. X-Xray. It could have been any aircraft. It’s in the logbook.
DE: Yeah.
AM: What the aircraft we flew in.
DE: How did the Germans know about Skilling’s Follies then do you think?
AM: Well [pause] well on our drome we had a spy. Not if. We did. Definitely. No matter what anybody says, we did. And what happened was one day I was going into the office block where the people — where we used to have briefings. Part of the building. And this officer came to me. He says, ‘Mac.’ So I thought he knows me. I don’t know him. Who he is. I thought who are you? So he says ‘Are you going in to,’ oh I was going to say Scunthorpe, ‘Are you going in to Lincoln? Are you?’ So, I said, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Would you do a little job for me?’ So I said, ‘What’s that?’ He says, ‘Do you know where the taxidermist is in Lincoln?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ So I says, ‘Isn’t it somewhere near the station? Near the railway station isn’t it?’ he said, ‘That’s right. Yes. It is.’ So I says, ‘Oh fair enough.’ I said, ‘I just want to check up.’ He says, ‘Well I want you to take this if your will and leave it at taxidermist.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He says, ‘It’s a bird.’ And it was in a packet. And he said, ‘I want you to take this to have it dealt with by the taxidermist.’ But I did know what a taxidermist was then but it wasn’t long previous to that before when I didn’t know what it meant. But anyroads I’d got to know what it meant and I took this parcel to this taxidermist. And afterwards I thought to myself [pause] I had a lot of thoughts about this encounter but I’ll not say what they were. And since the war it’s come to my notice several other things. And it was, they tried to find out. In fact, we had a do where Wing Commander Flint gave us a warning about something and he looked at me and I thought are you going to tell everybody I’ve taken a parcel there? I don’t want you to say that because it would look as though I’m working in league with the — whoever might be the, might be the ones. Anyroads, it didn’t work out that way. It was maybe my thoughts and maybe thinking too much of myself.
DE: You were worried there was a message inside the bird.
AM: Yeah. I was.
DE: Yeah.
AM: I thought, oh don’t say I’ve collaborated with the, with the enemy. And anyway it seemed that since then I’ve got to know various other bits of information and I wasn’t alone in my thoughts.
DE: Right.
AM: And apparently other people had been asked by this officer to take things in to the taxidermist. Now where would an officer get things from to take to a taxidermist? Only the same as anybody else. I know. And we were in the country yes.
DE: Yes.
AM: But I never saw any livestock there of any kind. At anyroads that’s another story altogether. But I don’t know what happened with that. Whether anything happened or not but I’ve thought to myself I wished I could get on to that roof and just have a look. See what type of aerials, if any, are still up there. And you could find out what frequency they were on then.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyways, that was, it’s just thoughts.
DE: So how did you hear about the message from the Germans about Skilling’s Follies?
AM: Well I’ve met people at meetings. At the reunions. And different people have said about remarks about it. And they said, ‘We know you’ve taken a parcel.’ I said, ‘Yes I have. I can’t deny that.’ I said, ‘But it looked very much, very bad for me,’ I said, ‘Taking this parcel. I don’t know what was in it.’ But they said, ‘Well you shouldn’t have taken it.’ I said, ‘Well I can say that myself now, I says, ‘But at the time it was an officer and it was just a parcel as far as I was concerned and I took it.’ But it maybe wasn’t. I don’t know. But anyroad, that’s the way it went and I heard since that they come to the conclusion that it was that place where the information was being taken to.
DE: Right.
AM: Now whether it was or not I don’t know and I can’t say. I can repeat what I’ve been told but that’s gossip.
DE: Yes. Of course. Yes. So what station was this? Where was this?
AM: Skellingthorpe.
DE: It was Skellingthorpe.
AM: Yeah. And we know when we went on raids they were waiting for us. You don’t wait for somebody on a ‘drome or in a specific area unless you have information to, to confirm what you’re thinking. That they will be coming there and they were literally waiting for us. And this happened several times and you was outnumbered with fighters. So I mean it wasn’t, it wasn’t by accident it was by somebody had got it right. That they were getting information from the station.
DE: Were these daylight operations or at night?
AM: All raids. Night and day. So we certainly got a good clobbering wherever we went. So — they always seemed to be on the ball, the Germans. As though, as though you couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes. But I don’t think that was the truth at all. I think the truth was, as was says on the ‘drome, somebody was passing information back.
DE: I see.
AM: They definitely were. And then when they sent a pilot back. Now, I’ll give you a little example. I was a witness to a crash there. Our site for VNG then was at the long runway which was east to west. At the west end of the runway and on the south side of the runway at the end — say if that’s the runway. Taking off in funnels we were all in a line around here. 61 Squadron around that side. 50 Squadron around this side and we’d be one after the other going. One 50, one 61.
DE: Yeah.
AM: One 50, one 61 ‘til we’d all taken off. And what happened was that [pause] I’m losing myself now. What happened? Oh this memory. Its —
DE: So you’re all taking off and it’s a story of when they were waiting for you.
AM: Yeah. We — oh we were parked here at this end of the runway. That’s it. I’ve got it.
DE: At the dispersal.
AM: We were parked at the exit end of the runway. So by the time they got to where we were parked, just in front of us and that the rear turret was facing the end of the runway and we was getting ready to go on the same raid.
DE: Yes.
AM: And I was doing my drill in the rear turret. Anyway, watching the aircraft take off — one of them, I thought there’s something wrong with him. He kept low. He didn’t climb like the others. The others took off and climbed.
DE: [unclear] Yeah.
AM: Up and up until they got to the height and set on the direction they were going but he didn’t. He went over Skellingthorpe village and I should imagine he very nearly hit some of the chimney tops. But he turned around and came back and when he got over the end of the runway and only just on it he dropped like a stone. And of course it was the whole bomb load went up and he went up and that was the end. There was nothing to be seen after that. And I thought oh they’ve all had that. And unbeknown to me the rear gunner, one of the ground staff saw something gleaming in the — he’d been cycling his bike somewhere. I don’t know where. And he’d seen a light shining in the hedge bottom somewhere. A ditch.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And he’d gone to this and he’d found the rear turret. It had been blasted off the ‘drome in this into this ditch. And when he looked inside the rear gunner was there but he says he was black. He was all black. Which I can understand he would be. Anyroads, I learned a few days ago that he was, he was still alive up to two years ago. And he just died two years ago.
DE: Really.
AM: So, so I’m told. If I’m telling you wrong I’ve been told wrong. But that was unfortunate. The whole event was unfortunate because, and I had to go as a witness to relate what I’d seen and it didn’t end up there. With me things don’t just go from A to B. They go from A to B to C to D to E and it’s like a kangaroo jumping along with information. And what happened was, with me, was this. That when when it was reported everybody knew about it. The man that took off number one was Skillings and I should call him Squadron Leader Skilling.
DE: Yes.
AM: Because that’s what he was and he earned that title. He didn’t get it easy. He got it. He qualified and in my opinion he should have got even higher. He was an absolute wizard. He was out of this world as a pilot. He got us out of many difficulties. And what happened was his pal was the first one off. Now, he’d taken, he was up here when he, this one here was taking off.
DE: Yeah. Yes.
AM: So he hadn’t seen this one at all. And on his way to the target he’d got serious engine trouble and landed in a field in Germany. And they’d landed quite safely and they’d all got out safe.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they were trying to set fire to their aircraft which was the procedure and Fritz come up with machine guns and said, ‘If you go any further with that you’ll all be dead.’ So they had to abandon the setting fire to the, to the aircraft. So they were taken in and they said, ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know that all the crew are not dead on that aircraft that crashed.’ They’d not seen it. They were up there. Well away from the event happening so they didn’t know a thing about what they were on about. And they thought they were making a yarn about this other aircraft. They said, ‘But you’ll be pleased to know the rear gunner is still alive.’ Now, this is before they’d reached the target. They’d got this information. So surely that would verify that someone on the ‘drome was talking to the Germans in some way. Of course radio obviously. But they had this equipment and I mean, the building, if you look at the place where, If I could back to it, to the what do they call them again? Taxidermist is. There’s tall buildings. I think they’re three stories high. Well you’ve got a good height there above all the surrounding buildings. You’ve got a good clear run to get an aerial from up there to Germany. It would be ideal for a, for a sight to broadcast from. And of course you’d get all mixed signals from that area. From the railway. From other equipment. Bus companies. Various other places. There’d be signals of all kinds buzzing about in that area so they had a good cover.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they wouldn’t dither and dather doing. They’d have a code no doubt.
DE: Yes.
AM: And having a code they would condense their messages and make it as brief as possible. So obviously when one of them came back, was released by the Americans and it was this pilot. The Americans captured the ‘drome where he was.
DE: Yes.
AM: Not the ‘drome. The prison. Or the prison camp. Whatever it was where he was detained. And they told him, when he got back to Skellingthorpe would he tell Skilling that they were after him and that they’d soon have him. And they would have Skilling’s Follies as well. That we were the Follies.
DE: Yeah.
AM: The crew and anyway, they didn’t get us. And they nearly did once or twice but we had an event which was rather unusual. I never heard of it happening to anybody. Only us. And that was this. We were on a raid where, when the tannoy went it said, ‘Will the following nine aircrews please report to briefing room.’ Now nine aircraft. Not nine squadrons. Now usually there were twenty of 50 Squadron and twenty of 61 Squadron. ‘Would the following crew — 50 Squadron and 61 Squadron, report to the briefing room’. That was it, but with us, ‘Would the following pilots report to the briefing room.’ Skilling was one.
DE: Right.
AM: And when we got to the briefing room we thought what was this going to be about. And they says, Wing Commander Flint says, ‘We’ve a very difficult job on. We can only send nine aircraft to the target. And the target is a barge and this barge is in the Mittelland Canal. And its night time and it will be well guarded. And you’ve got to get in and sink it. It must be sunk or you must bust the banks of the canal. Whichever you do it’ll leave him stranded. Now, if this here barge gets through to where they’re hoping to get it to.’ Where ever that want it to be. I don’t know. They says that, ‘We’ve nothing to stop this tank. It’s so good. It’s the most powerful tank the Germans have ever made and if it gets through we haven’t a gun that’ll touch it and we’ve nothing otherwise will deal with it. So get it sunk and come back and tell us you’ve done it.’ So, anyroads we gets off and we goes to the target. And we, we had to start with of the nine. One malfunctioned on take off so it left eight. Enroute to the target there was a big red glow in the sky. The sky all lit up. And on our port side was two Lancasters. The far Lancaster was on fire and there was one between him and us and there was also one behind our tail. Just behind us. So that was three. Anyway, we’d not been going much further. Number two Lancaster now is on fire. So that was that. So we’d gone a bit further. Now it was our turn. The mid-upper screamed, ‘Corkscrew port. Go.’ And we go straight down and all of a sudden there was such a row above the turret and a rocket passed the top of the turret a few inches and it filled the turret with fumes as it went by. It had missed us with Johnny Meadows, our mid-upper giving the word corkscrew. He saved the day did Johnny. But it was a bad way of having to do it because it was one of those nights that’s absolutely, call it black black. It was absolutely so dark you couldn’t see a thing. We couldn’t see the ground. We couldn’t see another aircraft. And yet this Focke - Wulf 190 came head on and attacked us. And he come just above. Just scraping the top of the aircraft with his belly. And I got the guns and I thought, ‘Oh I can’t.’ You’re going to say why.
DE: Why?
AM: Because there was a Lancaster just behind us and if I’d fired at him I would have hit the Lancaster. It was just behind us. And I thought oh dear and I wondered if they’d crashed but they hadn’t. They hadn’t crashed but anyroads this Focke - Wulf come over at night time. Of all the times. I’ve never known of it before. Maybe other aircraft have had it but we’d never had an head-on attack. We’d had attacks from the side, from below and various places but never, never from in front. So that was that. And anyroads we, we had a good time of it because we was coming back from it and over Belgium the anti-aircraft unit opened up on us and that’s where they took the sheet off the side of the nose of the aircraft.
DE: Oh I see. Yeah.
AM: The full length of the nose of the aircraft was minus a sheet of aluminium about two to three feet wide.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Maybe more. I don’t know the exact measurement. But it was, I think, about the width of the this table.
DE: Did you manage to — Dougie baled out. Did you —
AM: Dougie baled out. Yes.
DE: Did you manage to make it back to England then?
AM: Yes, he did. And he came back and when he came back the skipper says to us all, ‘We’re going out. I’ve got permission. We’re going out tonight to celebrate Doug’s survival. And we were taking Dougie in to Lincoln.’ So I says, ‘Good.’ Now I’m ready and everybody’s ready and Dougie’s ready and Dougie hung back. And somehow I get the feeling he wanted to talk to me. I don’t know how I knew but I did. And Dougie hung back and I hung back and he got hold of me and he says, ‘Mac.’ I says, ‘You’re not.’ So he says, ‘What do you mean?’ I says, ‘You know what I mean. You’re going to tell me that you’re yellow.’ He says, ‘I was. I was yellow.’ He says, ‘I was the only one that bailed out.’ I says, ‘Dougie you wasn’t yellow. You carried out what you was instructed to do and did it as you was told to do it. You was on the ball. That’s the only crime you committed. You was on the ball. You got out the aircraft when you should.’ Well underneath, Dougie, the bomb aimer, is a hatch about this square.
DE: Yes.
AM: And it’s easy for him to just jettison that. I mean I would have to find out how to do it but he knew how to do it. And he zipped it out and he was straight out. Followed the instructions and he landed with his parachute in the forest. Yeah. And from there onwards he ended up as a prisoner of war to be shot for being a German spy. That was Dougie.
DE: Yeah.
AM: The New Zealander. The skipper was a New Zealander as well. Hughie Skilling.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And he was pretty well known. Whatever station we went on, ‘Hiya Skilling. That’s the bloke that taught me to fly.’ And this was, wherever we went somebody did this. Every ‘drome we went to.
DE: Wonderful.
AM: Never missed. He taught ever so many people to fly. That was him. He had a marvellous reputation and he had with us.
DE: Yes.
AM: As his crew we couldn’t have picked a better man.
DE: So what was your job in the crew?
AM: What was —?
DE: Your job. You were a rear gunner. What did, what did that entail?
AM: Well I was just in charge. I had four guns there and all I had to do was to keep the tail clear or the side or wherever my guns would face I had to patrol that area visually. And I did do. And I never stopped. I never wore glasses. I never sat down ever. Every minute of my flying was stood up. If you look at my logbook you’ll see how many hours I’ve been on trips. I’d been to Munich and back and never sat down. It was too risky I thought and so I never sat down for that reason. I thought at times it’s proved to be successful. I’ve seen aircraft and the skipper says, ‘Well keep him under view Mac until he comes into range and then see what you can do.’ We had one that followed us for quite some way. I said, ‘Skipper we’re being followed with a JU88,’ and he was on our starboard side. So I thought well I’ll let him know. I said, ‘And I don’t think he’s coming in to attack.’ He said, ‘What do you think he’s doing then?’ I said, ‘He’s finding out where we’re going to and he’s keeping us in view and if he follows us we’ll take him to the target.’ And I said, ‘He’s out of range of my guns.’ So he says, ‘Well when he comes into range give him something.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry. We’re only waiting for him to do that but he’s not. He’s a wise bod. He knows full well if he comes any nearer he’ll get a congratulation.’ But anyroads he didn’t. He just cleared off. I think he’d had enough of us. He’d followed us for a quarter of an hour at least. We did have occasions when we brushed with them but usually we were fortunate. We managed to keep out of their way so to speak.
DE: I see.
AM: Yeah. So we didn’t get any damage from fighters. We got [laughs] we got some awakenings at times when he suddenly spotted one. We wondered what he was going to do but usually they went for other aircraft. And we was fortunate.
DE: Did you open fire at any?
AM: No. No. I never, never fired one bullet. Not on active service.
DE: But you kept your eye open.
AM: I was never in a position where I could fire at one. They came near us and as soon as they saw that you were taking precautions they cleared off and went for somebody else that maybe hadn’t seen them.
DE: So did you call corkscrew and that was enough?
AM: Well yeah but, oh we did corkscrew a few times. We had to do but when you did that — well I’ll tell you what did happen with the two squadrons. They sent, the newspaper sent an article, I don’t know which newspaper it was, could they send some reporters to find out what it was like on a raid? And the squadron, this was before I was on the squadron. I’m repeating what I was told. And we were told that yes they could send some reporters and we’d fix them up. There’s two squadrons. Twenty in each squadron. There’s forty aircraft. How many are you going to send? They sent five. Well four of them went with 61 Squadron. Two in one aircraft and two in another. And one came in one of 50s aircraft. And the two that went in the 61 aircraft they didn’t come back. The one that came in 50 Squadron he came back and he’d got so many bones broken. He’d corkscrewed and he got thrown about the aircraft and he ended up in hospital. So that was [laughs] I don’t like laughing at it but it was unfortunate for them that they couldn’t have been instructed before they went in what to do in a corkscrew.
DE: So what would you have to do to —?
Well you get a firm grip on somewhere otherwise you are going to get thrown about. And if you get thrown about he’s trying to be as vicious as he can with the aircraft. You’re going to get some rough treatment and there’s only one thing to do and that’s hang on. I mean I was stood up in the turret. When we went in to corkscrew I held on to the two supports and of course I could still stand up. Even in a corkscrew. Well they wouldn’t know this.
DE: No.
AM: But I did. I wasn’t there when they did it so I mean so I couldn’t say do it because I didn’t know. I never seen them. But it was unfortunate for them what had happened. I never did find out whether the others were prisoners of war or what happened to them but certainly the one that was on our squadron I did hear about him. And as I’ve, as I just said he got so many bones broken. What they were exactly I don’t know.
DE: No.
AM: I didn’t enquire.
DE: No.
AM: So —
DE: Oh dear.
AM: But it was a vicious thing was a corkscrew and it got you out of trouble.
DE: Yeah.
AM: So that was some of the things. There was other things but —
DE: What sort of other things?
AM: Well what can I think? I’ve not given it much thought really [pause] Well yes we went to a target where it was terrible weather conditions. Really bad. And it was in a mountainous area. If I looked in the logbook I maybe could find where it was because we landed at Tangmere when we come back. We’d no petrol. We were registering empty in the tanks. But anyroad I’ll tell the story from the off.
DE: We’ve got the logbooks scanned so we can look that up later. Yeah.
AM: Well the place that I’m referring to it was a bad trip because it was ice all the way there. And lumps of ice had fallen off the aircraft. We was having a job to keep our altitude. Anyway, we gets to the target area and we goes in and we makes an orbit of the circuit. And enroute to the target, just before we reach the target, what seemed to me to be in an aircraft a few yards but it maybe was miles. There was, on the mountainside, on the same level as us, the mountain at each side of us and on the port side of us looked, on a ledge on this mountain was an area all lit up. And I says, ‘Oh that’s a listening post.’ There was a good array of aerials and that on it. I thought that’s a listening post that. I’ll bear that in mind and mention it if the opportunity crops up. Anyroads, we gets to the target, we goes in to bomb, comes out the run. ‘How many bombs did you drop Doug?’ ‘Not one. They’ve froze up.’ So, ‘Right we’ll go around again.’ So we goes around again. ‘How many bombs did you drop this time Dougie?’ ‘None. They’re all froze up.’ ‘Why? Did you have the heaters on?’ ‘The heaters have been on all the time, skipper. They’ve never been off. They’re on, and they’ve been on all the time.’ ‘And we haven’t dropped a single bomb?’ He says. ‘No. We’ve got the cookie and the five hundred pounders.’ So we goes around again. The third time. No. We haven’t dropped one. So we goes around for the fourth time and they dropped the, I don’t know how many of the thousand pounders dropped but some of them dropped. But not the cookie. That’s the four thousand pounder. So the skipper says, ‘Dougie—’ Oh I haven’t mentioned this part here — this was Dougie’s thorn. This is the thorn in Dougie’s side. I didn’t tell you this part. At briefing Wing Commander Flint said, ‘We’re getting very short of four thousand pounders. And if for any reason you don’t drop your thousand pounder — four thousand pounder, I want to know the reason why you’ve dropped it, where you’ve dropped it and how you’ve dropped it.’ He said, ‘And I want a good explanation if you’ve dropped it.’ And he said, ‘You’re in for it.’ So anyroads we comes out and the skipper says, ‘Right, Dougie. We’ll have to get rid of it somewhere.’ So Dougie says, ‘You can’t.’ So skipper says, ‘Why can’t we?’ He said, ‘Well you heard what Wing Commander Flint says. If we can’t drop any four thousand pounder we’ve to bring it home or he wants an explanation why not.’ So he said, ‘Well we can give him one.’ So Dougie said, ‘What’s that?’ So he says, ‘We won’t reach base if we carry it. We’ve been around four times Dougie,’ he said, ‘And we’re getting a bit short of petrol. As it is we’ll be lucky if we reach the French coast.’ So he says, ‘Oh we will will we?’ So he said, ‘Well, I don’t care what you say. I say drop it.’ So the skipper says, ‘Well we’ve got to drop it before we get to the coast because we call it galloping petrol down.’ So he says, ‘We’ll have a vote on it, Dougie. Mac —rear gunner. What do you say?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Mid-upper?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Wireless op?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Navigator? Drop it.’ ‘Flight engineer?’ ‘ Drop it.’ ‘Pilot? Drop it.’ But I think he said, ‘I think we’ve won.’
DE: Yeah.
AM: So he said, ‘Will that do Dougie?’ So he says, ‘Well I’m voting against it.’ So he said, ‘Dougie if we do,’ he says, ‘I’ll guarantee we won’t reach the French coast if we take it back.’ ‘We won’t?’ He said, ‘We’ll be lucky now if we reach the French coast.’ And as it turned out we, he dropped it on this here, this here sight which I said was the listening post and he got a bullseye on it. And they forgot one thing. They forgot to take the difference in altitude of that from dropping a bomb. It was so many thousand feet up, this.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And that should, that should have been added to the distance between us and the height they dropped the bomb from. But they didn’t do that. They forgot about it. Well the aircraft got such a smack. The skipper says, ‘Mac, are you alright in the tail?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Thank goodness for that.’ He says, ‘Has any damage been done?’ I says, ‘Not that I know of.’ So he said, ‘Are you sure? Wireless op go and have a look down the fuselage. See if there’s any damage. I’m sure we’ve got some damage somewhere.’ But we hadn’t. We’d got no damage. So we heads for the French coast now. And I heard them talking as we were crossing The Channel there, ‘We’ll be lucky if we make the coast. We might have to ditch.’ Anyroad, we landed at Tangmere. And we got, we stayed there the night and got petrolled up and back to base but we wouldn’t have done with a cookie.
DE: No.
AM: It was a good job we got rid of it. So in the report they put down that we’d hit this here listening post. Which they did. They got a bullseye. Because they hadn’t, there wasn’t much difference, there wasn’t much difference in the height between them and us. But these are little side kicks to what made flying interesting. You did get little kicks now and again that boosted you up when you saw it happening to them and not to us.
DE: Yes.
AM: But, but then when you sat down seriously thinking oh aren’t we stupid. We’re bombing their lovely buildings that they’ve taken centuries to build. The pride and joy of Germany. We’re knocking them down.
DE: Yeah.
AM: They’re doing the same here. They’ve come to Coventry. They’ve knocked beautiful buildings down there that’s been up for centuries. And this is the thoughts that go through your mind. We must be mad to instigate such things as killing each other like we do as though it’s the right thing to do. But it’s not. It’s the wrong thing to do. But anyroad that was, that was it. There was other occasions when things happened but you can’t — I couldn’t bring them all to mind at the moment. Maybe when I’m in bed and thinking what I’ve said today. Maybe these things will come to my mind which they do when you’re not in a position to relate them.
DE: That’s always the way. Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. The memory does strange things.
AM: Yeah. We had some close dos. But we could rely on the skipper. He was, he was A1. Absolutely A1. And he invited us to their home in New Zealand for a fortnight’s holiday and the wife and I went and we had a marvellous time there. And as I’ve said we went to Dougie’s.
DE: Yes.
AM: Yeah. He says, ‘I’m pleased you was our rear gunner.’ [laughs] I don’t know why but that’s what he says.
DE: That’s good.
AM: So anyroads.
DE: How many operations did you do?
AM: I don’t know. I’ve not counted. It would be about twenty eight I think. Something like that.
DE: So what happened at the end of the war in Europe?
AM: Well what happened to me was we got a direct hit at the tail end of the aircraft and I was stood, in front of me it was open and I was stood there. The next thing I knew I was laid on the floor. And I come to and I could hear on my earphones Hughie shouting through the earphones. Oh I says, ‘Was you shouting me Hughie?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ he says ‘What happened?’ ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘You know that shell that hit us?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘It pulled my intercom out.’ I said, ‘It come unplugged.’ And he didn’t believe me but I thought I’m not going to tell him I’m laid on the floor. So anyroad, I got up off the floor and felt myself and I thought I’m alright. I says, ‘Everything’s alright at the back end here Hughie, I said, ‘It was just a bit near. That’s all.’ So anyroad, when we landed he says, ‘I want to see you.’ He says, ‘I don’t believe you.’ So I says, ‘Why? What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.’ I said, ‘What about?’ He said, ‘You know what about. You told me you were alright, didn’t you? On the intercom.’ I said, ‘Well I am.’ So he said, ‘You’re not.’ He says, ‘If you could see your eyes you would know why.’ So I says, ‘Well what’s wrong with my eyes? He said, ‘They’re all bloodshot. Both of them. They’re in a hell of state,’ He said, ‘You’re going to the medical centre.’ ‘ No,’ I said, ‘I aren’t. I’m alright Hughie.’ He says, ‘Mac we rely too much on you to for you to go up like that. You couldn’t see properly.’ I said, ‘I can see alright.’ And I thought I could. Apparently I was in hospital for a fortnight. But anyroad they kept me in. They wouldn’t let me out.
DE: Which hospital was that?
AM: It wasn’t. It was the army hospital — Air Force hospital. So, and I says, ‘Can I go back to flying?’ And they says, ‘Oh not again.’ I says, ‘Well I don’t want to be here.’ I says, ‘I appreciate what you’re doing but I don’t want to be here. I want to be back with my crew.’ I said, ‘I’ve only two more ops to do. Or one to do. I don’t know how many,’ I says, ‘And then we’ve finished the tour.’
DE: Yes.
AM: He says —
DE: Yes. Did they not fly without you then?
AM: No. They got another gunner.
DE: Right.
AM: I don’t know who he was. But anyroad they got another gunner and he took my place for the last two or the last one. I don’t know if there was one or two we had to do. So —
DE: So were you in hospital at the end of the war in Europe then?
AM: Near enough.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Anyway, they doctored me up in there and I think I could have managed without. I think I could anyway. I think they were taking precautions but they’d no need to. I was alright.
DE: Sure.
AM: I thought I was anyway.
DE: Yeah.
They said, ‘No, you’re not. Not again.’ I said, ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Just let me go and,’ I says, ‘I’ll get back with my crew and then that’s it. You’re finished. You’ll not put up with me.’ So they wouldn’t. They said, ‘No. You’re stopping here a bit longer.’ I was there for a fortnight. Anyroad, that was that. So that was the only incident I had. And it wasn’t too bad either. I mean I didn’t know much about it [laughs] I was just laid on the floor. And, oh a young lady in there in one of those photographs. Is she, oh she’s in here. This young lady — we meet her at the meetings. In our reunions.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Where is she? That’s — have you seen them?
DE: I’ve seen those ones. Yeah.
AM: You’ve seen them. And that young lady there in the middle. Yeah. That young lady there her husband was on the same raid as us and he got killed. He got shot down and he was killed. She enquired until she got to us and ever since then she’s, she’s clung to us. She’s from Wales somewhere. And when we go to the meetings she makes a beeline for us on account of us being on the same raid as her husband.
DE: I see.
AM: I don’t know what the connection is except her husband unfortunately, he come unstuck there. We were lucky. We got through.
DE: Yeah. Do you go to a lot of reunions then?
AM: I’ve been to quite a few.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. When I can go I go.
DE: I see. And what did you do after the RAF?
AM: I went back. I was an electrician. And I were working in Hull. I were working on mine sweepers. And I worked on — I think it was called the Virago. I don’t battleships. I don’t know whether it was a destroyer or a cruiser. It was a fairly big ship. Plenty of guns on it and plenty of anti-submarine equipment. And with ASDIC and sonar on it. And I was lucky with that because I struck with a note with a man that was piped on board ship. And the man that was the captain of this ship was called Crumpelow. A navy ship this is I’m referring to.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they piped this officer aboard on ship and he says, ‘I want you all to hide out the way while we’re bringing him on board ship. We don’t want him to see any of you.’ So we says, ‘Ok fair enough.’ So I was a charge hand then and I says, ‘We’ve got to keep out of sight while this officer’s coming aboard ship.’ So they says, ‘Ok. We can manage that alright.’ So we goes down below. Down in the bilges.
DE: Yes.
AM: Gets out the way. And he came and he went. And then we were working on the ASDICs and when a few days later on I had a “Practical Wireless” in my back pocket. And I was working down below in the ASDICs with the rest of the squad and I felt someone lift this book out of my back pocket. I thought who’s taken that? And I turned around. He says, ‘It’s alright. I’m not pinching it. I’m only looking at it.’ And it was this officer that they’d piped on board the ship. So he says, ‘What are you going to make out of this?’ So I says, ‘Well I’m thinking of making that condenser analyser.’ So he says, ‘Well do you know,’ he says, ‘I don’t know if my qualifications are good enough,’ he says, ‘But what I use for doing that, nothing as complicated as what you’re going to make.’ He says, ‘This is what I use. A pair of earphones and a resistor. And I calibrate the variable resistance with the earphones across the condenser,’ he says, ‘And I have a set of condensers that I have that are calibrated and are precision ones,’ and he says, ‘I use them to work out what the ones are that I’m putting in. He says, now then, only me can use this now because my hearing and your hearing and anybody else’s is not the same. The earphones are calibrated to my hearing. Not to yours.’ He says, ‘If you make this you’ve got one of the best condenser analysers there is in the market. He says, ‘And that’s what I use on this here ASDICs and Sonar’
DE: I see. Yeah.
AM: So he says, ‘Send this for this CPO, chief petty officer will you?’ — to this bloke that was with him. So he went and he came back with this chief petty officer. He says, ‘If this man wants any gear out of the radio room —’ the pantry he called it. I think he called it a pantry, he says, ‘Give him it. But he will return it. He’s not getting given it for good he’s being loaned it. And I’m giving him, sanctioning that he can have anything he wants out of that radio stockroom and he can have the use of it providing he brings it back.’ So I thought well how good of him and he didn’t know me from Adam. And from there onwards we were the best of pals. We really got on, you know, really well. He was a smashing fellow. Really nice. I thought he was anyway. I could have made a life-long friend of him.
DE: Marvellous.
AM: So that was, that was a little bit there about that. I think they called it the Virago.
DE: Right.
AM: I might have got the name wrong because it was a long time since now.
DE: Sure.
AM: That’s what I was doing. Working on ships.
DE: Can I just take you back? A couple of things you started to talk about and then, and then we’ll press on with it.
AM: Yeah.
DE: You had a crash landing at Woodbridge.
AM: We had. We had four crash landings at Woodbridge.
DE: Did you?
AM: Yeah. We had a Lancaster got a burst tyre, with shrapnel that was. And the undercarriage was damaged and we landed with one wheel down and we didn’t know whether it would stay up or not because it had come down of its own accord. Not selected down. We landed with a Lancaster. We landed with a Stirling. And we crash landed at Juvincourt in France and we landed in a field there on New Year’s Eve after we’d been to Mittelland Canal. Yeah. I think it was the Mitteland Canal we went to and we got clobbered there but we got the two engines — the port engines on fire and the port wing on fire. We got the controls damaged. They got the intercom to the rear turret damaged. There was quite a lot of damage done and got the bits stripped off the front which was twenty foot long.
DE: Oh this was when Dougie baled out.
AM: Yeah.
DE: Right.
AM: And it was all —
DE: So you crash landed in France after that.
AM: At a place called Juvincourt. Which is just about approximately three miles. I’m estimating this as approximately three miles north of Reims. And we landed there and I had a marvellous time there myself for several reasons. First of all when we landed there an officer came up with a sten gun. It was night time and we was in the middle of a field. We said, ‘What have you brought that for?’ He said, ‘Well yesterday,’ or last night, ‘An aircraft landed and a man come out the darkness and stabbed the pilot to death.’ So he says, ‘I didn’t want him to be setting about you people so I brought the sten gun. And if he comes tonight he’ll get his, what he’s earned because,’ he said, ‘I won’t mix my words. If he comes up I’ll not give him the chance to use the knife. He’ll have had it.’ But nobody came. So that was that. Now then, I mentioned early on when I was talking about Market Harborough and about the parachute packer.
DE: Yeah.
AM: That I would probably come back to that.
DE: Oh yes.
AM: Now, when we handed our parachutes in, ‘Oh its McDonald is it?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘I suppose you want something do you?’ He said, ‘Yes I do. I want my seven and six pence.’ So I said, ‘What did I tell you I did?’ He said, ‘You told me that when you flew over Germany you emptied your pockets, left it in the billet and when the airmen there knew you wasn’t coming back they was to spend it.’ I said, ‘That’s right. Well,’ I said, ‘That’s what’s happened tonight. My money’s still back in the billet. I haven’t got a penny piece on me.’ I said, ‘I’m not giving my money to the Germans. Not as a prisoner.’ I said, ‘So I’m sorry you’re out of luck again. ’So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what,’ I says, ‘When I can and if I see you again I’ll have the seven and sixpence and you’ll get it.’ And I have. I’ve three half crowns in a cupboard at home waiting for the day that I ever meet him again. And if I do or if I can contact him he’ll get his seven and sixpence. So that was it. We had a good natter him and I. You know. A sort of friendship builds up don’t it?
DE: Yeah.
AM: You can tell whether anybody’s friendly with you or whether they’re aggravated at what you say. And at first with him an immediate friendship. We struck it off together.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyway that was that. Now, after meeting him I went to the cookhouse and he says, ‘I wonder if any of you likes turkey?’ So I said, ‘I do.’ So he said, ‘How much did you want?’ So I said, ‘How much can we have?’ So he says, ‘You can have as much as you want,’ he said, ‘We’re on American rations here,’ he said, ‘And we’ve got that much turkey it’s going to have to be thrown away.’ And he says, ‘I don’t like throwing food away.’ So I said, ‘Well you’ve no need to do that.’ I says, ‘Can I have just turkey on my plate? No potatoes. Nothing at all but just turkey.’ ‘You can, he said, ‘With pleasure. And I’ll pile it up.’ So he did. So when the other, the rest of the crew says, ‘What’s up with you? Haven’t they got any vegetables?’ I said, ‘Yeah. If you want them.’ So they says, ‘What do you mean if you want them? Well you get vegetable normally with your turkey.’ I says, ‘Well, he asked me did I want turkey? I says yes. He says how much do you want? I says can I just have turkey? He says yes you’ll be very welcome to have turkey. And he says and he’s filled my plate up.’ And I says, ‘I think if you people asked for the same as me he’d be very pleased because he doesn’t want to throw it away.’ So they went up and they says, ‘Is he speaking the truth? And he says, ‘Why? What did he say?’ He says we could have turkey and no vegetables.’ He says, ‘Yeah you can if you want.’ ‘Oh. We’ll have just turkey then.’ So the rest of the crew had turkey. But I haven’t mentioned this so far. That when we were in our orbit we were in a dreadful state at that time. The aircraft that is. Not us. We were alright. And the tannoy, the intercom was going and this aircraft had obviously heard us talking to ground control. Heard our pilot talking to ground control. And he says. ‘I hear that there’s another aircraft in the orbit the same as us. His two port engines on fire and the wing on fire. And we’re very short on petrol.’ He says, ‘I’m afraid I daren’t go around and make a proper landing the right way around. I’m going to have to land the wrong way around.’ Well that meant we were landing and we were going up to that end here and he was coming in this way. And we ran off the runway. We’d no brakes. Off the runway, across the perimeter track, across the grass verge into a field and in the middle of the field we came to a stop. Now it was right in line with the runway where we were right underneath the funnels. He came in low down and he made an excellent landing. He actually touched down on the perimeter track with three wheels. Now, I think that’s a marvellous landing. Because usually you’re a little way down the runway and then you touch your wheels down. Not him. He made sure they were down because they were the same as us. They’d got knocked to blazes with this anti-aircraft unit in, in — not France. In Belgium. And we were to find out after it had all happened and we were discussing it. Somebody says, ‘Well we’ve captured Belgium.’ And then it suddenly dawned on us it was our own anti-aircraft fire that had clobbered us. And it wasn’t our British anti-aircraft. It was our allies anti-aircraft that had shot us down. That had shot him down and then following him as he landed another one came in that had got the same again. And apparently this anti-aircraft unit of the Americans they only used anti-aircraft shells with proximity fuses in. So instead of passing your aircraft by missing it if it was at the side of your aircraft the proximity fuse would detonate the shell and you’d get an explosion at the side of you, which for them was a good thing. It was ideal. It brought the aircraft down. Which it did. So it brought three Lancasters down within a few minutes that were passing over the unit. So we were one.
DE: Right.
AM: And this other aircraft was the next one and then of course one followed him. He got clobbered the same.
DE: Oh dear.
AM: So three Lancasters were lost there. But nobody fortunately was injured on any three of them. So that was even better still.
DE: Yeah. That’s good.
AM: So Dougie, he was going to get shot.
DE: Yeah.
AM: He was the only casualty. But anyroad, he didn’t get shot. And anyroads things, things turned out for the better.
DE: Yes.
AM: Nobody was injured and Dougie got away scot free. Thank goodness.
DE: Wonderful.
AM: He got a good frightening I suppose. Tied up and they were going to shoot him.
DE: Yeah. Your tea’s probably cold now.
AM: Oh well. Not to worry.
DE: There’s a couple of points that you made and I sort of, I let them go because you didn’t seem to want to tell me but I’d like to just ask you again.
AM: Yeah. Don’t you.
DE: That the WAAF that you met at headquarters. I’d like to know who she was.
AM: Who she was?
DE: Yeah.
AM: Well to be quite honest with you I know very little about her except that she used to come with a young lady much younger than herself. And I took it for granted it was her daughter. So I was talking to her one day and I says, ‘You know your daughter?’ ‘Well, you don’t, you’ve not seen my daughter.’ I says, ‘Well I’m not blind. You come with her every time.’ ‘That’s not my daughter.’ I said, ‘Whose daughter is it then?’ She said, ‘Well what happened was I got put out my house.’ for some reason. She didn’t say what. ‘And that lady owns property in Grantham, and she accommodated me and I’m living with her. And that’s how I know her and that’s why she comes with me to these meetings. She likes coming to these Association meetings.’ And to be quite honest with you she was very friendly with me and I says, ‘Well, your mam,’ this — ‘My mam? You’ve not met my mam.’ So I says, ‘I have. That’s your mam isn’t it?’ ‘No. She’s not my mam.’ She says, ‘I’ve taken her in because she got put out of her house.’
DE: I see.
AM: So that’s, that’s how I know. Well I don’t know her from that really. I know from the fact that her husband was on the same raid as me and he got killed.
DE: Right. I see.
AM: So that was on a raid to Munich. I went twice to Munich. And apparently on one of the raids he was on it and he got killed. And she goes to see him. It’s somewhere in France where he’s buried. And they invite her over there and she goes each year and she says they make a right fuss of her. They’re ever so good to her. So that’s her. I don’t know her name. I couldn’t tell. I’ve never known her name.
DE: I see. Ok.
AM: I usually just go up to her and talk to her like maybe you from now on. Like maybe if I see you in the town, ‘Oh now then how are you?’
DE: Yeah.
AM: But I won’t say John, Charlie, Harry, Joe or Ken or whatever. I wouldn’t because I mean I don’t know. I would say, ‘Hello.’
DE: Right. I see. Ok.
AM: So that maybe explains that one.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Now what’s the second one?
DE: It was you were sort of alluding to some secrets at RAF headquarters.
AM: Yes I was. And I shall have to be very careful that I don’t mention it.
DE: Ok.
AM: It’s very very high.
DE: I can’t, I can’t persuade you to tell me the story.
AM: No. No. But I’m in a difficult position. I could tell you as easy as wink. I thought I’d given you a clue when I said to you, when I was in London at St John’s Wood I was presented to the Queen Mother.
DE: Yes. I think I’m with you. Say no more.
[pause]
DE: I think that’s been an absolutely wonderful interview. You’ve nearly been talking for two hours.
AM: Have I?
DE: Yeah. Your son’s about right. Yeah.
AM: And I’ve only told you a fraction of what happened.
DE: Well we can do all this all again if you’d be up for it another time. Just while the tape’s still going, what do you think, what’s your opinion on the way that Bomber Command has been remembered over the last seventy years?
AM: Well they’ve not, they’ve not given us any publicity whatsoever. I mean I heard the news during the war and to me our aircraft went to Hamburg. That’s it. No mention of losses or anything. And the Germans were so efficient that I was jealous of them. I was literally jealous because the Germans were so efficient with their aircraft with how they attacked. They didn’t, they didn’t make one false move and they were always on the ball. You could never take it for granted that they wouldn’t be waiting for you because they would. They were there all the time and they come in. They never hesitated. They’re straight in. We were more than fortunate. We really were fortunate. But a lot of people, I saw a lot of people go down as you can imagine. And I felt sorry for them that went down but you couldn’t do anything about it. You couldn’t reach them. If my guns would have reached that fighter I would have given him a burst. For example one night there was a Lanc behind us. We’d bombed the target and was coming away from it. And coming away from the target this here JU88 was just behind a Lancaster going that way. And this JU88 was here and he stopped, I should say no more than thirty foot from the rear turret. And I thought what’s going on. Why doesn’t he fire? Why doesn’t the Lanc fire? And neither of them fired at each other for minutes. I thought good grief if I could persuade my skipper to drop behind I’d give him a burst and he’d be down easy. And he didn’t fire at the German. And the German didn’t fire at him. And then all of a sudden the rear gunner, I don’t know that he’d got trouble with his guns. Something had been switched off or suddenly wasn’t working. That I don’t know but then he did open up and of course the JU88 went down. But it was ages before he did.
DE: Crikey.
AM: And I couldn’t understand that at all. It seemed to me to be ridiculous.
DE: It is strange.
AM: Anyroad, if I’d, if I’d had the courage to ask my skipper let us drop back I could have easily, we was a little bit above him. Not far. He wouldn’t be a hundred foot below us. Less than that but behind us.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And just a little bit below us. Anyroads, he got him. Oh did I give a cheer when I saw him fire. And I couldn’t understand it. I’ve never seen it before or since. I’ve seen plenty of ours go down. Not many, not many of theirs. There were some went down. Yes. But not many. They weren’t, they weren’t like our Battle of Britain where the Jerries were going down most of the time. So we’re told.
DE: How did that make you feel?
AM: It was war and I accepted it as such. You got to accept all sorts of boss-eyed things in the war haven’t you? Things are not normal by any means.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And I just accepted them for what they were. Sometimes I felt sorry. Sometimes I says whoopee. Depended which side it was.
DE: I know you says you used to leave all your money behind.
AM: Leave?
DE: You used to leave your money behind.
AM: Yes I did.
DE: Were you, were you frightened? Were you reconciled to not coming back some times?
AM: Well the possibility was very strong. That you wouldn’t. And I knew this. And I thought well they’re not going to have my money. I don’t care what happens. They’re certainly not having that. And so I left it behind and left it with the blokes in the billet. They knew where it was. They never touched it. So yeah that was just one of the things. There’s a lot of funny things in a war. Many funny things. You meet people you never dreamed that you would rub shoulders with and you get things happen to you you’d never think would happen but they do. War is a funny thing. It’s a mixture of all mix and manders. Absolutely. It really is. I’ve been on a ship and I was on a ship between Ireland and Stranraer and there was a raging storm in the Irish Sea. And I was violently sick. And I went up on the deck and a wave — I got stuck between one of those —I think they call them air funnels. They’re not letting gasses out. They’re taking the air in down to the boiler room. And I got wedged between that. And it was the only thing that stopped me getting washed overboard. The wave came over the side and over me. And my great coat [laughs] and everything on me was wet through. And I thought well I don’t care if I get washed overboard. I was that fed up of being ill. I don’t care. I don’t care if I get drowned. That was it and that was the way it was. At night time by the way. Not day time. And then to end it a destroyer or a cruiser, or some, some navy ship shone his searchlight on us and then he put it off and they’d see me on the deck. Whether that put them off or not I don’t know but they put the searchlight off and we just progressed getting back to Stranraer. So, but I didn’t mention another little thing. Whilst we were at Juvincourt I went to our Lanc when we got up in the morning. I didn’t get any sleep. But the night time — oh I didn’t tell you that part. We got into bed. That’s the yarn.
DE: Right.
AM: Now I got into the bed and the bed tilted. If that’s the bed it’s there. I got in to the bed at this side.
DE: Yes.
AM: And this is what happened.
DE: It went through ninety degrees. Yeah.
AM: I’d never heard of this before but anyroad I ended up on the floor. So I got my tunic and I wedged one side of it and I thought well I’ll sleep at that side, but then my tunic crumpled up or whatever you call it and of course that side went that way [laughs] where the tunic was. So I thought I’m not messing about any more. I didn’t get any sleep at all that night. They were all having a good laugh at me being on the floor and under the bed twice. Anyway, to cut a long story short the next morning we gets up, we goes to breakfast and I says to Johnny, the mid-upper, I says, ‘Are you coming to have a look at VNG-George?’ He says, ‘Is that where you’re going?’ I says, ‘Yeah are you coming with me?’ So he said, ‘Yeah. I’ll come with you.’ We’ll have a look. See what damage has been done.’ So we went to, got on to VNG-George and we went up and oh what a mess it was inside. You’d have thought they had a gun inside the aircraft. There was holes all over the place. It was like a colander. And we went up front to where the skipper was. The dashboard was all smashed. And the seat where Hughie was there was a piece of shrapnel. Now, let’s get this right now. I’m going to say the wrong thing if I’m not careful. I know. I’ve got it. At the back of him was a sheet of armour plate like that.
DE: Yes.
AM: A half an inch armour plate behind the skipper. A half inch thick and the full width of his seat.
DE: Yeah.
AM: So he was protected from the back and just there on the seat was a piece of shrapnel. It had gone through the armour plating and were just sticking out at this side. But it hadn’t got enough force to go any further. It had finished there. And I tried to get it out and I’d not anything heavy to hit it with. I thought I’ll get that out and give it to the skipper because that’s the nearest he’s ever been to having a bit of shrapnel in him. And it would have got him at this, behind his shoulder because that’s where it was.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Where his shoulder would have been. Anyroad, we come out the aircraft and we saw the damage that was done and we saw the piece missing off the side of the starboard side of the aircraft. From the turret right back to the, where the flight engineer sits. You could see inside the aircraft all the way along. Anyroads we goes from there. I says, ‘Let’s look all the way around John. Let’s look at the ‘drome.’ Well there were debris all over the place. There was ammunition. There was guns. There was spades. There was uniforms. There was helmets. You name it, it was there. Where they’d been fighting on the ‘drome. Apparently according to our information we were told that they had only captured the ‘drome the day before we came. Before we landed there. And that there had been fighting on the ‘drome which they had. And so I said, ‘Come on let’s look around John.’ And we were walking along the perimeter track and it took several bends. And one of the bends we went around, ‘Look at that.’ ‘Well what about it? It’s only a Focke-Wulf 190.’ I says, I says, ‘I’m going on to that. I’m going to start if up if I can.’ He said, ‘Do you think you can?’ I says, ‘I don’t know. I’ll find out.’ So I climbs on to the wing. Climbs up to where the canopy was and it was perfect. There was no damage to the aircraft anywhere that I could see. I thought they’ve abandoned this in their escape from the place. I bet it’ll start up. And there’s me trying to get the canopy undone and I couldn’t find out how to get it undone. I struggled and struggled. Pulling and writhing and I couldn’t get the canopy undone. And all of a sudden, ‘Will you come down from there.’ [laughs] This officer come up, ‘That aircraft is probably booby trapped and if you’d got in it you and the aircraft would have gone up. Not just the aircraft but you and it. Come down and don’t come up again.’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ So I came down again very obediently. I thought this is where you play very gentlemanly. You don’t, you don’t say what you’re thinking because it gets you deeper water. I come away. So I said, ‘Come on John.’ We didn’t go the way he went. He went that way so we went this way. I thought the bigger the distance between us if anything else comes up he’ll be going that way and he won’t, he won’t see me. So anyroads we turns one or two corners. ‘Oh look at that.’ And it was a Heinkel 111, I said, ‘I’m definitely getting in John.’ I said, ‘Keep a look out for me, and if he comes give me a shout and I’ll lay down and keep out of sight.’ So anyroads, he didn’t see anybody coming and here’s me struggling to get this canopy open. But I couldn’t get it open and I was going to try and start that one up. But could he? No damage. No visual external damage. I thought well that might start up. Anyroad I thought good I’ll have a go at this at least if I got it started up before he comes back. I can’t hear him if he shouts up. I was dying to get this aircraft started up. But anyroads he came and oh. ‘Will you get down from there? Now. And I’m going to follow you. You’re not coming around this area any more. Off this site.’ So we had to back track to the main perimeter track area. So we goes back to the perimeter track. ‘If I catch you again you’re for it.’ He says, ‘I’ve told you twice. I’m not telling you anymore.’ So I said, ‘Ok. Come on John.’ So we went walking along the perimeter track. Well we went to look in one of the trenches and there was guns. There was ammunition. There was tins with food in. There was allsorts there. If we’d had a lorry we could have filled it and another one as well with this equipment that was laid about. I said, ‘Oh come on we’ve had enough down here wading around in the mud.’ So we come out of this here trench and we were walking along. ‘Hey. Look there, John. Can you see what it is?’ He says, ‘Yeah. It’s a tank.’ ‘No it isn’t.’ He says, ‘It’s a tank.’ I said, ‘It isn’t. I says where’s it’s guns?’ He says, ‘He hasn’t got any guns has he?’ I says, ‘Well it’s not a tank then is it?’ So he says, ‘Well what is it?’ I said, ‘It’s a radio controlled tank.’ So he says, ‘Is that what it is?’ I says, ‘That’s what it is John.’ I says, ‘I feel sure it is. Come on we’ll go and have a look.’ So we walked across this field and we got as far as that chimney from here.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. From it. From the tank. And what, I was going to climb on board it and have a look around and see what there was. And all of a sudden there was a load of blokes shouting and calling. They reckoned that we hadn’t got parents [laughs]. You silly —
DE: Yeah.
AM: ‘Do you know where you are?’ I said, ‘Yeah. We’re near this tank. Why?’ So he says, ‘It’s a radio controlled tank.’ I said, ‘We know that.’ So he says, ‘Do you know where you are?’ I says, ‘Why? We’re in a field. Why?’ They said, ‘Do you know what’s in the field?’ I says, ‘No, what?’ He says, ‘You’re in the middle of a minefield. That’s what we’re calling out.’
DE: Oh dear.
AM: So he said, ‘When you come back look to see if the ground’s been dug. With every step you take.’ So we didn’t bother to look down. We just walked off the doing. And we got on to the perimeter track and that was it.
DE: And that was alright.
AM: We didn’t get damaged in any way.
DE: Yeah. Oh dear.
AM: But that we finished there and we were walking back and they said, ‘Oh we wondered where you were. There’s a Lanc come and he’s taking us back and we couldn’t make out where you two were.’ So we had to go straight in to the Lanc and back home. So we landed at that place. What do they call it now? Near to [pause] near to [pause] near to Brigg. It’s not far from Brigg. It was where the spies used to land. I do know the name when I hear it. A double-barrelled name.
DE: Near Brigg. Elsham Wolds.
AM: No. I don’t know about that.
DE: Killingholme.
AM: It was a ‘drome where the spies used to be taken from and they took supplies from there. And nobody. The guards —
DE: Tempsford..
AM: Eh?
DE: Tempsford. .
AM: No.
DE: No. I don’t know then.
AM: Each aircraft there had a guard outside. All the Lancasters there had a guard outside.
DE: Ludford Magna.
AM: That might be it. That could be it. I’m not sure. But I think that might be it. But that’s where we landed. And the guard was outside a Lancaster and the aircraft had twenty one of us in. You know.
DE: Yeah.
AM: From three Lancs. And there were officers and they says to the guard, ‘You’re going to let us in aren’t you?’ He says, ‘No.’ He said, ‘If I let you in,’ he says I’ll get court martialled.’ We says, ‘We’re not going to tell anybody but we’re going in.’ So he says, ‘You can’t.’ ‘Well we’re going in.’ And we all went in. All the lot of us went in. And it was a bit different to ours. A little bit different. It had a bench at each side and chairs down each side. So they had transmitters at both sides and seats so that people could sit in the seats and operate the equipment. That was then. So I mean now it’ll have gone to the scrap yard by now I should think. But it was interesting. Oh there’s all different things will well up in my mind that I maybe should have told you. But there’s so much happens to you. You can’t sort of remember it all at once. And it was good. You was always being entertained so to speak. Something was always happening that was of interest. And well that’s the way it went, and I don’t know whether that’s on the tape or not but —
DE: It is.
AM: Is it?
DE: And its two hours ten minutes now we’ve been chatting. So I think I shall, I shall wind it up. Thank you very much.
AM: Ok.
DE: That’s a wonderful interview. Thank you.
AM: You want me to sign that do you?
DE: I will do. I’ll just press stop on here.
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 Edward Allan McDonald. Two
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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AMcDonaldEA150918
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-18
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Mittelland Canal
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Allan McDonald was born in Hull and watched Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus as a child. He worked as an apprentice electrician before joining the Air Force. He served as ground personnel in Northern Ireland until he passed the exams to become aircrew and trained as an air gunner. He recalls seeing a Me 109 and during training, his aircraft crash landed and he was soaked in petrol. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe and recalls seeing aircraft exploding in the air, a dinghy deploying by accident and nearly hitting a WAAF, and making an emergency landing at Juvincourt after being attacked by a Fw 190 and being hit by anti-aircraft fire.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:10:44 audio recording
50 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
bombing
crash
decoy site
forced landing
Fw 190
ground personnel
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
perimeter track
RAF Evanton
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Skellingthorpe
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force