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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/660/9270/EGortonLCMMorganG-[Mo]410709.pdf
dfe7dc95cdfeac5118df6e3b14ff8fc5
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
Gorton, Harold
Description
An account of the resource
136 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader Harold Gorton (1914 - 1944, 120984, Royal Air Force) and contains eight photographs and 126 letters to his wife and family. Harold Gorton studied at Oxford, and throughout his time in the RAF he continued studying law. He completed a tour of operations as a pilot in 1941 and was then posted as an instructor to RAF Cark. He returned to operations with 49 Squadron stationed at RAF Fulbeck in 1944. He was killed 11/12 November 1944 during an operation to Harburg.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mair Gorton and Ian Gorton, and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Harold Gorton is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/108964/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Gorton, H
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] 1 [/underlined]
59 Roundhill Grove,
Southdown,
Bath.
Wed. July 9th
Dear Grace & Mother,
Thank you for your letter, & for all the arrangements you’ve made. I’m enclosing stamps to the value of 6/8 to settle my shoe repair debt.
Harold had written to the Gouilon minister, but he’s written to cancel that letter, & now he has written to Isaac Griffiths, so all should be O.K.
His father & mother are coming,
[page break]
[underlined] 2. [/underlined]
as far as I know at present, & Harold has written to ask his brother to come to be best man. He suggests that they should stay at The Meadows, as they’ll be unable to travel down on the day of the wedding. They may be able to travel home after it, but I don’t know. When I know more definitely I’ll let you know at once, but I wondered if you could make some provisional arrangements for them to be put up if they decide to come. If they stay
[page break]
[underlined 3 [/underlined].
at the Meadows Harold suggests that he should stay there also. He will probably come to Bath, & come home with me when I travel next Thursday night or Friday morning. I must find out the times of trains, & let you know later.
Thanks for enquiring about the photo’s – I’ll let Harold decide, & go if he’s keen, but I don’t mind either way myself.
I’ve succeeding in [deleted] buy [/deleted] buying
[page break]
[underlined] 4. [/underlined]
a nice pair of shoes, though they were expensive, a bit. It was difficult to find a pair my size, as they only had a pair or so in each shop. They’re not making any now, of course, but I think you’ll like the ones I’ve got.
As they’re getting so fussy about the petrol we’ve decided not to go to Torquay in the car, & maybe get everyone into a bother. Instead we’ll probably go a shortish distance to the Cotswolds, or Evesham, as in
[page break]
5.
any case we’ll only have 4 or 5 days, & it isn’t long enough to make a long journey worth while. Don’t you think that will be wisest?
Harold had 48 hours leave, (& came down here to discuss the wedding), on Saturday & Sunday last. He has finished all his exams now, & has had his flying test, so is hoping to get his wings soon.
I forgot to mention [inserted] to Harold [/inserted] that it was [deleted] Harold’s [/deleted] [inserted] his [/inserted] job to provide me & my bridesmaids (if any?) with
[page break]
6.
flowers, & I think he doesn’t realise this, but perhaps I’ll tell him when I write next. Even so, I can’t quite see how he can arrange for me (etc.) to have some. What do you think it would be best to do about it? Could you do it & we could settle up later? (Roses!)
Can you find out the cost of an announcement in the Western Mail & Chronicle? Also the address? Could you find the rates & address from an old newspaper? Harold is keen to put an announcement in
[page break]
7.
a few newspapers, & said he might write to you for some particulars. I’m sure I won’t have any time to do it, so I asked him to see to it, but of course he’ll have to know where to write before he can do anything about it.
He paid me £1 for the licence, so I made a profit on that, if nothing else!
I’ve just written to Cecil to tell him the date & time, but I don’t suppose he’ll be able to come.
That’s more or less all for
[page break]
8.
the present I think, but I’ll probably be seeing you on Thursday night, & will let you know when, later.
Cheerio, with love
from
Lilian.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Lilian Morgan to her sister and mother
Description
An account of the resource
She writes about arrangements for her wedding to Harold Gorton.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Lilian Morgan
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-07-09
Format
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Eight handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
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EGortonLCMMorganG-[Mo]410709
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Bath
England--Somerset
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
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Tricia Marshall
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-07-09
home front
love and romance
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/725/10725/ABrandonJP180302.2.mp3
03e83eb935f3c68e6ca7bede2207ffe2
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
Brandon, June Pauline
J P Brandon
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with June Pauline Brandon (b. 1923, 8382 Royal Air Force). She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brandon, JP
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JeB: This is an interview, is being carried out for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jennifer Barraclough, the interviewee is Mrs June Brandon. The interview is taking place at Mrs Brandon’s home near Warkworth, Auckland. The date is the 2nd of March 2018. Okay, Mrs Brandon could you tell us, thank you very much for taking part. Could you tell us a little about your early life and how you came to join the Air Force, please.
JuB: As my father was with the Ghurkhas I was born in India, in the Himalayas and we had a wonderful life out there, riding twice a day and father had to go up the North West Frontier at regular intervals, we just wanted to keep the Afghans north of the North West Frontier so they didn’t come down into India, and they took tours of duty. We got leave in England every three years and when I was nine, my, the Gurkhas themselves are only about five foot three. Wonderful, loyal, great fighters, but the Afghans pick off the big ones cause they know they’re the officers. Father was brought back from the Frontier wounded, unfortunately got another bout of malaria and died, so we had to pack up. I was nine, at the ten, time, my brother was seven. And so we packed up, came back to England with mother who was widowed at twenty nine. And I can remember coming up the Suez Canal, I hated the topees, which were cork hats, and mother said to us, “come on you can throw your topee into the sea, you won’t need it again.” And I stood at the rail, threw the topee over and burst into tears and mother said what’s the matter. I had a pet donkey in India, I adored her and we just had a lovely relationship and I said, “I’ll never see my father or my little donkey again.” We came back to England and I was sent to boarding school. It was a school for all permanent officers’ daughters in Bath. I loved it there, they were great people and when the war started, the Navy, because we were on a hill above Bath, took over the school because they wanted to signal ships in the Atlantic. So we were moved to a beautiful country house where they built classrooms. We used to sit on the stairs and have lectures with ancestral portraits peering down at us. We had science lessons in the stables and art lessons in the Orangery. And I was, took school certificate there and I left school at seventeen. I looked around for what I should do and thought of nursing, but it looked like too many bedpans, [chuckle] so we weren’t allowed to join the Air Force till we were eighteen, so I put my age up a year, went up to London with mother who had some business to do, and whilst she went, I went along to Kingsway House and enlisted. They asked me for my birth certificate and I said, “oh I was born in India.” She didn’t seem to know. Father would obviously have registered me at Somerset House, so I got away with it. [Laughter] Well the next thing I know I’m on the train with a crowd of girls and the Germans didn’t bomb, this was after Dunkirk. They didn’t bomb Morecombe or Blackpool cause they thought they’d be there themselves in a few weeks. So first of all it was Morecombe and this endless marching up and down for drill. I found the shoes awful, I think they had slabs of concrete on the bottom, and I got chilblains. It was very, very cold. Well one morning the sergeant said to us tomorrow morning put on your overshoes. These were a kind of a galosh thing that came up to your ankles and did up with two buttons. So that morning I was doing great, I was marker cause I was the tallest, and at the end of the parade the sergeant said now take off your shoe, your moccasins, for inspection. I took them off, and everybody burst out laughing! I was standing in the middle of the Morecombe parade with a pair of red moccasins on. The officer looked at me, she couldn’t charge me with not being dressed on parade cause I had been. She just shook her head and walked away. [Laughter] The next thing I knew, I was posted to the Photographic School because I told them I had played with photography at home. And it was a six month course, and we started, it was lovely because you suddenly realised the class system had gone. In the desk next to me was Rachael Tennyson, Lord Tennyson’s granddaughter. Next, the other side was little girl that had worked in a chemists shop. We were all in it together, didn’t matter what our background was. We started off with the properties of light, then we went on to different lenses on cameras. We had an exam every two weeks, if you failed an exam [whistle sound] you were off. They couldn’t waste time on you. There were eighteen of us, our only trouble was we were billeted in Blackpool and there were bed bugs in our. Some people were moved three times, luckily I was only moved once. Some of the landladies were lovely, others were awful. Well, we got through the course, and they decided we must have a passing out parade. Well there was wide driveway with a wall down one side and suddenly the officers decided they had to be elevated to take the salute so they got on top of the wall. I was glad I was marker and they couldn’t see me grinning cause we did eyes right to five pairs of black polished shoes, [interference] we couldn’t see anything else. Well after two weeks leave I was put on camera guns [/interference] and these would, guns, synchronised with the real guns and they took a photograph of anything the Spitfires would shoot at. I was sent up to Newcastle to a fighter station. And there was only one other photographer, a corporal, he was a lazy thing. So my job was, I was given a bicycle with yellow and black stripes, given a satchel with the magazines and I had to cycle round all the operative Spitfires and test the cameras every morning. Well, I was always very careful going across the end of the runway if they were using that runway cause the Spitfires used to come in very low and very fast and I realised they weren’t going to stop for me! So I got up to the squadron and a sergeant came out and said, “what are you here for?” and I said I have come to test the cameras. And the whole lot of them burst into laughter. They’ve sent a girl! They were slapping their knees and dancing about and I thought what a greeting! So I grabbed a wheel chock; they were big triangular shapes of wood, with a rope through them and they put them in front of the Spitfire wheels so they didn’t move. Now the Spitfire wing is quite high and I had to look down. So I gathered the chock, took it to the port wing between the canon and the fuselage, took a screwdriver out of my pocket, undid a little panel in the wing, checked that there was, and then I said to one of them, the mechanic, could you jump into the cockpit and just give a quick burst to the camera only button. So, being a bit surprised, he did that. Then I took the magazine out to make sure there was enough film, put it all back together [interference] again and went to the next aeroplane. Then I had to sign a Form 700 [/interference] which was everything was checked, every morning and I had to sign for the camera gun. Well, there was a bit of fighting up there and several times the Spitfires went out and I got a call one day: “One of the pilots is sure he hit something, come out and get the magazine.” I cycled out there, I couldn’t believe it. There they were, with the film like this, looking at it and I said you’ve just ruined the film, you’ve put it to the light. They wouldn’t believe me! So I said come with me back to the dark room and I’ll show you. And I wound it on a big frame and developed the film for them. And they saw it was black, cover to cover. I was surprised pilots didn’t know about that. Anyway, a little later on I got a terrible pain in my stomach and the sergeant was roaring at me to get out of bed and get going. And I said I just can’t move. A friend of mine came over, realised I had a temperature and went and got one of the medical staff: acute appendicitis. So I was put on a stretcher, loaded into an ambulance. They couldn’t find mother because she was driving an ambulance in London. And I was taken down to the hospital, bumping over the tram lines, which was extremely [emphasis] painful. We get to the hospital and the nurse that came with me was carsick, so in the middle of an air raid with all ack acks going off, she was taken in as the casualty leaving me lying outside. They at last realised they’d got the wrong people, came with a stretcher on a trolley, put me on it. As we were going in to the hospital I said to the orderlies, don’t hurry the pain’s gone. They immediately started to run, my appendix had burst. No penicillin in those days, I didn’t realise how sick I was till I came to and found mother sitting beside my bed, she’d come all the way up from London. Well, I recovered and got, all told, four weeks sick leave. It was beautiful. I went to some friends of ours in the country. They were so kind to me, and this beautiful countryside, and you could forget the war. Well, when I was told I was fit enough, I was sent to RAF station Benson. Now we only [emphasis] took photographs, that was the sole purpose of the place. There were two cameras loaded behind the Spitfire cockpits and we had some um, Mustangs, not Mustangs, it’ll come to me. They were all painted blue and, making it hard to see against the sky. And the cameras were placed so that there was always an overlap this way, cause they didn’t turn over fast enough and this camera overlapped that way so if there was a damaged negative you could make it up with the other two. They were lovely girls there and we had a common room and the men had a common room. We used to have to change the chemicals at regular intervals so they gave us - because the hypo rotted our shoes - they gave us clogs. They are the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever worn. And we used to clatter about sounding like horses on a hollow bridge. Because you had to change the chemicals by buckets. You had to fill the bucket and go up the thing and change the, in these big machines we had. And I was always the one in the dark room. I don’t know why. You went through double doors into the dark room and there was a red pan light. You had a spool here with the film on it to be developed and it was threaded through the machine as just a spare piece of film, so you’d cut the film like this with a razor, pull out a piece of red tape, which always amused me, press it down and fold it over and cut it again with a razor blade, then you’d turn the machine on. And there were these rods that went down into the chemicals, and you slowly lowered them, there were two for water to get the film really wet, then it went into the developer. There were six, this was all in the dark, then there were two of water and two of neutraliser and then the film went through a little rubber letterbox, and was finished in the open. There were three of us in a crew working these machines. The one in the middle saw that everything was developing correctly and washing correctly. There was a viewing chamber as it went up onto the dryer, which was long fluorescent lighting with warm air being blown through it and it would go round this and someone at the end would see that it spooled up properly. Then it went through to the printers which had similar machines, but just printing, only. When that was finished all the films were bundled up and sent over to Intelligence for a quick look at what we’d got. It was nearly awaysl of bombing raids to see the damage we’d done or not done. Then it was sent to Medmenham, which was the Central Intelligence Unit, for final analysis. We used to have in the hall a huge what we called the Sortie Board, which listed the sortie number and its ETA so that we had an idea and when it arrived it was put down as arrived, when it went into the developing, when it went into the printing and when it was finished was all noted down. The sadness comes if someone came down and drew a line right through it. Plane was missing. Sometimes they landed at another airfield, sometimes: the inevitable. I always admired those pilots because they had to fly with no guns because the cameras were so heavy. They had to get to the target, fly up and down, taking photos, then scoot for home, and they knew that the Germans gave their pilots a bonus if they shot down a reconnaissance plane. We used to get a lot of requests for shipping movements, troop movements, where things were. We found in one stage the Tirpitz in a Norwegian Fjord and they got her when she came out. We also found the Bismark, took photographs of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau that were bombed. And all together it was an extremely interesting but stressful job because you couldn’t make mistakes. The girls were lovely, I never had any argument, none of us did, and when there was no flying we’d all sit in the common room and do beautiful needlework or knitting or something. We were in a separate hut, the photographers. Well, one night the sirens went and it was freezing, I was a corporal then, and I said to the girls, do you want to go down the shelter, which was what we were meant to do. No. So I said stay here, these shelters were very nice concrete but there’s steps going down and water run down and when you got to the shelter you were sitting ankle deep in ice cold water! So we stayed where we were, suddenly after a lot of running round in the thing, the door burst open and a sergeant covered in mud started to curse us. “Who’s in charge here?” And I said me. “You’re on a charge for disobeying an order!” Cause they’d opened up the shelter and found nothing. So next morning I was in front of the CO, so he said to me – after the usual charging - why didn’t you go down there, and I said I had a feeling. So he caught on and put it down to women’s intuition. Actually, my only feeling was it was too damn cold” So I got off. [Laugh] So, well I was there for about four years I think it was, and then I was sent to Medmenham. That was all enlargement work and specialised work, but there were no aeroplanes, I really didn’t enjoy it. So I got a commission and I was sent to the usual training. By this time the Americans were in the thing and you know what we thought of them. You’ve heard the saying [chuckles] and I was disgusted when were sent on a talk to learn how to public speak, and the Americans just took us as, for popsies that they could pick up! Me and my friend were asked were we staying the night? We said certainly not, we’re going back to camp. They turned their back on us and went and talked to the others because we weren’t going to sleep with the devils! So that was fine. And then, I can’t remember why, I was on Windermere station and a train came in, doors flew open, this was near the end of the war, and a troop of soldiers jumped out carrying rifles and they lined up all the way down to outside the gate where there was a staff car. Two more carriages opened and two officers jumped out with their hand guns in their hand. Next thing you know the middle door opens, Rundstedt walked out. We’d captured him. He looked magnificent [emphasis] with that red general stripe down his trousers. I noticed that her wore the Iron Cross, but no [emphasis] swastikas. They put him on an island in the middle of Windermere Lake, as a prisoner. I can’t remember what happened to him in the trials afterwards. Well. Can we stop this? During the bombing, when I was in London, you think it was never, ever going to stop, just noise, noise, noise and you didn’t know what was going to happen. I used, if possible, to curl myself into a ball and recite poetry which I loved. I was always terrified of getting an arm or leg blown off and they’d feel sorry for me. Usually the bombers went home about three o’clock in the morning. And then we had the start of the doodlebugs. I was at home one day on forty eight hour leave in mother’s flat in London and the sirens had gone nine times. You forgot whether it was all clear or what, and mother always used to go into the hall of the flat cause there were no glass. I had a very interesting radio programme on – National Velvet about a horse. And she was shouting at me to come and a doodlebug went past the window. We were only on the fourth floor. There was a bit of a silence and then a great big explosion and mother said come on, we’d better go and see if we can help. We went round to a little square that was near us, all built by people that had escaped the French Revolution and it was all built in that lovely French style. The doodlebug had gone straight through one block house right down into the cellar. The house was completely gone, but standing on a landing on the top, with absolutely nothing underneath her, was a woman screaming her head off. Luckily the firemen came along with a long ladder and rescued her. And then we had the V2s coming and it was very, very difficult to find where they were coming from. And we kept taking photographs round Holland and round the coast and finally one of the intelligence girls found it at Peenemunde and she got the MBE for that, and we bombed that, which stopped quite a lot of the V2s. And then the war did end.
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 June Pauline Brandon
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jennifer Barraclough
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABrandonJP180302
Format
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00:30:18 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
June Brandon was born in India, returning to England when her father died. She joined the WAAF and went into the Photographic Section, loading cameras on Spitfires then carrying out development of the films. She served at several RAF stations, telling stories of conditions in various places as well as experiences she had in service and on leave.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Pakistan
England--Bath
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lancashire
England--London
England--Oxfordshire
Pakistan--Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
England--Somerset
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Bismarck
bombing
ground personnel
RAF Benson
RAF Medmenham
Spitfire
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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/.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
England--Bath
Title
A name given to the resource
Bath [place]
Description
An account of the resource
This page is an entry point for a place. Please use the links below to see all relevant documents available in the Archive.
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1300/17898/PGreenJ1901.2.jpg
b14602c2b2a5a0d0f474ee6b3099f4cf
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1300/17898/AGreenJ190307.2.mp3
c4c66aa1cf8bc65f3c03434e1d4d9290
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
Green, John
J Green
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Green (b.1921, 1213252 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 100 and 12 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-07
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
Green, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GT: This is Thursday the 7th of March 2019 and I am at the home of Mr John Green, born 22nd September 1921 in Penge, South East London, England. John’s home is in Auckland, New Zealand. John joined the RAF in June 1942 as a drogue operator on the Isle of Man. Later, John volunteered for bomb disposal, and after fourteen months he volunteered for aircrew and trained as an air gunner in early 1944. From June 1944, John crewed up with pilot Flight Sergeant Leslie Flooder, or Podge, an Australian, at 30 Operational Training Unit, Hixon and then 1667 Conversion Unit at Sandtoft, Lancaster Finishing School at Hemswell and then on to operations with 100 Squadron at Grimsby late October, completing sixteen operations and posted to 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby for fifteen operations. All on Lancaster Mark III aircraft. John completed his RAF operational flying in May 1945 with a total of one hundred and eighty four hours, day and night flying. John, thank you for allowing me to interview you for the IBCC Archives, so please tell me why, and how, you joined the Royal Air Force.
JG: Right. Well, when war broke out, I, all your mates were joining up, and I think I was eighteen at the time and I thought myself well if I wait till I get called up they’ll put me in the Army, and I didn’t want to go in the bloody Army I said! So I went down to the recruiting centre and joined in the RAF just as an ordinary airmen, nothing special. They said okay, we will call you when we need you. I think it was another year gone by before they called me up.
GT: And what were you doing while you were waiting?
JG: I was working in engineering factory and when I got the call up I was posted to Blackpool for six weeks training, you know, fitness training and education and all that.
GT: But that was a far cry from you riding a bicycle wasn’t it?
JG: Yeah!
GT: What was the bicycle thing about?
JG: Oh, the bicycle, that was in one of me jobs, was, I was, what d’you call them, errand boy! That was when I left school at fourteen, I went as errand boy riding a bike with a big basket on the front delivering all the goods and that to people who’d bought them from the shops.
GT: And whereabouts did you grow up there, and born?
JG: In Penge. Grew up in Penge, joined, volunteered in Penge, and then I got posted from Blackpool, I got posted to the Isle of Man; a General Duties airman. And when I got the Isle of Man they wanted drogue operators, people to volunteer to fly, which you got an extra shilling a week by doing that which I was interested in, cause a shilling was a lot of money in those days!
GT: What was the role of a drogue operator?
JG: He dropped the drogue. In the bottom of the aircraft, mainly Lysanders, or whichever one I was in, you had a trapdoor. You open the trapdoor and in front of you, you had like a drum, a big drum with three metal drums on it, filled with wire and you used to clip one of these wire onto one of the drogues and try and drop ‘em out the aircraft, then you stood up and controlled the speed of the drum with a handbrake until you got near enough all you want out, you lock it up and then the aircraft used to fly around, towing the drogue, training all aircrew to fire at it.
GT: So the other aircraft would bead on to you and -
JG: On to the drogue and fire.
GT: Your log book states you flew Lysander, Fairey Battle, Anson and Blenheim aircraft and that was all with the drogue operations.
JG: No, Lysander and Fairey Battle, and what was the other one?
GT: Anson and Blenheims.
JG: No, Anson, Anson they done, I flew doing me camera work. Instead of guns, instead of having bullets, you had a camera and you used a camera firing. and the Blenheim, Blenheim was just a trip you wanted and I think it flew me, flew me I was going on leave.
GT: So that were the gunners flying, aircraft, to shoot at the drogues, the Defiants or aircraft like that?
JG: Yeah, any, could be even the Anson used to fly along the side, and they used to open the window and poke their cine camera out, or the guns out and if you had usually three gunners in your aircraft they had different colour bullets so when they got the drogue back, dropped back, into a, had a special field you should drop the drogue back then fetched it back to headquarters then they could count the bullet holes whether they were red, blue, black, or yellow, they knew how many hits you had.
GT: They just dipped the bullets into paint, didn’t they.
JG: Yeah, to get the colour bullet and that’s how they knew, and course with the camera, they had a cine camera. Because one day I was up there doing camera and I saw, I think it was an Anson coming along, towing, towing a drogue so I took a photo of me shooting this Anson down! I got a right bollocking for it! [Laugh] But good laugh, but it was such a good target, I said, it’s there. And I didn’t use a lot of film!
GTL Any close calls? Did any of the aircraft nearly shoot you down instead of the drogue?
JG: I think it happened once on our station, drogue operator got killed like that. Whoever was using it, instead of firing at the drogue away from the towing aircraft they fired while they were coming in and the bullets carried on and hit the towing aircraft.
GT: They were all three nought three machine guns, yes.
JG: Yes, 303s.
GT: So you liked that, is that something you wanted to carry on with or you went to volunteer for something else?
JG: No, I liked that, getting paid and then it came up they wanted volunteers, you get fed up with it as a youngster, wanted volunteers on this Bomb Disposal Unit so I thought oh, that’ll be a change, so joined that and I was posted to Bath, Barford Manor, that’s a country village outside of Bath in this big manor house what the RAF had commandeered. I spent I don’t know how long, quite a long time there, and from there I joined up from, into aircrew training.
GT: What explosives disposal training did you have?
JG: Bom disposal, oh just the lessons on the fuses and how defuse and listen, if they were ticking and that.
GT: So the bombs could have been ticking and did you have something to tell you?
JG: Oh yeah, you had like an instrument you got here, stuck on there and if it was ticking, if the fuse was ticking that meant it was alive, ready to go off. It’s timed.
GT: So what did you do?
JG: Run! [chuckles] Yeah.
GT: And if they wanted to dispose of them, how did they dispose of them?
JG: They had a disposal officer who used to go, get down a hole, and it was surprising, the bomb, could unscrew the cap which allowed him to get to the fuse and he could undo the fuse and slowly [emphasis] get it out to defuse the bomb.
GT: It was the officer doing that?
JG: Yes, that was the officer’s job.
GT: And these were mainly German bombs you were training on?
JG: They were practically all German bombs. A few of them were English ones where the plane, English planes had crashed.
GT: So did they send you out on daily, or night?
JG: Yeah, whatever it was needed. I mean when we wasn’t out digging up, or digging after the bombs, we were in the schools training, what to do, you know, learning all about it.
GT: Did you lose any men?
JG: No, not on bomb disposal.
GT: That’s good. So from bomb disposal you looked at aircrew and they obviously accepted you. Was it difficult to do?
JG: Yes, took a long time to get accepted. You had to go to school, you had to pass exams and that, for education purposes, and once you pass all them exams then you start your bomber training, your air gunner training.
GT: So when you were doing your training though, did they look back at what you did at school?
JG: No, no.
GT: Was it open to everybody? Everybody had to do that training. School.
JG: Well everybody who was going to be a gunner like, it might be my turn to go to the aircraft to take the guns out and take them to the armoury and then strip the guns and clean it all and check the barrel, cause on one occasion, that was I think after I shot down that Ju, when I clean and checked it, the barrel had no rifling left, was smooth, and the other three was okay, so that meant the barrel was useless, you had to put a new barrel in the gun..
GT: So did they choose you to be an air gunner or did you ask them that you wanted to be one?
JG: I chose, I chose to be an air gunner.
GT: And you had good eyesight, good health.
JG Yeah, I had good eyesight, hearing, everything was good and I didn’t, well I wasn’t intelligent enough to be a navigator, and wireless operator, I couldn’t stand that dat dat dat dat dat Morse code and of course the engineer you had to study specific engineer, studied all the instruments and the engines, navigator, that was the main job in the Air Force, was navigator. I think he was the most important man in the aircraft. I think he was more important than the pilot. He was the one who got you there and got you back, or told you, to get there and get back.
GT: Did you end up back on the Isle of Man in the aircraft doing the drogue shooting or did you do that at another place?
JG: No, I think we might, I’m not sure, no, didn’t land on the Isle of Man again. Once I left there I went to Waltham like the training stations, the different ones. The main two was Waltham and then Wickenby and then when I, that was it and when I was and waiting for demob I was at a RAF training unit for all new people coming in, joining in; I was in charge of the stores.
GT: So how long was your gunnery course?
JG: I don’t know, only by looking, offhand, you know, quite a long time, cause you used to start off wearing a cap with a white bit in.
GT: As a cadet.
JG: That signifies you’re a cadet for an air crew.
GT: Once you were, graduated and completed, that was what, late 1943?
JG: Yeah, the training.
GT: And you moved on to crew up somewhere?
JG: Yeah, Hixon, should be, should be 30 OTU, Hixon.
GT: And your log book shows that to be the 9th of June 1944 when you met there, on Wellingtons, so you met your future crew there.
JG: On Wellingtons, yes.
GT: So tell me about your skipper and your crew.
JG: He was, well what they used to do to crew you up, all the aircrew are posted to this aerodrome and when you come out, or in the mess for a meal, you meet all the other airmen. You get friendly with one, or they get friendly with you, and then by the time, I think it was only about, only about a week, I got friendly with the rear gunner, he wanted to be a rear gunner, I wanted to be mid upper, so then we met Barney, he’s the navigator, oh we met Podge walking round and we said, you go up to him and hi, you know, and have you got a crew, no I’m just getting crewed up. Did you want a couple of gunners? Yeah, he said, right, that was me and Jack and a pilot, carried on walking, we picked up the bomb aimer, navigator and a wireless operator, he was Australian, that was six of us and we done a lot of training there before we got posted to another station where all the engineers had been posted to and we made up our seventh member of the crew.
GT: What was the aircraft types that you did your OTU work with? Wellingtons?
JG: Wellington and Halifaxes, Halifax. It shows you there in the book how many Halifax, and then from that, Halifax, we went to er -
GT: Well your Conversion Unit was 1667 and you flew in Halifaxes there for about two weeks.
JG: Yeah. That’s right, that was coming off the Wellington onto that Conversion Unit and we flew Halifaxes and then from there we went to another station, Lancaster Finishing School.
GT: You only did five days flying for that!
JG: That’s all! Yeah, then that was it, then you were posted to your, you know, whatever squadron you were going to be; got posted to 100 Squadron
GT: You were 100 Squadron at Waltham and did your first operation on Cologne on the 31st of October, 1944.
JG: That was something I always remember about that first trip. We wasn’t, we wasn’t scared to start with, but we was once we was up there, but being in the mid upper gunner that had a three hundred and sixty degree turn, where you turned all the way round and when your guns got round and it was your own aircraft, they had something there where you couldn’t fire ‘em. But as I was turning round, I looked up the front the way we were going and all I could see was one big mass of red, where Cologne was alight, and the flashes of the flak and that exploding and all the FE, all, it frightened the bloody life out of me. I never, ever [emphasis] looked again where we were going to go, until after we left. That once, I only looked that once, and that was enough. I looked a couple of times, Heligoland is in there, that was towards the end, that was with the other pilot. And that was, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and there wasn’t a German fighter in the sky either. We could fly round there as if we owned it, you know, they just didn’t have the fighters left, not the Germans.
GT: Well John, I’ve just got a list of your crew and if you’ll allow me I’ll just quickly read them out, for the record here. Flying Officer Flooder, Australian Air Force pilot; Sergeant Barnes, RAF navigator; Sergeant Williams, RAF flight engineer; Flight Sergeant Maslin, Australian Air Force, wireless operator and Flight Sergeant Armstrong, RAF bomb aimer. And yourself Sergeant John Green, as RAF mid upper gunner, [dog barking] and the rear gunner was Sergeant Everly. So you stayed together for your first part of your flying, on 100 Squadron.
JG: The first fifteen ops, yeah.
GY: And for those fifteen ops.
JG: Until he got grounded.
GT: It was your skipper that was grounded, was that right. What was the story with him?
JG: After the Dresden raid there, it’ll be in the log book, after the Dresden raid we got back all right. Next night, next day they sent us down out Chemnitz after we’d done canals flying, we were put on, and the navigator, we’d been flying about an hour, and said I’ve had enough of this skipper, I can’t do my job, I’m too tired. So he come back, he told the pilot to come back and the pilot got the rollocking for it, for not carrying on, you know, regardless, dropping the bomb sort of thing.
GT: So he brought the bombs back to base.
JG: Yeah, and then what happened we got back to base you’ve still got all your bombs on, go out somewhere the North Sea and drop the cookie and we had to go and drop the cookie to get rid of it.
GT: Did you drop them armed? Were they armed when you dropped them? Did you make them explode or just?
JG: The cookie? No, we just dropped it. No, what the, there’s one op there, that, we dropped the bombs, and I’ve got it in, got: ‘Dropped cookie manually on spare’. That it? What happened there -
GT: It was the 15th of December 1944.
JG: Yeah. We got out and bombs away the pilot said, and then as we went away, he said, “Bluey,” that was the bomb aimer, Bluey, “are you sure all the bombs have gone, he said it feels heavy, the way it’s flying, so he said, “all right I’ll press all these switches, John will you get down and have a look?” So I get out the turret and look through a window in the floor of the aircraft and I could see the bomb. I said no, the bloody bomb’s still here! So they said right what we going to do? I’m sure it was the bomb aimer: let’s go round and drop it. And all of us: no you f-ing well don’t! We, no, we’re not going round there again! So I said to ‘em look, we’ve got to fly back, we’re gonna fly over, somewhere over Germany, you notify when we’re getting near where to the bomb aimer and skipper, when he gets out, I’ll drop it, I’ll pull the lever and drop it manually. And that’s what we done. We suddenly come up, there’s a town ahead, John, place called Spau in Germany, and then I’m talking to the bomb aimer and he’s saying, “right John get ready, get ready, when I tell you go, pull that lever, get ready, go!” Pulled the lever and the bomb dropped, and we just carried on. We just saw a big flash on the ground and that was it.
GT: What height would you have been at to do that?
JG: About fourteen, fifteen thousand feet. Cause we all, all [emphasis] of you kept above ten thousand.
GT: You’d have been on oxygen at the time.
JG: Yeah, yeah. Though when I, actually, what I done, get out my turret, and then at the side of your turret’s a small oxygen bottle, pull that out, clip it on to your oxygen mask so you’re on oxygen from the bottle, not from the aircraft. Yeah. That’s how they done it.
GT: And that was an eight thousand pound cookie.
JG: Yeah, er, four thousand pound cookie, but they finished up making them twelve thousand, that one they built, imitation up at MOTET haven’t they. They built that one. Must’ve made a bloody big ‘ole!
GT: So that was on the 15th of December, you did a further three operations there, 24th Christmas Eve, 1944.
JG: That’s when we landed at Rattlesden.
GT: Ooh! So tell me about that. What happened there?
JG: When we got back, I believe our engine caught fire.
GT: Ah, okay, was that from enemy damage, or did it?
JG: I don’t know, just so, put the fire out [cough] and when we get back it’s a bit foggy and that, and we didn’t have, only three engines, we didn’t have the mucking about, so we got ordered to land at Rattlesden. Rattlesden was American drome, and that’s when they pinched me bloody gloves, thieving bastards!
GT: Did the Americans not have much kit?
JG: No, they, Americans, course everything with the Americans was souvenirs. Course when we landed, we’d taken one, two, four pairs of gloves, the gunners had, and they were all left in the turret and of course we went you know, for a meal and briefing and for a meal, and then bed. When went up the next morning to fly back, we get to the aircraft and me gloves and that were gone and we couldn’t fly back cause our plane was unserviceable. I can’t, I believe it says there, come back as a passenger.
GT: So you lost all four pairs of gloves, to the Americans?
JG: Yes.
GT: Did they grab anything else?
JG: No, and they, I know when I come back and reported it, the CO, oh, I was put on a charge because losing your kit, and the officer who interviewed me over it was a New Zealander and he said, look he said, you couldn’t lock up. I said no, we had no locks on the door, he said so how the bloody hell can you, either take all your kit with you, how can you stop if you can’t lock the aircraft up? And he made a verdict of not, well, I wasn’t charged, it was dismissed and I was issued a new set of gloves. Through this officer, Wheatley.
GT: Your log book states that was about the 18th of November that that particular incident happened. You managed to get back to your home base. So what happened then with your skipper? You were telling me that your skipper -
JG: Yeah, well when we got back from the Chemnitz raid, you’ve got Chemnitz there, haven’t you, Dresden ten hours.
GT: Yup, what happened after that?
JG: We were flying, next day we flew to Chemnitz, and that’s when we returned, the pilot, the navigator said he was ill, that’s when they grounded the pilot, said his eyesight is not good enough to fly a four engined bomber, and he’d already done seventeen trips.
GT: So the pilot took the rap for the navigator’s -
JG: Yeah, more or less, yeah. He wasn’t, obviously, that was when the Station Officer, was a real cocky sod, but he come unstuck cause Podge, being Australian, imagine coming, going to Australia and saying this is what they’re gonna to do to me, because they kicked up a hell of a bloody stink.
GT: But the station officer’s accused your pilot of being -
JG: Lack of morale fibre, that’s what he was going to do, to stop him flying, but then I heard it was six months after, he was sent back to Australia.
GT: Did he fly again?
JG: In Australia he did, but I don’t know what though.
GT: But what happened when he went to London, to the Australian Consul?
JG: He went to Australia House, and course Australian, as they said, that’s the RAAF, it’s got nothing to do with you, and you’re on loan to him, he can’t make you lack of moral fibre and not only that you’ve done seventeen bloody ops, and course their, whoever’s in charge up there, he kicked a hell of a stink up. It’s getting to know the people who to kick up the stink with, and said this bastard’s not going to do this to one of my men, Australian. Next thing we knew, I think it was about, must have been about the second day, that next, we saw him, one of the crew saw Podge, he said oh he’s had to apologise to me, the CO, he’s had to apologise for what he said and done. It made him look a real right fool, cause everybody, all of it, all the news went round the squadron, about it.
GT: So that was coming up into mid February 1945 in your old log book, you’ve noted that your pilot was grounded. Was that the end of your time on 100 Squadron?
JG: Yeah, cause then, we wanted another pilot and they said no, we, other station was short of gunners and they posted me straight away to that gunnery, to RAF Wickenby.
GT: So your crew, incidentally disintegrated.
JG: Crew was finished, yes. Oh, they give no thought, for you or anything, you know, not when you’ve got an officer like that in charge of you.
GT: So there’s about two or three weeks in between the squadrons in your log book here, so on the 7th of March, is your first flight with 12 Squadron. So how did it work then, did you join another crew straight away or did you have a choice?
JG: No, that was when, as I said to you, when I got there they posted me to, I gets in the squadron, you have to call in the guard hut, as you go through the gates, and they said right go to the Gunnery Leader and send you over there. I went there and that, he said to me well John look, I can’t see you now, and I told you, we’ve got ops on, so I’m busy, come back and see me tomorrow morning. That was when they posted me to this crew that got killed. And that’s when I went back to him.
GT: Tell me about that, what happened there, you visited another crew that night?
JG: They were getting dressed and we were talking and they said how many you done John? I said I’ve done sixteen, they said oh, we’re lucky then, I said why and they said we’ve done twenty nine, we’re doing our last one tonight. Never got back.
GT: You were in their nissen hut were you?
JG: In the nissen hut. I woke up at six o’clock in the morning with the noise, it was all the Special Police coming to collect all their gear, collect all their belongings and everything; it’s all taken away. Then when I went back to see the Gunnery Leader he said, that’s when he said right we’ve got three crews all want gunners, you fly with all the three and choose one of them. And you can see the three there through, one of them was Castle was it?
GT: You’ve got Raymond, Dickie and Granham.
JG: That’s it.
GT: So why were they short of gunners? What happened to the other gunners?
JG: Well one of ‘em, I asked that question. One of them had a bomb, what you call ‘em, little bombs, incendiary bombs, drop through the mid upper turret.
GT: From above, another aircraft.
JG: Yeah. That killed him. Another one, he was sick, in the oxygen mask, and obviously the pilot, his pilot hadn’t kept in touch with him enough, got lack of air, and I don’t know about the third one. But anyway, I chose one of the three and the other two got shot down on the next time we all went on a raid. So I was lucky. That’s when I got with Granham, but you know I can’t remember any of the names, except Granham of that second crew. There wasn’t the same feeling between the first crew and the second crew. I mean the first crew we was all mates, always out together at night and that, and the second crew, I know you’re friends and that, speak and everything, it’s not the same what you call it, camaraderie there, I can’t even, all I know is one was named George, I can’t remember the names of all, any the others, and the pilot.
GT: And you did fifteen ops with that new crew.
JG: Sixteen with ‘em, yeah. Or fifteen.
GT: On your log book, mid March you’ve got one thousand bomber raid on Dortmund.
JG: Yeah, I think we, I went on three or four, that was when, towards that time of the war, they had all these aircraft, used to send everything up, Bomber Harris.
GT: That’s March 45 that was Dortmund and Essen, so what was that like, you were mid upper at that time?
JG: No, I was rear gunner then. It should say there.
GT: Rear gunner. Oh yes, it does. So what was it like with all these aircraft around you, and above you, and below?
JG: Well, during the day it was all right, but at night you didn’t see, only when you nearly had a smash with one, we crossed like that, that’s how close we were and you know, nobody, he didn’t see us, we didn’t see him, and, was something else to do with flying.
GT: But you were able to warn the skipper of any aircraft above you.
JG: Oh yeah, I remember, oh with Granham, oh that was when this Ju88, perhaps that’s why I didn’t get sighted, because we’re flying along and next minute tracer bullets come up, come up underneath [emphasis] the tail plane and over the top of the wing, big long stream of tracer and the pilot - what the hell’s that, and I said it’s all right skipper, it’s only tracer bullet, just like that, not even thinking, and then I gave the order corkscrew starboard go, and he dived down.
GT: So that was on your twentieth operation to Nuremburg, on the 16th of March 1945, eight hours thirty at night and your log book states: ‘combat with Junkers 88, fired five hundred rounds, fighter destroyed, crashed in flames, exploded on ground, brackets: confirmed.’
JG: Yeah. That’s what, it was confirmed by this other man from another station but they said, I mean there was a lot of talk about Granham getting the DFC and me getting nothing. But.
GT: So your skipper at the time was Flying Officer Granham.
JG: Granham. Yeah.
GT: Granham is his surname there. So he already had the DFC.
JG: Yeah, already had the DFC. He got the bar to it.
GT: And he was awarded a second with a Bar directly for shooting down.
JG: Yeah. Shooting down.
GT: And you shot it down and you weren’t awarded anything.
JG: That’s what a lot of ‘em were saying on the station. How is it that he got a Bar to his bloody DFC and the gunner got nothing and he shot the plane down.
GT: You were a sergeant at the time? Flight Sergeant.
JG: Not sure, probably Flight Sergeant. Then.
GT: So you don’t know if you’d been accredited with the kill.
JG: No, never bothered about, you know.
GT: There was distinction there that you should have been awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for your action.
JG: Yeah.
GT: And that never happened.
JG: That never happened. And then that’s how that came about, Paul.
GT: But in this case though your DFM, that others had been awarded for the same thing, you found out later that there was great disparity between -
JG: Oh yeah, between officers and airmen, non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers, big [emphasis] disparity, you try and get, and check out how many DFCs were awarded and how many DFMs were awarded.
GT: Did you find out the quantities of that?
JG: Yes, I’m almost sure it was what I said: twenty thousand DFCs and six thousand DFMs.
GT: And the shooting down of that Junkers that night for you saved your crew, and your aircraft.
JG: Well yeah, and if I’d have shot us down, I mean it’s lucky that the tracer bullets, if that’s your aircraft, come up under, underneath the tail plane, over the wing. That’s how.
GT: Normally every one tracer you see is another is four or five of rounds that are.
JG: All depends what they do, I think we had five, sometimes six, sometimes seven and then one tracer put in, you know, there.
GT: That’s pretty good shooting with three nought threes, to be able to get a Junkers.
JG: Yeah, but, that’s another thing what made me smile. On the training they’re telling you about your gunsight, your gun ring, you got a fifty, fifty percent crossing speed by half the gun sight, against a full gun sight, how you do this and that, and I said to ‘em, when they spoke to me about it after, some of the men, I said it’s biggest load of bullshit. What do you mean? I said I’ve ordered the pilot, I said, he’s corkscrewing like that, I said, all you’re supposed to aim at fifteen degree part I said all you’re doing is you’re firing a gun, the bullets are flying around and you hit lucky enough, hit a part of the engine what caught fire. And how the hell when I read sometimes on there or I read they got air gunners shot five or six, dunno, how the bloody hell, you couldn’t aim your gun, aircraft going like that. That was that you know, corkscrew come up the same way and then it went down again, till you ordered it, the captain, to stop. I know when we come up and the pilot, on one occasion, we’d just come out above the cloud, we’d dropped the bombs, flying back and he come above the clouds and it was beautiful [emphasis] clear and the pilot said Johnny, it’s pretty clear up here and we can be seen, what do you want me to do? I said can you go just in the cloud, just in the cloud so, and that’s what he done, for probably ten mile or so, flying just in the cloud. Made it a bit awkward, bit bumpy and that, wasn’t very good, but at least they couldn’t see us. Cause when you’re up, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, probably you haven’t but, if you’re about the cloud like that, that looks like sea above it, nothing there, just your lot, just looking at the cloud, yeah.
GT: On 75 New Zealand Squadron there was little documentation, but I’ve interviewed one chap who was an under [emphasis] gunner. Did you have any experience on 12 and 100 Squadron of Lancasters having under gunners?
JG: I know towards the end that’s when they found out the Junkers, instead of, he was firing upwards.
GT: Schrage musik. Upward firing cannons.
JG: Upward firing cannon. That’s why we lost so many aircraft before anybody knew about it! Then after that, when we’re searching, the mid upper gunner, the pilot every so often had to turn the plane down so he could look below and that way make sure there’s nothing underneath it.
GT: So the squadrons didn’t employ under gunners in any of the aircraft.
JG: No, not like the Americans, Americans had gunners in their Flying Fortresses. They had ten, ten gunners in their Flying Fortresses.
GT: For the gunnery side of things for you John, did you, that Junkers 88 you shot down did you have any other chance, or any other shooting opportunities with other attacking aircraft?
JG: Duren, we dropped, the Master Bomber called us down from seventeen thousand, called us down to five thousand feet, in Duren, dropped the bombs from five thousand, that was almost as if you’re on the ground, he called us down: it’s lovely down here. And we answered back and joked, yeah it’s f-ing lovely up here an all! We’re staying here! Of course, the Master Bomber couldn’t do nothing, he had no idea who it was!
GT: So you did all joined him?
JG: Yeah, so we slowly went down and joined him. You know, you’re talking amongst the crew, what do you reckon? Well look. if we go down, there’s a lot gone down, we’ve got more chance being in the crowd than staying up here on our own.
GT: But you risked being, having bombs dropped from those still above.
JG: Yeah, well that was my argument, but after this, seeing this plane dop bombs on another plane, how the hell, we were supposed to be the highest crew, usually round about sixteen, sixteen five, seventeen, seventeen five, eighteen. All depends how, I think on that particular night we were, our height was eighteen five hundred and yet there’s aircraft above us, and course we were talking, we’re supposed to be up the top, and the pilot saying what do you think they want these aircraft with these propellors for! They can go up higher! So long as the navigator knows, that if it’s, if he’s due to bomb at say sixteen thousand, then the instruments all set, but if we’re flying at seventeen, as long as the navigator knows, he can work it out, fiddle it out, that we’re a thousand feet higher than we should be.
GT: So by your twenty sixth operation which was Heligoland, in your log book you’ve stated: very good prang. Why was that a very good prang?
JG: Oh, l there wasn’t, well there was no cloud, it was a perfect sky like you get here, there wasn’t a cloud or anything in sight, not a fighter, no flak, you just flew round Heligoland. It was a u-boat place where all the u-boats dock, at Heligoland. That’s when they, they couldn’t, our bombs and that what we had, wouldn’t go through until they built the twelve thousand.
GT: Tallboy and the Grand Slam.
JG: That went through the bloody –
GT: Concrete.
JG: Concrete.
GT: So on the 29th of April, you started doing something different - Operation Manna. Tell us about Operation Manna, please.
JG: Yeah well, now we were given, [pause] first of all we were all told at a meeting that Holland is starving and that they’ve done a deal with the Germans that we won’t load our guns or fire on anything in Holland and we can drop the food, which we did do, the first time at six hundred feet I think it was. Was it, the first time?
GT: You’ve three entries in your log book for Valkenburg.
JG: Yeah, that’s Valkenburg was the first one.
GT: End of April beginning of May.
JG: So, and what happened, when we saw, it’s all in sacks, all stacked in the bomb bay, had a hell of a job with the bomb bay just opening like that a little bit to get the stuff in and course when it dropped, hit the ground we saw flour bursting and that, and we said, got back and reported it’s too high. They said right, go lower and the pilot said yeah, we can go lower, there’s nothing in the way at Valkenburg, and I always remember the second op Valkenburg, we’re going along, looking back and everybody’s running round the field and you’re dropping all these bloody great big sacks of food, and then we flew up the High Street and when I looked out the window, the church steeple’s up there! [emphasis] And we’re up the High Street and all the kids waving and that, to you, and you’re down flying up the Hight Street like a car and the church bloody steeple, I think Christ skipper, I said I want to go to Heaven but I don’t want to go this way yet! You know, and laughing and joking and all that, and then what we done then, on our particular, and evidently it was done. We used to fill up milk bottles and you know razor blades, how thin they are, you could bend it, bend it enough to put in the top and it used to open up, the blade used to open up jammed in the bottle and when they, you threw them out the turret it made a screaming noise, we used that a lot to frighten ‘em and what we done on our third trip to Holland, everybody on the station either had rag or handkerchief and cotton, you know the cotton, you know, parachute, you make your parachute, you tied it four corners and tied it round the choc bars. We all threw out we could see all the kids running with these little parachutes with the chocolate bars. Because that’s why, that’s why in the letters some of what Jack wrote, he went to Holland for two years running, they invited him over on the day they celebrate us dropping the food to ‘em, and the last time was Rotterdam, racecourse, flying along the racecourse about fifty, sixty foot high. Of course the pilots used to love it. So did we, flying like that! See when you’re young and that you never thought of danger, how dangerous it was. I think from what I was told, we only lost one aircraft on that and that was a Flying Fortress, on the way back, or something.
GT: Did you see any of the American aircraft doing the food drops as well, which was their Operation Chow Hound?
JG: No I never saw them, it was different timing and different places, you know.
GT: How many Lancasters would have been involved with the food drops that you saw?
JG: A few hundred, and then a lot of them, while that was carrying on, they went to pick up the prisoners of war.
GT: Juvencourt.
JG: Yeah, pick up all our prisoners of war, I wasn’t on that.
GT: Would you have wanted to be?
JG: One of me mates who was on it, he said we had twenty on the way back, prisoners of war, in our plane. Picked up twenty of ’em. Yeah.
GT: So you didn’t manage to do any more Operation Manna trips after that lot?
JG: No, I only done the four.
GT: That was your thirty one trips all together.
JG: Yeah. They posted me out.
GT: And you found out later why.
JG: He wanted to do some flying! I don’t blame him, I mean.
GT: Was that your gunnery leader?
JG: I went home on leave, they, I met the wife, and fourteen weeks I was home, fourteen weeks leave and while I was home on leave, I was a Flight Sergeant, I got a letter, on the, I got a letter on me demob leave promoting me to Warrant Officer which was another hundred and twenty pound!
GT: Good grief! That would buy a house, wouldn’t it! Now there were a couple of funny things that happened, funny when you look on them now, and one was when you were a mid upper on your first tour and the Lancaster above you was about to drop its bombs. They missed you but they got an aircraft below you.
JG: Missed us but got another one.
GT: What happened to the other aircraft?
JG: That’s what I said, the bombs had all dropped, we’d dropped our bombs and all, and the smoke cleared and the rear gunner, that was Jack, we’re on fire! I said shut up you silly sod, I said it’s not, I said it’s some poor sod’s had bomb’s dropped on ‘im! As the smoke cleared away, this other Lancaster bomber was turning like that, slowly turning to get back on course, with a bomb jammed in the wing. Told the skipper, and the skipper, we were going round, we went near enough to see it all and then skipper just carried on, you know, to get back himself, and we found out afterwards he landed, he made it, kept asking the people involved in our station and he said oh yeah, he landed okay, he landed in France on the emergency drome.
GT: The bomb hadn’t had time to arm itself before it hit the wing. Must have been so fortunate. That’s amazing. Now there was also a bit of an own goal, you were telling me about seven pound jam tins!
JG: That was the time I emptied it out the side.
GT: Tell me the story, come on, from the beginning!
JG: All the gunners had a big empty jam tin from the mess to use as their pee bucket cause we couldn’t get out our turrets to use the Elsan and this particular night I filled it up and I thought well what am I going to do? Am I going to empty on the floor, which it can go out through the bottom of the turret. I thought well, if I do that, the ground crew won’t be very happy that they’ve got to wash that out, and I slid the window at the side of me, in the turret.
GT: And what height would you have been at?
JG: Probably around eighteen thousand feet, I slid that open, and emptied the jam tin out. Within one second it had all gone round, straight back through the front of the turret – cause we had no windows, we took ‘em all out – all over me. We had no windows in our turrets, all the gunners took their windows out in front of ‘em, just had the guns there.
GT: So that would have been minus twenty, minus forty, is it?
JG: Sometimes it were really cold. We were cold, the rest of the crew were bloody ‘ot!. But the two gunners were nearly always cold. We had electric heated suits in the end, and I was colder still. Course when I told ‘em I looked like a bloody ice block, all they done was laugh. So did all at the station.
GT: So it all came back at you.
JG: Yeah, they couldn’t stop, they all thought how funny it was.
GT: And the jam tins there you said they were seven pound jam tins and the WAAFs managed to save these for you.
JG: Yeah. That’s what they used to have as their food: seven pounds of jam, in tins. That’s what all the RAF stations had, and I suppose the Army, Navy, and everything.
GT: Gee, you were lucky to not to have something frozen off.
JG: Yeah!
GT: So, the other thing was that during Operation Manna you’ve seen a photograph with the tulips and there was -
JG: Yeah, ‘Thank you boys.’
GT: There’s a photograph in one of the IBCCs books showing that and you remember seeing that.
JG: Yeah, I remember it was red tulips and ‘Thank You Boys’, probably from where we were about six foot long, so they must have had dozens and dozens of workmen overnight, planted all these in the middle of this field of tulips: ‘Thank You Boys.’
GT: You saw action with your, active bombing operations and then you did the Operation Manna and they classified that as an operation too.
JG: Oh yeah, we didn’t think they were going to, but they did in the end. Cause, and I remember at, what they done with the aircrew finished, they posted all the officers to one station and as many men to another one, filled up and they, let me tell you now, they got us on parade and said right, we’ll call your names out, just repeat your last number, your last three numbers and go and stand over there. They were calling all the names and this great big crowd got smaller and that one got bigger, and bigger and bigger, and in then end there was only about six of us left here, and we wasn’t in it. They were all going, being sent to Japan, against Japanese, Japan, we were too close to being demobbed, so they said it’s just a waste sending you out there, you’ll be sent back, and that’s when we got demobbed, you know. When we got our log book back, our pay book, there.
GT: The difference between the two, did it strike you then, that from doing the bombing operations that finally you were saving lives, of our allies?
JG: Oh yeah, with the food dropping, cause where we dropped, where we dropped the food at Valkenburg, it was surrounded by Germans. Actually I saw one German standing in the corner of the field, but, they had done a deal with the RAF not to take pictures and all that, and load the guns – like hell! We had our guns loaded, we weren’t going to take that chance with ‘em, but nobody got fired on.
GT: And nobody fired their guns.
JG: No, because, I found out afterwards by talking to somebody, of course they wouldn’t, cause they were starving as well. They wanted some of the food you were dropping: they were starving as well. Cause it was like, like a field, this part surrounded, all the rest is, a different, this part of Holland was surrounded by the Germans.
GT: You know there’s an Operation Manna Memorial in Rotterdam?
JG: I didn’t know.
GT: They hold a service every year and they thank you for your service to save them. It’s very special for the Dutch.
JG: I believe they’ve got to the last one or something, yeah. I know Jack used to go.
GT: Jack was your ex?
JG: Ex gunner. He used to go. Had a wonderful time he said. Said you never spent a ha’penny, you never spent anything. You wasn’t allowed to pay for anything.
GT: All the streets around the area are named after the commanders that organised everything in respect.
JG: What, actually what did annoy me, was this Dresden business, you know. Over the years they had meetings, cause they said there was three hundred thousand killed, in Dresden. Well it wasn’t all that long ago, only a few months ago, they had their last meeting over Dresden and they, all the people involved in the meeting are settled on nineteen thousand killed; well we had that in London! And they settled on nineteen thousand, killed in Dresden and not the three hundred thousand what they tried to say, you know, and that was only people over here, not over here, over in England. A lot of the do gooders, you know, you’re terror bombing, dropping bombs like that on Dresden and what annoyed me was Churchill blamed Bomber Harris for bombing Dresden, he said he had no need to do it! He went on the, yeah, he did, something there somewhere, I don’t know where I got it from, but he had no need to bomb Dresden. Well Bomber Harris had a letter from Churchill, ordering [emphasis] him, and he said I can prove how, I call him fat guts Churchill, whisky drinking gut, do you know if anybody speaks to me of Churchill, I say don’t talk to me about that fat gut! I said he put the blame on Bomber Harris for all these people being killed, I said, and he was the one who gave the order: him, Stalin, Roosevelt, at a meeting.
GT: And the very reason Bomber Harris was never given a peerage.
JG: That’s why though, when he finally come back here, they did do didn’t they, Memorial, they got the shock of their lives the way the people supported it.
GT: The Bomber Command Memorial in the Green Park. Now in 2011 and 2012 when New Zealanders went across, you being a British person.
JG: Couldn’t go.
GT: You were not involved, or not allowed to be involved with that. Have you been, yet, back to England?
JG: No, I’ve never been back; I won’t go back. I’ve never wanted to go back to England.
GT: Now if we can just move a little bit back from there. You emigrated to New Zealand in?
JG: 1979.
GT: And you followed your sons then, because you and Beatrice, or Betty, you had two sons.
JG: Yeah, and one of ‘em who’d already been back once to England, he went back home again and this time, he broke up with his wife.
GT: So you’ve got Mike who’s aged seventy two, living in Kent.
JG: In Kent.
GT: And you’ve got Paul here, living in New Zealand.
JG: Just over there.
GT: Who is fifty five, so you have your son close, and obviously you had a great time, Betty and yourself, here in New Zealand.
JG: You can go and see his garden, Paul’s gardens, see his swimming pool and all that.
GT: Fabulous, so Betty, she was, what did she do when you came to New Zealand?
JG: She was a dress maker, machinist, and in the end she had, we had a big machine up in that garage there, we made it into a, like a workshop for her.
GT: Fabulous. Now, at the, when you demobbed from the RAF, you went back as an engineer and then into the fishing tackle game, selling in London there. So you became a store owner, was that right?
JG: See, in England fishing tackle is a lot different to New Zealand. In New Zealand, I hate to say this, but all they think about is trout. Trout, trout. Can you eat it? If you can’t eat it they don’t want to catch it! Whereas the poms, we do it for the fun of catching the fish.
GT: You do the coarse fishing.
JG: Coarse fishing. And course, so therefore, the shop in England was selling ten times the amount of stuff than what they do in New Zealand, cause there’s so much, such a bigger range.
GT: And where was your shop?
JG: Down, opposite, opposite Penge Police Station funnily enough.
GT: And you sold that up to come out to New Zealand in the early seventies.
JG: Yes.
GT: You’ve already said you didn’t want to go back. Did you get homesick for England?
JG: I didn’t. The wife’s been back, twice, but I didn’t. Never been homesick and wanted to go back. And I told me son, when he left here and went back home, I said that’s the second time, don’t expect me to follow you, I won’t be following you, which I didn’t do, I didn’t want to chase after him. He’s happy enough, he’s married a Russian woman, got divorced. His wife was one of these moaning types, always got something to moan about! [Chuckle]
GT: Fabulous. So you’ve managed to keep your home that you purchased as soon as you arrived here. And so, when did you lose Betty?
JG: Eleven years ago.
GT: You’ve been very active here with the New Zealand Bomber Command Association.
JG: Yeah, I used to go there every Wednesday.
GT: So you were part of the, now in New Zealand we have a Lancaster that’s been rebuilt and is on display at the MOTET, which is the Museum of Transport and Technology.
JG: That’s right. We used to clean that.
GT: Right, so you were part of the Wednesday Bomber Boys. Was a group of you veterans over the years.
JG: Every Wednesday up there, and why I stopped in the end, driving here to there took nearly an hour, driving back was under half hour and driving on that motorway with all that, everybody going into Auckland, I couldn’t take it any longer and I had to pack it in. The Wednesday Boys.
GT: So for those who are unaware of our Lancaster here in New Zealand, it was donated by the French Navy and it was not an aircraft that had served during World War Two but was just after. But it sat for many years here and finally a group was put together to get it back to display status, and it’s a magnificent aircraft at the Museum of Transport Technology and at the current time it has 75 Squadron markings on it. But for your factor John, did you spend much time inside the aircraft when you were fixing it up?
JG: No, we, one of the jobs I had was, every week., four of us used to sit round the table with all log books, reading out what this one done, oh this one he flew so and so, so and so, and somebody like yourself is making a note of it, and all that was reduced to a disc, so that if you wanted, if you had a father or grandfather who was one of the aircrew got lost, you wanted to know what happened. Instead of you searching through all the records: it’s on the disc.
GT: Under that guy’s name.
JG: Under that guy’s name, and that would tell you everything. And that’s what we done. We used to sit there for hour, or couple of hours then it was tea time, cup of tea and a bun, and then some of us used to have a duster and clean the aircraft up. We, I took me mates up there once and they were, they had to pay to get in! [Laugh] They said no lads, sorry, but. I said they’re my mates, and he said yeah I know, he said but if we let them in then others will want it. I mean I didn’t have to pay, I could go in there any time: One of the Wednesday Boys.
GT: How many Wednesday boys were there all together? A dozen?
JG: Oh, couple of dozen. Yeah.
GT: Any left, besides yourself?
JG: Yeah, oh yeah, there’s still, still two or three left – like Peter Wheeler, I’m sure he was one of the Wednesday Boys.
GT: Peter’s not a veteran though, but he’s the executive of the New Zealand Bomber Command Association. He looks after the aircraft for MOTET, the aircraft’s not the MOTET particularly, it’s part of the Bomber Command Association.
JG: The last time, which is years ago, they had a Sunderland flying boat, outside.
GT: It’s inside now.
JG: That’s inside is it.
GT: It’s all been painted up.
JG: I know they were doing this Lancaster up, somebody said these two brothers got together and paying it out, paying for it out their pocket.
GT: You’re talking about the Panton brothers at East Kirkby, Lincoln. It’s Just Jane.
JG: They reckon there’ll be a couple of Lancasters flying.
GT: They’re looking at that. And this is where the International Bomber Command Centre has come about, now it’s not far, and this is where this recording will end up, with them in their archives and it’s been fascinating. Now what you have on your wall here is a huge framed effort with your rank slides, your medals and some photographs, and some badges of the squadrons you flew with, which is fascinating. Your son built that for you?
JG: No, he had it built by the chap owns the bed and breakfast at Russell, you know Russell? He owns the bed and breakfast [cough] right on the front of Russell. I don’t know, I think it cost a couple of thousand to do that. What he was charging.
GT: Awesome. That’s pretty neat there.
JG: Paul paid for all that.
GT: To have your information up on the wall.
JG: And then trouble is, one of the cards has slipped down and it’s too much bother to undo the back, because it’s sealed, so we just left it.
GT: So we see that you managed to secure the Bomber Command Clasp at least. So that’s good to see. Now John, you’re now coming up, in September it was your birthday, you were ninety -
JG: Seven.
GT: Ninety seven. You’re feeling good about yourself?
JG: Well, I’ve got all this problem now what’s going to happen about when they start knocking down my wall and pulling up me carpets.
GT: Bit of a flood in the laundry yesterday.
JG: I don’t.
GT: But the other thing too, John, you’ve just survived an accident on the road! Gosh, what happened there?
JG: Well that, on that mobility scooter, I’ll show you if you like before you go. Well coming down Buckman’s beach road you’re supposed to stay on the pavement, well I’ve been using the road, but on this particular time there was a lot of traffic so I went on the pavement. Coming down Buckman’s each but you know the houses’ driveways are slanted up like that, going along and we got to house and it was quite steep so I went to move over to the right to get nearer the wall of the house, and what I didn’t know, in front of me, the pavement ended, it was mud. And the wheel, ruddy wheel went down and threw me over the top.
GT: Were you hurt?
JG: I’ve done all this, out gardening more or less stopped now.
GTL And you also attend a lot of the Bomber Command services.
JG: Well I shall, I’m going this one June 9th at ten thirty. I’m going to phone up Kerry and Don, Paul said he would take the four of us there, you know, to the service. Well if he does, if they come, and we stop in the restaurant there, I’ll tell ‘em I’ll treat ‘em to breakfast. I know Carrie and Don won’t eat much - Paul will! [Laughter]
GT: So, the service is all about the Bomber Command stuff, right.
JG: Yeah.
GT: So, and you’ve been doing this every year?
JG: Every year, yeah, and Peter met, Peter said I haven’t seen you, was last year you saw me, cause he came here, Peter, to interview me over something. I will have to find his phone number and phone him up.
GT: The other thing John you mentioned to me, was that during your operational tours, you had a white scarf.
JG: Yeah, a white silk scarf.
GT: Tell me about that please.
JG: It was about eighteen inches wide and over six foot long, and every op when I come back, I used to take it with me on ops, when I come back, I had this WAAF used to embroider the name of the town we’d been to bomb. Even when we shot down that Ju 88, she embroidered a swastika on it. So I had sixteen names at the top and fifteen names, and fifteen names at the bottom with a swastika and I gave them to John Bannon to put on show.
GT: Well we’ll find out more about that.
JG: See if you can.
GT: It’s fascinating that you actually had that done.
JG: He died. When he suddenly died, I thought meself I wonder what happened to my scarf?
GT: We’ll have a look for that. So have you been up to see the Lancaster lately?
JG: No I don’t get out there now. You know, I mean I’ve got the address, 9th of June, Paul’s already, I can make a note, yeah, we’ll take you dad, him and his partner and I’m going to phone up Carrie or she’ll come over, and Don, see if they want come with us.
GT: Well you have got a amazing amount of your historical documents here: your log book is safe and is being scanned and copied. You have a folder full of all of the New Zealand Bomber Command Association newsletters for quite some years, you have some from the 100 Squadron in England.
JG: There’s two there.
GT: There’s two that you have managed to secure, and see what they have been doing and been up to, I have now given you have some IBCC material I brought back from England last year with me so you have some material there to check on, and when I arrived here to visit you today you were looking at your photographs on your big tv which is fascinating to see.
JG: I fetched the flying, the Lancaster flying with it, with it the Hurricane and Spitfire flying along there and then I fetch them flying over, practicing on that dam, all on my, but I’m not so good now with the computer, getting it, you know, cause I play poker a bit on it, on the computer.
GT: What did you do when you came to New Zealand? What was your career, job? What did you get up to?
JG: Er, [pause] I had a job with Shatlocks. You know, Shatlocks, I worked for them.
GT: The company that made stoves.
JG: They made all the stoves down Dunedin. All the electric ones and that, and Fisher and Paykel got their name on one of them.
GT: Fischer and Paykel are a very famous brand here in New Zealand aren’t they, John, making cooker tops and such.
JG: Well they done, well they didn’t actually make the cook tops, it was Jack Shatlock, Shatlocks made ‘em, made all the cookers.
GT: And you were a technician or a salesman?
JG: Technician. I’ve got, actually, see that red tin there, up there, there’s a red tin up the garden, there’s about twelve up there, that was what they used to enclose the dishwashers in and all the aluminium sheets up there, was all part of the plate what came out your cooker.
GT: You’re in a very large house here, with a large back yard which is not the same as what many English households have.
JG: I used to do a lot [emphasis] of gardening, but now, half hour and that’s me lot. I’ve realised now, when I start getting tired, I just come and sit down, read.
GT: And you’re the last man of your crew that you know of, John?
JG: Yeah, Jack was the, Jack was, he died a year ago now, and some of the others have been dead a few years you know, slowly getting less and less.
GT: You were involved with two different crews though. Did you keep in contact much with any of the other chaps?
JG: No, none at all.
GT: Once you demobbed.
JG: No, none at all, not even.
GT: Other than Jack of course.
JG: Jack and, talking to Podge cause he used to come over from Australia to stay at Jack’s place and he invited me, I spoke to him on the phone one day when he was visiting England, he said John, if you’d like to come to Australia and pay for half the petrol, I’ll take you all around Australia, flying, he had is own aircraft, type like Tiger Moth. And I never did go, but I could have flown all the way round Australia.
GT: You stlll can.
JG: All you got to do he said was pay for half the petrol.
GT: That’s amazing. You are amazing for the New Zealand Bomber Command Association to be one of the few left here in New Zealand, so, John, I am very honoured to be able to interview you today for the IBCC especially. You and I have crossed paths for many years at the services, this is my first time to sit and chat to you so I’m quite honoured to spend time with you today. I think is there anything else you would like to speak to with your interview here?
JG: No not really I think I’m quite surprised, you know that, I’m glad Peter Wheeler’s still there. I can have a chat with him, when I go. I will phone him up though.
GT: But this is your story, this is about your -
JG: If you remember, try and have a look for that scarf.
GT: I can do that too. But for your history and your remembrance of your time, serving with the Bomber Command itself, long before you were in New Zealand. I know I certainly can be proud to thank you for your service and you obviously served with distinction and pride.
JG: Thank you.
GT: And memories of those days: good, bad?
JG: Yes. Some good, some bad. I can think to myself, I must have been bloody mad volunteering for this when I was up there flying at times, when we was in trouble, you know, but then I realise, now, how lucky I was to be one [emphasis] of the men who got back. Like all, evidently, all [emphasis] that crew who you saw there, every one of them, survived. I don’t know how many ops Jack done, but I know he done a lot less than me, cause he done six food, no seven food drops, he told me, he done seven there so, if he done seven of them he didn’t do many, that’d been seven ops left. Can’t get, I’m lucky to have a son like Paul over there.
GT: Well John, I’m going to finish our interview here now, sadly, because I’d love to keep talking with you, but thank you very much for your time here, and I’ll make sure the IBCC have the recording from this, sent to them and I hope you enjoy reading their cards I’ve left with you.
JG: I will read all that. I’ll sort it all out and read it.
GT: They will have now your contact details and I’ll make sure they’ll send some to you. From me, from Glen Turner, of 75 Squadron Association, the secretary of the Association and my friendship with the Bomber Command gentlemen, I thank you and I thank you on behalf of the IBCC.
JG: I think thank you for taking the trouble to, you know, do this sort of thing. There.
GT: My pleasure for you. Thank you, John. Goodbye.
JG: Bye-by.
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 John Green
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Glen Turner
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
2019-03-07
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
AGreenJ190307, PGreenJ1901
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:28:12 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
John Green was born on the 22nd of September 1921 in Penge, South East London. He registered for the Royal Air Force to prevent being called up by the Army and was drafted in 1942. He was posted to the Isle of Man, where he volunteered as a drogue operator during training operations, before transferring to bomb disposal in Bathford. In 1944, Green volunteered for aircrew and opted to train as an air gunner. He formed a crew at 30 Operational Training Unit, RAF Hixon, converted from Wellingtons to Halifaxes at RAF Sandoft, and attended the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Hemswell. The crew joined 100 Squadron, RAF Grimsby, in October 1944. He recalls the conditions inside the mid-upper gunner turret, manually releasing their bombs over Speyer, and failing to complete their sixteenth to Kemnitz, which resulted in a Lack of Moral Fibre accusation to ground the pilot and disband the crew. In March 1945, Green was posted to 12 Squadron, RAF Wickenby, and completed fifteen further operations. He describes the lack of camaraderie with his new crew and shooting down a Ju 88 on an operation to Nuremberg, for which the pilot received recognition but he did not. For Operation Manna, he undertook three trips to Valkenburg, and one to Rotterdam, and recalls dropping chocolate bars for children and viewing a message of thanks written in tulips. Green describes his career after demobilisation, his opinion regarding the treatment of Bomber Command, emigrating to New Zealand in the 1970s, and his active membership with the New Zealand Bomber Command Association.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tilly Foster
Anne-Marie Watson
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
New Zealand
England--Bath
England--Lincolnshire
England--Somerset
England--Staffordshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Speyer
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Netherlands--Valkenburg (South Holland)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1944-06-09
1944-10-31
1944-12-15
1945-02
1945-04
1945-03-16
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
100 Squadron
12 Squadron
1667 HCU
30 OTU
air gunner
aircrew
bomb disposal
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
military service conditions
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Grimsby
RAF Hemswell
RAF Hixon
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Wickenby
recruitment
shot down
training
Wellington
-
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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
Akrill, William
Billy Akrill
W Akrill
Description
An account of the resource
132 items. The collection concerns Sergeant William Akrill (1922 - 1943, 1436220 Royal Air Force). He was a navigator with 115 Squadron. His Wellington was shot down by a night-fighter on an operation to Essen and crashed into the Ijsselmeer 12/13 March 1943. The collection contains his photographs, letters, and cartoons as well as an oral history interview with Michael and Ann Akrill about their uncle. There is also a subcollection of letters written as a teenage boy to his father in hospital. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Michael and Ann Akrill and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Additional information on William Akrill is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/200183/" title="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/akrill-we/ ">IBCC Losses Database</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Akrill, M-A
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] 1 [/underlined]
1436220 L.A.C. Akrill,
2 Flight “D” Squadron,
1. E.A.O.S.,
Eastbourne.
Monday 4.5.42.
Dear Mum,
Well my exam results turned out to be on the right side of the pass-mark so that’s that worry over. The papers were very tricky & some of the questions unfair & the marking stiff but only 10% didn’t get through. We’re here for 3 more weeks & I think its very likely that we’ll be able to manage a 48 the week-end after next – oh no that’s Church parade so we may not get one. Anyway our Flt/Commdr is trying to get us one. Then we go to the Embarkation Centre at Heton Park in Manchester to wait for the boat. We should get at least a week’s Embarkation Leave from there. That will be in about a month’s time. In the meantime we just have to amuse ourselves here. We’ve just been re-issued with equipment & I’ve got about £70’s worth this time including a 15 guinea watch. I’m very pleased to say that except for Wednesdays & one fine night from 10 – 11 each week (for star sights) our evenings will be free in future. Shan’t know what to do with so much spare time.
Denny said he got home last Saturday in the middle of the air-raid on Bath. His village is only
[page break]
a mile or two away & had some bombs. He says Bath is –
Well I wrote that at dinner time [deleted] & had [/deleted] & I was going to say that Bath was levelled & that the villages round are crowded with refugees with neither food nor shelter & that his village alone cooks a thousand meals a day. Little did I realise then that before I could say that I should also be “bombed out” but alive, thank God, and at least fed and sheltered.
I was writing a letter to Dave in class this afternoon (we’d nothing to do) when without any warning there was a terriffic [sic] “bump” & a drone of aero engines. I turned to the window just at my back to see, just outside, an Me 109 bank round and dive on a tiny little boat where two people were fishing and turn his guns on it – the filthy swine. There was another terriffic [sic] bang – some had sence [sic] to crouch under tables but most of us rushed to the windows & balcony until we were ordered downstairs. We rushed to those windows in time to see the rest of the Jerries 5 Me 109E’s in all make off low over the Channel. Each apparently loosed a bomb. One on a train in the station which I think will be repaired in time for my 48 if I get it. One on the gas works and another has just about demolished one of the churches. The remaining 2 caused all the fuss
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
Both of them were on a Raf hotel just on the opposite side of the road from ours & a few hundred yards from our classroom. One is not yet exploded so our flight – as we’d finished our course – had to charge into our shattered billets among splinters, rubble, broken glass &c & collect everyones bedding – also covered with broken glass &c. & cart it on lorries to a safer area. Out kit’s still scattered around our old billets. I just managed to grab eating, washing & shaving things. We’re sleeping crowded on the floor of the basement of another hotel. The Waafs have also had to move out – their billets missed it by inches. They’re allowed to take kit & it’s a scream to see them rushing about with their belongings. Lots of our boys are going around with scars & bruises & dusty clothes. Most of them were out doing P.T. but there were a number of casualties – some fatal according to reports & I think some are still trapped. I hope the confounded bomb goes off soon as its not going to be very pleasant sleeping as we are now. Don’t think our billets will be very badly hurt when, or if, it does. So now I know what it’s like to be bombed out. It was terrifficaly [sic] exciting while the raid lasted to [deleted] ha [/deleted] see the Me 109 outside just as we’d seen the spits so often before. It was all over in a few minutes & they were scooting like mad across the Channel. I can’t admire their
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
bravery in gunning the tiny boat with its two occupants having a quiet afternoons fishing – then they didn’t sink it for one of its mates went out & towed it back with one occupant showing signs of life. I suppose they’ll go back saying that hits were made on an enemy patrol vessel! Well I’ll shake ‘em one of these days - & it won’t be cowardly hit & run raids on Churches & peaceful towns either. The Mes have been doing quite a bit of that during the last week on the coast just here. There’s absolutely no means of stopping them as they just nip across the narrow strip of water, drop their bombs, & scram. We got no warning but the “all clear” went when it was over & since then the Civil Defence has been rushing around wasting time & petrol
So much for our raid – we’ll probably be having more within the next [deleted] few [/deleted] 3 weeks. You’ll not get this until late as I didn’t get it finished & posted in the rush.
Hope to see you – [underlined] maybe [/underlined] next week-end. Hope that blinking bomb goes off soon so that we can have somewhere to live again.
Had a grand leave – missing the food & “lie-in”.
[underlined] Bill [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Bill Akrill to his mother
Description
An account of the resource
Writes about exams and passing. Mentions leave possibility and church parade. Speculates over embarkation and writes of being re-equipped. Starts writing about a friend's experience of a bombing attack on Bath but then breaks off. Resumes to write of witnessing a Me 109 attack on fishing boat and others dropping bombs on railway station and local hotel used by the RAF. Describes damage to accommodation from bombing. WAAFs had to move out due to near miss. Comments on Me 109 'cowardly hit and run attacks on churches and peaceful towns' and the impossibility of countering them.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-05-04
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EAkrillWEAkrill[Mo]420504
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
Civilian
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--Somerset
England--Eastbourne (East Sussex)
England--Bath
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
William Akrill
bombing
ground personnel
Me 109
military living conditions
military service conditions
perception of bombing war
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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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
Cahir, Francis Shamus
Francis Shamus Cahir
Jim Cahir
Francis S Cahir
Francis Cahir
F S Cahir
F Cahir
J Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
44 items. An oral history interview with Francis Shamus "Jim" Cahir (419441 Royal Australian Air Force), letters, documents, photographs and a sub collection.
He flew operations as a mid upper gunner with 466 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jim Cahir and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-09
2016-06-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cahir, FS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
F/sgT CAHIR. FS.
AUS419441
Kodak House
Kingsway
London.
NOV 28th. 43
Letter No 20.
Dear Mum Paddy & Vincent
Over the pass [sic] couple of days mail has just been rolling in, I think I have received [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] at least a dozen letters, three being from you. Your letters are dated Aug 24th, Sept 27th & Oct 5th they are numbered 14 – 18 – 19. I am yet to receive 13 – 15 – 16 – 17 no doubt they will turn up sometime.
My other mail [deleted] is [/deleted] [inserted] was [/inserted] from Mary, Irene, Leo McGrath, John Donnigan, Dorothy Lambert, Paddy, a Miss Henry at Haughton’s (she’s about 40 so don’t get frightened), two girls from Robertson & Mullens, one from a young lady I met in New Plymouth N.Z, two from Mullumbimby and a very interesting Bullitin [sic] from Kathlyn. The Airmail from Mullum took 17 days to arrive, it cost 2/1 & came via [indecipherable word], so if you want to tell me something urgently the 2/1 Airmail is the thing, the 4d Airmail is useless. How is Airmail from here arriving home? let me know how long it takes.
Sorry to read in one of your letters that Mary Jones’ leg may be a bit shorter than the other, still as you say there may not be anything wrong at all, and if there is it can proably [sic] be soon rectified
You did not enclose Jim Brophy’s address, still I
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
don't need it to write to him over here, as you already know no doubt he has spent a couple of days with Uncle Shamus at Bath just before I arrived
So you got the letters I posted in New York, there were all kinds of rumors [sic] going around about the posting of mail and the general belief was the censorship was so hard that letters would be lucky to get home. I don’t think you mention anything about receiving a letter I posted in Colon about Aug 1st it was only a one page letter, did you receive it? Sorry about the cushion covers I had completely forgotten them until you mentioned them in your letters I think they are in the bottom of my bag somewhere, I must have a look & send them on to you. (sometime)
Regarding E.A McDonald the cricketer, I am sure he was killed in a motor accident just before the War began, anyhow I will check up with the Boys when they come in. Up till date one parcel has arrived I sent you an airgrath [sic] about it so I won’t go into details over it in this letter. The Y.C.W. paper arrived safely also Clarion, they make very interesting reading, fancy being approached for an article for the Y.C.W. paper! why it might mean the start of a journalistic career (I don’t think) I will be glad to write a short (I repeat [underlined] short [/underlined]) note for the paper in the near future, at the moment I can’t even cope with mail. I feel rotten when I receive letter after letter from Mary & a couple of others and know that I haven’t written half the number to them that I should have, still I suppose you can’t do the impossible at the moment it’s a matter of scribbling off as many answers to letters as you can and hoping next mail is spread over a period of weeks so that you can catch up a bit, at present I owe 22 letters wouldn’t it!
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
This week news is not very plentiful. The weather has not been too good, there has not been very much rain but mists have been bad which is just as bad if not worst [sic] than rain. A few mornings we have had very severe frosts & light snow storm.
I had a letter from Bill Cashman yesterday he is still in this country and looks as if he might be here for a while yet, he seems to be getting plenty of leave so I don’t suppose he will care when he is moved.
Last night I went to the Pictures to see “All the more the Merrier” it was a good show and I had a good laugh over it. Last night was the first time I have been out of camp for ages. Thursday night I was able to see the end of E.N.S.A. Concert, I was engaged for the best part of the night consequently did not see the beginning. The couple items that I saw at the end of the programme were excellent and I think I must have missed a real good concert.
The dances are still running, I am becoming quite a maniac on dances now, I go to more dances over here in a fortnight than I did in a month back home, still if you don’t go out it’s a case of sitting in the Mess trying to sink beers, an impossible task I assure you.
A couple of days ago we got an issue from the Australian Comforts Fund of a pair of socks, a heavy rolled necked Pull-over, a short sleeve jumper, & a couple of flannels, the last mentioned article was of no use to me so I left them for somebody else. at the moment I am still wearing my summer underwear I still can’t get use to long underwear which I have stacks of.
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
This morning when I got up for Mass at 7.45 it was pitch black, it seems funny going to Mass in the darkness. Quite a number attend Mass, no doubt there should be more, still that is their own look out.
There is no permanent chapel on the station, Mass is said on a make-shift alter in the Canteen.
I think I told you about our proposed Football match last week, well it did not come off. The weather was so bad that it kept the Lancasters on the ground consequently the players could not come. We finished up by playing a scratch match ourselves, the result being I am just getting over the effects of it now.
As I sit here writing this letter the rest of the crew are lounging around; the Engineer & the Rear Gunner are playing cards, some form of patience that they turn into a money making concern, its cost me a few bob so I have sworn off it for a while. The navigator is writing to some girl (I think) as he keeps asking how do you spell this – how do you spell that? “Pat the skipper” is reading the paper and at times breaks forth into the French language to tell us what he thinks of Hitler. Ralph the Bomb Aimer is snoring his head off on his bed, while Bruce the W. op is proably [sic] sinking pots in the Officers’ Mess if the truth was known.
This week I took a few snaps of the crew, I sent them into Beverley to be developed, they ought to be ready in about a weeks time; if they are any good I will send you a couple home.
Well Mum that seems to be the news at the moment so I will close down. How are you all at home? all in the best of health I hope. I would not be a bit surprised to learn Paddy had a couple of tapes up. Don’t worry over me! I am in the best of health & enjoying life to the utmost Your loving son brother Jim
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to Mrs Cahir from Jim Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
Letter from Flight Sergeant Jim Cahir to his mother and brothers. He writes about the mail he has received from friends and family and how long it took to arrive, that he received various newspapers, about the weather, his social activities, describing what his crew are doing and attending Mass on camp.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jim Cahir
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-11-28
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ECahirFSCahirM-P-V431128-0001, ECahirFSCahirM-P-V431128-0002, ECahirFSCahirM-P-V431128-0003, ECahirFSCahirM-P-V431128-0004
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 Australian Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Bath
England--Beverley
England--Somerset
England--Yorkshire
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11-28
air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
entertainment
flight engineer
Lancaster
mess
navigator
pilot
wireless operator
-
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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
Cahir, Francis Shamus
Francis Shamus Cahir
Jim Cahir
Francis S Cahir
Francis Cahir
F S Cahir
F Cahir
J Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
44 items. An oral history interview with Francis Shamus "Jim" Cahir (419441 Royal Australian Air Force), letters, documents, photographs and a sub collection.
He flew operations as a mid upper gunner with 466 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jim Cahir and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-09
2016-06-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cahir, FS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
F/sgT CAHIR. FS.
AUS419441
Kodak House
Kingsway
London.
Dec 19th. 43.
Dear Mum Paddy & Vincent.
Well here it is within a week to Christmas, how I would like to be home for this part of the year, still please God next Christmas I will be home. The weather of late has been real Christmas weather except for the snow, I would like it to snow, just to see what a “White Christmas” is like. I am due to go on leave in three days time, I think I will spend a day in London with the Boys then go on down to Reading Christmas Eve, I can’t take any of the Boys to Reading as Auntie Louie expects a couple of relations over Christmas
Sheila & Eileen ought to be home now, I have not heard from Bath for about a week so don’t know how things are down there. I am going to try & get down to Bath to see them, I also want to dash up to London to see our Engineer’s wedding, how I am going to fit everything in I don’t know!
The Plum Pudding & numerous other things from the parcel I will be taking to Auntie Louie for Christmas dinner. I haven’t sent you anything for Christmas for the simple reason there is nothing I can send you, so I am having a Mass said for your intentions, it will be said in the local township I won’t be able to attend it, but I will remember you all in my prayers.
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
I received your Airgrath [sic] Oct 18 about a week ago, you mention in it that Bernie Brophy was killed, I was very sorry to hear it, I wrote a brief note offering my sympathies to Jim Brophy. How are you receiving my mail up to date you have not received any surface mail from me, don’t forget to let me know how long Air mail takes etc and advise me how to post letters. Sea mail from Aust to Eng takes three months, airgraths [sic] take 14 days to 28 days, airmail also takes 14 days to 28 days, this is the 2/1 airmail the 4d is useless. Send your letters sea mail, if there is something special use Airgrath [sic] or Airmail, Airmail is sometimes better than Airgrath. [sic]
This week has been very quiet, I went into Beverley twice to the Pictures otherwise I wrote letters & went to bed every other night. I can’t go to the dances at present as I tore the ligements [sic] in my leg [deleted] i [/deleted] [inserted] during [/inserted] last week’s football match, I can walk quite easily but when I do any fancy steps my leg hurts, so I thought I would knock the dancing off for a week or two.
During the week I received a letter from Bill Purtell, he is stationed in Scotland and says it is extremely cold up there, he is still awaiting a posting to a squadron. Last night a misfortune over took me, I happened to venture inside the Mess with my cap on and it cost me nearly 10/- for drinks, it is the unwritten law that if you enter the Mess with a hat on you shout drinks for all present in the Mess.
When you think of it Mum you might include in the next parcel a couple of writing pads this style if you can get it, if you can’t any paper that will hold ink. I bought this pad in New York and it is rapidly coming to an end, writing pads over here are not too good.
P.T.O.
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
In my last letter I enclosed five snaps & an A.M.P. policy the letter before [inserted] that [/inserted] I enclosed three snaps, did you receive them? Let me know, I am enclosing three snaps in this letter.
Well Mum that seems to be the lot at present, I hope you have a very happy Christmas, remember me in your prayers.
Your loving son & brother
Jim xxx
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to Mrs Cahir from Jim Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
Letter from Flight Sergeant Jim Cahir to his mother and brothers. He writes about his arrangements for his Christmas leave which he will be spending with his aunt, the weather, about the best way to send post between Australia and England, his social activities and friends and colleagues.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jim Cahir
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-12-19
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ECahirFSCahirM-P-V431219-0001, ECahirFSCahirM-P-V431219-0002, ECahirFSCahirM-P-V431219-0003
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 Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Reading
England--Bath
England--London
England--Beverley
England--Berkshire
England--Somerset
England--Yorkshire
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-12-19
aircrew
mess
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/219/20093/2047.1.pdf
ae2b2cafbd99a9c360dfe8334e9e1ca3
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
Cahir, Francis Shamus
Francis Shamus Cahir
Jim Cahir
Francis S Cahir
Francis Cahir
F S Cahir
F Cahir
J Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
44 items. An oral history interview with Francis Shamus "Jim" Cahir (419441 Royal Australian Air Force), letters, documents, photographs and a sub collection.
He flew operations as a mid upper gunner with 466 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jim Cahir and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-09
2016-06-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cahir, FS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Sgt CAHIR FS
AUS419441
R.A.A.F.
Letter No 12. Kodak House
Kingsway
London
20.9.43
Dear Mum & Vincent
I have at last sat down to write a decent letter, It’s just a fortnight since I arrived in this country and am settling down rapidly to a different method of living. When I landed I had an idea that I would be able to dash across and see Uncle Shamus before we were taken to our reception depot, but all my hopes were in vain as we did not get any leave.
We had a rather long journey in the train up to London where we spent the night, the country side was really beautiful and all together different to home, the fields were very green and each little field was divided off with hedge fences. Instead of looking out of the carriage window & seeing one huge field as you would at home you would see hundreds of little ones; and the country side was just crowded with small farm houses dotted here & there. These farm houses looked very picturesque with their thatched roofs and poultry running around, everything was just how I imagined England would be. We did not see much of London this particular day as it was almost dark when we reached it.
The following day we travel [inserted] l [\inserted] ed on to our Reception Centre, and once again saw the Green
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
fields & thatched cottages. The place where we were billeted was very nice, in peace time it was a big holiday resort, and now most of the Hotels etc have been taken over by the Airforce, I was in a room with hoy & cold water laid on, the only complaint I had about it was the fact that it happened to be on the sixth floor and there were 143 steps to climb everytime I went to my room.
During my stay at this particular spot I had a very enjoyable time, we did not do very much work except hand in a lot of equipment that was no good over here, a couple times we got the afternoon off and I played cricket, we played in a Park named after the suburb at home so I got a souvenir from the curator of the ground. In the evening time was our own, Bill Jeff and myself use usually go to the pictures or a show. The pictures over here start at 5.45 and are out by 9.30, its very strange to get use to at first but you begin to take it for granted after a while. The Black-out is perfect over here, we did not notice it very much at all, I suppose we got use to it on the boat.
During our stay in Sussex I had a look around the shops, it is really surpri [deleted] y [/deleted] [inserted] s [/inserted] ing what goods they have to sell, I expected to go into a shop and see nothing but bare shelves. Clothing if you have the coupons to buy it is cheaper over here than it is at home. Tinned goods are quite plentiful only the catch is coupons, I bought a lot of tinned Peaches pears Fruit salad etc in [indecipherable word] where rationing is unheard of, I dumped them on to Auntie Louie as well as hundreds of Amerrican [sic] Cigarettes. When you send a parcel to me don’t bother sending any butter it is quite unnecessary over here, we get plenty of margarine and I’m
[page break]
[underlined 3 [/underlined]
damed [sic] if I can tell the difference between it & butter, it took us about a week to wake up to the fact that we were having margarine on our bread not butter. To tell you the truth I think that living conditions [inserted] here [/inserted] are not one quarter as bad as they are made out to be in Australia, the only thing that has really been scarce so far is fresh meat.
Whilst I was [inserted] at [/inserted] the Reception Depot I got 36 hours leave, so rang Auntie Louie telling here of it and made arrangements to go down to see her, before I rang her I had written to her a couple of times. I use say you had no accent Mum! But you have and a very disti [inserted] n [/inserted] ct one at that, when I heard Auntie Louie speak over the phone I could have sworn that I was speaking to you, it took my breath away the likeness of her voice to yours. Aunt Louie sent my letter on to Bath so I got a letter from Uncle Shamus, they were getting quite worried over me I think they had an idea that the Atlantic Crossing had turned out for the worst. I also received a letter from a Miss Boyle who lived at “Hove” it appears that she is Auntie Agnes sister and had been advised of my arrival, she wanted me to visit her but unfortunately I was posted before I got the opportunity.
When I arrived at Reading I had very little difficulty in finding Auntie Louie’s house it is a little way out of town and in a very nice spot with a nice view of the surrounding country, I spent Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday at Reading. It is a very nice house double storey with a front room a dinning [sic] room with a glass door looking out on to the back lawn a Kitchen and a spare room, upstairs there is a bath room with hot & cold water two Bed rooms and a Work shop of Uncle Tom’s, Paddy would love to see the work shop it has all kinds of implements in it. I slept in a bed room that overlooked the back garden
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
Whilst at Reading I took eight snaps Uncle Tom also took a few I don’t know when they will be ready but as soon as they are I will send them to you, I forgot to take a photo of the house, next time I will. I think I told you of my meeting with Auntie Louie still it will stand repeating; Auntie Louie was very much like you and I think I felt a little homesick when I saw her, still that is only what could be expected, she made me at home immediately I stepped inside the door, I am sure I am going to be well spoilt before my stay in England is through. All the time I was speaking to Auntie Louie I was imagining myself speaking to you, you know Mum! You are a bit of a dark horse I learnt more about your school days and life over [inserted] on [/inserted] this side of the world from Auntie Louie than you ever told us in the last ten years. Uncle Tom is rather a quite [sic] spoken man whose hobbies seem to be his garden & his work room, he keeps bees & gets quite a few pounds of honey from them. Uncle Shamus reminded me very much of Grandad in fact from my memory of Grandad I thought Uncle Shamus was the living image of him. Auntie Agnes I can’t say who she is like but she is extremely nice and looks quite young even though her hair is greying a little.
I am afraid I am rather poor at describing people Mum, but try and imagine them from my hazy descriptions. All the time I was at Reading I could not get [deleted] and [/deleted] the idea “that you should have been here not me” out of my head, never mind please God that after the war you shall come across & see all the places you use to know. Don’t forget to ask me any questions about Auntie Louie or Uncle Shamus if you do that I may be able to tell you more about them.
At the moment I am enjoying the country air in the famous county of puddings, the station I am on
[page break]
[underlined] 5 [/underlined]
at present is not too bad but there is such a long way to go to Mess & the showers, we worked out that we walk [deleted] ed [/deleted] at least five miles for our meals every day. Most of the permanent staff here ride bikes so don’t notice the distances. Yesterday I went to Mass, it was held in the Airmens rest room, there were quite a few [deleted] chaps [/deleted] Australians in attendance. Our stay at this particular place will be very short I expect to move on again very soon. Bill Cashman & Lance Cha [inserted] r [/inserted] lesworth [deleted] is [/deleted] are still with me, I left Bill Purtell & Jeff Varcoe back at the seaside resort, I believe they are on leave now so I won’t be able to take them down to see Auntie Louie.
On our way up to this station we passed through London, I can’t say I was impressed by it, its too old! I rather have a modern City, New York any day for me. Perhaps I am judging a bit soon but that is my first impression and you can generally size up a City by a drive through it, however when I spend a few days in London I will let you know if I was right or wrong with my first impression.
The other day I was issued with the English Battle dress, its quite good and very comfortable to wear all I have to do now is to cultivate a Lancashire accent & I will be a real English man.
In the same hut as myself there is four Australians, the rest are Scotchmen, Welshmen and Lancashireites, I have great difficulty understanding what they are talking about and generally answer with a yes or no to any questions addressed to me, I was always under the impression that people over here spoke English, as far as I can [inserted] see [/inserted] they don’t! but speak a language perculiar [sic] to each country.
Today I received a letter from
[page break]
[underlined] 6 [/underlined]
Auntie Louie & Uncle Shamus also one from Spike who had received a letter from you, and had addressed a letter a letter to Auntie Louie to be forward on to me.
Up till date I have received forty letters, twenty coming yesterday in one bundle, there is a couple of yours still missing namely numbers 1, 5, and 8 your letter number 10 written on [deleted] the [/deleted] July 27th is the latest I have received, I have also received three from Paddy the latest dated July 5th., from Vincent I have received two, the latest written June 25th. The usual half a dozen letters from the Egans have arrived with three or four from Dorothy, I also got one from Bunny, Jack Kelly, Mr McConas, Mrs Walton (from Rob & Mullens) Frank Dougan, Tom Clifford & Pat Ryan, a couple from Mullumbimby, and a very old one from Des, none from Doreen yet, I wonder what I said wrong there? I also got a letter from Kathleen, she writes an extra good newsy letter.
I feel quite ashamed of myself for not writing as many as I have received, I can’t write to paddy as he has a unit plus the place where it is situated as his address, I think you could forward all letters on to him I am sure he would not mind. I posted you an airgrath [sic] letter the other day, I will send an airgrath [sic] when I think I can’t write for a week or so, this is the twelveth [sic] letter to you, have you received all the others? I intend to send this one air mail just to see if it gets there any quicker, the airmail from Australia to England is not too good surface mail beats it here sometimes.
Well Mum I am going to stop here and go and have supper, it’s a great idea they have here, you have tea about 5.30 just a one course meal, then about 8.30 you have another meal with knives & forks, really there is four meals a day, it seems to be the habit as Auntie Louie had the same idea
[page break]
[underlined] 7 [/underlined]
I was very sorry to hear about Betty, I hope she is not too bad and is up & on her feet again in a very short time, you are right when you say she’s the ideal girl, I am sure you would go a long-long way [inserted] to find any girl [/inserted] to come any where near her, please give her my kindest regards when you see her.
Well Mum I really must close now if I am going to eat, I am in the best of health and eating like a horse, don’t worry over me I will be alright both spiritually & physically, all the advise you give me in your letters I take to heart & I like reading it, I enjoy receiving your letters as you write just how you talk and I imagine that I am at home once more talking to you in person.
Your loving Son & Brother Jim xxxxx
P.S I received six cables for my birthday about a week ago, they were all very welcome. Let me know [underlined] how long this letter takes. [/underlined
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to Mrs Cahir from Jim Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
Letter home to Jim’s Mother and Brother where he describes his arrival in England, visiting relations and settling in to his routine RAAF life on his station.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jim Cahir
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-09-20
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Seven handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ECahirFSCahirM-V430920-0001, ECahirFSCahirM-V430920-0002, ECahirFSCahirM-V430920-0003, ECahirFSCahirM-V430920-0004, ECahirFSCahirM-V430920-0005, ECahirFSCahirM-V430920-0006, ECahirFSCahirM-V430920-0007
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 Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Bath
England--Reading
England--Berkshire
England--Somerset
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-09-20
aircrew
entertainment
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/219/20098/2049.2.pdf
ce151cd24d88e8d702fd1b17bbb2193d
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
Cahir, Francis Shamus
Francis Shamus Cahir
Jim Cahir
Francis S Cahir
Francis Cahir
F S Cahir
F Cahir
J Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
44 items. An oral history interview with Francis Shamus "Jim" Cahir (419441 Royal Australian Air Force), letters, documents, photographs and a sub collection.
He flew operations as a mid upper gunner with 466 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jim Cahir and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-09
2016-06-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cahir, FS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
F/Sgt CAHIR. FS.
AUS 419441
Kodak House
Kingsway
London
Nov. 2nd. 43.
“ 3rd “
[underlined] Letter No [/underlined] 17
Dear Mum & Vincent
Last night I arrived back on the Squadron after seven days leave, it was marvellous! and I had an extra good time. I travelled down to London with the rest of the crew, then travelled on to Bath after spending the night at the Y.M.C.A. in London. I arrived in Bath about 4.30 and had no trouble in finding Newbridge Hill. Uncle or Aunt were not home so the house-Keeper let me in and I sat beside the fire reading the paper until they got home from Work; Uncle got home about 6.30 and Auntie Agnes about 6 oclock. [sic] Whilst I was waiting for them the carpenters were in renovating the ceiling & windows damaged by bomb blast some twelve months earlier.
The flat that Aunt & Uncle are living in is very nice, they have a very nice sitting room where we spent a few very nice evenings sitting beside the fire talking; I did not sleep in the same house as there was no room, but put up with some very nice people a little way down the road.
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
Uncle & Aunt seem to be in the best of health, the children are expected home for Christmas and by that time Aunt Agnes hopes to have secured a house somewhere around Bath.
The first night at Bath I spent by the fireside talking about home and telling Aunt & Uncle all about you Paddy and Vincent. The Second day I went into town to look Bath over, as usual it is an old town with plenty of narrow streets winding here & there; it is quite a big town with a population far exceeding Ballarat, but the people live in a very cramped style, I don’t think the town would exceed about a fifth of the size of Preston in area. Certain parts of Bath have been badly knocked about, whole areas have been razed to the ground mainly around the residential area.
The shopping area is very nice and very busy, there seems to be plenty to buy in the shops, but the catch is coupons & points as it is at home. Bus traffic is very thick, and there is always a long queque [sic] waiting for the different Buses. The thing that struck me [deleted] was [/deleted] were the orderly queques [sic] waiting for Buses, people just line up behind one another and take their turn on getting on the Bus, when the conductress says “Bus Full” they still retain their ranks and wait for the next Bus, you never see anybody bludging [sic] out of their turn.
I met Auntie [deleted] Louie [/deleted] Agnes for lunch, and had a very nice lunch of Roast Beef & vegetables at a little café, there were plenty of vegetables but the meat was very scanty, [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] I am becoming quite use [sic] to that. After lunch I walked back to work with Aunt then continued on to see the sights of Bath.
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
The Cathedral in Bath is very interesting, I spent quite some time looking over it, it goes back to about 1590; quite a few of the graves in the floor [deleted] where [/deleted] were dated 1602 and round about that date. The inscription on some of the grave stones were funny, most of them were written in “Old Time English, on one particular stone the inscription was “He dyed ye sixth day of Auguft [sic] 1674”. Amongst some of the graves of well well [sic] known people was the grave of the first American Ambassador to England somewhere around 1790.
On coming out of the Cathedral I met an Australian also down in Bath for a spot of leave, he advised me to go & see a certain Lady in the Baths and she would show me through the Roman Baths, this I did! and was shown through the ancient Baths that the Romans used long Before the Battle of Hastings.
These Baths are well [deleted] bef [/deleted] below the street level and had been hidden from the Publics view for many centuries before somebody accidentally discovered them, now-a-days excavations have revealed amazing discoveries. Apparently the Romans treated Bath as a Holiday Resort and built numerous Swimming Pools beside Hot Springs; these swimming pools are very well preserved today and are lined with tons of lead, lead pipes take the over flow of water from the Baths down to the river. Hot Springs are very few in number & can’t be compared to Rotorua N.Z.; the temperature of the water coming out of the springs is 112o, about 100o cooler than Rotorua. I also saw a few examples of paving by the Romans, it was beautifully done and had some marvellous colours blended in it; here and there were columns that had been found belonging to a Temple built by the Romans to a [indecipherable word] God.
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
Thursday I went over to Bristol to have a look at the town, as usual it was entirely different to home, with narrow winding streets very crowded with pedestrians & Buses. Bristol stopped quite a bit of Bombing, in one particular part of the city [inserted] there [/inserted] is an area the size of the “Block” in Collins st [sic] completely flattened, with not a single Building standing, there were quite a few other badly damaged areas but that was the worst. I met Uncle Shamus for dinner and went to “Brights Dining Hall” you might know it, it is quite a Big Place. After lunch I wandered around until I came to a Church in charge of the S.J’s, of course I called in there and was lucky enough to strike one of the Priests with whom I had a very long chat, he did not know anybody out home at all, but he gave me an address of a Jesuit College which I am going to call on when I get the opportunity. During the afternoon I travelled out on the Bus to see the suspension Bridge over the Bristol Gorge, it was well worth seeing and quite a feat of engineering’ whilst out there I also visited the observatory.
On the way back a catastrophe over took me, my watch stopped and I reset it an hour late, the result being I was an hour behind time for the rest of the day & I missed Uncle Shamus on the Bus, thus not getting home to Bath until 7.30, when I did get back I found I was to have tea in town with Uncle & Aunt, then we were going home to meet some visitors whom were coming: it must have been about 9 oclock [sic] by the time we had finished tea & got home to find the house full of visitors. The rest of the evening was spent in talking & playing cards.
[page break]
[underlined] 5 [/underlined]
Friday, I again met Auntie Agnes for lunch, I also met about half the admiralty she seems to know everybody from the First Sea Lord down. During the afternoon I took a couple of Bus rides out of the town and got quite a good view of the place from the surrounding Hills. On the way back from one of these Bus rides I called in on the Catholic Church in Bath and met a Priest there by the name of Father Eddie McDonell, I had quite a long chat with him and during the course of conversation I found out that he knows Father Cleary very well and wished to be remembered to him, so will you pass that message on to Father, Mum! The Church in Bath is very nice but has been badly hit by Bombs, the Presbytery beside the Church has been completely demolished, one Priest and the house keeper were killed in it. The school had a lucky escape from damage, the blast of the bombs only blew the windows out. Friday Evening I went to a Theatre Revue with Aunt Agnes and a couple of other ladies (I say ladies because they were nearer the fifty mark than the forty mark), it was a good show and a very enjoyable evening’s entertainment. Uncle was on fire watching that particular evening at Bristol.
Saturday I slept in until rather late and [inserted] just [/inserted] got up in time to have lunch with Aunt in town, come back pack my bag and catch a train to Reading. The journey up to Reading only took a couple of hours and I arrived just in time for tea. After tea was spent in talking and it must have been about 11.30 before I crawled into bed. Auntie Louie seems to be in the best of health Mum! and looked after me like a new-born Baby, in fact she made me feel I could not do a thing to help myself.
[page break]
[underlined] 6 [/underlined]
Sunday: Auntie Louie and I went into Reading to Mass, we had to walk about three miles in [deleted] in [/deleted] a drizzling rain; whilst I was at Bath I had beautiful weather perfect sunshine everyday. After Mass we managed to get a taxi back so saved our feet. After dinner which was very good consisting of Roast Beef, roast potatoes vegetables and cherry pie, not a bad effort for a starving country.
After lunch we just sat in front of the fire and talked, we had tea about 4.30 then a big supper of cold meat etc about 9 oclock, [sic] this four meals a day is a funny thing, I just can’t get use [sic] to it. Before I went to bed Auntie Louie put the Electric Blanket in my bed, it’s worth about a dozen hot water Bottles. Monday Morning being the first of November, Auntie Louie & I again went into Mass, after Mass I could [sic] the 10.8 train to London, and was in the Boomerang Club by 11 oclock. [sic] I met quite a few chaps in the Club, some I had not seen since the day I left Somers about twelve months ago. After lunch at the Club, George Brett (my navigator) & myself went for a walk around London before catching the train from King’s Cross back to Camp. There is quite a lot of difference going back to Camp after leave over here: when I use [sic] go back to Parkes after leave, I use [sic] [deleted] to [/deleted] feel real miserable about it and I use [sic] always be looking forward to the next leave even though it was a month off: over here leave just ends and you go back to the station without any wretched thoughts, in fact you get into the habit of referring to the Squadron as your home and really it is.
Since arriving back I have received a little mail, there was an Airgrath [sic] from you
[page break]
[underlined] 7 [/underlined]
dated oct 6th, you had just received my first two Airgraths [sic] there was also an Airgrath [sic] from Mary Egan, a parcel containing a very nice scarf for my birthday from Dorothy Lambert, a parcel of Books from Robertson & Mullen and a note from Spike here in this Country.
Tomorrow night there is going to be a mock Battle on, the Aircrews of the station are going to try to defend the station against a mob of commandos, heres [sic] hoping these commandos are not the conscientious type, if they are I think we are in for a hiding.
On Friday night “Richard Tamber” is singing in a musical programme which is going to be put on in Hull, I hope to get across for it, I rang up today to try & book a seat but was unable to, if I go over I might get a seat that has been cancelled.
Last Night I went to the usual Dance on the Station, it was quite a good turn, & I really enjoyed myself, I am getting to know quite a few of the WAAFs at the dances now and have met a few very nice girls; I still thing [sic] they are a couple of paces behind the Australian girl for looks (or should I say I have not met one that can prove the contrary to me).
I have not heard from Bill Cashman this week consequently don’t know if he is still in this country or not. Bill Puntell & Jeff Varcoe are still at Brighton but expect to be posted very shortly.
Well Mum that seems to be the news at the moment so I will close down, I will send this letter Airmail, let me know how long it takes, some of the Boys have been getting Airmail letters very quickly.
How is everything at home? everybody in the best of health I hope?
Love & kisses Jim
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to Mrs Cahir from Jim Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
Jim writes to his mother and brother of his period of leave in Bath and Reading describing the places he has visited, relatives he has met and stayed with. He mentions minor aspects of service life and service friends.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jim Cahir
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-11-03
Format
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Seven handwritten sheets
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
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ECahirFSCahirM-V431103-0001, ECahirFSCahirM-V431103-0002, ECahirFSCahirM-V431103-0003, ECahirFSCahirM-V431103-0004, ECahirFSCahirM-V431103-0005, ECahirFSCahirM-V431103-0006, ECahirFSCahirM-V431103-0007
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 Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Bath
England--Bristol
England--Reading
England--Berkshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Somerset
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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11-03
aircrew
entertainment
ground personnel
navigator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1110/26177/BRhodesG-KPayneAv1.2.pdf
d5a02c511d29c08f78d3593481d03102
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
Saunders, Roy and Honor
Roy Saunders
R Saunders
Honor Saunders
H Saunders
Description
An account of the resource
158 items. Oral history interviews with Roy Saunders (b. 1930) and Honor Saunders (b. 1931) and six albums of family photographs. Both experienced the London Blitz. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1638 ">Foreshaw and Carter Photos</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1639 ">Foreshaw Family</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1640">Roy and Honor Saunders</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1641">Saunders Family</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1642">Thorpe and Diver Family</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1643">Thorpe Family</a><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Roy and Honor Saunders and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-03
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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Saunders, R-H
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
1 of 10
[underlined] Grace and Ken Rhodes – War history [/underlined]
I am sure you have obtained lots of information from Grandma Saunders, who lived through the war.
You specifically asked about my Mum and Dad’s part in the war. I can give you small snapshots of what happened but, as I am sure you have found out, in the years following the war it was never discussed and one never asked questions. Indeed for me at school in the 1950’s and 60’s our history lessons stopped around 1900. What I did discover was mainly as a result of something on the TV (when there were programmes, often comedies, such as ‘allo ‘allo and ‘Dads Army’) which provoked some comment. I was also old enough to be present when friends of my parents who owned a record shop came to visit. The owner had worked in the development of radar and associated technology during the war with its application to ships etc. He and my Dad would sit exchanging stories with his wife, Mum and I sitting quietly trying to take it all in. So often I would have liked to ask questions but I felt this was not the time or place to do so. I guess this was a part of their lives I had no idea about. In retrospect I am not sure how much my Dad told my Mum.
Firstly the outline of their war. Dates and some information about this comes from their rather brief war records which I obtained this year.
Dad enlisted in September 1940 into REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers), where he trained as an electrician and was posted to Croyden [sic] where he was promoted to Lance Corporal. On 4.11.41 he embarked to go abroad (to India) then on 30.12.1941 he embarked for ‘M/E’ which I think was Singapore to defend Singapore from the expected attack from the sea by the Japanese. Within weeks of his arrival the Japanese attacked but through the jungle trapping all the troops (from several countries) on the spit of land where Singapore was built. The Commander surrendered and all, the military and the civilians were taken prisoner. In the records it states “Missing in Malaya 15.2.1942” Then it says “Prisoner of war in Jap Hands” but no date (see later)
Dad’s unit was moved to work on the notorious Burma Railway but he ended up working in the hospital and cookhouse. In practice the hospital had no drugs or any way to treat ill and injured men. No anaesthetics, antibiotics or any medicines. No medical or dental equipment. The cookhouse had minimal supplies of basic foods and all had to survive on so little that malnourishment was rife.
[page break]
2 of 10
The next part says “Released by Allied Forces, 12.9.1945” There are no more formal entries and as far as I know the prisoners were brought back to the UK by sea in ‘hospital’ ships to allow time for the doctors to treat the many diseases and injuries they had. Your Grandma remembers him coming home in August of 1946 so he was nearly 11 months coming back. At that time he still only weighed 7 stone.
Like many of those he had suffered from Yellow fever, Jaundice and Malaria (which reoccurred several times up until the 1980’s), had extensive leg ulcers and suffered with his teeth. He was lucky, many did not come home. The conditions in the camp also caused subtle but lasting damage to his heart.
Mum enlisted in October 1941. As a woman with no dependents, she decided to enlist rather go into the Ammunition factories or away as Land Girl. Why the Royal Airforce I don’t know but whilst she was in the recruitment office a Naval Officer came in and asked if the Airforce could supply them with drivers (why? Mum always said it was because the WREN’s would not lower themselves to drive as they were the senior service!) When her turn came to register she asked if she could become a driver? They agreed and at the end of the war she ended up able to drive heavy lorries as well as cars. I don’t know were [sic] she trained but in June 1942 she was posted to Charmy Down near Bath, Somerset (about a mile from where Stephen went to University). Not only did drivers take officers and the pilots where they needed to go, they would collect and deliver items and stores etc. In addition in poor/foggy weather they would help the planes to land by lining up along the runway with headlights on to guide them in. She then transferred to RAF Colerne August 1943, another fighter command base. In August 1944 she was transferred to Broadwell, in Oxfordshire, (near RAF Brize Norton). She was discharged in October 1945.
At some point she was being transferred abroad but just before they went the authorities stopped it because they could not get her husband’s permission for her to go abroad. This in spite of them making her Dad, Grandpa Foreshaw, her legal ‘next of kin’ when Dad went abroad. I don’t think that would happen today! I think Mum was happiest at Charmy Down, she always spoke of that base not the others.
Mum made several friends in the billets. Many of the ladies were from european [sic] countries invaded by the Germans. Her best friend and fellow driver who I met on many occasions until she died in the 1990’s, was ‘Aunt Nell’, a lady from Holland who worked in London as the Head Housekeeper in a couple of big London Hotels. But there were many others and I have some
[page break]
3 of 10
photos. I have no idea of who they all were. In the records it says her conduct etc was excellent, though I remember Dad commenting that she was nearly court marshalled! She was seen handing cigarettes to some Italian PoW’s in a camp next door to the base. The Commander asked her why and she said she hoped someone was doing it for Dad (she knew he was a PoW by then) and he just said “Never do it again, OUT” and she heard no more. Mum was about 10 years older than the majority of pilots and was more of a mother figure. I think she felt it greatly when many did not come back after sorties. The picture of a small wooden spitfire (attached) was carved for her by a pilot in 1945, possibly to commemorate VE day in May that year. It was always part of my upbringing and I have kept it. I also have her Autograph book with some signatures, poems, messages and even a cartoon! But it is not easy to read or copy.
She did comment to me how she did not appreciate how hard it was for the civilians to live on their rations. Although supplies were limited in the services, they did not go badly short of anything. She realised after the war that, when she went home on leave to her parents (as Mum and Dads house had been requisitioned to house a bombed out family), she ate probably the whole families butter ration etc in those few days, as well as other things!
Note:- Now this is where dates just do not match up as she was still in service when Dad arrived back in the UK as she was granted emergency leave to go home to him. That needs to be sorted. However that is not important here for you.
Some stories.
Dad did not hate the Japanese. In spite of everything he never condemned them. He did say that officers often treated their own soldiers nearly as badly as the prisoners. He spoke of a cultural difference where the Japanese could not accept surrender so the allies were ‘cowards’ for surrendering at Singapore. Indeed he said that when they were liberated his relief was tempered by the fact that the one Japanese officer, who had done his best to treat the prisoners well, had committed ‘Hara-kiri’ a form of ritual suicide (by the upper class Japanese). He was also sad when he went back to Burma in the 1980’s, the tourists split cleanly into Japanese and British and Commonwealth groups each side of the room and there was little sign of forgiveness.
All the men suffered from ulcers, mainly on the legs. They would go to the fence round the camp and entice the local village dogs in to lick the ulcer with their rough tongues. This cleaned them and stopped infection.
[page break]
4 of 10
However ‘Cleanliness’ could be fatal! There was a Dutch POW camp nearby which was wiped out in three weeks by dysentery. The men washed their tin plates in the river and it was contaminated water. The British wiped them ‘clean’ by eating every last thing and not washing them.
A local Burmese man (village leader??) tried to help the prisoners, bringing such things as herbs, bits of food, anything which might be of use. Dad did know his name and his actions were part of a TV programmed [sic] at one time. But I cannot remember his name or any more. We forget that the Japanese treated the locals in just as bad way.
The then Bishop of Singapore, Leonard Wilson, was captured and went at one point with the POW’s. Mum said that he had confirmed Dad whilst in the camp. I can remember him, as the now Bishop of Birmingham, always leading the Remembrance Service at the Albert Hall on the TV in the 60’s. I now realise why he took the service.
For one Christmas, the cookhouse tried to produce something that roughly resembled a Christmas Pudding! Dad would not say what they put in it! idea good, execution not so good!
The Japanese took anything of value from the POW’s and carried out regular searches. However Dad kept his wedding ring safe all those years. I will leave it to you to work out how!
I fear other stories tell of the worst side of human nature. However looking back I think thinking of home and his family kept Dad going and helped him to survive after the war (research has since shown that married men were more likely to survive).
After the war:
When Mum and Dad were able to get back into their own house after the war, they found it very difficult as rationing was even more severe then than during the war. They were not part of that local community which helped each other and spread any surplices amongst themselves. For example, all Dad wanted was a bottle of beer and the shop said he could not have one. Then the boss said “Bring me a bottle, any bottle, empty, dirty and I can let you have a bottle of Beer” Indeed Mum sent Dad out to do the weekly shopping as he was so thin, with yellow skin and scars, that the shop keepers took pity on him.
[page break]
5 of 10
I hope this gives you some more information. I regret that I know no more. It is now lost for ever.
Annette
[underlined] Photos [/underlined]
First postcard sent by Ken Rhodes as a POW.
[photograph of the front of a postcard]
[inserted] Arrived [indecipherable words and date] [/inserted]
[ink stamp]
MRS. E.K. RHODES.
1, ABERDEEN ROAD,
DOLLIS HILL,
LONDON. N.W.10.
ENGLAND.
[photograph of the reverse of the postcard]
[underlined] RHODES. E.K. 7642018 L/CPL. [/underlined]
[indecipherable date]
MY DARLING,
I AM A PRISIONER [sic] OF WAR. AM FIT AND WELL. DON’T WORRY. HOPE YOU ARE ALL WELL. GIVE MY LOVE TO ALL AT HOME. TED CLIVE AND ALL ARE STILL WITH US. NO NEWS OF YOU SINCE LEAVING HOME. GIVE JAMES MY LOVE. AM BEING TREATED VERY WELL TONS OF LOVE TO ALL. LOVE KEN
This was one of the first cards that came back about the PoW’s. It was delivered by several army officers and government officials who wanted to confirm that it was not a forgery. I don’t know if they went to Mum’s airfield or she went home but they wanted to know if there was anything in the message that might confirm it was genuine and from Dad. There is, the comment ‘Give James my love” proved it. James was the cat! The card was addressed to Grandpa Foreshaw’s house as this was Mum’s address at the time. Note that the details of the date had been partially erased. You may also note the comment about ‘being treated well’.
[page break]
6 of 10
[photograph of a Souvenir Order of Service, headed “Your Finest Hour 1939 – 1945” by Winston Churchill]
This is the front of an [sic] Souvenir order of Service called your ‘Farewell Service’. It contains words and and [sic] pictures of both Military and Political figures and a short service which I assume servicemen could attend. It was published two weeks after VJ day in August 1945. I know little about it and need to do more research. (Interestingly there is a copy on sale in the USA for 300 dollars!)
[colour photograph of a wooden model of a Spitfire]
This is the Spitfire that I spoke of earlier. Starting to show its age after 75 years. The inscription is on the base. Note Mum’s initials are where the identifying numbers would usually be.
[page break]
[colour photograph of the tail of the model Spitfire]
[colour photograph of the base of the model Spitfire with the inscription “R BROADWEL 1945 MAY V. YEAR”]
[page break]
8 of 10
This is a copy of the letter sent to all who were held as POW’s by the Japanese
[colour photograph of a letter from King George]
[Buckingham Palace crest]
The Queen and I bid you a very warm welcome home.
Through all the great trials and suffering which you have undergone at the hands of the Japanese, you and your comrades have been constantly in our thoughts. We know from the accounts we have already received how heavy those sufferings have been. We know also that these have been endured by you with the highest courage.
We mourn with you the deaths of so many of your gallant comrades.
With all our hearts, we hope that your return from captivity will bring you and your families a full measure of happiness, which you may long enjoy together.
[signature of King George VI]
September 1945.
[inserted] Dec 1945 [/inserted]
[page break]
9 of 10
In looking for the photos I have found one of Uncle Wally in uniform serving in the First WW.
He was your Great Grandmothers brother in law, married to Alice.
[black and white photograph of man in uniform sitting in a chair]
[page break]
10 of 10
Here are the photos of my Mum and Dad in uniform at the start of the war.
[black and white photograph of Ken Rhodes in uniform]
[black and white photograph of Grace Rhodes in uniform]
Compiled by Annette Payne (Ne. Rhodes), daughter of Grace and Ken.
August 2016
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
Grace and Ken Rhodes - War History
Description
An account of the resource
A description of their time during the war by their daughter. Her father joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in September 1940. He was captured by the Japanese in Singapore, 1942. He was released on 12 September 1945 and came home on a hospital ship.
Her mother enlisted in the RAF in October 1941 and became a driver.
Included are some of her father's stories of his time as a prisoner.
There is his first postcard home as a prisoner, a photo of 'Your Finest Hour', photos of the Spitfire model given to her mother, a copy of a letter sent to prisoners of war held by the Japanese, from the King, a photo of Uncle Wally in Army uniform and photos of her father and mother at the start of the war.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annette Payne
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
10 typed sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Text. Personal research
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BRhodesG-KPayneAv1
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
British Army
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Croydon
Singapore
Burma
England--Bath
England--Colerne
Malaysia
England--Somerset
England--Wiltshire
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground personnel
heirloom
prisoner of war
RAF Brize Norton
Spitfire
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1939/37203/SFieldPL907804v10038-0001.1.jpg
5b6c342814617f886f822669de95eaab
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1939/37203/SFieldPL907804v10038-0002.1.jpg
a4efeffc6a9279065a8a3b9baed0d689
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
Field, Peter L and Cynthia G
Peter L Field
P L Field
Cynthia G Field
C G Field
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Field, PL-CG
Description
An account of the resource
144 items and five photograph albums in sub-collections. The collection concerns Peter L and Cynthia G Field and contains memoirs, correspondence, photographs. Peter Field (b. 1920) served as a wireless operator and Cynthia (b. 1921) served as a WAAF in 2 Group. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2137">Album One</a> Photographs of various people.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2138">Album Two</a> Photographs of people and places, postcards.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2141">Album Three</a> Photographs of parents house over the years.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2144">Album Four</a> Photographs of family events, places and people.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2146">Album Five</a> <span>Photographs of wartime colleagues, Cook's tour aerial photographs of bomb damaged German cities, and family and friends as well as two letters home.</span><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Susan Elizabeth Field and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Royal Air Force crest]
Usual Address.
13/1/40
Dear Granny,
Thank you for your letter, I hope your not having it as cold as we are – I don’t think it can be, as Colne is a lot warmer than here.
Last Saturday I went to Bath & saw the Waterhouses; John is still at M’boro’ & invited me to go to tea in his study there any afternoon. Mary W. had just got married a week before. I spent the evening from tea to 8 o’clock there. On Friday (yesterday) evening I went down to Colne & looked up an old schoolfriend, who used to be in the same form as me, his name is Higgins. They were very nice to me & took me to see ’Confessions of a Nazi Spy’ and had supper there after. Also they invited me to go up to Blotham with them when they go up (about once a month.) [deleted] T [/deleted]
To-morrow I think I shall go to Swindon & see what is
[page break]
there. I have developed a cold again, and no wonder, seeing the temperature is terribly low here, and the wind cuts in like a knife & freezes you in five mins:
I shall come back next Friday about 7.30 pm. if I can get a ‘bus by then. But expect me between 7.30 & 8 pm. I shall have to leave about 8 pm. on Sunday too.
No more news at all, see you on Friday.
Very best love
[underlined] Ian. [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Ian Hay to his grandmother
Description
An account of the resource
Describes going to Bath to see friends and catches up with their news. Goes on to describe meeting an old schoolfriend. Mentions plan to visit Swindon and that he had caught a cold.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
I Hay
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940-01-13
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-01-13
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Wiltshire
England--Somerset
England--Bath
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page handwritten letter
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SFieldPL907804v10038
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Yatesbury
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1939/37204/SFieldPL907804v10039-0001.1.jpg
4bd9d0d444c530ddce4cb7f23b7f5849
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1939/37204/SFieldPL907804v10039-0002.1.jpg
2ce4144f238ed56c29a55b182e90d0c7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1939/37204/SFieldPL907804v10039-0003.1.jpg
b9d10b3d8e87a0304fa2141445ac874e
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
Field, Peter L and Cynthia G
Peter L Field
P L Field
Cynthia G Field
C G Field
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Field, PL-CG
Description
An account of the resource
144 items and five photograph albums in sub-collections. The collection concerns Peter L and Cynthia G Field and contains memoirs, correspondence, photographs. Peter Field (b. 1920) served as a wireless operator and Cynthia (b. 1921) served as a WAAF in 2 Group. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2137">Album One</a> Photographs of various people.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2138">Album Two</a> Photographs of people and places, postcards.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2141">Album Three</a> Photographs of parents house over the years.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2144">Album Four</a> Photographs of family events, places and people.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2146">Album Five</a> <span>Photographs of wartime colleagues, Cook's tour aerial photographs of bomb damaged German cities, and family and friends as well as two letters home.</span><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Susan Elizabeth Field and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
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[Royal Air Force crest]
906233. A.C.2. Hay. I.
Hut Y.42.
‘A’ Sqdn: 2 Wing,
R.A.F. Yatesbury,
Wilts.
4/3/40
Dear Granny,
So sorry I haven’t written before, but a chain of circumstances seems to have been against me. Anyhow this is what has happened during the week.
Last Tuesday apparently Pine told me the wrong train, because the one that he said connected at Reading, went to Twyford & Henley only, so I took a risk, by getting off at Twyford & cycling hell for leather to Reading. I got behind a lorry which broke the headwind, but I saw the train pass me at the Woodley bridge. But anyhow I got there in time, but I [deleted] C [/deleted] was perspiring all the way to Chippenham. I then cycled back.
The next day I found I had been put back all the way to the beginning of the
[page break]
course, which also necessitated my moving into an ‘A’ Squadron Hut – Y.42, which is my address now, as you saw at the top I expect.
Last Saturday I intended to potter along out on my bicycle, between Colne & Chippenham; but so great was the wind behind me, that I went on, & before I realized it – I was in Bath! So I went to see the Prior’s at St Christophers’, who welcomed me & gave me tea. I also wandered round the place; which hasn’t changed much, except for a few extra trees planted in the grounds.
Feeling too tired to ride against the wind, and all the way up hill; I caught a train back to Chippenham & cycled on again from there and got back at about five to ten. Altogether a very nice day.
On Sunday I had promised to go out with another fellow in this hut. We started after lunch & got to Devizes where we had tea with friends of his. Then he went & played the organ at the Methodist evening service,
[page break]
[Royal Air Force crest]
which he does apparently every Sunday. I blew the organ for him, which was quite hard work during the Hallelujah Chorus’, which he played for a voluntary at the end.
Afterwards we went back to his friends & had supper. Then started back about 9 & got in about 10.
To-day has been lovely again & really quire warm even up here. I do hope it keeps up till Easter.
Incidentally I’ve heard that we get a week at Easter from [inserted] the [/inserted] Thursday, but it may be changed. Also I’m hoping for a short week-end the week before Easter.
No more to say now, except that you must not do too much at Reading, or I’ll tell Auntie Maggie to keep you in bed!
Very best love
[underlined] Ian. [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Letter from Ian Hay to his grandmother
Creator
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I Hay
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940-03-04
Temporal Coverage
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1940-03-04
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Wiltshire
England--Somerset
England--Bath
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
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Three page handwritten letter
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Identifier
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SFieldPL907804v10039
Description
An account of the resource
Writes about a mix up in his travel arrangement and his subsequent journey. Mentions other cycling expeditions in Wiltshire and including a visit to friend in Bath. Comments on weather and that he might get leave at Easter.
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Tricia Marshall
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Yatesbury