2
25
50
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/750/10749/PCookJA1701.1.jpg
4edc3babf103787302f8c18e56801b42
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/750/10749/ACookJA170918.2.mp3
4978e3d53a8f638857ee98dfc90168c8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cook, Jack Alexander
J A Cook
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jack Cook (b. 1919, 1893192 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 158 and 267 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jack Cook and 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
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cook, JA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: Ok. I think we’re ready. Ready to go. So [pause] Ok. I think we’re ready to start. This is Andrew Sadler interviewing Jack Cook in his home in Uxbridge on Monday the 18th of September 2017. Thank you for allowing me to come, Jack.
JC: You’re very welcome.
AS: Can you tell me how you got involved with the RAF in the first place?
JC: Well, in the first place I was in a Reserved Occupation. Instrument maker. So, of course when the war broke out I was safe. Or shall we say safe. And in the end I just would not, I would not stay in there. I mean I didn’t want to see the war going on in somebody else’s backyard. I wanted to be involved so I volunteered. And the only thing I could volunteer for was Bomber Command. They wouldn’t take any for anybody else. So, of course I was glad. Glad enough of that. And I, I was, how can I say? I got, I finally, anyway I finally, they accepted me and I went. Went for training. Usual training. Bomber Command training. And when I finished that the, we naturally went to get crewed up. There I met my, my crew. The other people there. Bill Walsh, he was a New Zealander. I think there’s a picture of him somewhere here. And then the, the other. The other lot. I forget all their names now. Excuse me for that. But yes we, we then, after we’d finished our first lot of training you know we had to learn to fly the things of course and all about them. And as an engineer, what I was going to be a flight engineer I had to know a lot more because, you know you have to know the ins and outs of the aircraft. Anyway, we finally got through our training. From our early training and they put us on, on operations in Lissett. A place called Lissett in Yorkshire. We were flying. We were flying Halifax 3 machines and they were a lovely machine mind you because as an engineer I knew all about that. But we, we finally got sent in to York. A place in Yorkshire where we did, we did, started our operational flying. Of course, then it was straight on to, you know when the when the guns really did go bang. And we, I think we got through [pause] I think got about twelve or thirteen and we, we caught a wallop on the way back and then we had to crash in to, to Carnaby. That’s the big crash ‘drome. Carnaby. And from then of course it was easy going because we’d got another aeroplane by then. And we, we just did short stuff then from then on because we were practically at the end of the war by then. Fortunately, because you know when I did get into the war I got a bit of the war in [laughs] where a lot of people went through the really thick stuff, you know. But anyway, the end of the war we all demobbed. And that’s a painting done of us. And there’s not really anything. Then I went back into industry of course as an instrument maker. But beyond that. What —
AS: Where were you stationed?
JC: I was stationed in Lissett. A York, in Yorkshire. We first of all went on to, we went on to, you know our initial training in Yorkshire. But then we finally, when we finally, when we finally passed out on our initial training they posted us to 158 Squadron in Lissett and we, I think we managed to get off about twenty three operations. Twenty three trips through. I think it was about twenty three. Without my book I’d have a look and we then of course the end of the war we separated and although we kept in touch for a long time but we gradually lose you know. But yes. We did very, we were very lucky. We did get one. One went in on the way back and we got a terrific bang in the old what’s the name wing. And the shell had come up and knocked, you know hit the wing, the wing of the aircraft and sort of knocked us into a spin. We sort of fortunately were able to get back out again and get back. Limp back into Carnaby. That was a special place with extra long runways to, you know for a crashed aircraft to get in there safely. But otherwise and that we just gently cruised through the rest of the war and that was the end of it. We kept in touch for a while. But people —
AS: Were you just, were you just in Halifaxes?
JC: Sorry?
AS: Were you just in Halifaxes?
JC: In Halifax 3. Yes. Oh, a lovely aeroplane. No doubt about that. We trained. Trained of course on the earlier version. Well, you know the old, old stuff for the trainees. And then we transferred to the Halifax 3 which was as I say was a lovely aeroplane. But spoiled it by the end. We blew half the wing off [laughs] You know we were just at the end of the war and then we all sort of went our own separate ways.
AS: Can you tell me about your training as a flight engineer?
JC: Well, yes. I when I, when I was an I was an instrument maker, you see. And of course when I decided I wanted to, wanted to do something a bit more than this I tried to get in and the only thing they could put me on was a wireless operator. Well, you know I thought I’m going to have a go at anything. You know. To get in. And I went on a wireless operator’s course but of course for some reason or other I couldn’t take Morse. You know. I just couldn’t take, couldn’t get it down quick enough. They had to transfer me over. I was lucky because they just happened to be just short of flight engineers so they put me on a flight engineer’s course and I went down to Wales, St Athans in Wales and trained. I went through the training. Got my, got my logbook. It’s around somewhere. And, and then we went on after. After we got our initial training they posted us to a proper Squadron. 158 Squadron in Yorkshire. And that was at Carnaby. Near Carnaby. And then we flew. What did we, I think about twenty three I think before we finally ran out of war. So of course at the end of the war of course we all went our own separate ways.
AS: Can you remember the missions? The missions that you went on?
JC: Pardon?
AS: Can you remember the missions that you went on?
JC: Oh yes. Well, I’ve got a logbook here somewhere.
Other: He’s got his logbook there.
Other 2: Oh yes. Oh. Here we are. Yes.
JC: Yes. Yes. It’s, it’s a bit more interesting I suppose.
Other: Pass it over, Jack.
JC: Where are we? [pause] Yeah. There we are. Flight engineer, on. With the effect on the 18th of January ’45. So, you see we were running out of war quite fast I’d say.
AS: When do you think you actually go in to the Air Force?
JC: When did I go in to the Air Force?
AS: Yes.
JC: Oh [pause] To be perfectly honest I can’t remember when we —
Other: It’s no good looking at me.
JC: Because I tried to get in to the, first of all anything that would take me. Then the only thing you could get from, I was an instrument maker. The only thing I could get to come out from that was aircrew. But I mean I just didn’t believe I was sort of capable of going aircrew. But anyhow I went and they trained. First of all it was rather unfortunate. They put me as a wireless operator. Well, alright but the trouble was I just couldn’t take Morse quick enough. You know. I just couldn’t get it down so no good as that. So, you know you can’t say that, ‘Oh, would you mind running it again? We didn’t hear it.’ So you know I, I transferred then with a bit of luck as a flight engineer. I flannelled my way through. They said, ‘What do you know about cars and engines?’ And all that. And I flannelled. I didn’t know the first thing about how a car worked. But anyway I talked. Talked them into letting me start. So I went to St Athan’s and did the original early training. Then I finally sent up to Yorkshire where I did the operational. What they called the operational training where you have your final polish of all your work and learn how to really cope with aircraft. And then from then straight on to 158 Squadron. Quite a posh Squadron I must say. 158 Squadron in Yorkshire. Near Bridlington. And we, I think we managed to get about twenty three. I’m not quite sure how many it was. About twenty. I think it was twenty three and then we ran out of war. So we all went our own separate ways. I’ve got a few bits here but not, you know. Here’s sort of our crew. Oh, we’ll go through. We’ll go through our crew. Yeah. I’ve got Bill Walsh who was a New Zealander. He was the pilot and he was a smashing bloke. The other one there was [pause] we had two gunners. Reg. Reg Simpson and Nick Nichols. Funny that. And Ray. He was a [pause] he was the navigator. Ray. And the other one was the bomb aimer. And as I say we, does it say how many we got? See what we’ve got in the book. We did, we did catch a packet in one place and managed to land. I’ll show you in a minute anyway. We were coming across Holland somewhere I think. We got, we got hit. That threw us into a spin. And the, the pilot, brilliant pilot, old Bill, a New Zealand lad got us out of a spin, you know. A skinny lad really. And then we managed to sneak across the North Sea and came in at Carnaby. A big, a big crash aerodrome at Carnaby. And, [pause] but anyway as I say we went on from then. We got properly, got through the whole lot. I think it was about twenty three [unclear] But yeah we were lucky. We were very lucky. We had one or two. One or two clips, you know where you know, bits of holes appear in the wings and lumps come off. But on the whole we got away with them. Except on that one occasion when we nearly went down. But [pause] yeah. Otherwise, you see the photograph.
AS: Wow.
JC: Hit by a shell and it actually exploded in the wing.
AS: What, what was life like on the base when you were between missions?
JC: Sorry?
AS: What was life like on the Air Force base between, when you were between missions?
JC: Oh. Wonderful really because we as a crew of seven we tended to, well we were sort of all put in our own hut separately and so of course we lived as a family of seven. I mean there was, there was sort of we had a warrant officer pilot and a warrant officer navigator and the rest of us were all just sergeants. And there was no muscling about. We all went in together in the same hut and oh it was, it was really a lot of, a really a tight camaraderie between us. You know. We were a crew and as they were our right hand. Right arm. You know. It was, of course at the end of the war unfortunately we went our own separate ways and I lost touch.
AS: How long did you keep in touch with your crew mates?
JC: Oh well, first of all of course it wasn’t, it was quite a while and then gradually we sort of got writing to each other. But it was long, it was quite a long time since I’d seen them or heard anything. Yeah.
AS: When you —
JC: We understand that the navigator and Bill the pilot were both New Zealanders. They went back of course to New Zealand. The rest of us we just dispersed. What we had to, I can’t remember you know, we had the rear gunner was [pause] I forget what he was. He was just, just one of the bods you know. Like myself.
AS: When you finished and you came out of the RAF what did you do then?
JC: Well, I went back into the factories of course. It was a bit of a, you know it was all a bit of a wrench from being you know under orders as to getting back. Getting back on sort of your own peace. Your own job. But I went back in to the factories and became an instrument maker and finally a tool and mould maker. When I retired I was tool and mould maker. You know. All the stuff, you look around you has all my fingers on it.
AS: Oh right. And did you find it difficult to assimilate back into civilian life?
JC: No. Not really. I suppose we missed, missed the company for a start but of course we all went our own separate ways and kept quite tightly in touch for, you know for the first year or so but gradually it wandered off and to tell you the honest truth I’m never quite sure where they all are now. But —
AS: Did, did you, you didn’t fly any aircraft other than Halifaxes.
JC: Oh well, after yeah after the, after the war first of all, of course we did our training on a, on a sort of a clapped out Halifax. Then we did our operations on a brand new one. A lovely brand new one. And we spoiled it though. We blew a lump out of the wing. But then after that it was just a matter of pottering around. Aircraft wanted to be delivered from one place to another. I used to have to fill in as a flight engineer. But gradually you sort of get I finally got as I, sort of let out. They discharged. I don’t think I can offer much more than that. As I say because when I came out of course I went to try and pick my old threads as an instrument maker which I was virtually in the same sort of job I finally finished with.
AS: Were you involved with the RAF Associations afterwards?
JC: Oh. Involved with them. Well, not for a very long time. I didn’t realise that there was anything, you know. Anything like that. But it was just down the road wasn’t it from RAF, RAF Uxbridge? There was a, I met one or two people down there. I went in. I got in with them. And we used to meet down there sometimes didn’t we? Well, Olive didn’t but I used to go down there lunchtime. Friday lunchtime wasn’t it? Friday lunchtime I think it was I used to go down there and we’d meet together. But of course I don’t think [pause] I don’t ever really met my crew again. I’ve got a feeling I did meet one of them but you know being as we were a very close knit seven you know. A very, very close knit lot and when you all go your separate ways it’s surprising you are separate and that’s it. But yeah. We had a good crew. A jolly good crew. Have you had a look at the —
AS: No. Maybe I’ll —
JC: Not a lot, not a lot in there really but —
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 Jack Alexander Cook
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Sadler
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
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACookJA170918, PCookJA1701
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:21:17 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Wales
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Beginning the war in a reserved occupation, Jack eventually volunteered for the Royal Air Force, however, it would take the majority of the war before he joined. Eventually being called up for Bomber Command in 1944, Jack trained as a wireless operator before becoming a flight engineer. He was sent to RAF St Athan initially for training, before joining 158 Squadron at RAF Lissett to fly Halifax bombers. Throughout his operations, Jack completed 12 operations before his plane was damaged over the Netherlands, having to make a crash landing at RAF Carnaby. He then continues to give information on the Halifax bomber, recounting his experience being hit by a shell during a flight. Jack recounts his time at RAF Lissett as wonderful, living with ‘his own family’, his crew, a family of seven. Reaching the rank of sergeant, he believes he completed 23 operations in total. When the war ended, Jack returned to his pre-war occupation as an instrument maker, keeping in contact with many of his crew throughout the years. He states that it was easy to return to civilian life, but the one thing he missed most was the camaraderie. He is currently involved with the RAF Association.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
158 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
military ethos
RAF Carnaby
RAF Lissett
RAF St Athan
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/122/3534/ATaitJT160610.2.mp3
9f0edd1b79ed6f88dccec2e22a8097de
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
Tait, John
John Tait
J T Tait
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Warrant Officer John Thomas Tait (1923 - 2019, 175522 Royal Air Force), his service and release book and four photographs. John Tait flew 34 operations with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe as a wireless operator / air gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Tait and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-10
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tait, JT
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by [name of the lender] and catalogued by [name of the cataloguer].
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewee is John Tait and the interviewer is Mike Connock. The interview is taking place at the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archives at Riseholme College on Friday 10th June 2016. Also present at the interview are Alan Tait, Mrs Beryl Tait and Ken Tait. OK John, what I want you to do is just tell me a bit about um, when and where you were born for a start.
JT: Well I was born in America in Helena, Montana and my mother was English and my Dad was Scottish. Anyway my mum had had enough of travelling abroad so she wanted to come home. So when I was five she brought me to England and that was fine. Took a while to get used to people, people getting used to me actually. But anyway, when the war started we —
MC: Yeah, go on John, it’s just, what did your parents do? What was —
JT: My dad was, he was a retired cattle farmer and my mother was a retired school teacher.
MC: So how old were you when you came to —
JT: I was five.
MC: Five.
JT: Five, yes.
MC: So you started school in the UK?
JT: I started school in the UK, yeah.
MC: And that was? What year were you born?
JT: 1923.
MC: 1923, yes. So this would be ’28 when you came to us.
JT: It was, yes.
MC: And, so what about school days in those days, what was that like?
JT: Well school days, well I went to a local school, I didn’t start until I was six but it was very good, a local school, I enjoyed it and then when I was eleven I went up to, oh hell where did I go, oh God, isn’t it awful. Temple Road Central Boys School in Birkenhead. It was a secondary school and I went there and very good, I was accepted even though I was from the outer districts because they were nearly all lads from the city. But we got on ok, I did very well. In fact I played football for their team, but anyway I went to school there ‘til I was fourteen and then I took me O levels, except they weren’t O levels then but it were whatever. Anyway then I went to work in an office to train as a cost accountant, me dad knew someone who had an office and he would train — so I went to train as a cost accountant. Anyway, when the war broke out I was eighteen years of age and I didn’t like being in an office all day so I volunteered for the RAF.
MC: What made you choose the RAF?
JT: Well there were two pals of mine, lived in the same road as me and they were both wireless operator air gunners and neither of them came back, they both lost their life. One was Derek Jones and the other was Bob Christie, Bob Christie, yeah. They both lost their lives as it happened, but I was the only one of the three that came back. But anyway I volunteered for the RAF —
MC: So that was when you were eighteen?
JT: Eighteen yes.
MC: Oh right.
JT: I went to Padgate for six weeks, square bashing and then we went to Black — [pause] While I was there I volunteered for air crew and um, I went to Blackpool on a wireless operators air gunners course.
MC: Hmm.
JT: I forget how long it was but anyway I did a tour there and then I went to Stormy Down to do an air gunners course and then I qualified for that and I was posted to a place called Bruntingthorpe which, where they trained lads straight from school
MC: Was that an operational training unit?
JT: Pardon?
MC: Operational training unit?
JT: Operational training, yep. So I —
MC: Do you remember which one it was?
JT: Bruntingthorpe.
MC: Bruntingthorpe.
JT: Bruntingthorpe yep. RAF Bruntingthorpe yeah. Anyway, I did me tour there and the next thing was to go to a higher, err, higher course for wireless operators up north. So I went up there and while we were there they were sorting out the air gunners. Well I got picked to go down to Stormy Down to do a six week air gunners course, which I did and I enjoyed. Anyway, having finished that we then went to Market Harborough, I think. And the skipper was there . Dougie Milligan came round, he was picking his crew for the Anson.
MC: And that was where you crewed up, at Market Harborough?
JT: That’s were I got picked by Dougie Milligan to go with him, yeah. That’s right. We went, we did, we went from there to —
MC: Market Harborough, that would have been the OTU I suspect.
JT: Sorry?
MC: Was the Operational Training Unit at Market —
JT: That was, the OTU at Market Harborough, OTU, it was yeah. And we went from Market Harborough to um, —
MC: Can I just interrupt you there. Um, at Market Harborough was that just the five crew?
JT: We hadn’t got, yes it was. We hadn’t got a full crew then.
MC: Because that was on, oh, what aircraft was that?
JT: It was on Wellingtons.
MC: Wellingtons, yeah.
JT: Because we were on Wellingtons yeah. Anyway, we picked up a oh, um, bit of a gunner [?] I think there.
MC: And a flight engineer?
JT: And that’s what we did. We were on Wellingtons. We hadn’t got a flight engineer, [coughs).
MC: Where did you pick those up?
JT: Picked them up at Market Harborough, picked two up at Market Harborough.
MC: Oh you did pick them up at Market Harborough did you?
JT: We didn’t pick the [pause] flight engineer, we picked him up later because they hadn’t got flight engineers on Lancs. But anyway, as it happened when he joined us and we went to um, from there to, oh, somewhere in North Lincoln, I don’t know. Oh I know, we went to go on Stirlings, that’s right at Scampton. We went to Scampton.
BT: Oooh.
JT: That’s right. And the skipper converted on to Stirlings and we picked up a, oh, [pause]
MC: Flight engineer?
JT: Flight engineer.
MC: Yup.
JT: And his name was Jimmy James and he came from Liverpool, funnily enough but he was a good lad. He’d been, he came from South Africa actually. He’d been a mechanic out there for years, he was, and he wanted to join air crew to bring him back home to train so he joined us and they brought him back to train as a flight engineer which he was delighted and he was with us until the end of our tour.
MC: So was that at a Lancaster finishing school or a conversion unit?
JT: Oh yes, it was Stirlings, Lancs finishing school yeah.
MC: Yeah, oh yeah, it was a heavy conversion unit.
JT: It was a conversion school.
MC: Yeah, yep, hmm.
JT: They were horrible things, big [laughter]the Stirling but we flew quite a lot of trips, not operations but flights. And then we went from having completed our course on Stirlings, we then went to [pause] we went on the squadron, that’s right.
MC: Did you not, you must have gone and converted from Stirlings to Lancasters?
JT: We converted to Lancasters, we didn’t convert to Lancs until we got to the squadron.
MC: Oh didn’t you?
JT: No I don’t think so. I’m just trying to think —
MC: You went to the Lancaster Finishing School I think, was that, um did you not go to —
JT: It was Scampton [unclear] converted on to Lancasters at Scampton, that’s right, yes we did, yeah. And err, that was when our crew was formed, we’d got a full crew.
MC: Yep.
JT: [pause] I’m sorry if it’s a bit bitty.
MC: Oh no, no it’s not. It’s fine, it’s no problem and so you got, so um, I mean up until then you got posted to your squadron but all the crew was made up.
JT: That’s right. There was, Dougie Milligan picked us up from, originally from Bruntingthorpe, that was it. [pause]
MC: Just going back slightly, back to when you joined up, um, as a teenager what was life like growing up just before the war. I’m sorry to have —
JT: It was fine, well I used to, I enjoyed football, I played a lot of football but of course when the war started we were classed as aliens.
MC: Oh!
JT: Because I was an American citizen, and we used to have to report to the police station once a month and that’s why I said ‘blow this I’m going to join the RAF’ so I did. [laughter] Yeah.
MC: So having been to the err, operation training unit, conversion unit, you were then posted to err, —
JT: Skellingthorpe
OTHER: Skellingthorpe, 50 Squadron.
JT: Yeah, that’s right.
MC: Can you remember arriving at Skellingthorpe, much about the station?
JT: Aah, we thought it was a bit out in the wilderness but err, yeah, we did no it was great, when you‘ve got a crew around you, you were quite happy.
MC: Yeah by that time they’d got the concrete runways and things like that.
JT: Oh yes, that’s right.
MC: Hmm, yeah. So, can you remember much about your first operation, all your operations, your first one for instance?
JT: No.
MC: Did it not stick with you.
JT: Doesn’t ring a bell. As I say, I did thirty three all with Dougie Milligan and I did one as a spare bod with a skipper named Mike, oh Pete Stockwell.
MC: What was his name? Pete?
JT: Peter Stockwell. He was a flight sergeant, he’d gone with me from Skellingthorpe to there, to train and they didn’t just trust him on Wellingtons so they put him on the Stirling. He would fly, flying a fighter, that’s right flying Spitfires 'til he pranged one and they told him to get off the squadron and get back to the squadron so he asked me would I go back with him and I said ‘of course I would’. So we formed another crew up and that was it.
MC: I mean you did some hairy operations. Does anything stand out in particular?
JT: Um, no, err, [pause].
OTHER: You said that, you know —
JT: The Ruhr Valley was the worst.
MC: Rurh, yeah, yeah [unclear]
OTHER: Well some of the operations you did were, you know, you did Munich –
JT: Pardon?
OTHER: You did Munich didn’t you?
JT: That was the longest, the longest trip was Munich I think.
OTHER: Yeah, Munich.
OTHER: Did you do Berlin?
JT: No.
OTHER: Yes, at the time, ‘cos at the time you were joining it was the lead up, leading up to D-Day.
JT: That’s right.
MC: So you would, did you do some, you obviously did some invasion support operations?
JT: Well we did some in France, we did a few trips in France, that’s right, that’s right yeah.
MC: Yeah, so the actual raids themselves you don’t remember much about?
JT: The operations? No. Ah, well —
MC: How did you feel, I mean did you err, —
JT: Probably scared stiff to start with, but err, —
MC: Yeah.
JT: But you got used to
MC: That’s what I’m trying to get at, you know, how did you —
JT: That’s right the first trip I always remember the first trip. I can’t remember where it was but I couldn’t believe it and I looked out of my rear window and I could see the fires down below and I said to Jimmy Marlow, ‘Jim come and have a look’. ‘Not bloody likely’ he said, ‘I’m sitting here’ and he was sitting on the table drinking his tea. He wouldn’t have a look out of the window.
MC: And Jimmy Marlow was the?
JT: He was the, he was the navigator.
MC: The navigator, yes.
JT: He was a sergeant or a flight sergeant then. Yeah. He’d worked for the Air Ministry and he wanted to get a commission so they could give him a position to go back to, when he went back from the RAF. Which he got in the end.
MC: So I, I gather Doug Milligan was a good skipper then?
JT: Oh, Dougie, yes.
MC: He got you through thirty three operations.
JT: He was dead on, he really was, he was.
MC: And you all had a good crew, you all got on well.
JT: Very good. We were lucky with the crew.
MC: Yeah, what about —
JT: We lost our rear gunner for a while at the end because he got frostbite and he was invalided out of the RAF and we got another, just for a couple of trips, but err, yeah we got on great.
MC: Yeah, what about socialising in the area round Lincoln?
JT: Oh.
MC: Don’t give too much away.
JT: You know Lincoln was a wonderful place to socialise, people were so friendly, it was great, they really were.
MC: You used to go out most evenings?
JT: Most evenings we’d be down the pub, local pub. In fact there was one night we were all out on the booze and they decided to put an op on and they sent the RAF Police round Lincoln calling for all members of 50 Squadron to come back and we went back to the squadron but we, some of them were half canned. Dougie Milligan wouldn’t bother, well he wasn’t a great drinker. He liked a drink but he wasn’t a great drinker, but the rest of us were [laughter].
MC: [laughter] you made full use of the local hostelries.
JT: That’s right, there’s a lot of nice people in Lincoln.
MC: So what, which, where did you used to go? Can you remember?
JT: I can’t remember the name of the pub. There was a pub down the road from Skellingthorpe and there was a lady there, she invited us in one night. Her husband works, he was working away, working on a job or something and she had two or three daughters or nurses who visited and she invited us to join them for a party one night and um, the night they put the operation off we were in Lincoln, she was sat in the back kitchen with me feeding me coffee to sober me up before we went back [laughter]. She was great, a lovely lady and she was, oh what was her name? No, it’s gone. She was lovely, the people were lovely they really were.
MC: So you got around in Lincoln?
JT: Oh yeah, no complaints
MC: Yes. It’s err, you were a wireless operator?
JT: Wireless operator, yes.
MC: Can you, I mean [pause] so you was a WOP air gunner, so I mean I gather you had your 21st birthday while you was on the squadron?
JT: Oh yes.
MC: So um, how did you celebrate that?
JT: [laughter] down the pub [laughter].
MC: [laughter] So they looked after you did they on your 21st?
JT: Oh yeah, had a fabulous time.
MC: So what did you get up to on that then? Anything special?
JT: Nothing, well apart from going for a drink in the pub, that’s about it, that’s all we did anyway.
MC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JT: We hadn’t got enough money to go buying it or wining and dining but we went for a pint, yeah.
MC: Can you remember much about your C — Commanding Officer? Whoever your CO was?
JT: I’ll tell you who he was, not the Commanding Officer. Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Sir Mike Beetham.
MC: Uhuh.
JT: He, I think he was a flight lieutenant on our squadron and he was a flight lieutenant a very, B Flight, no sorry, I was on B, he was on A Flight. Yeah, Mike Beetham was on A Flight. He was a great bloke, very approachable, very pleasant chap.
MC: Did you know any of his crew?
JT: Well I did at the time but I don’t now. But —
MC: Sir Michael Beetham, so as I say, Reg Payne was Michael Beetham’s wireless operator. So you may know him.
JT: Oh well that’s somebody I’d perhaps recognise.
MC: How’s your morse these days then?
JT: Sorry?
MC: How’s our morse these days, morse code?
JT: I haven’t done any, dit dah dah. I can do it though.
MC: I’m sure you can.
JT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So you, obviously you finished your tour, you say you did thirty three?
JT: I did thirty three and then I stayed on, we were all, the crew was then dispersed, they was —
MC: Yeah?
JT: And I stayed on and did one trip with Pete Stockwell.
MC: Yeah? [pause] Yeah, and then where did you go from there?
JT: We went from there to um, I think we went to Market Harborough with Pete Stockie.
MC: Back to Market Harborough.
JT: Yep. He was told to get himself a crew and get back on the squadron, he was a bit of a lad was Pete, [laughter] flight lieutenant [laughter] but we have got a [unclear]
MC: So he finished up as a flight lieutenant then did he?
JT: Pete did.
MC: Yeah?
JT: Yeah. Well, our navigator Barney, he was a navigator with Pete, he was a flight lieutenant too. But we were, the rest of us were senior NCOs, yep.
MC: So how long were you at Market Harborough then on the OTU?
JT: Probably, maybe a year, a couple of years.
MC: As long as that?
JT: Well what they did, they asked, 35 Squadron was formed to do formation flying, twelve Lancs in formation and we were on that, Pete Stocky was on that so we went with him, formation flying. We used to do all over the country and then we went to America to celebrate Army Air Corps Day. We did six weeks tour in the States formation flying.
MC: So that would have been in ’45 then?
JT: That would be yeah, maybe ’46 I don’t know.
MC: How long were you over there?
JT: A long time ago.
MC: You was over there a long time?
JT: Well six weeks. We did six weeks.
MC: You enjoyed that?
JT: We started off in New York, went right down to the south coast and round about. We were the first crew to fly over the White House. They allowed aircraft to fly over the White House and the Lancs flew over there. But, oh we had a six weeks tour [unclear]
MC: And that was with 35 Squadron?
JT: 35 Squadron. We were entertained, taken to Hollywood, we were entertained in Hollywood shown the people doing the rehearsals and acting. We had a wonderful time really. Couldn’t, couldn’t do any wrong. [laughter] We came back and I asked to do me time after that. I only had about a fortnight to do when we came back. I got demobbed and that was it. But we had a wonderful time.
MC: So when were you demobbed?
JT: Uh —
MC: Because you stayed in —
JT: Before, I signed up for six months. I didn’t actually do the full six months I don’t think. They let me out early. I forget now to be honest.
OTHER: Indeed, probably late ’45.
MC: Yeah. So having come out the Air Force, what did you after the Air Force then?
JT: I needed a job obviously. I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to be a cost accountant, there was no way. And a pal of mine worked for McAlpines, he was in the office at Sir Alfred McAlpines so I got a job, he got me a job in the office Sir Alfred McAlpines and I started there off as a [pause] stationery assistant then I was posted, I got asked to go out on site, I became a timekeeper then I became office manager and then became an area office manager and then while I was doing that I was doing a lot of the work that surveyors were doing and the chief surveyor said to me ‘John,’ he said ‘why don’t you take up surveying?’ he said, ‘you know more than these buggers’. So I applied and I went to the college of building for about six years I think, five years and I studied to be a quantity surveyor and became a chartered surveyor and I finished up my time in Cheshire County, yes I worked for Chester City, Cheshire County.
MC: So when did you meet Beryl then?
JT: Oh, I met Beryl way back, that was when —
BT: [laughter] Ah, when was that? I was —
JT: Where was I working then?
BT: Seventeen or eighteen, whenever that was because I’m eighty five on Sunday.
JT: Aye, that’s not good. Where were you, you were working at McKagan Barnes (?) weren’t you?
BT: Sorry?
JT: You were working at McKagan Barnes (?)
BT: Yeah, and I was in the accountants office.
JT: She was training in the accountant’s office.
MC: So that, you met before the war?
JT: Sorry?
MC: You met before the war?
JT: Oh, no.
BT: Oh no, after that.
MC: After the war?
BT: I used to see him very often going back off leave in his RAF uniform and I used to think, oh he looks alright and you know, [laughter] not realising I’d end up marrying you [laughter]. But um, no we just met virtually at a dance at the local dance hall.
JT: That’s right.
MC: Yes.
BT: He came in, we spent that whole night dancing. I was going out with the drummer in the band and I said to — when John said ‘can I take you home?’ and I said ‘well, see the chap playing the drums, he is my boyfriend so you’d better come with me to tell him’. So he did and, told him and I got a phone call from the chap the next day and he said ‘I can’t believe you did that’. I said, ‘well I’m sorry’ I said, ‘I’ve now met somebody else so we’ll just have to call it a day’.
MC: You must have been a bit of a lad in those days.
BT: I thought, well I could have just —
JT: I was a bit of a lad.
BT: I could have just walked out but I thought no, I’ll do the right thing and tell him.
JT: Thank you.
BT: And the fact that he didn’t like it well, you know [laughter].
OTHER: [unclear]
MC: Going back to the operational times.
JT: Well once you, sitting there with a [unclear] the searchlight picked you up as you went in and the skipper had to do evasive action which was climb and roll and—
MC: Corkscrew.
JT: and climb and roll. That happened on many operations.
MC: Yeah.
JT: But it was something you used to —
MC: Any close mishaps with other aircraft then?
JT: Oh, aye. Many a time. [laughter]. And our foreign friends but err —
MC: So you, you had a few escapades with some fighters then?
JT: Yep.
MC: Yeah. And managed to get away unscathed?
JT: That’s right.
MC: Obviously a good skipper.
JT: Thanks to the skipper. Yep, that’s right. Oh yes every, there was always other things with somebody on one of the ops.
MC: Did you always get them back to base at the same, you know?
JT: Yeah we did, we always got back, we, the last time we were, aah, the skipper was advised to make a landing in the South of England and we agreed. We were going on leave the next day so we said ‘come on we’ll give it a go’, so we went back and we got back and when we got back one of the aircraft engines packed up as we landed but err, the skipper got a remand for it. No we were cheering. Yeah. There were all kinds of little incidents but they were well, sort of part of the daily routine, or night routine.
MC: For you, yes.
JT: It was.
MC: [laughter] So, yeah, I mean it’s, you talked about it, I mean you say there were lots of incidents. Can you remember other incidences? Did you ever get diverted coming back, apart from that one incident when you didn’t go back?
JT: I think that’s the only occasion, which we didn’t — What they did, they sent a fighter out from Tangmere, which we ignored [laughter] and went back anyway, but err, that’s the only time.
MC: You ignored the fighter. What was he there to do?
JT: Pardon?
MC: What was the fighter from Tangmere there to do?
JT: It was a, oh bloody hell, I don’t know.
MC: No, what, why did they send him out?
JT: To guide us into Tangmere.
MC: Aaahh.
JT: But we didn’t take any notice. We went back, yeah. What was it, I forget the aircraft now, I knew it —
MC: So you never got any problems with coming back in bad weather, to Skellingthorpe then?
JT: Oh we did have rough times. From time to time you came in you could hardly land because of the weather but we made it. We’d got a good skipper in Dougie Milligan, he really was. He was a, he wasn’t, he was just going for it as much as I should have been, but err, he was on the ball and a good skipper.
MC: Yeah. So the flight engineer, he was?
JT: Oh Jimmy James was a great lad, oh yeah.
MC: A name like Jimmy James? [laughter]
JT: Yes, well he had a garage in Liverpool and I tried to find out about him and I found out about a week after he died. I used to belong the Aircrew Association, I think it was. And I asked them to fish out for any documents and they said the only one we’ve got is Jimmy James and he died a week ago and he was our flight engineer. Our bomb aimer, the one I would like to get in touch with is Ronnie Pugh, ‘cos Ronnie Pugh came to our house. In fact there’s a picture of him at our house, he came to our house, he was a great lad was Ronnie. He was a professional pianist before the war, he played for Maurice Winnick and wherever we went, on the piano, we always had a gang round together. [laughter] No problems with drinking with him.
MC: So, he was the navigator you say?
JT: He was the bomb aimer.
MC: What about the navigator?
JT: Jimmy, was very —
MC: Jimmy, this was Jimmy James, no Jimmy James was the flight engineer.
JT: Marlow. He was one of two who were married. He was married, a lovely wife, a young lady. He’d just got married and she came with us a couple of times, not on train journeys, elsewhere, and Jimmy, he never came out a lot. He didn’t go on the binge like us so much but he was a great bloke, Jimmy. He, he was the one who worked for the Air Ministry before the war and he wanted to get a commission so it would stand him in good stead when he got demobbed. But he did get it just before we finished, he did get one. He was only a, Robbie Pugh already had one, he was a pilot officer when he joined us.
MC: And your mid upper? That was —
JT: Jock Bryman [?] he was a flight sergeant.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Big Scotsman, a canny lad. [laughter]
MC: You don’t know what he did before the war?
JT: No I haven’t got a clue.
MC: No, no. And in the tail, rear gunner?
JT: Johnny Austin, but I don’t know what he did before the war but he got frostbite and he was invalided out of the RAF, Johnny Austin was. We had a spare gunner for a couple of trips, I think.
MC: Did you, [unclear] did you know much about 50 Squadron when you were posted there? Had they told you much? Did you know of it?
JT: No, I didn’t know anything about it at all. Not the slightest, no. It was a good squadron, and I’ll tell you what, we had a good mob.
MC: Hm. [pause] Yeah, as I say, you talked about your birthday, and so your raid on your birthday was that railway junction.
JT: Yes, well I sort of [unclear]
MC: You couldn’t celebrate it in the air could you eh? Or did you?
JT: No, no, no we didn’t.
MC: [laughter] A successful operation though, um. So you probably, so I mean, it wasn’t um, it wasn’t 16th April you were on operations?
JT: We must have gone down the pub.
MC: So you must have been down the pub.
JT: We would do, yes.
MC: That’s a good excuse, but you didn’t need an excuse in those days.
JT: [laughter] Hardly.
MC: So I mean, if, if I guess you’re looking at your first tour was um, your first operation even was er, was marshalling yards at Tours.
JT: That’s right. I don’t rem — I remember going to the marshalling yards but I don’t know where it was. That’s when I got Jimmy Marlow to try again to get him to look out of the window but he wouldn’t look. He said ‘no fear’.
MC: And then you did the GVC, UVC marshalling yards, you did lots of the marshalling yards?
JT: That’s right. [noise of door closing]
MC: Even Paris, even, your third trip was to Paris.
JT: I don’t remember that.
MC: Marshalling again, marshalling yards.
OTHER: There you go, that was, was that leaflet dropping you were saying you were doing at the time? That’s the one, that‘s the Paris trip.
JT: Paris, yeah.
OTHER: ‘Cos you went from [unclear] Paris and then you went, started, you seemed to go to Germany and Munich.
JT: [unclear]
OTHER: [unclear]
JT: But I was in the Ruhr Valley.
MC: You went to Cologne?
JT: Oh yes and somewhere else, I forget.
MC: Cologne and —
JT: Two or three trips to the Ruhr Valley. Yep, they were always a bit hairy.
MC: Yeah, because of low level defence —
JT: The thing was you’ve got a battery of searchlights and the second you got near to them, the searchlights were on you and you were dodging the searchlights all the way through.
MC: Did you, I mean did you get hit, you never got hit any time by flak?
JT: Sorry?
MC: Did you get hit any time by flak?
JT: I think we did but err, nothing to, well nothing to put us off keeping going.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Although that was, always took the length of the runway. According to the skipper you had to hold it down to make it, take itself off.
MC: It took a while to get off with a full load?
JT: It did yeah.
OTHER: So that would have been, you know especially if you had long trips, with a full fuel load as well.
JT: That’s right he would hold it down to the end of the runway to make it fight to get off, yeah.
OTHER: Is this a —
JT: Poor old Johnny who was in the rear turret was wondering when he was going to leave the deck. [laughter]
MC: Were there many times when you came back —
JT: Yes we did get a recall once.
MC: You had to bring the bomb load back?
JT: . We had to go out to the North Sea, there was a dumping area out in the North Sea, we used to have to go and dump them there and we’d say ‘ah flippin’ heck’. Or sometimes you’d get a hang up with a bomb and in theory you still had to go out to the North Sea but in honesty, disconnect the camera, get rid of it [laughter]. We didn’t do it that way, we did go sometimes but sometimes we didn’t.
MC: What sort of dumping area, you dumped it elsewhere?
JT: We’d just disconnect the camera, pull the toggle and away we’d go [laughter]and put the camera back on [laughter] get a picture of cloud.
MC: Yeah, yeah [laughter] So did you have to bring many bomb loads back did you?
JT: Sorry?
MC: Did you have to bring many loads back or was there —
JT: We never brought one back, only, we dumped one but we never ever brought any back.
MC: Oh you always dumped them?
JT: Yeah, yeah.
MC: What sort of bomb load was it you were carrying?
JT: Probably thousand pounders, [unclear] in cans. Four thousand pounders with cans.
MC: Four thousand.
JT: Four thousand pounders with the cans, well, a load of thousand pounders with the, oh bloody hell what are they called, not flares. Oh I can’t think.
MC: Incendiaries?
JT: What you say?
MC: Incendiaries?
JT: That’s right.
MC: Yeah, yeah and were there many mishaps, did you experience any mishaps?
JT: Pardon?
MC: Did you experience any mishaps at Skellingthorpe while you were there you know?
JT: No we didn’t actually, we didn’t get any hang ups, no.
MC: No, I meant did you have any accidents at Skellingthorpe or anything like that?
JT: Aahh, not that I can recall.
MC: So what did you personally think about the bombing raids then, about the —
JT: I thought they were a great success really.
MC: Yeah. And the morality of it, what did you think about that?
JT: I think Bomber Harris had it right. The only thing was he put a raid on once, I think Winston Churchill insisted and they lost a lot of aircraft that night but err, I thought they did a good job.
MC: Were you on that raid?
JT: No.
OTHER : That would be Nuremburg?
JT: Yep, That’s ninety six or ninety five.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Yeah, well that wasn’t going to go ahead but Churchill insisted that it did and we lost ninety six aircraft that night.
MC: Hmm, yeah.
JT: I mightn’t have been here now. [laughter]
MC: You didn’t do Dresden then?
JT: We’d finished.
MC: What did you think about Dresden then, you were aware of the Dresden raid?
JT: Well, it’s hard to say really. We never had to encounter the problems they had when they got there so we don’t know. I mean they said it was a walkover[?] for them. In fact a pal of mine who was a navigator in another squadron said he didn’t like, he regretted it said he was ashamed of going there but having said that and he came back but some people didn’t so it’s all right talking if you got back. Yeah. That was Ken Boxon, [?] Ken went to Dresden yeah.
MC: So what did you think about the way Harris was treated after the war?
JT: Sorry?
MC: What did you think about the way that Harris was treated after the war?
JT: I thought he had a very despicable treatment. I think for what he did during the war I think it was a crying shame. If it hadn’t been for him Bomber Command wouldn’t have been the force they were, I thought he was great.
MC: Good for Bomber Command.
JT: Absolutely, he was yeah, Butcher Harris. [laughter] But he didn’t get the justice he deserved.
MC: Yeah. And did you get your clasp, Bomber Command Clasp?
JT: Yes.
MC: You did get your clasp?
JT: I don’t think it’s worth a light. Little tiny thing, not worth a light. I don’t know why they bothered to make it to be honest. I think I brought it with me.
BT: In the box is it? Is that the one?
MC: So, yeah you did apply for your clasp and you got it. That’s um —
JT: No it’s not there.
MC: You said there was a lady at the end of the runway. She used to wave you off.
JT: Sure, she did. She came down, she’d wait for us to come back. She was the lady who used to treat us to coffee. She was the lady who gave me coffee that night when they called us in from Lincoln to go on ops.
MC: What was her name?
JT: Mrs Cook.
MC: Mrs Cook.
JT: Mrs Cook. She was a lovely lady and she’d come down and stand at the end of the runway and she would wait until we got back to the air traffic tower. She was lovely, really was.
MC: I suppose there would have been a few people waving you off?
JT: Sorry?
MC: I suppose there would have been a few people waving you off at the end of the runway?
JT: There were, that’s right there were, but she never, she never missed a trip that we were on, no.
MC: So did you mingle with the other crews much during the day?
JT: Well we did obviously but when we to, we had specialist briefing, nav briefing, WOP briefing, pilot briefing, but then, but at night you did OK, I mean we’ve got, if they were in the pub, the same pub as we were we’d mix in there but we never had, we had our own gang.
MC: Were you very conscious of the losses? I mean you know, were you aware of some of the aircraft that didn’t return?
JT: Well, the thing was, the following day there were empty beds. This was it.
BT: Yeah.
JT: That’s when you knew how many had been lost.
MC: Hmm. But it was never you.
JT: No. When you lose five out of eleven that’s a lot of [unclear]. We were, we were always there. We was very lucky.
MC: Is that what you put it down to?
JT: Yeah, it was luck, pure luck.
MC: And the skill of the skipper.
JT: And Dougie Milligan’s skill. Yep, yeah. He was [emphasis] skilful. When he got back he used to get, he got reprimanded once for taking his time coming in to land. He always complied with the instructions [background noise] for landing. Other air traffic come back ‘cos they went before him and they used to play hell about the, but Dougie never did, he always complied with them. [background noise]. The rules of landing. He was a good skipper.
MC: Which contributed to your success.
JT: Oh he did, without a doubt, yeah.
MC: So when you got your medals after the war did you? When did you get, collect your medals, did you apply for them straight away or —
JT: Ah. Did I? I can’t remember now whether in fact they —
MC: So what medals have you got?
JT: I’ve got the France & Germany, the Aircrew Europe, the Victory Medal and another but I don’t know what it is.
BT: Have you got them there John?
JT: They’re there somewhere.
OTHER: They’re in your blazer pocket.
JT: Ahh.
MC: Yeah, I was just asking you know about your medals, what you’ve, when you got them?
JT: I’ve got the Aircrew Medal at the end of it as well. I still put that on.
MC: Yeah. Then you’ll be err, France & Germany Star?
JT: France & Germany.
MC: That’s the one, I think it’s, that’s the one the clasp goes on.
JT: I don’t know, I don’t, didn’t go on, I never put it on anywhere. And then the Aircrew Europe.
MC: Yep.
JT: And then the Victory Medal and then err, I think I’ve forgotten what the other was. There’s certainly four of them. [unclear]
OTHER: No, no.
MC: So when you —
OTHER: They apologised to him.
MC: Talking about America, going back to when you were flying in America.
JT: That’s right.
MC: You say you flew in formation?
JT: Twelve Lancs in formation. Oh we were tight, it was a tight form, I could look out of my Astrodome and see the bloke in the next jar alongside me and we did that in tight formation over America. When we got to Army Air Corps Day the Yanks had three Superforts in formation. They were miles [emphasis] apart, they were absolute bloody rubbish and the commentator said ‘Ladies and gentlemen, don’t you think this is the best bit of formation flying you’ve seen today?’ and he had to apologise for it. Yeah.
MC: You’ve obviously [laughter]
JT: Three miserable bloody Superforts.
MC: You had twelve in tight formation?
JT: Twelve in tight formation.
MC: So you saw a fair bit of America then did you?
JT: Oh yeah we did.
MC: Whereabouts did you get to then?
JT: We started off at New York and Wash —, um, down to down south, oh I forget where it was and then we went to Hollywood, that area and then we went to Texas and we came back to Washington and somewhere else on the coast and then back to err, New York.
MC: So you flew the Lancs across did you?
JT: Oh yeah.
MC: You flew all twelve?
JT: Twelve yeah.
MC: Twelve Lancs across —
JT: That’s right. We stopped off in the middle of the Azores. We had to land in the Azores to refuel.
MC: The Azores?
JT: Yeah. And then we carried on from there to the States and one of our lads nearly wrote the Reception Committee off. He came up too tightly on the front and he had to pull up and the Reception Committee were lying on the deck [laughter] yeah.
MC: You got a good welcome from the Americans then?
JT: We got a wonderful, wonderful welcome, incredible. Really did. But err, I wouldn’t have liked to stay there. Having been born there I wouldn’t go back there, no, no.
MC: Yeah, well, whereabouts were you born?
JT: Helena, Montana.
MC: You did say, yes.
JT: That’s right, yeah. [pause]
BT: We’ve been over there.
JT: Ken and Al have taken me back there and Beryl —
BT: And me.
JT: All the four of us went. They took us over there.
MC: You [unclear] you back yeah.
JT: When did we go?
OTHER: We went on your 80th.
OTHER: Yeah, yep, just as, well I’ll tell you when it was because we stood under the Twin Towers and three months later they weren’t there.
JT: That’s right.
OTHER: They were —
BT: That’s right.
JT: We beat a path between the Twin Towers.
MC: What’s this?
JT: Flying Fortress, fifty thousand feet, bags of ammunition and a teeny weeny bomb.
[laughter]
OTHER: That’s what they said about the Yanks because they were flying so high [unclear]
JT: [unclear] little tiny bomb and we had a four thousand pounder on and a load of ammo. [laughter] In fact we took a crew one night with us and they couldn’t believe it before we got off and where we were going how much bomb, how many bombs we’d got on board. They could not believe it. They did just one trip with us, only one, that was it.
MC: This was on an operation was it, you took a —
JT: Oh yeah.
MC: You took an American —
JT: Took the Yanks one night, I think we took three of the crew [sound of door closing] on the rear gun, one by the skip and one alongside the nav and me. They couldn’t believe where we were going and what load we’d got on. Yeah.
MC: Amazing. ‘Cos they, they didn’t have such a big bomb load.
JT: Well that’s where this little song came from ‘Fly fly a fortress, fifty thousand feet, bags of ammunition and a teeny weeny bomb’ [laughter]
MC: You did two spells at EHB, that was your, wireless operator?
JT: Wireless operator, yeah.
MC: Yeah.
JT: We went from Blackpool to EHB and then we went back for a refresher later on when I’d done my gunnery course, yeah. EHB.
MC: So at that time, there was, what was the living accommodation?
JT: When I went the first time I was an AC2, when I went back the second time I was a sergeant. [laughter] Different approach altogether.
MC: Absolutely yeah. Well thank you very much John for your time.
JT: It’s been a pleasure
MC: Some interesting stories and err, —
JT: It’s nice to talk to you.
MC: and it’s been great talking to you [emphasis].
JT: Thank you very much.
MC: Thank you very much.
JT: It’s a pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John Tait
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mike Connock
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
2016-06-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:42:42 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ATaitJT160610
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
John Tait was prompted to join the Royal Air Force, as he was American by birth and therefore he had to report to the police station once a month because he was considered an ‘alien’. He was a wireless operator and gunner, flying in Ansons, Wellingtons, Stirlings and Lancasters. He was based at RAF Skellingthorpe, enjoying the social life in and around Lincoln, flying bombing operations over the Ruhr Valley as well as various marshalling yards in France. At the end of the war he joined 35 Squadron who flew Lancasters in formation both in the UK and the USA. He was on the first aircraft that was allowed to fly over the White House after the war.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Wales
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Bridgend
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tina James
35 Squadron
50 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
entertainment
Goodwill tour of the United States (1946)
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Padgate
RAF Scampton
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Stormy Down
searchlight
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1026/11398/AMcVicarK151222.1.mp3
8dbe392451014b9a5358deb7dce3dd85
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
McVicar, Kenneth George
K G McVicar
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ken McVicar (1810515 Royal Air Force). He served as a 'spare bod' air gunner with 619 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McVicar, KG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: Ok. So my name’s Pam Locker and I’m in the home of Mr Kenneth George McVicar and the date is the 22nd of December 2015.
KM: Yes.
PL: And I’d just like to start, Ken, by saying an enormous thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command Trust for talking to us.
KM: Right.
PL: So we’ll start our interview. So I guess the first question would be to just ask you how you became involved in the first place.
KM: Right. Well, up to — I was a young man at, living in my home in Llanelli, South Wales and I decided I’d join the RAF. And unfortunately for me, for things that went afterwards they took a long time to contact me and I joined the RAF in, I forget now when it was. Anyway, I joined up and was sent to ACRC, which is the Bomber Command course at St John’s Wood, London and I stayed there for about a month and eventually I was posted down to Neath in Wales, which was only twenty miles away from my home. Anyway, I stayed at that, I did the ACRC course of six months and then I got posted again. And I was posted to RAF Sealand where I did some flying on a Tiger Moth for a fortnight but the weather was not good and I didn’t solo or anything like that. I went on to Heaton Park, Manchester where I was supposed to be going abroad with the, to continue the flying experience you see. But they had too many gunners and too many pilots and not enough gunners. So I decided I’d be a gunner even though it wasn’t my intention to be a gunner, I was. And I left that school and went up to Dalcross near, well what is, the airport for up that way, you know, in Scotland. And six weeks later I was a fully qualified gunner. So then I —
PL: So what was your training like?
KM: The training. Well shooting from the back of an Anson, sat in the mid-upper turret and two guns. Firing at a drogue which was drawn by another plane, well. I shot away and eventually I shot the wire which connected the drogue.
PL: So there was another plane.
KM: Yeah.
PL: Flying with wires coming down.
KM: Yeah.
PL: Holding on to a door.
KM: A drogue. A drogue.
PL: A drogue.
KM: Yes.
PL: Right. And you - and that was your target?
KM: That was my target, yes. I shot at this and eventually I shot the wire which was pulling it, see, and the drogue flew off and not seen again. I finally passed out as a sergeant. I was posted to Barford St John in, near Banbury and commenced training with Wellingtons when I met my first crew. And that was the pilot — Flying Officer Adams. And the navigator, Flying Officer Eddie Preedy. Staff Sergeant Gunner was from Canada and he was a bomb aimer. Sergeant Teddy Knox was the wireless operator. And Sergeant Jock Milne — the mid-upper gunner. I first met my first wife and got married in 1945. I continued my training and first sent to Swinderby to train on Stirlings and Lancasters until 26th of March 1945. Then I went to Woodhall Spa, you see, and that’s when I joined 617 Squadron as rear gunner. But as they had plenty of spare gunners there and we were flung off the squadron and went to 619 Squadron. Well the war was coming to an end, I was posted to Anglesey where I was classified, re-classified as a sergeant and ground crew, and as I was a clerk in civvy life it wasn’t long before I became a clerk in the RAF. I returned - while in India I was sent to Yelahanka, an aerodrome near Bangalore and remained there until I was discharged on the 17th of the 3rd 1947. I returned home to Wales and lived there with my parents where I applied to join the Metropolitan Police — which I did. And on the 17th of the 2nd my warrant number was 130491, issued and I went to Hendon to train as a police officer. My first posting was at Stoke Newington and I stayed there for a while until I went to Edgware where I qualified as a driver until I was promoted to sergeant having passed the examination, stationed at Paddington Green. The old Paddington Green. Later promoted to station sergeant and posted to Golders Green. And from there I became an inspector and I stayed at Enfield most of the time until I retired after having completed about twenty eight years.
PL: Amazing.
KM: Yeah.
PL: Amazing.
KM: And then of course by that time I’d met Josie and we eventually started living together and got married in, I forget now —
PL: 1980 was it?
KM: 1980.
Other: It wasn’t. It was 1974.
PL: ’74.
KM: ’74. Yeah. So that’s about a brief description of my life, oh aye —
PL: That’s a wonderful start. Can I take you right back.
KM: Aye.
PL: To the beginning.
KM: Yeah.
PL: And was there, what attracted you to the, to the RAF? What did you, did you have history? Did you have family history?
KM: No. I don’t have any family history. It’s just that I wanted to be, join the RAF. I always wanted to join the RAF from way back.
PL: From being a boy.
KM: Yeah, right.
PL: Right. Fantastic. And when you, your first squadron that you were involved with.
KM: Yeah. 617.
PL: 617 Squadron. How did you all, how did you all meet? Were you —
KM: Well we were posted to the 617 and then we had a lot of — I wanted to stay on 617 but they wouldn’t have me because I was a good shot, see, in the air. And that’s when they decided to get rid of me and there we are.
PL: There you are. So what actual active service did you see? Would you like to tell me about some of your experiences actually as an air gunner?
KM: I was an air gunner but I didn’t go on any trips or anything. I just sat in the back.
PL: Right.
KM: And —
PL: When you say sat in the back.
KM: Yeah.
PL: What do you mean by sat in the back?
KM: Sat in the turret.
PL: Right.
KM: Turret swinging to the left. Swinging to the right and shoot up. Of course the big bomb came along and there wasn’t any room for us then.
PL: Right .
KM: And as there more pilots and gunners than they wanted, nobody wanted me. So I went as a spare bod to 619 Squadron and we did there for a while, until the war was finishing then.
PL: So you did all that training.
KM: Yeah.
PL: And then you never had the opportunity to —
KM: To go and fire. Never.
PL: What did you think about that?
KM: Well I was hurt, yeah. Did all that training to be a gunner and then never went up in the air. So there you are.
PL: So what sort of period of time was that in the war? So this coming towards the end of the war?
KM: The war.
PL: Right. Ok. Ok. Ok.
KM: Yeah.
PL: So, your first wife. How did you meet her? Was she in the WAAF?
KM: Well, when I went to Barford St John, I met her. She was one of the girls that, you know, go up to and dance and things like that.
PL: Amazing. So are there any other experiences? I mean I’m very curious to hear what it was like on, you know, being at the airfield. Were you based at the airfield?
KM: Yeah.
PL: When you were doing your — ?
KM: Training.
PL: Right. Yeah. So what was that like for you all?
KM: Well it was alright I suppose. Waiting, the training of course. Jump in a plane and go off flying somewhere. We all had — my logbook. Flying logbook. Here it is. There we are.
PL: Thank you. Wonderful. Gosh. So these are all the times that you —
KM: Flew.
PL: You flew. And so when you, when you actually flew, were you, did you have to be in the gunner’s turret?
KM: Yeah. Turret. Yeah. All the time.
PL: That was always your —
KM: Always my station.
PL: Right.
KM: Yeah. In the turret.
PL: Right.
KM: Oh aye.
PL: And what was it like? Did you, did you feel claustrophobic at all?
KM: No. Not at all. Not at all. I felt at home.
PL: Really.
KM: Really at home.
PL: So you had the whole world at your feet.
KM: Yeah. And a heated suit.
PL: Sorry.
KM: A heated suit.
PL: Oh right.
KM: It was cold, you know, in the back.
PL: Of course.
KM: I was covered me head to toe. It was heated by the plane’s — plane heating system. You know.
PL: So when you went on to the plane did you go in any sort of order? Was there any sort of way in which everybody went in?
KM: Yeah. Up through the bottom. And up, jump up a ladder you know, and then I would step over the elsan, which was situated at the back and climb in, over in to the backseat and there I was master of my own dominion. Yeah.
PL: And did you feel part of the team?
KM: Of course. I was part, part of the team and if it had been when we were attacked I would direct, I would say to the skipper corkscrew left or depending on where he was coming from the left I would go that way and this way and down and up and at the time I would try to shoot him down, you see.
PL: Goodness.
KM: Aye.
PL: So I guess you were the guy they didn’t want to hear from.
KM: Yeah [laughs]
PL: A good trip would be when you were quiet the whole time. Right. Ok. So there were no active ops.
KM: No.
PL: Right. Ok. Ok. So did that apply, then, to your whole crew? You stayed together as a crew did you?.
KM: No.
PL: What happened to the others?
KM: The others stayed on 617.
PL: Right.
KM: And went flying with them as far as I know.
PL: Right. Right.
KM: I lost contact with them.
PL: Right. Right. Right.
KM: And I went on to a spare bod to the other place you see.
PL: Very good.
KM: Aye.
PL: So, so what year did you join? Did you actually join up? Do you remember?
KM: 1944, I’ve got it here. [pause] when I went to Sealand it was [pause] I think it was ’44 I think.
PL: In the RAF.
KM: ‘44. Aye.
PL: ’44. Ok so it must have been very frustrating for you.
KM: It was. Very frustrating. Having trained all that time, you know and then not go to.
PL: So how old were you in 1944?
KM: Oh I was eighteen. Eighteen.
PL: Goodness. So did lots of your friends join up at the same sort of time?
KM: Yes. And they were all coming from Wales and Scotland and all over England, you know to join. Same time.
PL: Is there anything else that you’d like to tell me about your, your experiences in Bomber Command before we move on to anything else.
KM: No. I don’t think so. Nothing happened to me you see. I was lucky as some say. As I say — unlucky.
PL: Well it’s just as important part of the story.
KM: Yeah.
PL: As everybody else’s part.
KM: Aye.
PL: It wouldn’t be a complete story.
KM: Aye.
PL: Without your contribution.
KM: Aye.
PL: So I guess one of the other things I’d like to ask you is how you felt about Bomber Command and how they were treated historically.
KM: Well Bomber Command were always second best to the first of the few. The fighters. You know, when they got their reward it was well and truly deserved of course and, but we should have had a reward then for our contribution.
PL: So how do you feel about the recognition that has come now?
KM: Now it’s alright. Now it’s alright of course. They’ve put that right. Everybody agrees now the role that the bomber boys had has come true.
PL: Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed Ken for talking to me today.
KM: Oh it was nothing.
[recording paused]
PL: Ok. So we’ve resumed recording because I just wanted to ask you Ken about what happened when the big bomb came. You talked about the big bomb. What was that and what were the implications for you?
KM: Well it was the Tallboy bomb. It was the biggest bomb we ever had and that’s why it was necessary to take out the one turret. To minimise the weight you see and allow the bomb to be carried. So it was only from that day that they needed one gunner instead of two see.
PL: And so who made that decision? And did that vary between crews or was it just a blanket decision from on high?
KM: Blanket decision.
PL: Ok. Thank you.
KM: Thank you.
PL: We’ll pause.
[recording paused]
PL: So we’re back on now. We were just having a conversation, Ken, about the fact that everybody volunteered for the RAF.
KM: Yes. Yes.
PL: I was just interested to know how you felt as such a young man joining up.
KM: Well it was great. You know. Get in the RAF. Do a job that was worth doing and it was wonderful.
PL: Did you feel excited by it?
KM: Yes. I was excited.
PL: But did you feel afraid as well?
KM: No. I didn’t feel afraid.
PL: Really.
KM: No.
PL: Very interesting. And did you, I mean as a young man I often think it must have been very interesting being a teenager during that time. Did you sort of feel like you were working towards your time?
KM: Yeah. Working towards my time with the RAF and joining a crew you know. To go and bomb.
PL: That’s very interesting.
KM: Tough for the people underneath who were receiving it of course but that wasn’t my worry.
PL: So do you think people did think about that?
KM: Yes. They did think about it but they couldn’t do anything about it anyway. No.
[recording paused]
PL: Put this back on. So we’re recording again. So you were this young man full of vim and vigour.
KM: Aye.
PL: But you weren’t afraid.
KM: No.
PL: But you knew about the statistics.
KM: Yes. I had a cousin that were training and lost him on training you see. Yeah.
PL: But you still did it. You still went ahead and did it.
KM: Oh yes. You couldn’t go back you see. Well you didn’t think about that. Going back.
PL: Very good. Very good. Thank you.
[recording paused]
PL: So we’ve starting recording again. So we were just talking, Ken, about you know this young man who was there in your own world. Master of all you surveyed.
KM: Yeah.
PL: Waiting and checking the sky.
KM: Yeah.
PL: For, for other planes.
KM: Aye.
PL: And believing that you would be victorious.
KM: Aye.
PL: If there was a problem and the plane was hit in any way, what happened then?
KM: Well I would turn my turret to port, pull the doors open on the back and flip myself out, see. And go down then. I had a clear run.
PL: With your, with your parachute.
KM: Parachute. Aye. And all I had to do was put it to port and flip myself out you know.
PL: So did you do all of that during your training I guess? You had practice runs did you?
KM: Yeah. Yeah. We had practice runs but nobody jumps out of a perfectly good aircraft when its flying alright do they?
PL: So how? So you just literally, you did some, you had the experience of a parachute drop though did you? In your training.
KM: Yeah.
PL: But not from the turret.
KM: From — we done from a static point in the, jumped about, I don’t know, and then it was suspended and then you pull a certain thing and down you came you see.
PL: Goodness gracious. So you didn’t actually go up in an aeroplane.
KM: No. Had to do it.
PL: Goodness me. So, so if there had been an emergency that would have been the first time.
KM: The first time and the last time you would wave bye bye to them, to the crew.
PL: What, that was the deal.
KM: That was the deal.
PL: Is that what everybody used to say? You would have to wave bye bye to the crew.
KM: Aye.
PL: Goodness me. Wonderful. You see all of these things are just taken for granted by you.
KM: Yeah.
PL: But for the people who are listening to this recording they won’t know those sorts of details.
KM: No.
PL: It seems extraordinary in the twenty first century that you would be sent to war.
KM: Yeah.
PL: And never actually jumped out of an aircraft.
KM: No [laughs] It’s quite safe though to jump out, you see.
PL: What do you think about your generation?
KM: I don’t think, well my generation, if it happened again I would go, of course, even though I’m no good now. But it was the thing to do, see. Everybody did it. Everybody thought the same and it was just one of those things.
PL: Wonderful. Thank you very much Ken.
KM: Alright.
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 Kenneth George McVicar
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pam Locker
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMcVicarKG151222
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:31:03 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth George McVicar was born in Llanelli, South Wales and joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 18, where he qualified as a Gunner. He Flew in Ansons as mid upper gunner turret, but also on Stirlings and Lancasters. He tells of how he went to serve in 617 Squadron but since they had a surplus of gunners, he was moved to 619 Squadron. He recollects the arrival of the Tallboy bomb and how the adaptation caused a gun turret to be removed. With the war coming to an end, Ken became a clerk in the Royal Air Force before being posted to India. On his return home to Wales, he joined the Metropolitan Police, rising to the rank of sergeant and he retired after about 28 years of service.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
India
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
617 Squadron
619 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Lancaster
Stirling
Tallboy
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1561/34804/SRAFIngham19410620v070001-Audio.2.mp3
1cdda487d490705f1871c23fb467186a
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
RAF Ingham Heritage Group
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-14
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
RAF Ingham
Description
An account of the resource
25 items in six collections. The collection concerns RAF Ingham and contains interviews photographs and documents concerning:
Andrzej Jeziorski - Pilot 304 Squadron
Arthur Hydes - Boy in Ingham
Brian Llewellyn -ATC
Jan Black - Rear Gunner 300 Squadron
Lech Gierak - Armourer 303 Squadron
Marion Clarke - MT Driver RAF Ingham
Mieczyslaw Maryszczak - Armourer
Stanislaw Jozefiak - Air Ops 304 Squadron - Pilot on Spitfires
Wanda Szuwalska - Admin 300 Squadron Faldingworth
Zosia Kowalska - Cook RAF Ingham
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by the RAF Ingham Heritage Group and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Other]: Make a start.
Int: Right, I’ll just, I will leave it on because this is the rough cut. Obviously what we’ll do is, just give you a copy, on a CD, of the whole recording. And then obviously when we come to do a production side of it, we’ll cut out the bits that are relevant towards the Heritage Centre but we’ll give you a copy for your family, or a couple of copies if you’d like that.
[Other]: That’ll be lovely dad!
Int: We’ll just leave the camera rolling. If at any time you want to have a break, or you need to use the toilet, or you would like a drink, if we just say and we can stop, because it won’t matter on the film: we’ll just keep it rolling. Because sometimes, we found in the past, that when we’ve interviewed some of the veterans, they’ll say could I just stop now for a cup of water, glass of water or something, so we switch it off, and that’s when some of the very interesting little pieces of information come out, when they’re just chatting, so sometimes it’s worth leaving it on. I did a very, very quick bit of research into you before I came here, so I know a little [emphasis] bit about you, and it is only a very small amount, because I didn’t realise that you were an armourer, um, I probably should have done, and obviously although you’re known as Michael, or Michael now, obviously you had your Polish first name which, would you like to pronounce it for me?
MM: [Phonetically] Michislov. [Laughter]
Int: Thank you. My pronunciation would be very embarrassing to you.
[Other]: I can’t pronounce it, can’t spell it, let alone!
Int: M I E C H Z Y S L A W. Yes.
[Other]: Miecyzslaw, something like that.
Int: How do you pronounce your surname, your family name?
MM: [Phonetically] Marishtack.
Int: Marishtick.
[Other]: [Phonetically] Marishtak. Marishtak, yes.
MM: There, you see I was in Gaza at that time, that was, Rommel was, British was worried about that, taking over Suez Canal and I wasn’t in the Air Force yet, but was about hundred fifty Polish boys, we supposed to learn how to repair the tanks, you know, but that Australian say look, its take lot of time to learn, I’m going to teach you how to drive and we going to repair and we going on the desert and test them they okay, on the front because there was hurry, you know, be ready before Rommel attacks the Suez, so I got for that, medals.
Int: And how old were you at that time then, in the desert?
MM: I was very young, well [pause] about seventeen I think, seventeen.
Int: And were you part of the Polish Air Force or the Polish Army at that time?
MM: The Army.
Int: Part of the Polish Army.
MM: At Gaza, yes. Because that was Gaza, was on the Egyptian Palestinian border, that time was, [cough] well, under British rule in Palestine, you know that. I was in Palestine as well.
Int: And you’ve obviously mentioned that you were trained in the Polish Air Force to be an armourer. When you were in the Polish Army, in Palestine, did you also deal with the shells and the bullet side of things as an armourer, or not?
MM: No. You see after that I was removed, victory was Alamein, and they moved to Egypt, and Egypt er, that was quite lot of boys and was about, volunteers about six hundred fifty, because Polish was, more to, Polish aid for us in England. So there, you know, the examination, you know, doctor, you know, everything was, so six hundred, six hundred forty five, is only sixty five been accepted, and from that time I joined the, to the Polish Air Force.
Int: Why did you decide that you wanted to apply to join the Polish Air Force? What was the reasons behind that do you think?
MM: Well because Polish, they came round to Egypt and they want some replacement in England for the younger people, you know.
Int: I was just wondering why you chose, did they, was there any, was there an incentive?
MM: I didn’t choose that.
Int: You didn’t choose, oh, okay.
MM: They just said volunteers you see! [Laugh] So this stay in Egypt and from Egypt we travelled by Royal Britannia ship round Africa because we going to go through that where U-boat was, German U-boat, and round the Capetown. We stopped in Capetown for about three days and because not only Polish but was Yugoslavian, all different nationalities, Greeks, and they all different, and we arrived to Freetown, and Freetown to Liverpool. And from Liverpool came to Halton.
Int: What, what time of year did you arrive in Liverpool? Was it the summer, or the winter, or?
MM: That wasn’t winter, no, no, no, that was er, [pause] which date was that, approximately.
Int: I’m just thinking that having been in Palestine, and having been in in Egypt, and then even South Africa, coming to Britain, and Liverpool, must have been probably very cold, very wet.
MM: No, no, no, that was June or July, something like that, that time, we arrive to England. That was in, practically summer, was that time.
Int: What was your, can you remember your first impressions when you landed in Liverpool, in England?
MM: Balloons [laugh]. Yeah, there were balloons everywhere.
Int: Oh, the barrage balloons. Yes, yeah. And then you went, you said you went to Halton.
MM: Halton, yes.
Int: For your training. Can you tell me -
MM: We travelled during the night, I don’t know why, we actually arrived early and having travelled through the night, and I seem to remember they stop us in Crewe; they give us some cup of tea and sandwiches. [Laugh]
Int: That was nice, and was it in the back of a lorry then, that you travelled?
MM: No, no, it was train.
Int: Oh, on a train, right.
MM: Yes. I think it was Crewe which er, and we arrive very late in Halton.
Int: And what are your memories of Halton, as a training?
MM: Oh, they was very good, you know, because most of the people was coming from the 303 Squadron, from Northolt, for, to Halton, for training. Some of them depends what, some of them just gunnery, you know, three months training and you’re off you know. But you know, was very, very, training was very, very good, you know, was excellent, you know, we got everything. Even remember the Russian er, [indecipherable] Bureau like came round to visit Halton and what happened they, the Brit, they shut us completely! [Laugh]
Int: They just, they wouldn’t talk to you, they just ignored you completely.
MM: Yes. They said no, no, put in school and then they shut us, the workshop up is completely: all Poles.
Int: Shut away. And how long after you arrived, did you hand over your Army uniform and then you got the blue, the blue uniform for the Air Force?
MM: Oh yes. When we arrived to Halton I got given blue uniform.
Int: Blue uniform. Then you were in the Air Force, the Polish Air Force.
MM: Yeah. That’s right.
Int: And can you remember the insignia and the badges you wore at all? Were they RAF ones or were they Polish Air Force?
MM: Polish Air Force.
Int: Polish Air Force. How long, roughly how long did you stay at Halton for, to do your training?
MM: Oh, training for, because the, I was for training this time four years, for training.
Int: Four years at Halton!
MM: Because you know, we supposed to go to Poland, after the war and you know, but they, Polish Government, say you must let every arms they got in Britain, you know, like rockets and everything, you know, and at the time was top secret, you know.
Int: So, when your training had finished, at Halton, which RAF station did you go to after Halton?
MM: Hah, Lincolnshire.
Int: Lincolnshire. Can you remember the name of the station?
MM: Cammeringham. Cammeringham.
Int: At Cammeringham, you were actually at Cammeringham were you? Right. So that would have been, it changed its name from RAF Ingham to Cammeringham in November 1944, so if you knew it as Cammeringham, you must have gone there from November ‘44 onwards at some point. So, if you haven’t already got them we can get hold of your service records – you’ve got them have you? No. We can get your service records from Northolt. There’s a lady called Margaret Goddard.
MM: Oh yeah, I know her, yeah.
Int: And she can find your records, which will show the dates you went to each station, which is good for you, and for your family.
MM: I remember there used to be NAAFI canteen on that river in Lincolnshire.
Int: In Lincolnshire. NAAFI, NAAFI was.
Int: Was a NAAFI canteen in the middle of Lincoln was there?
MM: Yes, I can remember the river was you know.
Int: In the middle of Lincoln, there is a -
MM: Yeah. Not far from the Cathedral, you know.
Int: Yes, yes I know the one you mean. There’s a big, large, well they call it a pond, but it’s called Brayford, Brayford Pond, with all the barges.
MM: That’s right, that was NAAFI.
Int: Oh right, okay. What, can you remember much about Cammeringham, RAF Cammeringham? Just to help your memory, the airfield was on the top of the hill and the Station Headquarters was down in the village of Ingham. Does that ring a bell at all?
MM: Well you see at that time they knew that we never go back to Poland and a lot of people try to register, go to Argentina, to United States, you know, Canada.
Int: Oh, as part of the Polish Resettlement Act, yes, but you decided to stay at Cammeringham for a while.
MM: Actually, I was going to [chuckle] Argentina!
Int: Right, okay.
MM: But I met one chap, he was from Argentina, he was in Polish Army, and he said never go to Argentina!
Int: And why was that then?
MM: Because is, you got problems over there and he say I wouldn’t advise you to go to Argentina. So I’ve still got the papers, you know!
Int: That you could have decided to go there, but instead you stayed in England.
MM: Yes.
Int: And when you were at Cammeringham did you do any of your armourer jobs, was that with loading the machine guns or were you an armourer that dealt with the bombs?
MM: I had a, that was, from Cammeringham and was posted to 48MU, in Wrexham.
Int: Okay. Right.
MM: That was, I used to, quite lot of, because guns and machine guns, you know, in Wrexham. You know, Holyhead, if you go that way.
Int: So in Wrexham it was a big store for machine guns?
MM: RAF station!
Int: Oh, it was an RAF station was it, at Wrexham, right, okay. Was your job to maintain them or was it more for storage?
MM: Sort out, you know, quite a lot of them used to go to the, check them in the temperature and everything, you know.
Int: So did that include dismantling, taking machine guns to bits, and refurbish them, change the barrels and things?
MM: From the, yeah.
Int: Right. So is that a job that you could do with your eyes closed, when, at the time, you became very skilled at that.
MM: Well, yeah.
Int: Yeah. And did you get a chance to fire any of the guns on the practice ranges at all, or not? Or were you just purely putting the guns together?
MM: Not in the air.
Int: Was that a bit, was that a good job? Was it a boring job?
MM: Oh, you know. Well you know, somebody has to do it!
Int: Somebody has to do it. Before you went to Wrexham, if we could just go back one step to when you were at Cammeringham, what did you actually do at Cammeringham?
MM: Actually I was doing, there were no jobs, everybody was thinking what I’m going to do, you know.
Int: Right, so you were still in the Polish Air Force, but there wasn’t a job for you at the time? So you spent all [emphasis] of that time training and then you got to Cammeringham and there was no job for you.
MM: Well that was, you know, that was probably closed that station, you were just only waiting for the different people going different countries, you know.
Int: But there was a lot of Polish airmen at Cammeringham at the time, yes?
MM: Yes. Some of them they went back to Poland, you know, but.
Int: It’s not a good story, no. I’ve heard several accounts from people where they went, [beep] especially if they’d been in the Polish Air Force, and then they were arrested by the Soviets, and the Russians, and some were executed, which is er, just for being in the Polish Air Force. A lot of your colleagues were at Faldingworth, which was just about five miles down the road, a lot of them, and the Polish 300 Squadron were there. So you went to Wrexham and you did the 48MU job at Wrexham, how long did you stay at Wrexham, can you remember?
MM: [Pause] No, I said, I was, because my station was er, in Framlingham.
Int: Framlingham. Yes. I’ve heard of it, I’ve heard of Framlingham, right.
MM: There was er, and I was only been attachment to the 48MU’s just only, you know, so I wrote the letter to them: can you call me back to, on my station. So you know, so they, yeah, I went back and say look, now you have to go to London and you have to look for a job.
Int: And that was, so that was the end of your Polish Air Force career.
MM: Yeah. And I stay in South Kensington, and for looking for the job because only job they was offering us is coal mine, you know. [Laugh]
Int: Or engineering? Did they offer you engineering?
MM: Engineering? No, no chance. No chance.
Int: No? So what kind of job did you get in the end then? What was your first job, being a civilian after the war?
MM: They told me you to go to the coal mine, I said no, I never go to coal mine. [Laugh] But all, so they decided to last, and I was from National Health making glasses. Spectacles glasses.
Int: Okay, right, okay, that was here in London was it?
MM: Yes, in London yes, in Camden Passage, in Islington. So I said all right, I’ll go that, but I wouldn’t go to the coal mine. [Laugh]
Int: And when did you meet your wife?
MM: [Cough] Oh, that was [muttering] 19, about 1960 [pause], 1960.
Int: And was she Polish or was she English?
MM: She’s Polish.
Int: She was Polish. And had she been a WAAF during the, a Polish WAAF during the years?
MM: No, no, no. She wasn’t, no.
Int: She’d just come across from Poland, okay. I notice looking at your medals you have the, is it the Tute Militaire? The very first one that you have here. Can you tell me a little bit about how you were awarded that, that medal?
MM: This?
Int: No, the very first one, this one here.
MM: Oh, that, no, no.
Int: This one there.
MM: That was Freedom for Polish, Freedom.
Int: Oh, that’s the Polish Freedom one is it? Right, okay. So that was awarded in about -
MM: At the Embassy.
Int: At 1990, or ’91 when Poland got its freedom.
MM: I have somewhere, upstairs, the letters, that was yes, was in the Ambassy, in London.
Int: Going back to your time in the Polish Air Force again, do you have any funny stories, any funny things, because with your fellow kind of airmen, the Polish airmen, you must have done some funny things then.
MM: Well it was funny stories, you know because when it was in Halton you were only allowed to go out for [cough] eleven, you know, well not twelve o’clock, yeah, before twelve you must be.
Int: You must be back before midnight, yes.
MM: But some of them was climbing through the windows! [Laughter]
Int: And did they get caught, or not?
MM: Yeah, what happened, and the sergeant was checking every bed, and somebody was going to each bed and was like saying yes, he’s in, he’s in, but he’s out!
Int: And then he’s sneaking back to his own bed, good. When you were there, you obviously had the big dormitories, the barrack rooms where you all slept in, what was the food like? Was the food good at Halton? Because it was English food I presume, not Polish food.
MM: That was the, actually, no, it was good food there, yeah, sausages, you know.
Int: Plenty of food, plenty of food?
MM: Yeah. And usually that was prisoner of war working in the cookhouse.
Int: What, German prisoners of war or Italian?
MM: Italians.
Int: Italians. That could be a good thing if you like Italian food!
MM: And they was free to go to the cinema, everywhere!
Int: Really!
MM: Yeah!
Int: But you couldn’t go out after twelve o’clock at night! Huh. That’s very strange, isn’t it. Yeah.
MM: And they used to sell the jewellery because, well, they had some watches and the you know, they was free, they didn’t want to go back to, escape to Germany.
Int: They were happy to stay in England then.
MM: Stay. Otherwise they probably go to Russian Front, you know. Yes, they got.
Int: If we can go all the way back to the beginning of the story, are you okay, do you want a break, are you okay?
MM: It’s all right, yes.
Int: Going back to talking about Palestine and the time you were In the desert with Rommel, and fighting Rommel, and you were saying you were allowed you to drive, what was your job, what kind of job did you do?
MM: Well I was testing the tanks.
Int: You were testing the tanks?
MM: On the desert, because that Bill, they repair, because they, mechanics you know, to learn how to repair the tanks was take time, he said look, we going to repair, I teach you how to drive, on the desert, and that’s you know.
Int: So as well as repairing the tanks then, as a mechanic, you also did, you had to go and test drive them as well?
MM: No, I didn’t repair, I only just test.
Int: Oh, you were only doing the test driving then. And was that fun? Especially as you were young. Driving tanks round the desert?
MM: Oh yes! And that chap, after the, Alamein, he was going, his name was Bill, and he’s Australian, and he would just say, I got nothing else to give you, he just cut his button from his coat and give it to me. So I kept that all the time.
Int: Oh! Did Bill make it through the war?
MM: I don’t know what happened, I don’t know, might have been killed, I don’t know. But what happened, in a Polish club in London, I met there, she was Wing Commander from the Australian Embassy, and I told her I got the button which is that Bill give me, and oh, was probably my grandad, so I don’t know. What regiment he was? But I didn’t ask him!
Int: But he was in Palestine at that time then was he? Yes?
MM: And I give it to her and she says she’s going to find out, you know, the name of that is.
Int: That sounds like a needle in a haystack, but you never know, you never know. So do you attend a lot of the Polish events that happen in London, at the Social Club at Hammersmith?
MM: Yeah, we go so often. Usually, we usually have the dinners once a month, you know.
Int: Well I mean, obviously, I met you, you might remember, in September, at the Polish Memorial, Northolt. It’s great to chat with you, what I was going to do now was just, I was gonna have a rest, just in case you wanted a cup of tea or something, we can talk a little more. Cause I know sometimes it’s, you’re thinking back and your mouth can get very dry, can’t it, especially when we’re just talking and it’s a thing. So I’ll leave the camera on, but if you’re happy, I don’t know whether you’d like a drink of water or a cup of tea or coffee?
MM: No, that’s all right, no.
[Other]: Dad, but where were you when the war finished? That’s the bit I don’t get.
Int: Right. Were you at Framlington?
[Other]: Where were you actually, when the actual physically the war finished?
Int: When it was VE Day kind of thing?
[Other]: Where was he?
MM: [Pause] 1945.
Int: Where were you actually, where were you stationed, at that time, when it was VE Day? Can you remember which station you were on?
MM: 1945, which station, I probably was still in Halton.
Int: Did they not have big celebrations?
MM: No. Because they didn’t invite for the -
Int: For the Polish.
MM: For Britain.
Int: To go to London, did you have them, if you were at Halton, or Wrexham, or even Cammeringham, wherever you were at, when it was VE Day, did they have a party on the station?
MM: Wrexham, we only had one celebration then was when Prince Charlie was born, 1948, and we had a barrel of beer, we had drunk that, you know, on his birthday.
Int: So you were still in the Polish Air Force then, in 1948, so that must have been almost the last year, because most of the Polish Air Force, from what I’m led to understand, obviously straight after the war, after VE Day, along with the problems where they wouldn’t let the Polish parade through London because of the Yalta Agreement.
MM: That’s right.
Int: With Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, and I know that’s why they had the Resettlement Act and they had to absorb the Polish Air Force into the Royal Air Force properly, just so Stalin couldn’t get -
MM: We had the contract two years, Polish Resettlement Course.
Int: And I think it was 1948 was the last, when the last Polish squadron was disbanded, so that probably ties all of that in. It would be interesting, you know, if your daughter Joanne’s able to, on your behalf, to get the, your service records from Margaret, or a copy of them.
[Other]: Yeah, I can do that.
Int: Cause then it’ll show -
MM: I know her. Yes, I’ll go and see her in.
Int: She’ll be able to photocopy them and then give you a copy and at least you’ll be able to read all the dates on, and if it’s, I think if it’s very similar to the RAF’s one, it’s just a piece of almost brown card, two sides, which shows all of your, all the stations you were at and any courses you did, and even things like when you were on the sick or on leave, it’s all on one card that they did at the time. It’s all handwritten.
[Other]: Cause I’m just a bit confused here dad, so you went from Halton to Lincolnshire and then Wrexham, yeah.
Int: Yes.
[Other]: And then you went to London.
MM: To London.
[Other]: What year?
MM: I came to London to look for job.
[Other]: What year? Cause you were saying you were under the RAF until 1948.
MM: That was Polish Resettlement Course.
[Other]: So I’m just, and I just. It’s all right, I’m getting there. A bit confused.
Int: So, if we get things in the right order: you went to Halton, and then from Halton you went to Cammeringham did you, or did you go to Wrexham first, after Halton?
[Other]: Cammeringham.
MM: No, Cammeringham.
Int: Cammeringham.
MM: And from Cammeringham I went to Wrexham.
Int: To Wrexham, and then to Fram –
MM: Framlingham.
Int: Framlingham or Framlington? I’ll have to check exactly where that is. And then from Framlington that was it: were out of the Polish Air Force then?
MM: Sent us to London for.
Int: To find a job.
MM: That’s right.
[Other]: When they sent you to London, did you stay in an RAF base, or no? Were you private dwellings?
Int: Was it a private house, or was it still in barracks in London?
MM: No, no, in London that was hostel, South Kensington, was houses was probably very expensive, London houses. That was big hostel over that square, that was square, I would call it square.
Int: Straight after the war.
[Other]: So dad, where were you when you, when the announcement of the Second World War was over? When Churchill said, we are not at war any more, where were you? [Polish]
MM: I said I was still in Halton.
Int: You were still in Halton.
MM: In 1945.
Int: So 1945 you were in Halton. Then you moved to Cammeringham in ’46 because I mean Cammeringham was one of the Polish Resettlement Units. And Dunholme Lodge.
MM: That’s right, and they posted us to Wrexham.
Int: It was still under the kind of the Air Ministry’s control.
[Other]: Umbrella.
Int: While they did some training and they did, there was quite a few training: carpentry, electrical. They did all the courses there so they just used it as an RAF station but it was more of a training camp for training purposes.
MM: That’s right.
Int: And then obviously the MUs, which are the Maintenance Units but they normally store, big store camps, so obviously Wrexham was a big store camp where all the machine guns were coming back and they were being -
MM: From there the Wellingtons and all that, big er -
[Other]: So really, until the war finished you were based?
MM: At Halton.
[Other]: Until 1945 and then after that the Resettlement Act came in and by 1948 you were discharged to civilian life. Right, I’ve got that now. Okay. But when the Second World War finished, what happened, because that was a big news! So was there no celebration? Do you remember what you were doing when you found out the war was ended. I mean.
MM: I was still at Halton.
Int: You were still at Halton.
[Other]: But what were you doing?
MM: There still was training.
[Other]: [Polish]
Int: [Beep] Did they have a party perhaps, a big party at Halton, that day?
MM: At Halton, even, because what’s his name, Bevan, and he asked, give us a letter and give us, every members of the Polish er, boys, been given, to go to Poland or, or were you going to join the Polish Resettlement Course.
Int: Yes. Because of the shortage of jobs, he was the Trade Union, Bevan was the Trade Union man, wasn’t he, and they set the Trade Unions up, and don’t get me wrong but his point of view was, he didn’t want the Poles in Britain.
MM: Britain, no. That’s right.
Int: And that’s why, I think that’s why they only offered the Polish military –
MM: Coal mine.
Int: Ex military the coal mine, and some of them got into the steel works, the foundries, almost the jobs that nobody else wanted to do, so it was very restrictive, and obviously because the Trade Unions came in straight after the war, that’s when they were created, and that was very much in the National Health Service and everything else, but that’s when they said jobs for the Britons, you know, it was almost like, Churchill was Conservative, although he led the Coalition through the war years then he was, straight after the war he was kicked out and the Labour government came in and that’s how the Trade Unions came about, and that’s why, the Agreement was obviously made at quite a high ministerial level to have the Polish Resettlement Act.
MM: That’s right.
Int: Of 1947 I think it was, to protect the Polish servicemen and women that wanted to stay in the UK, or it allowed them to go to the Empire countries, Canada, even America although that’s not an Empire country, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and - .
MM: All different countries.
Int: Yes, yes.
[Other]: But Dad, you misunderstand. I’m going to say it in Polish. [Polish]
MM: In Halton.
[Other]: [Polish]
MM: I can’t remember that.
Int: No.
[Other]: I was asking him what he was, the moment he found out when the Second World War finished. I remember when Diana died. I can tell you exactly what I was doing.
Int: Yes.
MM: We didn’t celebrate because was Yalta.
Int: Yes, because of Yalta a few weeks before this, and that meant you’d lost Poland.
MM: We didn’t celebrate.
[Other]: I see, okay, that’s a different side.
Int: That’s probably why, yes because I mean Yalta was really more Roosevelt and Stalin; Churchill was just a puppet.
MM: Puppet, yes.
[Other]: That explains that, yeah.
Int: He was part of the three but he had to go along with what the two big powerbrokers wanted and they carved up Europe at Yalta and Poland unfortunately was the one that suffered because it got kind of.
MM: Roosevelt was very sick man, he was very sick, he was actually dying and Truman took it over, you know, after Roosevelt.
[Other]: But in those four years that you were based at Halton, did you witness bombings in England, you know, saw the active stuff, you know, the active service. Obviously you get the planes ready for them to go off to battle, obviously I’m guessing here.
Int: Halton being a training -
MM: Training.
Int: Was all the four years that you did at Halton, was that all training or were you an instructor then?
MM: No, all training.
Int: Just all training. And was that just [emphasis] for training to maintain the machine guns or did you do bombs, fusing up the bombs and everything?
MM: Bombs, fusing, [indecipherable] everything.
Int: So as an armourer you did all the jobs.
MM: And then rockets.
Int: And the rockets.
MM: They been before well, they was first to use the aeroplane.
Int: To fire the rockets, right at the end of the war, so you had to be trained up to do all of that.
MM: That’s right.
Int: Whilst you were at Halton were there any air raids, at night, where the sirens went off and the bombs dropped at Halton, or not?
MM: What happened, for about each, because Air Ministry was worried when start bombing London, and they move us to Cosford, RAF station Cosford.
Int: Right, okay, yes.
MM: And I assume the Air Ministry wants to move to Halton, that’s, so they move and stay at Cosford, Wolverhampton, you know that.
Int: Yes. Over in the West Midlands, yes.
MM: We stayed there, I can’t remember how many, three months or something.
Int: Three months. And did you go back to Halton afterwards?
MM: Oh yes.
Int: So was just for three months they moved you out of Halton, over to Cosford near Wolverhampton. And did your training continue there, or did you do something special?
MM: Yes, it was training.
Int: Just normal training.
MM: Yes.
Int: At Cosford. And was that quieter at Cosford? Was there not as many air raids?
MM: No, well, was different was because the Cosford was, because Halton was, had the equipment for training but Cosford, you know.
Int: Didn’t have it. So what did you do while you were there then, at Cosford?
MM: Still, you know.
Int: Yes. And was there an airfield, as in where planes aircraft could land at Cosford or was it just a factory kind of?
MM: No, I think that was only for factory.
Int: Just like a training, in a factory, yes.
[Other]: Dad, sorry, why were you trained for so long, for four years, you know, normally now it’s just for three months off you go to, I just, why were they training you for so long?
MM: Don’t forget, we stake everything [emphasis].
[Other]: Yeah, but dad, it’s war, people, they need men.
MM: But you don’t. It’s not only that, you’re training each, even, even if you write there how to kill the person, you know, all different things we didn’t know.
[Other]: But that’s -
MM: Some, if you want to kill the person, if he’s going to start writing and it’s blow up his face and it kill them.
Int: I think what Joanne was perhaps meaning was, normally training would be maybe one year, maybe a little bit, but because it was war you would imagine that they wanted to get you trained very quickly and then straight out to the airfields. The question was -
MM: But not bomb everything targets, it’s not that simple like that.
[Other]: I know dad.
MM: It takes, you know.
[Other]: But four years in a war’s a long time, in a situation of war.
MM: Yeah, don’t forget four years, it’s not only that, guns. [Pause]
[Other]: I’ve lost you.
Int: So during your time at Halton, as well as going to Cosford, did you have small amounts of time where you went off to other RAF airfields to actually practice what you’d been trained, or not?
MM: No.
Int: No, you just stayed at Halton.
MM: They was trying to get more information, you know, and instructors who came from London and give us all the guns, well guns and ammunition and material which is TNT, you know, and so how to.
Int: It sounds a little bit like your training was more experimental training.
MM: Yes, yes.
Int: Not the standard training so any new bombs or new rockets – am I going down the right road here?
MM: Yes. Everything was secret and that’s why the training was so secret.
Int: Right, we’re starting to drill down into a little bit now.
[Other]: So, did you have to sign the secret service act?
Int: The Official Secrets Act.
MM: Well, we have to, you know. The service was secret.
Int: I meant as opposed to maybe an ordinary [emphasis] Polish Air Force armourer, that did his basic training and went straight out onto a squadron.
MM: Oh yes. That’s three month course.
Int: Yes, that’s the three months course. So in fact the time at Halton, although you said it was training, was it more, it sounds like it wasn’t basic training, it was specialist training as each new munitions came out, right.
MM: Yeah.
Int: So you were seeing how things worked and to improve it, so yes, you weren’t so much a student as a team that were there to um, I don’t know how to describe it to you, I’m trying not to put words into your mouth! So were you still in like a classroom situation at Halton?
MM: Yes.
Int: Oh right. But they would bring something new in and then talk about it. And what job did they give you to do? Was it to see how to make it better, or was it just purely to take it apart and put it together? I don’t want to put words into your mouth, I’m trying to find out exactly what you did at Halton.
MM: We usually, they like electrician was coming from London he was going to teach us electrician and some extras you know, which is, came round once a week and teach us electrics; it’s not only guns, everything you must know.
[Other]: What I think we’re establishing dad, is that you were, you’re right, you were training but you were given devices, or guns, or whatever, and they wanted you to try it out, it’s more that -
Int: Test and evaluation or something.
[Other]: Yes. You had your basic training of three months, yes. Everyone does three months.
MM: No, three years.
[Other]: Yeah, but. No.
MM: Basic training that’s only came only there for, for -
Int: I think what Joanne’s trying to ask the question is, you had your basic armourer’s training, at Halton – how to be an armourer basically. Your basic bombs and bullets, but then after that at Halton, you obviously specialised, at Halton, with maybe experimental bombs or experimental rockets, and new things; anything that was new. Cause if you had an electrician that came from London specially to Halton, to talk with you and to teach you, it sounds like what you were doing was more experimental work, maybe I don’t know. Hmm. Is it possible?
[Other]: How many was there in the class at one time, dad? Ten, twenty, fifty? Do you remember? And was there only one class or was there lots of classes?
MM: [Pause] |Well we had, it’s not only that, we had mathematics and everything, turrets, and you know, you have to, how to operate turrets for machine guns for the er, prepare the aircraft to, for the pilot to fly that Spitfire and you know, it’s not simple as.
Int: I know, I fully appreciate, it’s a very complicated.
MM: We started, you see you have to, to, must, it’s not only one turret you’ve got, all you’ve got different one top and bottom.
Int: Different kinds of makes and turret, yes, certainly. It’s interesting, maybe when you get the records from Margaret, it will actually say on there and remind you, you may well have been part, although you did your basic armourer’s training at Halton, perhaps they kept you at Halton, as part of a test and evaluation section and that’s why you stayed at Halton, that’s why you didn’t go to an airfield because the people from London would bring you up, he Air Ministry, would bring new things for you to look at and along with your colleagues.
MM: Because some people, some they decided they got enough and they went for the course for three months and came as a sergeant.
Int: Oh, okay!
MM: They didn’t want to continue.
Int: They didn’t want to continue, no. So it does sound like what you were doing there was some kind of specialisation, after your basic armourers training, so. And then that’s perhaps why you went to Wrexham afterwards, although you went to Cammeringham first didn’t you. But that was at the end of the war, so maybe they just used your skills as an armourer to deal with the machine guns and everything else because you were quite. What rank were you, that’s an interesting, that will give us, help a little.
MM: Well AC1, you know, when we finished.
Int: AC1 when you finished! Crikey. That’s interesting.
MM: We didn’t, we had.
Int: Right, and that was, AC1 is just aircraftsman first class. So that’s kind of the first or the second rung on the ladder, so after four years
MM: After everybody finished at Halton, they was first class.
Int: But you said some people could come out quickly and become a sergeant.
MM: Yes, they didn’t want to continue.
Int: So they didn’t want to do the armourers job.
MM: No, no, it’s not only armourers, they didn’t want continue because was different sections at Halton.
Int: Right, okay.
MM: It was not only the armourer, there was different sections.
Int: So they could change to a different section and become sergeant very quickly.
MM: Some of them engineer and so on, so that was different.
Int: I think it’ll be, it’s certainly worth you trying to get in touch with Margaret and see if you can get your records because that might, you might suddenly find that you were doing a very important job and you didn’t quite realise how important a job it was!
[Other]: But from what I’m hearing dad, because I’ve never heard of any of this, what I’m hearing is that, my understanding is that you, your division, whatever, at Halton, you were doing some secret service stuff, you know, you were examining.
Int: Possibly, yes.
[Other]: And you were probably told [emphasis] that you were under the training umbrella but you weren’t really, I think. [Beep]
Int: There’s a little bit more to this that perhaps they didn’t even tell you [emphasis]. They just said oh, you were doing some more training.
[Other]: So you were just told training so that if anything happened to you you’d say I was just doing training. In fact you were probably doing some.
Int: Some more interesting work.
[Other]: Without you realising you were doing.
Int: Which might be part of the reason as well, that you actually went to Cosford, to do some more things, but that you would think as just ordinary. Cause Cosford now, Halton and Cosford are still in the RAF now. Halton is the -
MM: No, Cosford, the reason we went Cosford because –
Int: They were doing something at Halton.
MM: They was bombing London.
Int: Oh, they were bombing! Right, okay.
MM: And the Air Ministry, I think they was trying to move to Halton.
Int: Right, that was the reason.
MM: That’s probably the reason, they move us from.
Int: Just, yes, they just give you some space at Halton possibly.
[Other]: Where is Halton, sorry.
Int: Halton is down kind of Aylesbury kind of way, that kind of.
[Other]: So it’s quite relatively near London still.
Int: Yes, it’s part of the old Rothschild’s estate.
MM: Yes, that’s right.
[Other]: And Northolt is the London base.
Int: That’s the one, yes, right just inside the M40.
[Other]: And your connections with Northolt is that you just used to go there?
Int: No, no, it was Cosford, which is over in the West Midlands. I don’t, did you ever go to Northolt during the war years when you were in the Polish Air Force? Or not?
MM: No. Some of them they’re coming from there.
Int: It was 303 Squadron that were based there, which is the Polish fighter squadron.
MM: They was coming for training.
[Other]: To Halton?
Int: To you, to Halton.
MM: You know for the, not only for me but for different engines or -
Int: Yes. So, so from 303 Squadron, the 303 Squadron armourers and the engineering teams for the engines and things used to come to Halton.
MM: They had the best in Halton.
Int: To get refresher training on new guns or new types of engines for the aircraft.
MM: They had special camp in Halton.
Int: Within Halton, right.
[Other]: It’s all kind of secretive.
Int: It’s kind of interesting, yes.
[Other]: This is quite intriguing.
MM: Sometimes when the cookhouse was closed for some reason, we went to the Polish dinner which is 303 Squadron used to have.
Int: Oh, they had a canteen, yes.
MM: We some Polish dinner!
Int: Proper Polish food, oh good! [Laugh] It’s interesting because as I say Halton is still there now, they use it for the new recruits just in any trade that come into the RAF. So Halton is still there. Cosford is still there and they do a lot of the training. In fact I think the armourers do their training at Cosford now, which is quite funny: that’s the complete circle has moved round. So both those stations are still there. Halton hasn’t really changed much, so if you ever got a chance to go there.
[Other]: I think Dad, you’ve been there.
MM: I’ve been to Halton, yes.
Int: Cause there’s just like the road that runs through the middle and there’s the top half of the camp and the bottom half of the camp.
[Other]: Yes, he’s been there. Okay.
MM: They use to march, they was calling Polish Avenue, and when they finish, they plant some trees, and they’re great.
Int: Huge big trees now, yeah.
MM: Polish Avenue.
Int: And they called that Polish Avenue did they? I’ll have to go and look. Next time I go to Halton, I’ll look and see if they still call it Polish Avenue.
[Other]: Thank you very much. So dad -
MM: We used to have, every morning we used to march to that, you know, after breakfast, to, to training.
Int: To your training area.
MM: At our school.
Int: Was it, can you remember now where, your barracks, when you lived in the barracks at Halton, were they at the bottom of the hill or the top of the hill? Could you, you probably can’t remember.
MM: The, the barracks, you can’t miss them because Polish Avenue, you’ve got Polish Avenue and that, as you’re walking, on the right hand side, that the barracks.
Int: That was your barracks.
MM: Two barracks, there was three, two barracks was. All different.
Int: And in your room, in your barrack room, it was just all Polish Air Force was it? Or was it a mixture of RAF and Polish?
MM: No. There was just two, two big barracks.
Int: Yes, but in the actual room, where you had maybe ten or twenty beds, in the room.
MM: There were many beds!
Int: But they were all Polish in that big room were they, or the English as well as Polish?
MM: No, no, no just Polish.
Int: Just the Polish.
MM: English were different.
Int: Yes. And when it came to special occasions during the year, special Polish occasions, including Christmas, did you have a Polish church, at Halton, that you could go to? A military church?
MM: Yes, yes. When Hitler declared war on the United States and we had, I remember one Christmas which is, the American came round and we had a big dinner.
Int: On the base, and did you -
MM: Yes. No, at Halton.
Int: Oh, at Halton. And di they bring a lot of extra food, special food from America?
MM: They had, you know, all different.
Int: Chocolate and things like that, yes. And when you were at Halton did you play any sport?
MM: Oh yes, swimming, we must swim, you know, you got, it doesn’t matter which is winter or summer still had to [indecipherable] had to learn must, you know, swim.
Int: I didn’t know whether you were perhaps a sportsman and you liked to play either football, or swimming or anything.
MM: Oh yes we usually have, used to have I think every Wednesday.
Int: Every Wednesday was sports day was it.
MM: And that was Mr Brown. [Chuckle]
Int: And Mr Brown was what, he was the instructor for sport?
MM: Instructor yes, for sport, yes. Was very nice chap.
Int: What’s your, what’s the memories, maybe one or two memories that you always have when you think back about Halton, anything to do with Halton at all. What’s the memories that you have, that you remember, if you were going to tell maybe two stories about Halton, what would those stories be?
MM: Well you know, the stories is completely different stories for our Wing Commander he was, well at that time he had a car, you know, Wing Commander what’s his name? Newbury. Newbury? And as he was coming to, to the station and two chap was walking, and he say can I give you a lift, you know, it was that station, and says oh yes please. And he say don’t tell the guards I left, don’t go through there, go to the main.
Int: And that was you was it? Oh, I thought it was you that he gave a lift to, but he gave a couple of guys a lift!
MM: He did.
Int: And at weekends, did you get time off at Halton? Did you get time off to go to the local town?
MM: Oh yes, we used to go to Aylesbury dancing, you know and also do dancing in Halton as well.
Int: And when you went off for your day off, or weekend, did you have to go in uniform?
MM: Yes.
Int: So uniform everywhere then. You didn’t meet any nice ladies then, when you were dancing? [Chuckles]
MM: Well!
[Other]: It’s all right dad!
Int: Good. Well that’s lovely. The only other thing I probably, we’ve talked an awful lot about Halton and I think there’s probably some more interesting little stories to come out of Halton. Could we, if you don’t mind, could we just go back to Cammeringham, how long do you think you were at Cammeringham for? Was it literally a couple of months, or was it a year?
MM: No, didn’t stay long.
Int: You didn’t stay very long.
MM: No. That’s why we posted.
Int: Yes.
MM: To the, from Cammeringham been posted to the Wales, you know that.
Int: To Wrexham.
MM: Wrexham.
Int: To Wrexham. So, you were saying that when you were at Cammeringham there wasn’t really a job for you, there was nothing to do.
MM: Cammeringham was just only for staying people.
Int: For the Polish resettlement.
MM: Yes, that’s right.
Int: So when you were there what did you do, each day, was there anything to do at all?
MM: Not really. No. The one chap he had a nice dog, and people’s giving him, sometimes give the dog penny, goes to the NAAFI, took penny and got the cake. [Laugh]
Int: Got the cake! That was the dog brought the cake back!
MM: Oh no!
Int: No, you got the cake for the dog!
MM: No, was for the dog!
Int: Ah right, I’m with you, right, okay. Can you remember when you were at Cammeringham, did you live in the village, in the barracks in the village, or up at the airfield?
MM: The airfield and the train was stopped, like where I was in the first squadron, and the train stop, you just put the hand, and the train stopped and you just can go to Ipswich or that place. Like bus now!
Int: Yes, oh man, that’s interesting.
MM: And a lot of people just playing the cards, you know, the cards.
Int: Yes. And that’s it that was it really, you played cards all day and then had your breakfast, your dinner and your kind of evening meal so that was it: there was nothing for you to do. Most of what’s, well, there is very little left at Cammeringham, or RAF Ingham now. There are a few, just a few nissen huts, a few buildings. The rank that you were at Cammeringham, I imagine the building that we’ve, that we’re renovating, was the building you would have eaten in because it was the airmen’s mess, um, oops, is it the other side round, wait a minute, yup, there we go, [paper shuffling] it probably looks very, very different, and that’s the thing with the kitchen, there was a dining room, and another dining room the other side, and that would have been the Junior ranks mess, up on the edge of the airfield, so I imagine, and that’s what it would have looked like, a computer drawing, so I imagine that’s where you would have eaten. You can hang on to that because it’s, some of it’s in Polish and some of it‘s in English, it just tells you a little bit about what we are doing at RAF Ingham, and you can see Cammeringham there, because obviously it was Cammeringham at the end of the war. It might jog a few memories. And we’ve got the web site as well which has got more photographs on it. I think, did I give you one of our cards beforehand? Did I?
[Other]: I’ve got your card.
Int: You’ve got my card, right that’s okay. But we’ve obviously got the web site and we’ve got a twitter now but we just use it purely and simply to put pictures on there and a little bit about what we’ve done the previous week when we’re doing all the works. We don’t use it as a chat room thing.
MM: And is another one which is from Halton, Sikorsky, when Sikorsky been killed, Mrs Sikorsky, and she invite me, I don’t know, another two chaps, for dinner to her, you know.
Int: To her house.
MM: Well, it’s a big house. And actually we came to London, she was in Baker Street, she was waiting for us, and the first thing we went to Madame Tussaud, and Sikorsky was already in Madame Tussaud. From Madame Tussaud we just walk maybe ten minutes, to big house, that policeman was standing in there [chuckle] and they prepare big meal you know, yes, we stay over there. And the evening we went to the, to the Piccadilly which is what er, the place, what you call it, because that Sikorsky had two sons and they was in Navy or you know, and they took us to the Prince of Wales, on Piccadilly, that was: Prince of Wales Theatre.
Int: The theatre, yes, yes. So you went there that evening. They took you for a night out.
MM: Yeah. The Prince of Wales. I remember that.
Int: And why were chosen to go to the evening meal?
MM: I don’t know!
Int: You hadn’t done something special you were being rewarded for?
MM: No, I don’t know!
Int: And what did your officers say, best behaviour and?
MM: No! It was free over there.
Int: That was free, okay, good.
MM: Yes, that was Prince of Wales.
Int: And when you went for this night, for the meal with General Sikorsky’s wife, and the sons, were you at Halton at that point?
MM: Yes.
Int: Oh, you were still at Halton.
MM: Yes, yes, at Halton.
Int: Again, very interesting, very interesting. Mmm. It creates more questions than answers.
MM: And Sikorsky, always, he was against the, you know, the Polish Army, and the army in Warsaw. He was against that, he said you not going to win with Stalin and because well, two hundred fifty, two hundred fifty thousand people been killed, or you know; destroyed Warsaw completely. But, and he was completely against that, [beep] Sikorsky.
Int: So he didn’t want to fight in Warsaw, he wanted to just -
MM: No, because you’re not going to win.
Int: Not going to win and it would just wipe out –
MM: And they just Ignored that, his advice.
Int: What, I haven’t asked you yet, but I should ask you. Where were you born? What’s your town or city you were born in, in Poland?
MM: The, in 1939 the Lvov which is [indecipherable] there was prisoner of war, er Russian soldiers taken to, from Lvov northward up to Podlesice and their massive [emphasis] horses and prisoners, you know. My mum, she gave some bread to me and I went over and throw it because I, well was not enough food probably, and their horses, massive [emphasis] horses, maybe some of them been probably killed in Kharkiv that time and when, when, because when they first er, I think they in the country, but first, because I used to live not far from railway station, and there was Polish policemen all, that took over by Ukraine and Jewish people, because of us welcoming the, Stalin in that way.
Int: Yes. So you’ve mentioned that you’ve been back to Poland since, did you say you’ve been back to Poland since it’s been free, since Poland was free? In ‘90 or ’91?
MM: Oh, yes.
Int: In 1990 ’91 was it, ‘91 when it became a Republic again, I can’t quite remember, with Lech Walesa?
MM: After that, yeah.
Int: So you haven’t been back to your town or your city to see it? No, you haven’t, no.
[Other]: Dad’s only been back to my mum’s side. [Indecipherable]
Int: Right.
[Other]: But can you tell Geoff where you were born dad? It’s what he asked you!
Int: Yes, I know, yeah.
MM: In the, Bokievka.
[Other]: Bokievka, which is on the Russian side.
Int: It’s on the Russian side then. Or is it still in Poland?
[Other]: It is now -
MM: No, that was, that time, when I born we was not Russian.
[Other]: It was Poland.
MM: No, it wasn’t, it wasn’t even part of Poland.
[Other]: What was it?
MM: Austria.
Int: Oh right.
[Other]: What? So when you were born dad, you were born in Austria?
MM: Austria. Because –
[Other]: Huh? But all the documents it says in Poland.
MM: Well, it’s Poland, yeah, it was Poland, but we been under the Austrian.
Int: Oh, was it the Austro-Hungarian?
MM: Hungarian, yeah.
Int: The Austro-Hungarian kind of part of it, it came up before, post, pre Second World War and all that, possibly.
[Other]: I think where dad now, the village, I think now is Lithuania isn’t it? Or Ukraine?
MM: [Indecipherable] is on the top.
Int: But the village, or the town where you were born -
[Other]: Is now –
Int: Which country is it in now [emphasis]?
[Other]: Lithuania.
Int: Is it Lithuania? Or is it still Poland?
[Other]: What is it then? Ukraine?
MM: Ukraine.
[Other]: Ukraine.
Int: It’s Ukraine, right, okay. So the borders have changed.
MM: Ukraine, Ukraine there.
Int: Okay. Is there anything else you can think of at the moment that you’d like to tell me about your time in the Polish Air Force at all? Anything you might have, because we’ve been talking about so many different subjects, and different times through your time in the Polish Air Force, did you, did you ever, here’s a question, at the end, when you’re finishing in the Polish Air Force, did you, did they allow you to keep any of your badges, or your hat, or anything at all?
MM: Yeah.
Int: Yeah? They allowed you to keep some things. That’s good.
MM: When the coat uniform, when demob only had one uniform, all the rest of them was RAF.
Int: So you kept them for a while. Did you, do you still have any of the badges or did you, have the badges all gone?
MM: I think probably got some buttons.
Int: From your original uniform. That’s very good.
MM: But er, well, we kept the uniform and everything.
Int: Well I hope that at some point in the near future, depending on how things go, we’re obviously hoping to open the Centre, maybe not this year, it might be next year now because we’re waiting for Heritage Lottery Fund, but then we’d love to invite you up, with your family, to come and see what we’re doing in Lincolnshire.
[Other]: Yeah? Do that dad.
Int: We are looking the big Memorial Garden, with the Polish Memorials in it, we’re hoping to open on the 26th of May this next year, with His Excellency the Polish Ambassador’s coming up and it’s going to be that kind of thing.
[Other]: Oh let us know.
Int: Once we’ve firmed everything up.
[Other]: Yeah, let us know.
Int: We will yes, we’ll let you know; it’s a Thursday. We thought that’s a little bit easier for people rather than weekends where it kind of clutters things up a bit, so we’re hoping to do all of that and with all the veterans we’ve found and managed to talk to, and what I have [emphasis] got for you, because you are an armourer, I’ve got some footage, it’s RAF footage, but it’s a training, it’s almost like a training video of how to arm up bombs and how to load and unload.
MM: [Indecipherable]
Int: We’ve got something like that already.
[Other]: What I’m trying to get in my head, is how you can train for four years.
Int: Oh I know, yes.
[Other]: When people dying.
Int: They’d be pushing them out onto the squadrons.
[Other]: They need the men. I just think my dad was told a certain thing to do but they were actually doing a different type of job, if that makes any sense.
Int: Yeah. Test and evaluation in some form, or testing new things, but they were training during that time. Yes, that’d be interesting to dig a little deeper into that. Yes.
[Other]: I can’t, I think dad’s been brainwashed by what they told him.
Int: Well yes, they would have just been doing more training, and more training, but maybe there’s a little bit more. It’ll be interesting to see, when the records come out, if, while you were at Halton, it says you were actually attached to a special section or squadron, you were doing test and evaluation, you know, for these four years, because it’s -
[Other]: So it’s Margaret we need to speak to. Do you have her phone number, dad?
Int: If not, I’ve got it. I can email it to you anyway.
MM: I know her!
[Other]: Well I’m sure you do know her, but we want to get your records. She can send you a copy of your records.
MM: We’re going to the [indecipherable] and she’ll be there.
[Other]: She’ll be there. And you can ask her. You want to ask her there, okay. All right then, we’ll go to –
MM: I’ve got her telephone number.
[Other]: He wants to that, okay.
Int: You might well have already have done this anyway, have you been down to the Sikorsky Institute and Museum? In London, down on King Street.
[Other]: Probably have.
Int: Because that’s the main museum for all kinds of things.
[Other]: Yeah, I’ve been there a very long time ago, but not recently.
Int: If you want to look at any of the archives I think you have to ring them up beforehand and book, to go at a certain time and then they’ll get things out. Once you see what Margaret’s got, it might be a case that they’ve got something to do with that particular Halton thing at, in the Sikorsky Museum. They may be able to bring out photographs, cause they’ve got tremendous, we haven’t even been down there yet to look at stuff to do with the Polish squadrons because we just haven’t had the time, but we know [emphasis] they’ve got film, they’ve got photographs; they’ve got a lot of stuff archived in the Sikorsky Institute.
MM: When I been in training the one, what’s his name, he just went you know, trained and was training and he went and shot down the German plane [laugh] and that Squadron Leader he was, I think he was Canadian, and he was very upset because he say you should stick with the, the, all together, anyhow, but later on he say from now on you are in operational; you done very well.
Int: So there was a Squadron Leader who shot somebody down and he was just there practicing or testing, and then they made him operational. Right.
[Other]: So dad, you were never operational then?
MM: Pardon?
[Other]: Did you shoot down any planes?
MM: No, I didn’t fly!
[Other]: No I know you didn’t fly but did you shoot any planes from ground force, from ground level?
MM: No, ground is different people was doing that, not shooting.
[Other]: So Halton was never attacked?
Int: Quite possibly so, yes, I would imagine they would have had some kind of air raids.
[Other]: So when Halton was attacked by Germans, where would you go? You know, like London, they used to bomb London.
Int: Did you have air raid shelters, under the ground? Were they in the basement of buildings? Or were they separate?
MM: We had air raid shelters, yeah.
Int: You had the shelters to go in.
[Other]: There was a, a drill went, you had to go to air raid, yes, but you didn’t actively shoot down planes.
MM: No, no, that was different people.
[Other]: I know but I’m asking, I’m just asking.
MM: No, there was, you’ve got, with the machine gun you can’t shoot them.
Int: No, exactly. they had to be the bigger, the anti-aircraft guns, yes. Oh, okay. Well, if we find out some more information, I’d like to come back maybe, at another time, for a, to have a chat with you again and we’ll put the camera on a second time. Because there might be some other, we might even find some documents or some photographs or something that explain the kind of job that you were doing a little bit more at Halton and it’ll be interesting to see if there’s a hidden story that perhaps you [emphasis] weren’t aware of, that they were getting you doing.
[Other]: I think they’ve got a [indecipherable] that he wasn’t aware of, that they [emphasis] were aware of.
Int: Because they, you were just, with your Polish colleagues, you were just doing training, but on maybe advanced weapons, and new weapons that were coming out which is why you said it was training because it was new stuff.
[Other]: But it wasn’t training.
MM: Yes, that’s precisely, there you go.
[Other]: But that wasn’t training.
Int: So you were doing testing on new [emphasis] types of weapons because you mentioned rockets didn’t you.
MM: Oh yeah, rockets.
Int: Now rockets didn’t come in until 1944 ’45 and they put them, not under the, not so much under Spitfires, but under Typhoon, the fighter aircraft and Mosquitos.
[Other]: But dad, did you put the bombs onto the planes?
MM: Well –
[Other]: Would you put the bombs under the planes?
MM: I didn’t put them, we just I didn’t do the training.
[Other]: Forget the training, did you physically put the bombs on to the planes?
MM: You don’t understand, that was training only.
[Other]: Well that’s what they told you.
Int: So when you actually did the training, as part of the training did they show you how to attach the rockets under the wings and things?
MM: Yes of course! We were doing that.
[Other]: But did you physically do that?
MM: That was not operational planes!
Int: Yes, I understand, because that was just training, so what they would do is, they would have a plane there, and you would practice putting rockets and things on to.
MM: You put the fuses to the bombs, everything.
Int: So the aircraft was just really for practicing your training, it wasn’t operational; I understand.
MM: Was not operational.
Int: So the aeroplane was almost part of your workshop. That you used it to practice putting the bombs and the rockets on.
MM: Yes, that’s right.
[Other]: But weren’t you kind of interested as to why you were constantly on training? For four years. You know, didn’t you think in your, amongst yourselves, we’re constantly training? Didn’t you think about it?
MM: But aeroplanes so complicated.
[Other]: Yeah, but dad no [sigh].
MM: Turrets and, you know, it’s not so simple you think can learn that in one day.
[Other]: But one year was a sixth of the Second World War! We were only at war for six years so four years is a big chunk.
Int: I think you were very lucky, because you were, it does sound like you were on experimental training for all the new weapons, but they told you that it was just training. But to have kept you there all that time I think you have to have been on a very special testing and evaluation.
MM: Like I prepare wings, then rockets, we have to calculate the pins which is going to shell that – it’s not simple.
[Other]: I’m not saying that dad, but dad.
Int: The timing mechanism on a rocket to when it explodes or was it just explode on impact or at a certain distance or height.
MM: Yes! And when the pilot pressed the button, they used to have a red, or the TNT burns and that shell, that pins.
Int: This, this is an experimental area. They were given rockets, but they’re obviously um, looking, your colleagues knew, they were obviously testing different types of fuse lengths and different fuse, not lengths but timers, for rockets and bombs to work in different ways, so some would be designed to explode above the ground, like an air burst, possibly, ground burst or some other. I think there was a lot of experimental work.
[Other]: So, did you think you were getting bombs to dad that were just straight off the, kind of, um tsk?
Int: I don’t think so much production, these weren’t production, these were, I think what you had Michael was pre-production.
MM: Pre-production. Yes, that makes sense.
Int: It was experimental. People who were coming up with the ideas, bit like Barnes Wallis did with the Bouncing Bomb, and you would have scientists that were going: I want to make this and then your bunch of armourers would be there say, working out how they can make that work.
[Other]: This pre-production. So really they weren’t training, they were testers. But they were told training.
Int: But it was classed as probably training, but they were testing different fuses and different things to work out what would work.
[Other]: Before they went into production.
Int: Possibly so, I think.
[Other]: Right, okay. I think, yes.
Int: I think that’s possibly, just listening to what you’ve told us.
MM: That’s right. Definitely
Int: So I think that’s a very important job, very important. Probably more important than you realised at the time.
[Other]: Yes. So basically you were testing all the prototypes and once you’d tried, agreed. So who would sign it off then? Who was it actually, this is gonna work? Who would sign it off, your chief commander? Who was your top man? Wing Commander, or?
MM: Yeah, would be the Wing Commander was. [Beep]
[Other]: Would have to sign it off.
Int: It would be head of that section probably.
[Other]: Who was head of sections, dad?
Int: Who was in charge of your training area? Would probably have been an officer I presume.
[Other]: Do you remember?
MM: Yes, that was er –
Int: Or a Warrant Officer maybe.
[Other]: So he was probably getting information from other agencies, or other.
Int: Yes, very interesting.
MM: That’s, that’s right.
[Other]: Do you remember the name of your head of training?
MM: Um, just a moment, I try to.
[Other]: Cause I think now, you’ve got your scientists, doing your prototype, next thing.
Int: Coming down to Halton, they’re going: right, here’s the basic idea, let’s see how we can make this work.
[Other]: These guys, let’s, and then -
Int: Look at existing –
[Other]: And then someone signs it off.
Int: Bombs and rockets they’ve got, and whether they needed modifying from the scientists and then they do the armourers part of putting the whole thing together and making it work from an armourer’s point of view. And [emphasis] how do you then fix that onto the underside of the wings or into the bomb bays, because obviously the, all the connections for the bombs and the -
MM: Got some of them, rockets, they’re shooting that, they stick to the tank and exploded.
Int: Yes. There you go. So to pierce armour, any, any good project, these days projectiles will go through some serious armour and then they explode inside the tank. So the first charge blows the hole in the tank, the second charge blows inside the tank.
[Other]: So dad, when you were doing all this, you were, you’re risking your life, every time!
MM: No, I’m testing.
Int: Probably not so much cause it was in a research.
MM: Research and test.
Int: In a research kind of environment so it would be like workshop, laboratory, research and they were working out how to, so that the rockets that were fired – cause they were right at the end of the war – they’d come off fighter planes that shoot, basic, very basic rockets at the end of the forties, but you could hit ground targets, so if you got tanks going across an open ground or something, or something like that, then obviously the fighter planes could get in and then fire the rockets to hit the tanks. But as you were saying, if it hits the outside of the thing and sticks to it, so it’s not going to bounce off, and then it explodes.
MM: Otherwise it can slide that, you know.
Int: There you go there’s a very interesting little piece of information there. That, and that’s something you’ve now remembered, getting something so they’d hit the target, and stick on it, and then explode. Rather than hitting the target and bouncing off.
MM: Bounced, yes.
Int: So there we are.
[Other]: Right. So that’s where your engineering, cause dad ended up being a production engineer, so he used to.
MM: That, you had the people was coming from London and was going teach us, you know.
Int: Yeah. It’s starting to come together now! We’re understanding a little bit more about what you actually did.
[Other]: Right! Yes.
Int: So it was probably -
MM: How to drop the bombs as well.
Int: Yes.
MM: You know, was teaching everything, you know.
Int: Which does explain perhaps why –
[Other]: You weren’t operational, non-operational.
Int: And you didn’t go up through the ranks because you were staying at that experimental, although you think they might have given you another rank or two for a little bit more pay, for the job you were doing! But maybe because that was, it was a shorter time and during the war.
[Other]: Four years is a long time in the war! That’s eighty percent out of four years.
Int: We can, the records, the main records for what happened at Halton research are probably out in the public domain now if you know where to find them, just to find out, test and evaluation centre that would have been there, or a small workshops as part of the armourers. And to be honest, if you’ve got the armourers there, the people that taught the armourers will be more experienced people anyway, so then they’d use some of those instructors, probably attached to, with your father, they’d be like the managers, the site managers, or the supervisors looking after the team of younger workers that were doing the test and evaluation on things.
[Other]: But my feeling is there’s a lot going on behind the scenes here.
Int: Oh, probably so, yeah. I mean that happened through the whole of the Second World War. Not just the Air Ministry, but in the Air Ministry would, there would have been a lot of small, trying new things, test and evaluation. I mean nobody had heard about the bouncing bomb, had they, and that just, that was all built.
[Joanne] Did you test the bouncing ball dad?
MM: No.
[Other]: Did you do anything with nuclear war? That nuclear?
Int: No.
MM: No. They was testing in Wales that, yeah.
Int: Yes, I mean the bouncing bomb was all done down at um, Teddington, Teddington Lock, the big old, the big water tanks that they had down there, in towards London. I don’t know what, I don’t know where all the nuclear stuff was done.
[Other]: Wales, dad said it was Wales.
Int: Wales.
MM: Wales, that was in Wales.
Int: Probably in and around the old quarries and things like that where you have low population.
MM: They was doing some in Wales, testing.
[Other]: Oh, very interesting, I didn’t know this.
Int: There we are. It’s interesting sometimes, when things, as people relax a little bit when we have the conversations, little things do tend to come out, so, and the nice thing is we’ve captured it all now so we can put it on to a disc so that if you need to look back and remember points that perhaps you’ll forget about, and then you think ‘oh yes, I said that’, so, and that’s, so it’ll help Joanne as well cause if you get the bug and start doing a bit of research we’ve got at least some ground area now.
[Other]: So, in your testing evaluation school, how many Polish people were there? Sixty, seventy?
MM: No, that was, there was I think six, was five hundred.
[Other]: Five hundred?
MM: But different sections!
[Other]: Yeah, but in your [emphasis] section?
MM: In my section er -
[Other]: Do you remember dad?
MM: No. In my section was [pause].
Int: Five hundred would have been probably for the whole camp. With the standard training for armourers in different points, but then -
[Other]: I can’t believe that dad.
MM: Thirty or forty.
[Other]: Thirty, so it’s quite a small group.
Int: Small group, concentrate on certain things.
[Other]: Concentrate, yeah.
MM: Thirty or forty there was, yeah.
[Other]: And all the other groups, you knew all the other groups, yeah?
MM: Well one actually, he was instructor, he went to Argentina and I think he passed away long time ago.
[Other]: So, so the friends that you see at your monthly Polish Air Force lunch, they used to be in Northolt, Halton, with you, yes? No? Yes?
Int: The people that you have lunch with, each month, your friends now [emphasis] when you see them each month now.
[Other]: They were at Halton.
Int: Are they the people from Halton, or are they just Polish Air Force people that you’ve met since?
MM: No, they’re probably different.
Int: From different things, right. Okay
MM: You know, from different.
Int: Well thank you very, very much.
MM: Not so many left now [laugh].
[Other]: Very interesting.
Int: No! Well thank you very, very much Michael, find where the turn off switch is.
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 Mieczyslaw Maryszczak
Description
An account of the resource
Mieczyslaw Maryszczak was born in Bokyivka, Ukraine and served in the Polish Army and then the Polish Air Force. An early memory of the war is throwing bread to starving Russian prisoners being marched from Lviv to Podlesice. At seventeen he was in the Polish Army testing repaired tanks in Gaza. After the Allied victory at Alamein he went to Egypt where he joined the Polish Air Force, sailing via South Africa to Liverpool to train at RAF Halton as an armourer.
At RAF Halton he met fellow Poles from 303 Squadron who were there for three months training. He, however, was there for four years and received training very good on all types of armament and explosives, possibly in the context of weapon research and development.
He was there on VE Day but says the Poles didn't celebrate because of the Yalta agreement. He also recalls how, when some Russians visited, they were locked in a workshop out of the way. He recalls the barrack rooms and how they cheated the midnight bed checks when some were still out dancing in Aylesbury. He also says that the food was cooked by Italian prisoners and was very good.
In 1946 Michael went to RAF Cammeringham pending demobilisation. He was then detached to 48 Maintenance Unit at Wrexham, where he received and checked aircraft guns, before going to RAF Framlingham to await resettlement or repatriation.
Some Polish airmen returned to Poland but Mieczyslaw, by then know as Michael, went to London for resettlement. He claimed that trade unions didn't want the Poles and tried to send them into the mines and foundries but he refused and found a job making spectacles. He met his wife, who is also Polish, in 1960.
In London Michael attended social events and dinners at the Polish Club. He was awarded the Polish Freedom Medal in about 1990 or 1991.
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
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:31:02 audio recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SRAFIngham19410620v070001-Audio
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
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.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Geoff Burton
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Andy Fitter
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-05-08
1946
1947
1948
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
Gaza Strip
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Suffolk
England--Lincoln
England--London
England--Wolverhampton
Middle East--Palestine
Wales
Wales--Wrexham
Ukraine
Poland
Poland--Kraków
303 Squadron
demobilisation
ground crew
ground personnel
military living conditions
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
RAF Cosford
RAF Framlingham
RAF Halton
RAF Ingham
RAF Wrexham
recruitment
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/227/3372/PCharltonR1603.1.jpg
050ec2c145fb98c267b86c32860b5151
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/227/3372/PCharltonR1602.1.jpg
722c20116026475658f51dc3399f87dd
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/227/3372/ACharltonR160720.1.mp3
3341eead56faa2593f39be1ed6a64a1f
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
Charlton, Raymond
Raymond Charlton
Ray Charlton
R Charlton
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Raymond "Ray" Charlton (1815764 and 201593 Royal Air Force) and a memoir. He completed a tour of operations as a flight engineer with Squadron 57, from RAF East Kirkby.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-05
2016-07-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Charlton, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: Hello, it’s Pam Locker and I’m in the home of Mr Ray Charlton of ****. So, if I can just start Ray by saying an enormous ‘thank you’ on behalf of the International Bomber Command Memorial Trust for agreeing to talk to us today, and I thought we’d perhaps start by talking a bit about your family and how you got involved with Bomber Command in the first place.
RC: I am one of five children to the Charlton family. I am the middle one. At the time of the war I’d just turned fifteen and then as it crept along to seventeen and a bit I wanted to join up in Bomber Command. My mother was absolutely [emphasis] against it and would not sign the admittance form, agreement form, so she said ‘You can wait’. So I had to wait ‘til I was eighteen and then I went in. I was sent along to London, Lords (Lords Hill I think it is called), flats there that had just been completed for upgrading. And then I was selected to go to Paignton in Devon and enjoyed that from the start, by the sea, living in a bed and breakfast apartment, run by the RAF of course, not by [unclear] the cooks and everything. But the main hotel in the town, in the village, was used as the headquarters where we dined and everything else, meetings. I found my initial test of weather. I could not for the life of me remember one set of clouds so they sent me off to be re-mustered. I finished up at the Isle of Sheppey, just outside London as you know, and then we had interviews one after another and I decided I’d train as a flight engineer and then from there I was posted up to ‒ now I’ve got it down somewhere ‒ and finished up at Bridlington and then from there it was down the west coast, east [emphasis] coast, to, er , ‒ until we passed out. And then, just to make things easy for everyone, I fell ill with pneumonia, about a fortnight before the exams so they had to keep me back until I recovered. After that I had to wait until the next intake to take the exams, which I had to join, to join with them to do the same exam. And we finished up being selected as trainee flight engineers and we were shipped off to South Wales, St Athans, to do a six months course. Twenty-six weeks of subject, each one taking one week except for the engines which was two weeks and, er, now ‒.
PL: So, did any of your other siblings go into the Forces?
RC: Yes. On one of the evenings attending the NAAFI a Canadian recruit who joined the RAF pulled out a roll of notes and in the queue next to us was a chappie with his eyeballs hanging down, so absolutely flustered. There was over one hundred pounds in a roll of notes. Apparently his father sent him ninety pounds a month to help him to live. Anyway, that night we’d all gone to bed the Military Police walked in, shut all the blinds up, and turned all the lights on and said, ‘Stand by your bed and your lockers’ and I said to the young Mo who stood near me, ‘What the matter?’. He said, ‘Shut up’ and in the end he said, ‘There’s been a robbery’. So I said, ‘Oh dear’ so I said, ‘Well. I don’t want to be funny but think of this as my bed, go into the next billet in the same position as this is’ (‘course they’re all in lines). I said [unclear]. Anyway they disappeared and then we were told we could go to sleep. Next morning I was sent for by the station commander, ‘How did you know that chappie was responsible?’ I said, ‘I didn’t’. So he [?] said, ‘I just didn’t like his absolute horror at seeing so much money, sheer delight to hold it’. So, he says, ‘Well, that was the money that was stolen’. So I said, ‘Oh thank goodness’. He said ‘Well, I’ll tell you this, you know the ruling here, if you get 70% you’ll be recommended for a commission. If you get 65% you will have [emphasis] a commission. So, I said, ‘I don’t want one, various personal reasons’. Anyway, he came out at the end of the exams and I’d got 64 ½ % because the day before was the final exam, oral, and the sergeant said to me, ‘You’re a devil. You know the answers and you’ve given me some wrong ones’. He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘That’s my reason’. So he said, ‘Well, I don’t know what to give you, so many marks or so many marks’ and I chose the lower, the lower, number he mentioned and that was put on a piece of paper one and a half inches square which I had to take to the station commander’s office and hand it in and I put it on his desk after the normal salute. He said, ‘Is that all you’ve got? Who did this?’ I said, ‘Sergeant So-and-so’ and he bawled down the telephone, ‘Sergeant So-and-so here now’ and he came in and he says, ‘Why did you give this man so many marks?’ He says, ‘Well, that’s what he asked for’ [laughs]. He said, ‘I wanted to give him far more but’ he says, ‘I know he knew the answers but he gave wrong answers deliberately’. Anyway, he says, ‘I want you to alter it. I says, ‘He’s not to’ and refused to let him alter the figure. So I was left and I was ‒, I finished up, as Sergeant.
PL: Can you explain why you made that decision? Or if it’s personal that’s fine.
RC: My family was going through a very financial tight period. My father had lost his farm and prices for what he’d got fetched the lowest you could ever get and he refused to be made a bankrupt. He didn’t want the indignity of being a bankrupt, silly old devil. But anyway, he said he’d pay back every penny he owed and one of his brothers, he owed about £100 and he was the worst one to pay back. He demanded [unclear] until every penny was paid back. Anyway, it stuck and I was posted off to a bomber command, first of all at Swinderby on Stirlings (horrible tumbly things) but then on to East Kirkby where we started our bombing trips.
PL: I’m recommencing with Raymond Charlton.
RC: I’m Raymond Charlton. Now I’ve forgotten where I was. No, I can’t pick it up.
PL: You’ve just gone to East Kirkby.
RC: Well, before I got there I was asked, no, I’m jumping ahead. No, we went to East Kirkby and we were crewed up. Four Australians, the pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, and wireless operator were from different parts of Australia and the mid upper gunner came from Loughborough and the rear gunner came from Norfolk. I can’t tell you no more else. He was the baby of the crew. He was only nineteen. I was an old man of twenty. It was three weeks after I finished flying I became an old man of twenty-one. And then the fun starts. I was sent along to be re-graded for a job but being a VR, not many people know about this, the Air Force could not post you anywhere without your permission or change your job without permission of you. Er, it’s not flowing.
PL: So, tell me about East Kirkby. What was it like there?
RC: East Kirkby was very flat, typical flat Lincolnshire field. When the wind blew there was nothing to stop it. The snow came. The only thing that stopped it was your buildings. Our Nissan hut was completely blocked in one end. We had to use the back end and the floor was lino covered and in the winter months it used to be awash. So how we survived that I’ve no idea. And then of course they decided a very good frost put the kybosh on it. One tap only worked and that was in the cookhouse. Taps all over the camp wash rooms and such like were all frozen. So it was back to ‒
PL: Very uncomfortable.
RC: Very uncomfortable, yes.
PL: And did you share with the rest of your ‒ the rest of your group you were with or with others?
RC: Only the crew. We were put in a Nissan hut which housed two crews. Fourteen of you. And then, unfortunately, it appeared the other crew didn’t come back from a trip and then that happened on one or two occasions so they decided, as the bomb aimer put it, we’ve given everybody the jinx. So they wouldn’t let another crew come back in. They filled that bed up with the instrument repairer. He was a funny chap. Every time an aircraft went out and we were at home he was on his own but when the aircraft ‒, when we were not flying we had to sit up while all of them came back and landed. Well we’d never heard that noise before but he didn’t wake up at all. Then suddenly a tinkle bell went and it was an alarm clock in his kit bag and he woke up. So I says, ‘He never hears the aircraft, only tinkle bells’ but he was a nice chap to work with and did well. Then, of course, when we finished flying, I was posted off to a recruitment camp and they were trying to find us with jobs. First of all it was a young pilot officer still wet behind the ears, then a flight lieutenant, flying officer then a flight lieutnent , then a squadron leader. Then a wing commander came in and says, ‘You are causing trouble’. I says, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘You won’t make up your mind’. I said, ‘I will. I will not take a clerk’s job’. ‘Not even a clerk SD (Special Duties)? ‘No’ I says, ‘I’ll be a clerk when I’m demobbed. I don’t want to be a clerk now’. He says, he went on, ‘Well, the RAF regiment is recruiting officers. Would you be interested?’ I says, ‘Well, I could be’. He says, ‘You’re a funny chap. Three times you’ve refused to have a commission. Now you’re saying you don’t mind’. ‘Well, it’s a different situation isn’t it? When I was flying I didn’t want a commission’. I said, ‘How would I have gone from St Athans as a trainee flight engineer to join a crew, all of them sergeants. How would I feel as a pilot officer?’ I said, ‘That’s one of the reasons why I refused to do it.’ The there was another occasion when three of us were invited to the adjutant’s office to fill in a form. When we finished it I said, ‘Can I have my form back?’ He said, ‘The CO’s not signed it yet. He’s not back ‘til four o’clock’. I said, ‘I’ll have the form now’. So he gave me the form, the adjutant came into the room and I tore it up. I said, ‘This is for a commission and I don’t want it’. Then, of course, oh I forget. What was it? Yes, yes, the pilot said to me one day after muster (while we were flying this is). He says, ‘Can we go for a walk round the perimeter?’ He said, ‘I want to talk to you’. I said, ‘Am I in trouble?’ He said, ‘No, no, no. The CO wants you to change crews and go fly with him, the wing commander.’ I said, ‘Like hell!’ He said, ‘What’ll I tell him?’ I said, ‘Tell him to go to hell!’ Well, apparently he did [laughs]. ‘Cause I met him thirty-odd years later and I says, ‘I don’t expect you remember me’. He said, ‘I do. You’re the one who refused to fly with me. Go to hell!’ He said, ‘Why didn’t you want to?’ I said, ‘I just didn’t want to’. And then I said, ‘I’ve now taken it and come back in the RAF regiment as a Flight Lieutenant so now I’m happy’. I said, ‘Things are straight at home and everything else.’
PL: So, tell me about the relationship you had with your crew.
RC: It was a very, very, very friendly, easy to get along with crowd. Never any trouble. The only trouble we ever had was with the mid upper gunner. He called out one day, ‘My [?] heel was on fire’. His electrically heated suit had set fire at the heel. The connection had so the pilot said, ‘Go and sort him out’. Of course, being dogs body I went down to the mid upper gunner, took his shoe off, his sock off, put a dressing on his heel, ‘cause it was a horrible smell. Burning flesh is not very pleasant. Anyway I put his shoes back on and socks, put him in his perch and I says, ‘Get on with it and shut up’. Anyway, I hadn’t been back many minutes in my position when he said ‘It isn’t half draughty here’. So the pilot in very sharp terms and in terms I’d never heard before, ‘Go and sort him out once and for all and shut him up’. So, I went back and said, ‘What a matter?’ He said, ‘Well, when I sit under this I get a draught on my neck’. So I put my fingers up behind his head and they went straight through a hole. It could only be a bullet hole but I wasn’t going to tell anybody. Anyway, I said, ‘Don’t turn side wards unless you have to, you know, need to move, turn side wards, and you won’t feel it.’ When I got back to the pilot’s position he said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Shush’, he said, ‘I want to know’. So I went back and said, ‘Bullet in the dome, bullet hole in the dome. Just one in the back’. And then when we landed the bomb aimer knew. He heard me say to the ground crew, ‘You need a new canopy. It’s gone.’ So he says, ‘We’d better go straight back to the hospital ‘cause he’s that bloomin’ thick the bullet’s probably still in his head’. We were really nice to each other normally but that was the worst remark I’d heard about any of them. And we just didn’t bother. But anyway, they changed the thing and, of course, just before then he’d insisted on doing one of my jobs, which was to dipstick the petrol tanks, but on a frosty morning I told him where to walk on the wing. I said, ‘Don’t go to the right or to the left. Keep on that line’. What did he do? He stepped over to the right and then you saw him sliding down the wing. It’s only fifteen feet high and when we got in the aircraft he says, ‘My left wrist hurts’ and I put it in a splint, sat him in a turret and said, ‘Work your right hand and keep your left hand steady’ and I said, ‘You’re all right’. Anyway when we landed we said, ‘We’d better go back to hospital with him’ and they took him there and the wing commander came in and said, ‘You’d better find a new gunner’. He said, ‘We’re a three months repair job - compound fracture’. Now of course sitting there working the turret wouldn’t do any good at all but he had no option. But he was an ex-boxer so you know how intelligent they are [laughs].
PL: So, what about your missions. Tell me a little bit about your tours.
RC: Well, most tours are, most of the tour, were without any remark you can pass. One to Munich once, after climbing Mont Blanc, which is twenty-four thousand feet, we couldn’t go over the top. We had to go round it. While we were getting near to the target the bomb aimer, bomb leader, who controlled where we dropped bombs said, ‘Hold back chaps. Do not drop yet. My boys are down posting the letters in the letter boxes. If anyone drops a bomb you’ll kill one or two of them’. Anyway, in the end he says, ‘Right chaps, boys’. But to get there we’d have to turn out and then back in the crowd. Well you know what it’s like trying to cross a busy road from a side road. You’ve got to wait for a space and that’s what we had to do, wait for a space between all the aircraft going in to the target. We got there, did the necessary, and went home. And then, on another occasion, oh dear, that’s gone.
PL: What did he mean, ‘putting the letters in the letter box’?
RC: They were flying that low to put markers down and to cover any not right, not in the right position to put colour on to cancel it. But they were flying at about fifty feet above house tops. The Lancaster going round and round directing them what to do, where to drop one and he controlled the rest of us. Now, what was another occasion? I had three occasions when the ‒ No, won’t come.
PL: Can you remember where you were sent on your missions?
RC: Well, that was to Munich. And then one day waking up in the morning the bomb aimer said ‘Oh dear, we’ve had it tonight, chop [?] We’re going to chopper [?]. We were shot down over the target.’ Now, funnily enough I’d had a dream myself and it was his remarks that reminded me of it. They always said unless you have a remark, a remarkable namesake you don’t know it, know what the target was, dream was. And I’d had a dream. In fact when we were over the English Channel I pointed to the navigator on his map where we would cross on the way out and on the way back. I said, ‘We shall cross there on the way back’ and I saw every river, every railway line and every forest area in this trip and then when we got over, over the target, I suddenly saw a black spot at, what we’d call ten past two. Look at your watch and look at ten past two. And I said, ‘Now watch it’ and all of us were watching that (the pilot was too busy). All six of us were watching that black spot area and it became closer and I said, ‘Well, that’s it’ and we did the necessary cork screw dive and with that he, this object just flew away. It was a German night fighter, realised we’d spotted him and turned away to look for someone else. But I can’t think ‒ there was three occasions. Never mind, they won’t come.
PL: So, you stayed with the same crew throughout your time?
RC: The crew was with us until we lost the mid upper gunner and then we swapped to Bob, Bob Mott, and he fitted in absolutely marvellous. The pilot and I selected him from the initial conversation ‘cause I said to Tommy, ‘This is the one’. We’d seen one but didn’t like him and then we saw another and then we told the third to go back to duties. And he fitted in as if he’d been with us all the time. We didn’t even realise it was a different man. Just the fact he just had a slightly different voice but the same attitude. We were all keen on doing a job. I’ll always remember one new crew came in to fill up a space, the other space on our billet, and they went out on fighter ‒, fighter affiliation. That’s where a Spitfire armed with a camera attacks you to see what reaction you had. And the mid upper gunner said, ‘He sat on his rest bed telling the pilot what to do’, and I said to our pilot, ‘What do you think of that?’ He said, ‘Not much’ and I said, ‘I think even less of it. How many do we give him?’ And we both agreed one or two trips and then the next night I was put on to fly in his place on their first trip because their engineer had fallen sick and I said, ‘I’m not going to go’ so they threatened me with a court martial.
PL: Why was that?
PL: Lack of moral fibre and I said I’d rather die a coward than live, rather live a coward than die as a stupid idiot and anyway they went off ‒ nobody thing. The next night we were sent on this trip with this same crew to go together in a thing. They didn’t come back. On their first trip they didn’t came back. But what do you expect with an attitude like that in training? We said they didn’t deserve to live but apparently the bomb aimer said we had got a name, putting a jinx on people, because the pilot and I used to say, ‘Give them five trips’, ‘Give them four trips’, and they never went beyond it. You knew by just how they behaved what chance they had.
PL: Was there a lot of superstition?
RC: I think there was a lot of ‒, yes, a lot of people carried things in their pockets, mementos from the family to cover, to guard them. It’s like, we were sent off one day to some oil fields in Poland. Now, on the way out from England all our instruments failed. Of the six main instruments only two worked. We’d got height and speed but not for wing movement or height to ground and we struggled on. The cloud was very heavy. We didn’t see where we were going. When we crossed the ‒, Norway and what not, what do you call that area? I can’t think of the area. Denmark and what not. When we crossed over there not one visible sign of any coastline so we didn’t know where we were. Poor old navigator had to do everything by dead reckoning and we flew off and after a while, flying ages (it was a nine hour trip), the pilot, navigator, said, ‘We must be somewhere near’ and we looked down and we saw some flares about fifty miles behind us. I said, ‘We’ve come too far’. So, of course, we turned back and what we saw my heart jumped because the flak was so dense, looking at a wall of flak, and we had to go in a circle and turn and believe it or not it was an arch like that and we flew under the arch and they said, when we were debriefed, ‘No bullet holes?’ No, not one. He said, ‘You’re the only one’. He said, ‘Have you been on the same trip?’ We said, ‘Well, we’ll prove that when the air camera shot of where the bombs dropped’ and it did give a very clear shot. We were over the target, the oil fields in Poland. Of course Gerry was very short of oil so it was necessary to keep it away from him. But, er, its, we never did, never did solve why the instruments failed. They blamed me, thinking I’d not put on, or removed, the protection of the tube letting the air in. It’s like just a hole in a pipe which told the instruments what to do, air pressure, and everything was registered. It was the six, and there’s two of them, instruments just like those. There was six of them in a block in every aircraft you could see, still is, and everybody accused me of not removing the protection which was on [unclear] the ground. Take it when you go flying, put it in your bag, just a plastic canvas tube cover. But no, that was alright, when we got there, and that was it. Never did find out why it failed. Then there was one funny trip, coming back, just after we’d left the target, I said to the pilot, ‘My oil drum, oil tank, petrol tank, on the wing, starboard side, looks a bit low’. ‘Double check and give me your readings’, so I sat and did all my calculations again. I said, ‘No, I’m fifty gallons short on starboard’. Well, he said, ‘We’ll press on’. Now, we didn’t know what it was. It could have been a hole in the tank and it sealed itself. They did that, they sealed themselves if there was just a small damage, or not. Anyway, I did a ten minute reading every time from then until we landed and as we came into land they didn’t want us to land, they wanted us to go away to some crash ‘drome. The pilot refused flat, ‘Not going, land here or else’. Anyhow, they allowed us in but we had to park somewhere way over, way away from where we normally parked. So, what did they do then? Put an armed escort on it until everything was checked. They recharged the tanks with some petrol and proved that I was very low. I’d only got twenty-six gallons left in both two tanks, which was just about enough to land on. Anyway ‒.
PL: Did they ever find out what the problem was?
RC: No, I still say they didn’t put it in but the petrol boys had a knack, a knack of filling their forms in that nobody could understand. But I don’t think they would do it deliberately. But it never did resolve itself. But the wing commander was very cross over it ‘cause we’d landed that much earlier than we should‘ve done and also not having the petrol right and my form which was normally within fifteen gallons of what it should be was way out. But still there we are.
PL: What was a crash drum? Did you say crash drum?
RC: Crash ‘drome [emphasis]. Aircraft ‒. There’s one in Norfolk. Eight aircraft could land at the same time on the wet. It was a special ‘drome built for crashing on. No aircraft normally use it. You landed and then they pulled you inbetween the trees out of the way so nobody could land at the same spot and it was about six or seven that could land at the same time. It was fantastic really. But he wanted us to go to another ‘drome that was prepared to let us aircraft land if they were not busy. But he refused to even consider it. But having got back it all blew over, but no ‒.
PL: Tell me a little about your job as flight engineer.
RC: Well, it just, my job was to make sure the engines were absolutely lined up with each other, to synchronise all four engines along with the pilot’s help. He’d do two and I’d do two and then we’d join the two inners to make sure they were together and naturally without any [unclear] he was shorter than me. He couldn’t reach all the levers. So if he wanted to, er, put some exhaust, acceleration [emphasis], on he’d have to go down, I’d [emphasis] have to go down and lift it up and hand it over to him to use, to ‒. ‘Cause when we first met he wanted to control all the engine’s controls, but I said, ‘No you don’t. I control those. That’s how I’d been trained’ and after a while he accepted it ‘cause he realised we couldn’t reach half of them. He was too low for him to reach but we never did fall out. My job, well you could say it was getting boring [unclear] ‘cause nothing happened. We never had any false alarms, never any fuses, we just went and we came back and we used to hand the aircraft over to the ground crews. Nothing to report, just clean it up, you know, just check it over. The only time we had any trouble we had to land at an aerodrome called Tarrant Rushton and I said to the ground crew there that had been allocated to our aircraft, ‘I’ll see you in the morning at eight o’clock. Don’t touch a thing’. Well, I got there at eight o’clock and he said, ‘I’ve done it Sergeant’. I said, ‘Have you?’ He said, ‘Yes’. All he had to do was to top up the oil, coolant and make sure the petrol level was right but he said he’d done it all and had checked, it was alright. We took off and I said to the pilot, ‘I don’t like the sound of our outer engine’. I said, ‘She keeps surging and easing off and surge again’. He said, ‘If you want to switch it off I’ll let you switch it off and we’ll go home on three’. I said, ‘No, we’ll keep it running and I’ll keep my eye on it’ and we did. Oh, ah [background noises] and we did, damn you [addressed to a pet?]. Yes, I says, when we got out, I says to the ground crew, our ground crew, he was a sergeant, Corporal Scott. The other one was an aircraft man, he was English, and much younger but he was very keen and very careful. But the engineer, Scott, was absolutely brilliant. I said to him, I said, ‘I don’t like the sound of that engine. She’s surging’. He said, ‘I’ll look at it’. ‘Course, when we went to be looked after he would start up the engine and I went back to him after my breakfast and the engine was out and he was working on the connections of the [unclear]. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘Some bloody fool has put oil in the coolant and coolant in the oil’. I said, ‘Oh, has he?’ So I went straight back to the wing commander, I said, ‘I want that (and I got his name you see), I want this bloody idiot’. Shh shut up [addressed to a pet in the room?]. ‘I want this idiot. (I called him a bloody idiot.) Charge him’. I said, ‘He could have killed us’. He said, ‘He what?’ I said, ‘He filled up the [unclear] one engine. He put oil in the coolant and coolant in the oil.’ And yet on their lids they’ve got [unclear] of that size and right across it was these letters OIL or coolant CLT. So how [unclear] I wouldn’t know, lack of brain. So he says to me, ‘He’s been suitably dealt with’ and then the wing commander started to celebrate. He wanted to try out a new scheme of what they called formation flying. So, he chose our pilot, my pilot, to fly in the out of position, right on the edge of starboard so, naturally, when you went round right you had to run but when you went to the left you had to put your brake on. Anyway, we were flying out one day over the Wash and another Lancaster, obviously a trainee, a trainee crowd, ‘cause you could tell by the markings was a trainee crew and he circled in closer than what we were to the one [unlear]. We tried to shoo him away but there was no such thing as radio ‘cause we were on a different wave band, see, we had our own special wave band, and all they did was just smile and wave. ‘Go away’ [emphasis]. And suddenly we were flying off and the wing commander said, ‘Start to turn right’ [laughs]. I looked at the pilot and he did nothing. I think he was oblivious to the thing. He hadn’t realised this aircraft was as close as it was but we ‒, I pressed my button, I said ‘Straight ahead please’. The wing commander came back on , he says, ‘Would the person who cancelled my order give his name, his crew, his pilot’s name and aircraft number and the reason why he cancelled my order’. So I briefly explained. He said, ‘I’ll see you in my office afterwards’. Well, of course he finished off his training. He decided not to do any more formation flying and it was the idea of the Americans. You formed a formation from the front and the rest trailed behind. So it gave greater safety. But anyway I went to his office afterwards, ‘The information you gave me was enough to locate who the idiot was.’ He said, ‘You’ll be pleased to know he will not fly another aircraft. He’s been taken off’. He was completely irresponsible so what good was he as a pilot if he was irresponsible. But he circled in that close if we’d moved a foot or two we’d be within an inch of him ‘cause he didn’t know we were going to turn unless I ‒. We couldn’t tell him. But they said afterwards ‘Thank God you were sitting on top fully alert’. I said ‘Somebody has to be’ [laughs]. But I think that’s why we survived, all of us was of the same category of mind. You train to the extent we were still training when we finished and I still say that’s why so many went down. They thought it was a holiday.
PL: Is there anything else that you want to tell me?
RC: I can’t think of anything else.
PL: Just very briefly then tell me about what happened after the war?
RC: After the war?
PL: So the war ended and then what did you do?
RC: Yes, The war ended so when we ‒, when we finished flying we were sent on demob leave. Then when we were on demob leave Germany had had enough, finished. I got letter ‘cause up ‘til then we had seven days indefinite leave, seven days indefinite leave, and every week that was renewed. So I had a month’s holiday at the end of when we were flying and we ‒, then after four weeks, I had a notice to go to um ‒ I went then up in Scotland, just where the RAF regiment is now, funnily enough, it was there. Anyway, he said, ‘We’ve posted you to Grantham for a commissioning course. We’ve accepted your commission. This is your commission. Go!’ He said, ‘If you’d signed when you were on the flying side, all you had to do was sign a sheet and you’d get a uniform. Now you’ve got to prove you’re good enough.’ I said, ‘Good show, I’m another three months in England’. Anyway, I did my training, became a flying officer, no pilot officer, pilot officer. I was posted to Iraq, the Middle East. Iraq in the Iraq levies. I got out there. We had to see the colonel first. We had an army colonel in charge, Colonel Loose [?] and he said ‘I’m putting you with the transport. You can help out on the transport to start with but you may have another ‒, another drop’. Anyway I went to this transport office. There was about thirty or forty lorries or cars and, er, we were sitting one day in the office. This flight lieutenant in charge, he was taking a charge sheet of one of his drivers for some misdemeanour and the phone bell went and all he kept saying was, ‘Yes Sir, I’ll tell him Sir. Yes Sir, he will be Sir’. When he finished he said, ‘The Colonel wants to see you in his office after breakfast’. This was at six o’clock in the morning. He said after breakfast, which was half past seven. Anyway, I went to the office as per appointed and he said, ‘You are the Adjutant as from next week, of No. 1 Squadron’, number one wing, the first top wing, and yet I knew the adjutant of the number two and thought he was a much better chap at the job than me. But anyway he said, ‘I think you’ll be alright’ and four or five weeks after I’d been in the office he was walking up under this shade of the building, and he stopped outside the door, you know, this insect door. He flung that open. He said, ‘I knew I hadn’t made a mistake. You’re doing very well’ and walked on. I didn’t even have a chance to say, ‘Thank you.’ Anyway, things progressed and as I said the other adjutant was better than me. He said, ‘Well, he was here before you. If he’d been my adjutant I would have sacked him a fortnight after he’d started.’ He says, ‘I’m keeping you for months’ [laughs]. So I says, ‘That’s nice to know’ I says, ‘Why?’ He says, ‘You fit in. You get on with your job’ and I progressed very well.
Pl: So did you stay and make a career in the Air Force after the war?
RC: They wanted me to. They offered me extended service for seven years and give me nine thousand pounds at the end. I said, ‘Like hell! I’m not prepared to’. And they thought I was foolish so I often said to Jean I never knew what I would have been if I’d stayed flying with the wing commander or staying on the ground in the ground staff job. It could have been a complete change of life for me but I’ve never regretted it, ‘cause I couldn’t stand the petty indifference and intelligence of the generations of officers coming along. They were petty. They fiddled. They, er, mesmerized you. They didn’t give you a straightforward answer or anything. Yet I’d had to deal with them when I knew nothing. I mean, the person who followed me on had only been sent on a three months course on how to be one, I had one hour. But I fitted in just like that and yet it was absolutely new to me. But I’d see a stack of paper that high every morning but it was mostly, you know, discipline and what not. I had one funny case where there’d been a sergeant shot in the leg and a corporal was up on the charge of shooting him and after I had all the interviews, they’d all ‒, all the people had been sent to the Air Force Ministry in London, came back, no good whatever, please retake, all the questions, you know, all the examinations. So I did it myself and this corporal I says, ‘You’re a fool taking the blame and everybody’s blaming you. You did nothing wrong. It’s the others, the more senior officers, native [?] officers.’ They were commissioned by the CO Middle East. But it rounded off. In the end he got away. Oh yes, ‘cause of course the papers I sent in, they said charge him with about six charges and I looked through the legal book and I found another six, so I put twelve charges on his sheet, went across to his room where he was being held and said, ‘I still say you’ve a fool and you’re being charged with so-and-so and so-and-so so’. I said, ‘You’ll be here for years if you’ve not careful’. Anyway, then I got a phone call, ‘He wants to see you back again’ and the chief native [?] officer, who was a Russian by birth, who had been in the Russian Tsar’s army as a major, he was our senior native [?] officer, said to me, ‘He wants you in the cell again’. So I went to the cell. I said, ‘What do you want?’ He said, ‘I want ‒ ‘. I put a hand on his mouth. I said, ‘Shut up. You’re not going to say a word. You’re not going to blub out what you want to say now. You’ll do it officially.’ I put my hand on his mouth and shut him up. I couldn’t catch a word he said. He wanted to confess what had happened and in the end the AOC Middle East came in and saw the Colonel. The next thing I know the corporal was released. The officer who I thought had been the cause of the trouble had been quietly dismissed. No show, no nothing, political, it was all mixed up with politics, politics from the Iraq people and joining in with the British. The Embassy was hopeless. I’d always got on well with the Embassy but they faded away when that came up. They didn’t want to know. But anyway ‒
PL: Talking about politics then, something I need to ask you, your feelings about how Bomber Command has been treated over the years. Do you have a view on that?
RC: Shockingly. I still say the ‒, what you call it, the clasp [?] it’s a bit of tin painted in gold paint. I say after seventy years it’s disgusting, totally disgusting. As the bomb aimer used to say, ‘They give the pilot the big medal. Why can’t they make a miniature one for each of us? We’re all together in the same crew’. No, just the pilot had to have a big, big, medal thing. We got nothing. And that was the attitude. We were all just the workers, get on with it, and yet he couldn’t do it without us, any of us. We used to say the mid upper and the rear gunner were probably more important than we were. Who could have navigated, dead reckoning navigation over a cloud filled sky all the way to the bottom of Poland and back, and back? And he finished up on the same stretch, when we looked out and saw the state of the coastline and we were going over it. I says, ‘That’s where I’d pointed out, isn’t it?’ He says, ‘Yes, you were spot on within two miles.’ He said, ‘And that was only a dream’. I said, ‘Yes, but we did live, didn’t we?’ I said, ‘Tommy said we’d not, we’d not make it from the trip but we did make it’. And they were the factors that kept you going. Much obliged. I’m going to finish, sorry.
PL: Well, can I say thank you so much. That was a fascinating interview.
RC: I hope that was as good as you want.
PL: Thank you very much for being so generous with your time. So, recommencing with Ray Charlton. So we’ve just been talking about a fascinating story about Wesel ‒ . Would you like to share that with us Ray?
RC: Yes, I just recalled the trip to Wesel, which was on the edge of the river and Montgomery had moved his troops back three thousand yards. And I said to our CO, ‘Tell him as an insult to go back three thousand yards that’s allowing us to make all that much mistake.’ Anyway we were flying over about twelve thousand feet and the flak in front of us was quite heavy. Anyway we pressed on. And suddenly underneath us we heard a rush of noise, a heavy wind noise, and we were looking out watching and we could see anti-aircraft guns being shot out of action. They’d been firing one minute and nothing the next and that’s what had happened. Every time one fired the artillery boys pinpointed the site and aimed [?] it out. Well on one of my initial visits to Salisbury [other], Salisbury, we’d got a packed lunch with us, and we saw Philip ‒, Prince Philips’ regiment. Well I said, ‘We ought to go in here’ (‘course it’s not the present Prince Philip. It’s the previous one). And we had ‒, we were enjoying our lunch on the lawn, and obviously one of their men came and joined us, ‘Were you in the regiment?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, only the RAF regiment’. ‘Oh, I don’t know about those’. I said, ‘We’re all aircrew’, He said, ‘I don’t know much about them’. I said ‘Well, we did bomb Wesel. ‘Did you? You must meet our sergeant’. I said ‒. He went to find the sergeant but he couldn’t leave his post, he was on the door. Oh, he asked us to go to him and when I went to approach him he grabbed my hand and shook it so hard it hurt. I said, ‘What’s this for?’ He said we were told about you boys coming to raid it to help us. We were told to expect to lose two thousand men in crossing the river. He says, ‘And I was to lead the men over and establish and put the machine guns out of action’. He said, ‘When we got there not a single shot was fired at us. We never saw a single German, only dead ones, and he says, ‘How on earth did you do it?’ I says, ‘Just bombed’. ‘How did you get through all that flak?’ I said, ‘You ignore it’. I said to the sergeant, ‘We ignored it. Had to do. It was heavy to start with but it dwindled off to nothing. It was just one gun firing in one spot positon and that kept firing. He must have had a load in and we just thought nothing of it. To us we’d done a job.’ He said, ‘Well I shall never forget it. You saved two thousand men from this company, this regiment.’ He says, ‘That’s something to do’.
Pl: Wonderful.
RC: But he said, ‘And we achieved our objective. We never saw anything. They must have cleared all out, they must have moved out. ‘Cause they expected you’d have to go through every house and route out snipers but there wasn’t one to be found anywhere. The survivors said the bombing was so accurate and so intense that nobody could live through it, so we were quite happy. We did an easy job and that was it.’ And there we are.
Pl. Thank you Ray.
PL: This is Pam Locker and I’m in the house of Mrs Jean Mary Charlton, who was also ‒. Her first husband was called Robert Mott and her maiden name was Gilliatt [?]. And this forms a complement to another interview, with Mr Ray Charlton, about his experiences in Bomber Command. So, Jean, would you like to stat by telling us a little bit about what you were doing at the start of the war perhaps?
JC: I was in training for Nottingham City Hospital. D Day I was at training school [unclear]. Very little idea about what we were going to face. We saw the most horrific things, soldiers coming in still in uniform, covered in blood, just bound up, legless, armless. It was a horrible thing to have to remember really. But on the Saturday at the Goose Fair in Nottingham we decided we’d all go to the Goose Fair, so four of us went together. Four airmen came up and said ‘Come on girls, come and have a ride’. Of course, I was left with the old man, wasn’t I? Which was Bob. That was 1954, as far as I can remember. I think that’s right.
[Other]: ’44.
RC: No, ’45.
JC: ’45, sorry, I had it the wrong way round. We did a tour of Nottingham Castle and left and [unclear] ‘Will we see you next weekend?’ Then when they turned up there was Bob. We married a year later, came to Southampton to live, ‘cause I brought up seven children, that’s the youngest, and I decided to go back to nursing, went to the local children’s hospital and fourteen years in the district [unclear]. In the meantime Ray came down to Southampton and said, ‘Oh, I know someone who lives here and in that road ’ as he passed it, ‘I’ll go and look him up’, knocked on the door, ‘cause I was at work [unclear] and then he opened it, ‘Who are you then?’ He said ‘I’m Ray Charlton, the Flight Engineer’. Anyway, he stayed the night and went off again. A month later we were celebrating Christmas, my eldest daughter was home from Saudi Arabia, and we were going to have a special weekend, and Bob suddenly became ill and he died twenty-four hours later, a heart problem. And so I phoned Ray [unclear] and then, of course, I went on and moved into a flat, didn’t I, on my own? ‘Cause we gave up our house [unclear].
PL: So you moved house?
JL: I went to a flat. I was working for the district, it was this side of town, you see, and I kept in touch with Ray, wrote Christmas cards and things, and my granddaughter, she was at college, I was house-sitting for my son and Ray phoned up, could he pop in and see us, as he was at an RAF meeting in Bournemouth? And he came in, drove round Southampton, and from then on he started phoning me, to go to Leicester for the weekend, and they used to say, ‘We never know where you ae mum’ [laugh], and then we married, it took about ten years to make our minds up, didn’t it? To marry. We’ve been married twenty-three years. So we moved, now, as I say, he married me for my pension fund [laugh]. But we’ve been up to Lincolnshire, to East Kirkby, every year, haven’t we?
RC: Yes, every year.
JC: I used to drive up but in recent years the family would take us. We would miss it, wouldn’t we?
PL: It’s a very romantic story. So, just to be clear for the tape, one of the most extraordinary things about this story is that you were married to two men from the same crew.
JC: Yes, the first one was with me since I was eighteen.
RC: Do you remember when I Bob says to me, ‘Who are you?’
JC: Yes, I mentioned that. I think that’s me finished.
PL: Do you want to add any stories ‒. Have you got any memories that Bob shared with you about his experiences in the war?
JC: Well, not a lot, because he used to say, ‘We never had any problems’. They were all such a good crew together. Had little jokes between them but nothing that was [unclear]. Sorry, my voice isn’t clear.
RC: I think that was the trouble, there was never any ‒
JC: Friction between you, was there?
RC: No friction and no crystal to shine. We just ‒, just went smoothly on.
[Other]: Two crews.
JC: Yes, Bob flew with two crews. The first crew he was going for the aircraft and his knee gave way, so he had to go and have a cartilage operation.
PL: Right.
JC: And that’s how he came to join Ray’s crew, when he came back. We did meet one member of the crew at East Kirkby didn’t we? And I think we were chatting all day long to him [unclear].
[Other]: He thought dad had died. He thought dad had died.
RC: Well, that’s how we feel about the Pantons, isn’t it?
JC: Yes
RC: At East Kirkby. I’ve had some lovely letters from both of them and their wives.
JC: Yes. I miss Sharon [unclear].
PL: So Jean, is there anything else that you want to ‒.recorded for either Bob or Ray you would like included?
JL: I can’t think of anything.
[Other]: He used to say how tired he was mum, how he used to fall asleep standing up on the train.
JC: On the train. He used to come down to Southampton and, of course, he could never get a seat, and he would be stood there sound asleep. You’ve said the same thing about being on the, um, trains coming home and being asleep.
RC: When the parson and four of his parishioners, they wanted me to give up my seat, and he said, ’You leave him where he is’, and he says, ‘Every time you wake up your eyes span the whole window’. So he says, ‘Open your overcoat’ and I did, you see, he said, I knew you were aircrew’, he says, ‘As soon as you open your eyes that window’s searched.’ He said, ‘You do it automatically’. I said, ‘That’s how we lived’, but these women, they were with him, his parishioners, thought I was terribly rude not offering my seat up.
[Other]: What about getting the bacon mum? They used to go into the mess of the sergeants and pinch what was left of the breakfast.
JC: Yes.
{Other}: Do you want to tell that one?
JC: You can tell it.
PL: So, the next person to speak is Vanessa ‒
[Other]: Standley [?]
PL: Standley, who is Jean’s youngest daughter.
VS: Dad used to have supper in the evenings and the one thing that always made us laugh was dad liked everything with brown sauce and he loved cheese. We went to a reunion at East Kirkby a few years ago and bumped into someone who remembered dad from flying at East Kirkby and started to tell us some stories and one of them was that dad and someone else, I don’t know the name, used to sneak into ‒ I think it was the sergeants’ quarters when it was empty in the evening, and if there was some cheese left, ‘cause obviously they were on rations, they used to toast the bits of bread on the electric fire and put cheese on and brown sauce and they’d sneak back, you know, it was their secret. And I thought that was great ‘cause all through my childhood the one thing my dad always had was bread, cheese and everything came with brown sauce.
PL: So, is there anything else anybody would like to add for the record before we close?
JL: No.
PL: Well, thank you all very much. Your family has an extraordinary story with extraordinary connections, so thank you very much for sharing it with us.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACharltonR160720
PCharltonR1602
PCharltonR1603
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ray Charlton
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:19:22 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pam Locker
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-20
Description
An account of the resource
Ray wanted to join Bomber Command but after going to RAF Paignton, he was re-mustered and went to RAF Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey where he decided to train as a flight engineer. He was posted to Bridlington and this was followed by a six-month course at RAF St Athan. He explains why he refused commissions at various times.
Ray was posted to Bomber Command, initially on Stirlings at RAF Swinderby and then RAF East Kirkby. He crewed up with four Australians and two other English men. He mentions the difficult conditions and crews who did not return. The mid-upper gunner faced several issues before being replaced due to injury.
Ray does describe some of the events on his tour: going round Mont Blanc; an encounter with a German fighter plane; instrument failure, going to the oil fields in Poland; insufficient petrol; the ground crew mixing up oil and coolant when diverted to RAF Tarrant Rushton; almost being hit by a trainer Lancaster crew when trying formation flying. He did, however, later find out that they had saved the lives of 2,000 troops crossing the river at Wesel.
When Germany surrendered, Ray was sent on leave, and then Scotland and Grantham for a commissioning course. He became a pilot officer and was posted to Iraq where he was made adjutant of 1 Squadron.
Ray explains how he felt about the treatment of Bomber Command.
Before his death, Ray’s wife, Jean, was married to another crew member, whom she met while training as a nurse.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Poland
Europe--Mont Blanc
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Iraq
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
Sally Coulter
57 Squadron
630 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
love and romance
military living conditions
military service conditions
Nissen hut
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Eastchurch
RAF St Athan
RAF Tarrant Rushton
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/652/8923/PWadeR1503.2.jpg
0b506137cd4da312b391a18185ae0198
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/652/8923/AWadeR150726.1.mp3
95701c1624fa69e8a17fb1a5fdcce23c
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
Wade, Ron
R Wade
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wade
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Ron Wade (b. 1917, Royal Air Force) and three photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 58 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay, so this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody, and the interviewee is Ron Wade, and the interview is taking place at Mr Wade’s home in, near Cheltenham at Bishops Cleve on the 26th July 2015. So, Ron, if you just may be start off with just a little bit about your background, about your school days and what your parents did? Off you go.
RW: All right now, it’s switched off
AM: [Laughs]. Okay, so off you go Ron.
RW: Right. What do you want first?
AM: Well just tell me a little bit about your, what your parents did, and school days, where you were born, just a little bit of background about you.
RW: Yes, right, I was, you’ve got the date I was born.
AM: I have.
RW: And um, my parents, I was one of four children, I had two sisters and a brother. Unfortunately my brother was killed during the war, not on operations, but he, after I was shot down, he was working for the gas company and he would have been, um, he needn’t have joined, let’s put it that way, but er, because I was missing believed killed for six months and he said, ‘they’ve got Ron, I’m going to take his place’, and he joined the RAF. He was coming home on his birthday, 1943, on a motorcycle, and I was the motorcyclist in the family and taking risks a place, he hit a lorry and was killed outright, and so my parents had a rough time because I was, they thought I was, I was injured they didn’t know how badly and so um, they had a rough time.
AM: They must have done, yeah. What did your parents do Ron?
RW: My father was, they had a grocery shop at the time, but before the war my father was a Master Grocer and he was made redundant by the person he worked for it as a, I was born. Let’s start off where I was born. I was born in Stoke-on-Trent and Longton was the name of the one of the six towns, not five towns, they forgot Fenton, and so, um my, that was my father, he was a Master Grocer and those days, when he was younger, to be a Master Grocer was quite a trade. And so um, he, my mother worked in the Potteries in Longton where most of the china was produced and Ainsley and all the top china work, and she was a Paintress, a freehand Paintress, and er, the, also my sister, one of my sisters was also a paint, a freehand Paintress on pottery.
AM: Where did you go to school?
RW: I went to school at Woodhouse, it was called Woodhouse and er, an Elementary School. I wasn’t very good [laughs] at maths but I enjoyed school, but when came the age of fourteen, in those days you had to pay to go to Grammar School. We couldn’t afford that, so at the age of fourteen I was kicked out and I left, and so um, I wandered around trying to get a job. If you think, this was in the thirties and a lot of unemployment and so I was told to go and get a job. So I got a job in a factory at Longton and it was a bit rough because I had to, as a warehouse boy, I was paid five shillings a week and one of my jobs was to scrub the floors, light a fire under a heater in the factory so they could bring their food and put it on the top to heat it up for lunch. If I was late getting all that done, I was in dead trouble [laughs], but scrubbing the floors, it was so the one floor from downstairs, the ovens, we had two big ovens, one gloss and one biscuit, that we called biscuit ovens, [coughs] and then after a while the former warehouse boy he er, he worked in the moulding, he became a moulder in the moulding shop, and he said, ‘have they got on to you yet about moving from here?’ and at that time, I was scrubbing the floors with a scrubbing brush, cold water, down the steps, all wood, wooden steps, cleaning the steps going down there [laughs]. And so and er, then the crunch came when they said ‘right, pack it in, you go downstairs and help unloading from the ovens’ and what happened, it was, they’d be firing and then they used to open up after the firing, take all the bricks away from the entrance and then for twelve hours it would be cooling off. And then they got me with the others, the people unloading right from the top of the ladders and they brought it down and it was still very, very hot ware and then they got me with the others, carrying ware like dinner plates, [laughs], carrying from the oven. Up the stairs, two flights of stairs, along the corridor, which I had to clean [laughs] and into the warehouse, where the women were and they unloaded from the baskets. And one day, I was going up with a basket full of cups and saucers, and I used to carry them on my shoulder, basket on my shoulder and one hand on my hip, going up the same flight of stairs and I caught a water pipe that was sticking out from the stairs, just caught the basket and I had a choice. Shall I go down with the basket [laughs] or try and retrieve what I could, but I decided to let the basket go [laughs] and save myself.
AM: Save yourself.
RW: And there the ugly manager, who was one of the bosses sons stood at the bottom, with his hands on his hips and he saw, he saw all the ware down there, all smashed, and he said, ‘I’ll stop that out of your wages’ [laughs].
AM: And did they?
RW: No, no, they’d have been forever [laughs].
AM: I was going to say wages probably wouldn’t have been enough, would they?
RW: No [laughs] so that was that.
AM: So that was your introduction to work.
RW: My introduction to work.
AM: What about the RAF, how did you come to join the RAF?
RW: The RAF yes - what happened there?
AM: What made you want to join?
RW: From there, I went, I had several other jobs you know, trying to make a living in the 1930’s, wasn’t easy, and I walked around for miles getting jobs for five shillings a week. And then I was always interested in the RAF and I wanted to fly and so I went to join up when the war started and er, they said, ‘no, no’. I said ‘I want to be a pilot’, because my uncle had been a pilot and been killed, and um, but I always, right from a tiny child, wanted to fly, I wanted to be a pilot, and so they said ‘no, we have enough pilots’, and um, my maths wouldn’t have been good enough anyway.
AM: This was right at the beginning of the war, 1939?
RW: Oh yes, the beginning of the war, when the war started.
AM: So you would be twenty two?
RW: Twenty two, that’s right and I had been married. I made the mistake of getting married, and er, anyway I had a daughter by that marriage and she is now ninety seven, eighty seven, sorry, and amazingly enough, she visits me, she stills lives near Stoke-on-Trent.
AM: Yes, excellent.
RW: And she comes now and then to visit. I, then, that’s right, oh they said, ‘if you want to go into aircrew, if you want to fly, we can offer you the um’, what shall I say, oh yes, ‘offer you the way you can get into aircrew and you can be the wireless operator, and then from wireless operator, you would be an air gunner. That’s the only thing we can offer you if you want to fly’, and so this is what happened. I joined up, I was called up and I offered my services then, and I was called up in January 1940 and I did my ITW in Morecambe, sent to Morecambe, and that was quite an experience, because we all walked down the street in Morecambe and they said, ‘you eight in that house, you eight in the next house’, and so this went on and as we were allocated this one house and the dear lady, who was the boss of the house, she was coming downstairs and we were just coming into the house, into the hall and she said, ‘I didn’t want you here, I’ve had enough with guests through the summer’, [laughs] and so that was our introduction to this place. She wouldn’t let us use the lounge, we had a little room at the back and then they had a kitchen, where we were allowed in, but not the lounge [laughs], and I wasn’t very popular with her because I didn’t like her attitude, and she said we had to be in at ten o’clock at night and so one of us used to stay around, say like if we went to a dance, you see, and so this is what we did and er, we made it enjoyable. I think the pranks we got up to such as I cut out a skull and crossbones and put it in the light that it shone, the light shone through the skull and crossbones [laughs]. They had um, a, a bit of a showcase in there and I saw er, a cup in there, I thought, the old man, poor devil, he was really under the thumb with the old girl, and I saw a cup in there, an inscribed cup and I thought, marvellous, he must have been a runner or something like that, and so when I examined the cup, fortunately the door wasn’t locked on the showcase, and I was disgusted to see that it was for mineral waters [laughs]. The cup was given for being very good with his mineral waters, and so what happened there was, I filled it with cold tea [laughs]and I wasn’t very popular at all.
AM: No.
RW: We were allowed to go upstairs to our rooms, she complained about, about the rifles, we all had our the Enfield rifles.
AM: Because you were square bashing?
RW: That’s right, yes, up and down the streets, and so um, she complained because we put our rifles in the umbrella stand in the hall, so she said, ‘no, they must go upstairs and under your beds’, so fair enough, this is what we did. But at ten o’clock in the mornings, we had to get up early, but at ten o’clock we had a tea break and so we all, the whistle went and we all had to fall outside in the street and er, the old boy had to make the tea, you see. By the time he’d made the tea for the eight of us, the whistle went again [laughs] so we had to form up outside again, and er, also the rifles had to keep going upstairs under the beds [laughs], so by the time we had done all these things, then we were going to be late on parade so that’s fair enough we managed it.
AM: Oh good.
RW: Yes, and then we were eventually, we were called by the CO, we had to go, we were called into the CO’s Office in Morecambe and – left, right, left ,right, halt - and er, we stood, the eight of us there, and we stood in front of the CO, and he had his bits of paper on his desk and he said ‘which one of you is Wade?’, so - left, right, left, right, halt - ‘Right, I’ve had complaints from your landlady’, and er, he read out all these different things that I had done in the house. And then I tried to explain, I said ‘I’m guilty of what she said, but it’s very difficult to go up and down the stairs in our boots and not make a noise’, that was one thing that she went on about, and the other thing was that she had to take up the stair carpet and so we were making more noise going up and down the stairs and this went on for a while, but the CO, ‘well, you won’t be here for very much longer’, which we weren’t fortunately, but next door they had a marvellous time, the eight in there, and they were allowed into the lounge and they had a piano, and the pianist there, I’m trying to think of his name - Ronnie, Ronnie, but he played at the BBC and er, his friend ran the Squadronaires.
AM: Right.
RW: I forget his name now, they were a nice couple of guys, and they also were able to fraternise with the two daughters [laughs] so they were unhappy to leave Morecambe [laughs]. Anyway we went from Morecambe up to um, to do the wireless course, wireless operators and er, so as I say I joined in January and when I went to Swanton Morley, no, not Swanton Morley, I’m trying to think of the name of the place we went to now.
AM: No, never mind
RW: It’ll come, and um, that’s right, and so I started a course there as a wireless operator and er, I did quite a few months there, doing Morse. Very difficult, very difficult and I was very happy to leave there [laughs].
AM: Did you pass?
RW: I passed, yes, we had to, and from there I was interviewed, now I was hoping they were putting me onto a pilots course [coughs] and I was interviewed by a group, and they were ex pilots from the First World War and um, as I sat there they were asking questions, ‘why did I want to fly?’ and I said ‘I’ve always wanted to fly since, I, since being very small’ and so er, I thought I am going to get my course as a pilot. But the one question one of these old boys threw at me was, ‘what would your feelings or attitude be, if you fired at a German and you saw his face disintegrate due to your bullets?’ I said ‘bloody good show, that’s what I joined for’ and so [laughs], and they all looked at me, you know, ‘who’s this crazy guy we’ve got here’ [laughs] and so that went on, and I thought, oh no, they’re going to put me on a pilots course. ‘No’, they said, ‘no, you will be an air gunner’. So I went down to South Wales and did an air gunner’s course there and this is just about the end of the Battle of Britain, and er, we were being bombed and shot up every day and night there, and er, and I was chased down the runway one day by a Junkers 88 and I managed [laughs], the bullets were going all around me and I got behind a sand bin and they came through the sand, the bullets from this 88 and then the hut, the hut we were in the, the normal RAF Huts.
AM: Nissen Huts.
RW: Yes, that’s right, all wood, and er, one day they bombed and destroyed the one each side of ours then we had to lie down flat as they strafed us, the bullet holes through the hut, through the wood.
AM: And this was at training camp in South Wales?
RW: In South Wales, yes, day and night. We weren’t allowed, as air crew, we weren’t allowed to sleep in the huts so we had to go out in the field and within tents and sleep outside, and there again, I was a bit crazy and I slept behind the beds. I put my mattress down there and then I thought ‘what’s it going to be?’ and my DRO’s, one of our men, was killed because he didn’t get in the tents, so I was turfed out of there and I had to go into a tent and er, that was the end of the Battle of Britain.
AM: Of the Battle of Britain.
RW: Yes.
AM: What was the training like Ron, the air gunner training?
RW: Oh it was intense, very intense and we had, had er, we had the um, Fairey Battles, Whitley’s 1’s and 3’s which were, they were pretty awful things this is why they had, and the Whitley 5’s we finished up on, they were also rubbish, [laughs] sorry to say. And um, as I said training had to be intense because we were the only ones carrying the war to the Germans, Bomber Command, and so from there other things happened you know, I was lucky to get away with we were, because they were bombing night and day.
AM: Because of the bombing?
RW: And so er, from there I went to OTU at Abingdon.
AM: Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
RW: That’s right, Abingdon, and er, that was very intense. We had very few hours off and because we were needed, and so from there a very good friend of mine, he was a pilot doing his training too and we were formed up into fives.
AM: So it was five, there were five of you in your group?
RW: Five in a group.
AM: This was for a Whitley?
RW: Whitley 5, yes, and er, Mac was his name, MacGregor Cheers and I’ve got it in my book, and he didn’t want to be a pilot, he wasn’t happy training as a pilot, poor Mac. There was me, I wanted to be a pilot and he would have rather, rather been an air gunner but it didn’t work out that way.
AM: How did you get together as a crew?
RW: Oh there we er, we had, later on when we got to the squadron, I moved on to 58 Squadron er, from training and um, this, our CO there, he said ‘I’ve been having too many complaints from you, from all air crew about the Whitley’, and we said ‘we’d rather be on the Wimpeys’, you know the Wimpey?
AM: I don’t know the Wimpey.
RW: Yes, the Wimpey was the one, I’m trying to think of it now, the Wimpey. We were on the Whitleys, I was flying on the Whitleys, this was the, this will probably tell you in the book there [looks through the book].
AM: I can’t find it, never mind it doesn’t matter.
RW: Anyway, we’ll find it yes. It’s my age [laughs].
AM: You’re allowed [laughs].
RW: And so we said we’d rather be on different aircraft, we didn’t like Whitleys, and he said, ‘anymore complaints and you’ll be off flying, you’ll be grounded’, he said ‘you fly in this and it’s a very good aircraft and you have to fly it’.
AM: Where was 58 Squadron based then, at that point?
RW: We were at Linton on Ouse.
AM: Okay.
RW: And that is where we had to form up and choose the crew, choose the fives, and er, it was very good, very good. And, oh yes, when I arrived there, our flight commander came through the hangar, I came from one door and he came through the other door, flight lieutenant, and um, he said ‘my god, we are glad to see you’, he said, ‘we had a rough night on Berlin last night and we had one aircraft left in our flight’. So he said, ‘come and meet the lads’, so off I went in the crew room and er, I met the lads and er, he said ‘right, this is Ron, Ron Wade, and er, he wants a cup of coffee. What do you want, tea or coffee? Who’s on making coffee?’, ‘Oh, I did it yesterday’, ‘now make him a cuppa, whatever he wants’, so I met the lads that way. But er, how we formed up in a crew we went into flying control and into the room there and all milling around meeting each other, formally or informally and this is where we formed up, and er, I was very lucky guy. I had a lucky war really because my original crew, I was taken off, we did two trips, two trips, I forget where it was now, but they said, ‘right that’s me softened up so you are being replaced by this Graham (I think his name was), Graham, because he ditched in the sea and he has been on leave for a couple of months, but he will be taking your place’, then last heard of, they came down in the sea, so this Graham had two trips, two operations both into the sea and the second time they weren’t recovered, so I was very lucky there, but I said to Amy, ‘how must his parents have felt?’
AM: Yes
RW: Because I think of him now, taking my place I had through good luck and he had the bad luck. My folks had the bad luck with my brother being killed and me being [unclear] after six months they thought I’d been killed.
AM: So just wheeling back a bit.
RW: Yes.
AM: So you didn’t, you were taken off that crew and then, presumably, put with another crew?
RW: Yes
AM: And did some more operations?
RW: Yes, with another crew, and then I was waiting to get on another crew and er, it was rather boring because I was sweeping, I was cleaning the snooker table and I got very good at snooker, and I was waiting and then I had several attempts to go on ops but something happened every time. And then on a Whitley 5, they um, they had a lot of what you call exacter trouble. If they snatched too hard then it would go fully fine and we would have to turn back and so er, this happened, different things happened and I didn’t get, because I had, I just, oh yes, what happened, from the trip before, it had been a bit hairy, got a few holes in it and er, I had a premonition from that, that as we were coming into land, I saw the runway and I thought I won’t see this again, I’m going to be killed. Strange feeling, it was a very, very, it, it and I knew I was going to be killed, strangely enough and I wanted to get this trip over, the next trip over, all my crew who were going to be my crew were on leave and I should have waited to come back but this is on January, January 8th I think, I think it’s in there, the book. Oh yes, my roommate, I won’t mention his name, but he came back from leave and he said that he was tired, he knew what the trip was going to be, it was a tough one, Konigsburg, and er, the CO said, ‘there are two fighter areas’, so he said, ‘keep North and be very wary because of the fighters’, and I knew that it was going to be tough because of so many things going on there. And so er, I volunteered for this, and he said that he was tired so the sawbones gave him a pill and told him to go to bed, so I volunteered, do you want to go to bed because always a thing come back, leave, he had a tough one, crew didn’t make it, we were losing so many in those days. And so off with his name, on with mine, just the [unclear] they wanted and er, I thought, I’m going to get it over with, and so off we went and this is when we were in Holland, North Holland, and then we had, they hit the port engine and we set on fire.
AM: Where? On the way to drop your bombs?
RW: Yes.
AM: On the way there.
RW: On the way there, yes, and er, we thought we were going to come down in the North Sea, we were going over the North Sea at the time, and January you didn’t live very long in the North Sea, and so we thought, that’s it, and all the rest of the crew were aged nineteen and I was the oldest.
AM: You were an old boy, twenty three?
RW: Twenty three, yes, and so um, the navigator said, ‘I don’t think we’ll make it, we are not going to make Holland’ and so the skipper said, ‘right I don’t know what you are going to do, but it’s no use coming down, we’ll have to go down into the sea and about five minutes that will be it because Whitley’s didn’t swim very well’ [laughs]. And so I was in the, I was flying as a rear gunner at the time, operating as a rear gunner, and by the way before that I had done a trip from um, the, when I was at OUT, I’d been, I was on a crew, going, dropping leaflets over Italy. We had a trip to Turin and it’s in the book there and dropping leaflets and we were attacked by two fighters and I told the pilot to do this um, manoeuvre to get away from them and um, then when we came up again, they fired at us and then I had the new Brownings, four of them, and they really did damage because I fired at them and then they turned and smoke poured from both of them and they retreated and went back. I didn’t know if they went down or not but they weren’t happy, and so that was an earlier.
AM: So that was Italy,
RW: And I was going to tell you.
AM: So now, now you’re on your way to Holland?
RW: That’s right on operations, I’d gone from there and I had a photograph taken by picture post in the turret, in the rear turret, showing off these new Brownings , and er, yes, so back to the squadron, on our way to Wilhelmshaven and then we were hit and I thought that’s it, this is my premonition coming because fire broke out and it was getting close, my job to get, we were given the order to bail out although if we wanted to over the sea, but by this time the navigator had informed us that we could make it, we just made it, North Holland, so we had been told to bail out. I had to get out of the rear turret somehow, we’d been losing height at quite a pace, so when I got out of the rear turret, because my parachute was in the fuselage, and so I had to open the rear doors of my turret, crawl out, then the order was to get my parachute and harness, ‘cos there’s no room in the turret for them, so my training was that I got these and then I had to get back into the turret with great difficultly, close the doors, turn ninety degrees and then go out backwards.
AM: Right
RW: But fortunately for me, as I was getting my parachute and harness and I put them on, the first wireless op came down the fuselage and he jettisoned the door, waved to me and the sparks and flames coming past the fuselage door, and he waved and jumped through this. Now I’m not getting back in that turret, I’ll never make it and so I was going after him and so I made for the door and, what happened next then, and, oh yes, I was about to jump and then out of the corner of my eye I saw the navigator coming down dragging his parachute and harness. He hadn’t put it on.
AM. Oh no.
RW: And so I couldn’t leave him, the plane was slipping like this – slipping, slipping, slipping - we lost a lot of altitude and we were getting pretty close, and so he couldn’t do anything because he was almost falling over every time the plane went. What had happened, the two pilots had gone from the door, from the front.
AM: So they’d bailed out?
RW: They’d bailed out, because he’d given orders for us to bail out by then, and as I say don’t forget that all the rest of the crew were nineteen, they very young. And so he went, that’s right, so I went back and zipped him up and then pushed him out, hoping that he’s there [laughs], then I went after him. Then I don’t remember anything else, apart from it had been snowing through the night, it was a very, very bad night and um, it was about eight o’clock and then I came down in this field and er, the place is called Anna Paulowna, a little hamlet, and the next morning um, a man going to work on the farm and er, he just saw me and I was covered in snow, and it had been deep snow through the night, and he found I was still ticking.
AM: So you were unconscious?
RW: I was unconscious because, what had happened, the Dutch people told me afterwards, that I had gone towards the plane, so we must have been pretty low when I bailed out. I was the last one out, and so that’s why I don’t remember anything, they said that they called to me to come away ‘cos I was making for the plane, so it wasn’t very far away, but as, what I remember when I bailed out, that I was hoping that the parachute would open [laughs].
AM: Quickly.
RW: Quickly, and the um, I wasn’t scared, strangely enough, I just wasn’t scared, and the only thing I could think of, I missed my bacon and eggs, because the only time we had bacon and eggs was when we came back from an operation, then I was calling swear words to the others ‘lucky bastards’ [laughs].
AM: No bacon and eggs.
RW: [Laughs] You’ll be having my bacon and eggs and that’s all I could think off [laughs]. I’d been looking forward to that, and then they called me to come away from the aircraft and so what had happened then, as the ammunition had been exploding, then I stopped one in the back of the head and so I’d been treated in hospital there and um -
AM: So the Dutch people found you?
RW: Yes
AM: And took you to hospital?
RW: No, oh no.
AM: Oh right.
RW: They called the Germans, because if they’d been found, they took me into the hamlet where they lived and then they called the Germans because if the Germans had come and found me first, we’d have all been shot. So the Germans took me away and then they took me into hospital because I’d stopped the bullet in the back of the head, the doctor said I was very fortunate because if it had been any deeper I would have been killed, which was my premonition. And if it had been over a little, I would have been blind and so what happened, I lost, I found out later, I lost the least of the senses that was smell and taste and I’ve never been able to smell and taste since. I can taste, I was tested for it when I came back home and I can taste sugar, salt, vinegar.
AM: So things that have a strong taste.
RW: That’s right yes, that’s all I can taste, so that was it.
AM: So you are in the hospital, you’ve been treated?
RW: Oh yes, I’d been treated.
AM: Then what happened?
RW: What had happened, I had an enema, do they call it? It was a hell of a mess [laughs] and then I was in this ward and er, I was, I remember being in this bed and looking up and there’s a fellow waving to me across the ward, and I thought, ‘who the hells that. I don’t know him’, and this went on for a whole day when he was waving and that was the navigator.
AM: Right
RW: And I didn’t recognise him and this went on and after a while it came, my memory came back again.
AM: So that’s two of you in the hospital?
RW: That was in the hospital. Oh yes and um, when I got talking to the navigator again, he said, ‘careful’, because I was well known for my dirty jokes at times [laughs], anyway different thing he said, ‘be very careful what you say because that one there, is a Nazi’. The only time they listened to the radio was when Hitler was making a speech so he said, ‘very, very careful what you say’. He used to go to the cupboard there, get this radio out, switch it on when Hitler finished speaking, disconnect, back in there, so he said, ‘be very careful’ [laughs], and from there I went in an ambulance, that’s right. They took me to an old camp, the French, French and Belgians in there and um, I’d asked one Frenchman there, he spoke English, if he could get me some information because we were right next to an airfield and they were working on the airfield, and I said, ‘can you get me an old coat to wear and er, then I can make my way with you to this airfield’. Somehow I was going to, although I was a wireless op, I knew the controls and I was going to try and steal a plane and get back home.
AM: This is in the first camp after the hospital?
RW: In the first camp, yes, and er, it was a rough old camp. I remember the blanket I had was 1917, and er, it was rough, and er, and I’ll never forget having, oh yes, they said, ‘can’t you taste that?’ I said, ‘why it’s all right’. I was eating this stuff, sauerkraut [laughs], rough sauerkraut, they were dished up with, I said, ‘no’ [laughs]. Anyway just after that, next day, two great big Nazi’s came in, ‘wait’, so this Frenchman must have, must have told them what I was up to because they took me and after seeing films of people being taken for a ride, I went in this Opel I think, I think the car was an Opel, it was an Opel, and the one as big as Gary. I had one each side of me, I was down middle of them, and off we went and er, I was taken down to the station, down near the station, into the large, like a town hall - left, right, left, right - up in front [laughs], not so nicer man, this CO, and he said, ‘right, this and that’ [unclear] it was a big desk, I’ll never forget and he said, ‘this man here has had his orders, and he is going to take you on the train to Frankfurt and he’s been warned and told that if you try to escape, or do anything, he will shoot you dead’.
AM: He spoke to you in English?
RW: Oh yes, oh yes in English, and so um, I was, people were trying to attack me on the way up, up to this town hall.
AM: Civilians?
RW: And one man came with a knife and the guard had to fend him off and others because they’d had an air raid there, you see, and so off I went, and went up to this town hall and that’s when he had his orders, anyway I was taken back down to the railway station.
AM: What town was this Ron?
RW: This was in Cologne.
AM: You were in Cologne by then.
RW: Yes, and I was driven right the way down there, and so I thought, oh yes. When I was in the waiting room and other er, Germans were in there, you see, drinking coffee, suppose that’s coffee and things like that, nothing was offered to me [laughs] and so then I said oh, ‘stand up’, and the door opened, as this door opened a major (unclear) he came in.
AM: An English, a German?
RW: No a German, a German major, he came in and they all gave the Nazi salute, ‘Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler’, yes, I came out I said, ‘Heil Churchill’, oh, he was just turning to go and I said this, and he got his gun out his Mauser, his Mauser or whatever it was, and I thought, well you’ve done it this time [laughs], and then he said ‘English schweinhund’ (unclear) off he went. I got away with that one [laughs], especially as I had just had this
AM: The warning?
RW: Warning yes, and um, and that was that and so when the train came, we went up to Frankfurt and um, he was watching me like a hawk.
AM: Were you handcuffed to him or anything?
RW: No, no.
AM: There was nowhere to run to though is there?
RW: No, but all the way I was wondering how I was going to belt him and looking at the window, how strong is it because I was going to smash it with his rifle, you see.
AM: Right.
RW: And it was quite a journey, beautiful trip from Cologne, up to Frankfurt but that’s in my mind all the time, how am I going to get out of here and get rid of him [laughs], and then the chance didn’t come, didn’t come. His eyes were on me every step of the way, he was scared he would have been shot if I had escaped, and so we went to my first real prison camp that was up to the um, what they called, it wasn’t a Stalag, before the Stalag.
AM: Was it a Dulag, Ron?
RW: A Dulag, and once again this officer, German officer came in and I was in the cell there, and one very high window, and er, oh he said, ‘I speak English very well, I was educated in Oxford’, and er, he said, ‘you will find we will treat you very well now, but er, a few things to add’, and er, he said, ‘this form here’, he’d got a form with a red cross on the top, ‘so all you need do is answer a few questions, so there you are’, and he said, ‘first of all, do you smoke?’, and I smoked in those days, so he got a packet of Capstans and a box of Swans.
AM: Vesta.
RW: Vesta matches, put them on the top there and there I was, smoking away, ‘right then, first things, name, rank, number’, that’s all right, name, rank, and number, and so put those in, he said, ’good, then we will let your parents know or what have you, that you are alive and well and injured’, and so um, that’s all right. ‘Now these other things’, and I looked on this form, ‘what squadron, your CO, what was his name, and the airfield you took off from, what was the aircraft you were flying, note it down here’. ‘There we are and that’s all I can give you, name, rank and number’. He said, ‘surely you want your people to know, you want your parents to know you’re alive?’, ‘yes course I do and that’s what you have to do because that’s all I’m giving you, my name, rank and number’. Then he became a German, and he went red and he did a lot of words came out that weren’t English and he said, ‘then you’ll stay here until you do fill that in’, and [laughs], and he grabbed the matches and cigarettes and put them in his pocket, and so I was fortunate in as much as I had to be taken up to the hospital to get my bullet hole seen to [laughs] and so I got away with that. Next cell he, whoever it was, had had a rough time, I heard him groaning and yelling and I think they beat him up because he wouldn’t answer and I refused too. The next morning they had taken my uniform away through the night, they’d taken it, I had to strip it off and they took it all away. The next morning, I saw they knew where the map was in the shoulder, then they’d taken the button off.
AM: So all the stuff that was to help you to escape?
RW: That’s right, they knew where it was, they’d taken it and the needle, the compass needle had gone out of the button [laughs] so then you weren’t full of tricks, and so that was Dulag, and from there, I was taken, I went to, yes, Stalag Luft 1, yes, I was taken there next.
AM: Were you still being taken on your own or were you with other prisoners by then?
RW: No I went in, the other prisoners I met there in Dulag and um, you know it was great to meet them and speak English, it was great and they’d give tips and that. I went to Stalag Luft 1 and um, then we stood at the gate welcoming the boys coming in and it was a sandy soil and we got them to throw the lighters and things in there, because the guards were trying to keep us back, you see, and as we went towards the gate, we did this at every camp we went to, throw your things in, throw them in, throw them in, because they had been stripped of things mostly and so what they did, pick them up and give them back to him and then, and then when we couldn’t get down to things, we just trod them in.
AM: Trod them into the ground?
RW: Into the ground as they forced us back, because them bleeders were very sharp [laughs].
AM: So you could go back for them later?
RW: Yes that’s it, and especially went from Stalag Luft 1 and then did about eighteen months there and then we were moved to Stalag Luft 3 and er -
AM: So what year are we now, 41 probably?
RW: My god, yes.
AM: So you were shot down early 41.
RW: January 41 yes.
AM: And then you were in hospital and eighteen months.
RW: I wasn’t in the hospital for eighteen months.
AM: No, no, the hospital and then you were in Stalag Luft 1 for eighteen months.
RW: That’s right.
AM: So we are now?
RW: Now in Stalag Luft 3.
AM: Probably early 43?
RW: About 43.
AM: By this time.
RW: And we did, and went to this new camp, er, we hadn’t heard of before.
AM: How did they move you, on trains?
RW: Yes, and er, yes, on cattle trucks, they weren’t very clean. There’s wire both sides of the entrance of the cattle truck and we were put in twenty each side, standing up, you couldn’t sit down, we were packed in. When you think half a cattle truck, and so this is how we moved, sometimes we had better accommodation but this new camp we went to was Stalag Luft 3, everything is new there, all the huts were new and so we started a different life.
AM: Were you the first intake into Stalag Luft 3?
RW: We were yes, from Stalag Luft 1 into Stalag Luft 3, and then, after that, they started to bring the RAF prisoners from other camps into Stalag Luft 3, and er, they said, ‘you’ll never escape from here, we’ve learnt too many lessons’, but we did, the lot, a lot of people said they tried, escaped from there and they probably tried but they didn’t succeed and it was difficult, and then all the different things, books had been written by prisoners [laughs] and things, no, it was very difficult. I tried once and out of the corner of our hut, I got down and one man from Cheltenham said, ‘you’ll get us all shot, you know’ because I dug through the floor and dug down and I could see where workmen had been, electricians or something yes, been working outside and there was a trench near the camp, near the um, wire and so I got down there and then got out there in the early hours of the morning. It was dark and er, I thought I can get under the wire, get under there, escape, fair enough, so I tried this and then I heard a guard approaching with his dog. Dogs, they were more like wolves, and he had got this one and I heard him coming along and so I got out of there, swiftly went up the road, oh yes, and I had an experience, I ran between two huts and I didn’t see wire stretching from one hut to the other and I ran into it, and it got me in the mouth, took me off my feet and I was strung up and the wire went into my mouth and forced, forced my teeth out. I lost seven teeth, and I landed on my back and then there was the guard and the dog, and he was afraid of that dog as I was [laughs], they weren’t trained to be friendly and so I was put into the cooler from there.
AM: What was that like?
RW: Rough. I had water to drink, bread, well when they say bread, black bread, just bread and er, I was in there for over a week.
AM: On your own?
RW: Oh yes, yes, oh yes.
AM: And no teeth.
RW: No teeth, they’d come out, I have no teeth now. I tell people that um, if I’ll say I had my teeth out, all paid for [laughs]. But um, all the time we were trying to, if we had any ideas about escaping, we had they had to go to this Massey who was the -
AM: What was the name sorry, Ron?
RW: Massey, Group Captain Massey, and you had to give your ideas to him for the escape committee, but something we noticed when we first went into Stalag Luft 3, that one part where the fence was, they hadn’t built any German huts or anything there, it hadn’t been finished. And so John Shaw, my good friend, he noticed this first and he said, ‘we’re gonna go try that’, he said, ‘we go first, the four of us’, I forget the other one and he said, ‘I go first because I noticed it first’. I said, ‘okay, then I’ll go, you get away now, I’ll go follow on’.
AM: How were you going to get out, were you going to tunnel under?
RW: Tunnel under there because they hadn’t built anything that side, so this is what we are going to do, and so you’ve got to appreciate, so John decided to go. What happened, bang, bang, and I have a photograph I’ll show you, with John, and shown in his coffin, he was shot right through the heart, so if people thought that these guards were asleep in the huts, no, and they were crack shots, they got him right through the heart, poor John.
AM: So the other three of you didn’t go?
RW: No, we’d been discovered that was it.
AM: Did you know the people who were involved in the great escape?
RW: No.
AM: No.
RW: No, they were mainly officers. You see what happened, we started off these tunnels under the cooking, took that away and then got all that (unclear) and then dug down to do the tunnels, but then again, we said this would happen, the officers took over, we started it as sergeants and then they said, ‘no, we are going to take over’, and then we were moved eventually to Heydekrug.
AM: To?
RW: Heydekrug.
AM: Which is?
RW: Heydekrug.
AM: Which is another camp?
RW: Which is another camp, yes, so we’d done a lot of work. I was, I helped out with moving the earth wearing these things there, but the soil, the soil we brought up from below, it was a different colour, so we had to take this earth from down below, walk around, walk around and distribute it and dig it in as we were moving, because they were watching us all the time.
AM: These are from the tunnels you dug?
RW: That’s right, yes [laughs], and we were getting rid of the earth, tons of earth, you know. It’s boring.
AM: Well yes, what else did you do in camp?
RW: Oh all kinds of things, apart from trying to escape [laughs], and er, we wrote shows. We did this, you see, and Les Knowle became a very good friend of mine and he was a pianist before the war, before he joined up and he, a professional pianist, was very good too.
AM: Was he the one next door to you in Morecambe or a different pianist?
RW: No, no, it was a different one.
AM: A different one.
RW: No, Les Knowle, he was a different one. This one I’m trying to think of his name, Ron, I forget now, but he went on to the BBC and worked from there and he was on the RAF Band.
AM: Yes.
RW: And then he became well known.
[Interruption]
AM: I’m just going to pause for a moment.
RW: Have you anywhere else.
AM: No, no, so we’ve got shows, what about, did you do any education they had?
RW: Oh yes, yes, and um, I’ve a pencil, and I was studying maths actually and I was going to do a course on maths and it was difficult because it was very, very cold, very cold, up in Lithuania, this was and getting close to Russia and so I was studying and then trying to write out holding the pencil.
AM: So literally holding it with whole of your hand?
RW: That’s right.
AM: Trying to write.
RW: Trying to write, it wasn’t easy, but it was quite good and then I studied, I was studying, was architect because I had been in the building trade, you see. I was taken away from the factory when I was fourteen.
AM: When you were fourteen yes.
RW: By my brother-in-law, who was, um, he’d come to the factory, fortunately before they absolutely killed me [laughs], and he said, ‘you, out’ and he took me away and made me an apprenticeship joiner.
AM: So you were a joiner. Going back to the camp in Lithuania.
RW: Oh Yes.
AM: So what happened then as, what did you know about what was happening in the war?
RW: We had clever people as sergeants, not all officers then. We had people from all walks of life as sergeants.
AM: As sergeants yes.
RW: And er, we had entertainers from the stage, and I wrote um, with Les Knowle, he wrote the music and I wrote the words for shows on the stage and I’ll show you a picture of him, but I don’t know if you have ever heard of Roy Dotrice?
AM: Yes
RW: You have? Well Roy, I’ll show you a picture.
AM: His daughter was an actress, Michelle.
RW: That’s right, he had two daughters, one lives in the States, Michelle, I was watching her the other night.
AM: And was he in the prison camp with you?
RW: Yes, yes, and then I never thought that he would, because he was very young, he was born in Jersey and he changed his age. He was very much younger than me then and he came over to the mainland and joined the RAF.
AM: What happened at the end of the war, how did you find out that the war was ending and what happened?
RW: Oh yes, now then, we had our radios that were built out of things, things we’d stolen from the Germans. I remember walking behind one man carrying, carrying a box and stealing something out of there and when they, they used to um, we used to be woken up in the early hours of the morning by the Nazis. They used to come in and get us out of bed, tear the place apart, and never put it back again, and all things taken out and then we would be walking around the compound from the early morning to late at night while these Nazis were searching and they, yes, and they used to go away with things. Oh yes, we used to steal their hats and their gloves and they weren’t very happy [laughs], and also if anyone escaped, they used to have what we called a sheep count, and they’d form up the barriers so we used to have to go through, and they’d check and check the numbers, you see, and we used to go through and then we used to go back round, and come in again, in the end they had more prisoners than they wanted [laughs], and that was one gag we got up to, and then some had contact at home. You’ve possibly seen it in the letters they used a code in a letter which the Germans couldn’t spot.
AM: To say where they were?
RW: That’s right, all kinds of things.
AM: So how did you find out that the war was coming to an end? From the radios?
RW: From the radios we had, yes. We had certain guys who were very clever, clever electricians among us, all kinds of things they used to do, where if a German came in the front about or something, a buzzer would ring at the far end telling whoever was doing something, escape committee at the other end.
AM: To stop them?
RW: Then bury the stuff again.
AM: Gosh.
RW: And then all things like that and um, the, yes, parts for the radios be stolen from the Germans [laughs] and they would build a main radio that one clever man used to operate. I forget the names now and um, they used to come around the huts and give us the, the news we used to get daily news, we knew exactly what was happening back home, and e,r when the invasion came, the first time, the Germans were gloating when they said, ‘that was your invasion’, when so many Canadians were killed, remember, my minds going.
AM: On the beaches at, yes.
RW: Yes, where so many were killed, and the Germans thought that was our invasion. They said, ‘you’ve had your invasion, you’ll be here’, I was told that I would be there for the rest of my life, they used to enjoy telling us this, that we would be there and we will be rebuilding Germany.
AM: Because they would win.
RW: That’s right.
AM: Sadly for them but thankfully for us.
RW: Oh, thankfully for us.
AM: They didn’t.
RW: But they loved telling us that we would be there forever.
AM: When it did all end? Were you involved in the long march?
RW: Oh yes.
AM: You were.
RW: That was the worst part of it.
AM: Gary’s making faces.
Gary: I’ll leave it.
RW: Okay. That was a tough one, the long march.
AM: How long were you on the march for, Ron?
RW: I can’t think now.
AM: Months, it was months, wasn’t it?
RW: Months, months, bad weather, bad weather, so many died, and then we were, we had no food and they’d been trying to get through to us and then this one Red Cross wagon appeared and he said, ‘this is the third load I’ve had. I’ve been shot at, and destroyed, then I have gone back and got another load’, and finally, well you know the story.
AM: Sadly.
RW: And some sights there, on that march, and one man, he was signalling with his coat in the meadow, this meadow where we were, shot up by the fighters and I saw him just cut in the air.
AM: Shot at by German fighters?
RW: No, by our fighters.
AM: By our fighters.
RW: Yes, they thought we were Germans.
AM: Right.
RW: And he was just cut in two, Roger. Next time I saw him, just his legs standing there, top half gone and they killed forty, fifty of us there, it was a rough one. Oh, and we were in twos, they delivered these Red Cross parcels, we shared one between two, and when we were shot at by Typhoons by the way, based locally and all the way through, we’d been shot at by Spitfires, and what have you, Hurricanes, they thought we were Germans. And on one occasion, we were walking, they made us walk at night because, so through the day, we had to sleep in barns with their animals, and the Germans, the German people used to give things to the guards but nothing to us, not like this country where there were prisoners, their prisoners there given food but we never got anything from the Germans. If we wanted a drink, we had to wait till we got to rivers, lakes, or something or get washed.
AM: So how did you get rescued in the end?
RW: Oh that is another story. The 10th Hussars. We were hearing reports our, our troops across the Rhine and how close they were getting and we were being marched away, we were going to be hostages and Hitler would have got rid of us eventually, we’d have been shot or what have you. We were heading for Norway somewhere and they were taking us as we were going to be hostages, but so many things happened we were shut up, barns were set on fire, men were there.
AM: With men in them?
RW: Yes.
AM: Yes. But the 10th Hussars were?
RW: The 10th Hussars caught up with us and oh, they were marvellous, they treated us like royalty. They set up trestles in this village in Ratzeburg in Lubeck, Ratzeburg, and er, this little village and it was in March, was it May?
AM: So May of 45?
RW: We went through Luneburg, where they signed the Armistice, and we went through there and then we came back through there when the signing had been done, and it was marvellous, so they set up tables there with food on, couldn’t eat it.
AM: I was going to say, could you eat it?
RW: No, no. One man died because he tried, he tried to eat, couldn’t. Then we came back from Lowenberg on Lancasters and I’ll never forget seeing white girls, posh ladies all made up, I thought they, I thought they were on the stage somewhere, heavy lipstick.
AM: Once you got back you mean?
RW: And this is when we, no, when the 10th Hussars. Oh yes, that’s another one, we had the, this major, English major. I said, ‘can I help?’ because I had had stomach trouble and couldn’t eat anything, so I felt this marvellous feeling.
AM: Freedom.
RW: Freedom, marvellous after four and a half years, freedom. And I’d stuck my neck out several times, one man, I bent down to pick up food or something, I don’t know what it was, peas somebody dropped on the road, and this guard, he came behind me, kicked me up the backside and I went over and I got up and turned round to gonna belt him, and the look on his face, and his Tommy gun was there waiting for it, just what he wanted. All they wanted, an excuse.
AM: To kill you?
RW: Yes and er -
AM: When you saw the Lancaster?
RW: Oh yes.
AM: You’d been in Whitleys, what did you think of the Lancaster?
RW: We saw the side of it really [laughs].
AM: Four engines.
RW: Four engines, yes, marvellous.
AM: So they brought you home in the Lanc.
RW: Yes, they landed at, forget now where it was, down South somewhere, and as we landed they opened the door and a lovely young WAAF came, and I had my box with some belongings in. This girl got it and I grabbed it back from her she said, ‘it’s all right you are home now’ [laughs] and er, she led me off and as I was talking to her, going up to the hangar, I said, ‘this is a holiday’, this is VE Day, you see. I said, ‘you’re on holiday, what are you doing here?’ She said ‘oh we volunteered, we were the lucky ones’. I couldn’t understand it ‘cos we were filthy and the first this they did - whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
AM: Shower?
RW: Not a shower.
AM: Water?
RW: No - debugged.
AM: Oh right, oh sorry, they sprayed you?
RW: That’s right, yes, before anybody could touch us [laughs] and then they had all this food out, I couldn’t eat anything, not a thing, and then from there we came up on the train to where we went, see that photograph, and we came up there, all there, all the records were up there. That was marvellous. Then one day we were taken over, over there, records and what have you, but I went home and that was a rough time because I found my wife, I had my daughter, was that much older, she was only two and a half when I went away, she was seven she didn’t know me, didn’t know me, didn’t want to know me. And er, then my wife had met me at the station, although I didn’t want to see her because I’d had reports and she wrote to me and didn’t want to know me ‘cos she’d met an American and she wanted to get married to him. And so um, that was my homecoming, didn’t want to know me. I‘d had a letter from her saying she wanted a divorce, which I wanted too after that, and then my folks had been trying to meet the train to tell me what she had been up to, what she’d become, well you can understand it, it had been a long time.
AM: Yes.
RW: But the way she did it, she dyed her hair, it was red, and er, I’d asked a friend in camp who came from Stoke, from near where I was, where I lived, if he could find out why, what’s happening because she didn’t write to me. I’d only one letter that I had and she wanted more money, it’s all she was interested in.
AM: So your pay while you were a prisoner of war goes to your wife, doesn’t it?
RW: That’s right, it went to her and then she wanted more money, and so I came back and went up and met my wife, as I say, I didn’t know anything what she had been doing, no one had told me and this friend in camp, I’d asked him to find out what was happening, why I hadn’t had any letters from my, my wife and er, he put it off all the while. I said, ‘have you heard from your wife?’, ‘no’. I didn’t know anything about it.
AM: He wouldn’t tell you?
RW: No, and so when I got back, it was my wife who knew, my wife. He said to me, he said, ‘Ron, I couldn’t tell you what I found out about her’.
AM: No.
RW: Couldn’t tell you. So I met her and she was all over me and I met all her sisters and her brothers because it’s difficult, very difficult because my folks had been trying to meet me off the train but she’s the one who had been told.
AM: She’s the one who’s entitled to know.
RW: That’s right, and she’d got the time of the train, she met me, all the other trains had been coming in my side had been.
AM: They all missed you?
RW: They’d all missed me, everyone.
AM: Oh dear.
RW: My homecoming and I felt like going back.
AM: You married again though. Amy.
RW: Yes.
AM: I’ve met Amy and she is lovely for the record.
RW: Yes, oh the best thing that ever happened to me.
AM: Wonderful. I’m going to switch off now, Ron.
RW: Yes okay.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ron Wade
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-26
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWadeR150726, PWadeR1503
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:44:54 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Description
An account of the resource
Ron was born in Stoke-on-Trent. He left school at fourteen and tells of his experiences working in a pottery factory doing odd jobs until he was called up. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1939 at the age of twenty-two. Ron trained as an air gunner at RAF Morecambe after initially wanting to be selected for pilot training. He completed his air gunner training in South Wales at the end of the Battle of Britain - he tells of being strafed by a Junkers 88 and the damage that was inflicted to the Nissen huts. Ron flew the Whitley, which he did not enjoy. He then went to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Abingdon before moving to 58 Squadron based at RAF Linton on Ouse. Ron tells of being forced to bale out in 1941 after his Whitley was attacked by two German fighters over the the Netherlands. He did not remember that much since ammunition was exploding and a bullet hit him in the back of the head, leaving him with memory, taste and smell impairment. Ron also tells of his first interrogation by a German officer and how his humour nearly causing trouble at the at Cologne railway station. He was transferred to Stalag Luft I and then to Stalag Luft III. Ron tried a few times to escape but was discovered every time - he also details the death of his close friend during one attempt. Ron was eventually transferred to Stalag Luft VI (Heydekrug, Lithuania) which was his last camp before the end of the war. However, with the end looming, Ron was then forced to go on the long march. He then tells of some of his memories of the event, including being strafed by British fighters. Ron was freed when the British Army 10th Hussars caught up with the group near Lubeck, and he tells the story of his homecoming in May 1945.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lancashire
Netherlands
Poland
Germany
Lithuania
Poland--Żagań
Germany--Barth
Lithuania--Šilutė
Wales
Germany--Oberursel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1945-05
58 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Dulag Luft
escaping
Ju 88
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Morecambe
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
the long march
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/186/2434/PMarshallS1513.2.jpg
df6f6cc8ff0327e30fb6a0b48ae46145
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/186/2434/AMarshallS150508.2.mp3
cfb718b423c94b1acd547feb3a16e437
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
Marshall, Syd
S C Marshall
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. The collection contains two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force), his decorations, training notes, photographs and a photograph album. Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall 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
2015-05-08
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMarshallS150508
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Mick Jeffries, the interviewee is Mr. Sidney Marshall. The interview is taking place on 8th May 2015.
SM: My name is Sid Marshall, I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 8th May 2015. I live in Boston, Lincolnshire, right then? I left school in 1938 at the age of fourteen which most people did in those days, this was about a year before the outbreak of war, so when that started I was still only fifteen, and I had gone to work with a local engineering, agricultural engineering I should say, we were repairing tractors and all kinds of agricultural equipment, and of course this I suppose was considered in war time to be extremely er important, farming, farmers were never called up and that sort of thing, and when I got to be eighteen I er discovered, in conversation with my boss that I was in a reserved occupation, which simply meant that my job was considered more important than me joining the forces, but I think there is a bit of peer pressure comes into it here, everybody keeps saying to me ‘when you joining up, when you joining up’ , and eventually I got a bit fed up with this and I discovered that if I volunteered for aircrew I could get out of it, this was about the only thing I could er go to do, er, which would get me into the forces and away from me civilian job. It’s quite a performance getting in as well, I had, I went one day I was out on the job and I knew the recruiting officer was at the local, [coughs] excuse me, was at the local Job Centre and er so I thought I would go and see them and to my surprise when I got there it was a young lady, and she looked me up and down and I was in my greasy overalls, I suppose I didn’t present a very good picture really, and she said you know I told her I wanted to volunteer for aircrew, and she said, ‘ you know you have to be absolutely fit for aircrew’, and she was sort of trying to be put me off I thought anyway I insisted, and of course that’s how it all started. I didn’t say anything to my boss about it for a start, but I had to tell him when I got called for a medical, I started off, I had to go to Lincoln and this was the same medical that was used for any kind of military service, they used to jokingly say if you had two arms, two feet, and you were felt warm, you were all right, [laughs] you’ve heard that before.
MJ: Yes
SM: Er, anyway I, eventually came round I had to tell him when I went to Lincoln, I said look, tell the boss ‘I said look I’ve volunteered for aircrew duties and I’ve got to go for a medical’, so I went and this was pretty simple really, and er, I there was then a break of probably a couple of months, and I then had to go to Doncaster which was the full aircrew medical. You had to go and be prepared to stay there for a couple of nights, so the thing was spread over three days really. So anyway I got myself to Doncaster, and I found the Selection Board and all that were in the top floor of a multi-storey shop, and er, the first thing you had of course was the medical because if you didn’t pass the medical then you didn’t go any further, and they were very very strictly, they didn’t exactly turn you inside out but very nearly, you had to blow up columns of mercury and hold them, and you had to do various exercises, you were given a much stricter medical then had been for you know for what I call ground crew job. Anyway I passed the medical okay and in fact if you didn’t that was as far as you went, if you hadn’t passed the medical you were sent home again, that got the first day over. The second day [coughs] because I hadn’t been to Grammar School I had to sit a maths and general knowledge sort of test, anyway as an engineer I had been taking lessons in er [coughs] excuse me, in science, er maths and technical drawing, and of course that had boosted my education enough and I managed to slip past the exam okay, and that was about the last thing on that day. The third day you went before a panel of officers and they asked you what you wanted to do, they interviewed you and er, I realised the fact that I hadn’t been to Grammar School was not going to help me and they said ‘what would I like to do?’, and of course I think everybody wanted to be a pilot originally, anyway I told them I had been studying at night school and that and they said ‘ oh I think you’ll just about make it’, but to try and put me off they said ‘we have got such a lot of applications we probably won’t be able to take you in for seven or eight months’, I think it was just a gag really to put you off. Anyway they then asked me was I what work I had done and as soon as I mentioned that I had been working in engineering for four years, ‘oh your just the chap we want you can become a flight engineer’ and I’m afraid my sealed, fate was sealed at that, so that’s how it all came about. I went back home anyway and told my boss that I’d be going shortly but I was another, I should think another two or three months before they called me up, and er, anyway that was it, he never got on to me about it I think he understood how I felt, and he did say, ‘well your job will be there when you come back’, which was fair enough wasn’t it. Anyway the time came round for me to go and I found myself on Boston Station early one morning with my little suitcase bound for Kings Cross. I got on the first train and er, when I got to Kings Cross there was an NCO working there, waiting I should say, and by that time there were seven or eight of us who were all going to the same place, we had to report to what they call the er, er, oh dear, RTO, that’s the Rail Travel Officer, and er she gathered us all up and then we set off on the underground to St. John’s Wood Tube Station. We got off the station there and there was a corporal there waiting, marched us in some sort of disorder to the holy, holy place, Lords Cricket Ground, that was where it all happened. The first day we got there, we were booked in, they took our names and that sort of thing, and then we were given a card with a number on it and told to go and sit in the grandstands until we were called, of course there were hundreds of other lads there, and er, eventually my lot was called, and you went in and you had another er medical, it was only brief, it was what they called, it had all these er initial letters in the forces, this was an FFI, free from infection, I don’t quite know what they thought what we’d had picked up in the interim, but anyway it wasn’t very severe that one, and we went on, and then er, the next then we got to er [coughs] we went and got kitted out, we were given a kit bag and you went down the line, and I was fascinated by how they got the size of uniform right, there was a sloping line on the wall marked off in feet an inches, and as you walked by one bloke called your height out [laughs].
MJ: [laughs].
SM: Another bloke put a tape measure round your chest and that’s why, that’s how they decided the size of uniform unit. So you finish up with arms full of stuff and a kit bag, and we stowed all that lot in there and that’s about all we did the first day, and of course the next day we had to kit ourselves up in uniform and something else that really tickled me was [coughs], we decided that, you’ve seen Poiroit on the television haven’t you in these very posh block of flats, well we were in one of those, mind you it wasn’t very posh, there was nothing much on the floor and each room just had a double bunk each side and that was it there was nowhere to hang your clothes up or anything else, if you aren’t wearing it, it lives in your kit bag [laughs] or hung on the end of your bed, and we er, and we were there in all for about three weeks, and when I wrote home my address sounded very good, and it was er, the house was called Grove Court Mansions and it was in Grove End Road, St. John’s Wood, London, which is a very posh address isn’t it, and of course when my mother wrote back, she said ‘ [unclear] lad you’ve got such a nice place’, I didn’t disillusion her, [laughs] I let her think if she was happy I would leave it at that [laughs], and we were there for about three weeks altogether, we started to drill, we had another full medical, we were divided up into swimmers and non-swimmers, and we started er the you know we had our meals by the way, the zoo of course was closed in those days, London Zoo, not being too far away we used their canteen that was our cookhouse, we had our meals there, and anyway time passed pretty quickly and we got to know er some of the other lads, there were four of us in this room and er, I, and we managed right the way through our training to keep together [coughs]. As I say in all we were about there for three weeks and then one night we were packed up and we were put back on the underground again back to Kings Cross Station, and they never tell you where you were going, and when you got to Kings Cross, I thought if you are going to Kings Cross you are going North. We got to er, overnight, we travelled at midnight, I think they put troops and that on the train at night to leave the trains free for the civilians in the day time, imagine that was the idea. Anyway we found ourselves in the early hours of the morning at er York, clambered out there and we were put on another train and er we arrived quite early in the morning at Scarborough, and here’s another posh address the place we went to there was called The Grand Hotel, and of course the forces used these places, they were empty in those days, nobody taking holidays were they, but it wasn’t very grand, but we didn’t have to worry us too much, because we had our breakfast there and then we were all drawn up outside and we were ticked off where we gonna’ go and they found there wasn’t room for us all at er Scarborough, so my flight which consisted of something like thirty of us were put on a train again and went to Bridlington, and this is where I did my, we got these letters again, this is ITW, Initial Training Wing, and when we were in London it was ACRC, which sounds a bit queer but it was Air Crew Reception Centre, you get used to all these letters don’t you. So this was where our initial training was going to be and in all I think we were there for about eight weeks, and it was the middle of winter and we used to do PT on the beach in the snow with the spray blowing off the sand, and do you know you never catch cold because you are fit aren’t you, and er when we went into the er Ex’, we were based in the Expanse Hotel, which I’ve seen since it’s still there, it is one of the top hotels, but of course they took us to these places ‘cause there was accommodation available didn’t they. We lived on the ground floor of the hotel in my particular case, and we were told when we went out to leave all the windows open get some fresh air in, well the sea was rough and the spray was blowing as well [laughs] which didn’t help matters. Anyway we were introduced then to our er instructor, a drill instructor, Corporal Horrocks, I won’t tell you what we called him, because would it be rude to mention it?
MJ: If you want to.
SM: [laughs].
MJ: It’s up to you.
SM: I won’t mention it, but you can guess what it was, he was a very nice chap actually, and er the only trouble was he was, we got lads there some of them from London, some of them from all over the country, and he was a Geordie, and you just couldn’t understand what he said a lot of the time, his favourite thing we used to drill in the streets, and of course along the seafront, no traffic about in those days as nobody had any petrol did they, and we used to be marching up and down there and I remember one occasion we came out of a side turning up to the promenade and he said something, he said ‘hey up [?]’, and we didn’t know if he said right or left and we parted company like that you know, one line went left the others went right, and there was a group of women coming up there with their shopping bags laughing their socks off at us [laughs], and of course he bollocked us as they say for that [laughs], but he was actually a very nice bloke he didn’t mess us about too much, and er we did, we had lectures in the Spa which is a sort of dance hall place there isn’t it, and we were, and I think the main thing was getting us fit, we sometimes we’d go jogging in just of a pair of shorts and if you like a vest if you like, and I remember on one occasion, while we had it I don’t know we had a rifle, a bayonet, a tin hat and all that and a gas mask, we never used any of those things did we? Anyway we, they took us one day, I’ve forgotten the name of the place there, seaside on the coast near er, and we all got out and er we had to march to the far end which was probably three or four miles and then we this lorry followed us up, we had to chuck all our kit in the back of the lorry get stripped off and run back, [laughs] this is all part of the getting fit process, and we had lectures as I said in the Spa, er it’s surprising we did drill instruct, drill we had to do shooting, we then started using, do clay pigeon shooting which was shooting at moving targets which I think was more akin to aircrew than anything else wasn’t it, anyway we were you know there in all for about eight weeks, and then we got at the end of the time we, it happened to be Christmas, we were very, very, lucky, we were sent home we had a ticket wherever you were going to get home and then we had to go back to London, so I was home for Christmas so that was very nice, I had a full week at home, and then I was back to Boston Railway Station again and down to Kings Cross and we had to return, and again we had to report to the RTO, that’s the Rail Travel Officer, they had these offices on all the main stations to you know supervise troops travelling about telling them where to go and all that sort of thing, and this time we were put on a train we knew were we were going, er we were put on a train to Wales, and we rode at first of all, I think we got as far as Cardiff and we had to change onto a slow local train then and this was taking us to our final destination for that, we pulled up er, went through Barry, and er we eventually stopped on the little wayside station it was at the bottom of cutting and it was one of those places where there was only about one man there he was the station master, the signal, the porter, and everything else, and er we got off the train there and er we then marched up there was a corporal, there always corporals aren’t they, corporal met us, with all our kit and that we were marched up to the RAF Station at Saint Athan, this was where we were to be for the next, I don’t know seven or eight months. In the war time you know the courses get shortened, I think the engineer’s course at one time would probably be nearer eighteen months, at the time I got there it was down to about seven or eight months, and er, if you had er, some people had engineering experience like myself didn’t find it too difficult, but some of the lads had never touched it and they of course you know an exam about every fortnight and if you didn’t get on very well you got put back a week, and I think if you got put back more than twice you were kicked off the course [laughs]. Anyway we were there for, let me just get my book, I’d only really got to er we’d just arrived at Saint Athan hadn’t we, for our training, I didn’t realise then how long it would be but we actually, er training of flight engineers lasted about seven months, and it covered all aspects of the aircraft, we had to know a little bit about everything, we had to know about the hydraulics, I mean the undercarriage and the bomb doors and all that sort of thing are all hydraulic, so then we had to learn about brakes because they’re pneumatic, and we had to learn about the engines and how to get the best out of them and keep in in an eye in view the amount of fuel we were using, if you opened the engines up too much the fuel consumption went up drastically and if you did that too much you might think you hadn’t got enough fuel to get home with again [laughs], this is the sort of things you had to you know get used to, but this is what we were taught to do, we had at the end of it we had actually we had an exam about every couple of weeks and if anybody was not quite up to scratch they were put back and did that section over again and you could do that twice but if you did it more than twice you got chucked off the course for taking too long [laughs]. All in all I was at Saint Athan for about seven months, you can’t really go into detail about it, it’s too technical and too complicated, but we had a [unclear] a list of all the things we had to do anything mechanical or anything that worked was my option, and my most important job really was in a Lancaster you know you got four engines and you got six fuel tanks and normally the two sides of the aircraft are separate, there is a valve in the mains bar[?] where you can open so you can transfer fuel from one site to the other, [sighs] but normally you took off on the middle tank, there was a tank between the engine and the fuselage, another one between the two engines and the third one was out in the, out part of the wing, so you’ve got, your wings are full of petrol and the floor underneath you was full of bombs, it’s not a very good situation really to be in is it, you don’t really want to get hit, and er, the most important job I had to do was, ‘cos an aero engine uses a lot of fuel er, anywhere between about twelve hundred and fifty horsepower each engine, in fact to put it an easier way a Lancaster did about one mile to the gallon, which is pretty [unclear], not far is it, and if you had a full load of petrol you could go out somewhere there and back and do two thousand miles and that was about your limit, you always had to keep at least a hundred or nearly two hundred gallons er back for landing you don’t want to be landing on your last gasp of fuel do you, and when of course they were arranging operations they took the weight of the aircraft and er then they [coughs] I had to look at the plan and calculate how many miles it was there and back, shall we say if was probably fourteen hundred miles there and back, and without going into decimal places the Lancaster did about one mile to the gallon, so okay fourteen hundred miles you want fourteen hundred gallons of petrol and they gave you two hundred gallons extra that’s your safety margin, so if all goes well you should arrive back at base with two hundred gallons of petrol, but it does allow for the fact you might get delayed, you might have a head wind which might make it take a bit longer to get back home again, you might not be able to land at your own base because it’s probably fog bound, so you have the hours grace, and I remember of one occasion we had to, we came over, got over Britain and we set off, er the bomb aimer, sorry, the navigator gave the pilot his last course back to base, we hadn’t been going long before we had a radio call through to say that we couldn’t land at base because it was covered in fog, and er we were to land I think it was somewhere in Norfolk, anyway that’s fair enough so we made a slight alteration of course and we are heading towards this not long after that we got another message to say we couldn’t land, it was Langham in Norfolk, can’t land there it’s now fog bound as well, so we start to circle around and they said to stand by, so did a wide circle round, we went round a couple of times, and I said to all of them [unclear] ‘we soon want to be landing somewhere because we are getting down on fuel’, and almost at the same time the wireless op, the mid upper gunner came on the, on the intercom and said ‘I can see a glow in the sky skipper it might be FIDO’, you know fog dispersal, so we made our way over there and we’d been told to stand by but we never got any further instructions I think they were struggling to find us anywhere to land, so we went on and we circled round over this and your call log if you were in trouble you called dark here, that was your trouble, it mean’t you were in difficulties, and our, our call sign was suedecoat, aircraft was C-Charlie, so you called ‘darkie darkie from suedecoat charlie’ and we got an immediate call back the usual lady’s voice, WAFS, ‘are you over an airfield with FIDO burning?’, so we think we are because we could see the glow in the sky so we came down a bit lower and er we called em again and they gave us landing instructions, and it was quite, I say it was a bit scary really, because do you know what FIDO was made of there were pipes laid down by the side of the fuselage, the runway, not too close to the runway, they were blocked off at one end and then holes drilled, a bit crude really, holes drilled in them and at the upper end near the entrance to the runway was a pump and a fuel tank and they were pumping neat petrol into these, and I don’t know who did it some brave guy must have gone out and lit it probably used a flare or something like that, and they only did about half the length of the runway but when you got lower you could actually see the flames and you usual drill was, er ‘yes Charlie you are clear to land call down wind’ that’s when you are coming down wind, so we called ’Charlie down wind’, you’ve got your wheels down, got your flaps down, [?] down, you then turn and say ‘Charlie Roger call funnels’ and your lights from the high up looked like a funnel that tapered into the runway, so they guided you onto the runway, in this case it was the flames, so we got on funnels they called ‘Charlie funnels’ they said ‘Charlie [?] mission is a Charlie pancake’ that means land, so we landed and there was a bar of flames and when we went over the bloody aircraft went ugh like than [laughs], like a kick up the backside, because tremendous heat from these flames literally lifted the aircraft, anyway we came in and we landed, I had my fingers crossed ‘cos I knew we’d got some damage, I said to Luke[?]the skipper ‘I hope to Christ we haven’t got a flat tyre if we swing off into that lot it will be unfortunate’, anyway we landed all right we taxied to the end and er a vehicle met us there and we followed it round, they took us round into a spare dispersal and of course you went through your drill close your engines down everything else, shut everything off, and er you can’t really leave anything in the aircraft so we went out loaded up with our parachutes and everything else which, we were then taken to a room where we was briefed, debriefed, and we discovered that the aircraft there were Mosquitoes, because one or two of them took off in that lot to go and bomb, so that’s they were using the flares to guide them, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it, we heard this roaring come along, said ‘Christ it’s a Mosi’. Anyway we were debriefed, then we were given a meal and then we were given an armful of blankets and pointed toward a hangar, a Nissen hut, you go in there and there was Buckaroo [?] on the floor, it’s like dark brown lino on the floor usually isn’t it just so you can sweep it up, and you make your bed up and I think we was that ruddy tired, we just chucked the, we had three biscuits you know what biscuits are? Three padded squares that you put end to end, tuck a blank around it and that’s your base for your bed, I don’t know if we even bothered to do that we were that ruddy tired I think be then we just crashed out and went to sleep, we couldn’t get undressed ‘cos you’d nothing with you, trouble is when you got diverted like, you got no shaving kit, you got no ‘jamas or anything like that, you just had you were in what you were. Then we slept the sleep of the just there and next morning we went we found out, found the sergeants mess and had some breakfast, very much do it yourself isn’t it [laughs], and then we got, er we went to see, I think we went to see the CO or the squadron leader anyway, and he said ‘well you chaps look as if you are stuck here we can’t er, you’ve got some damage which your aircraft has got to be repaired before you can take it off again, you might even need an engine change’, and we discovered it was two days before Christmas and we knew we’d got Christmas festivities on at our base, ‘that’s bloody handy we are going to be stuck here over Christmas’, anyway our skipper went to see the adjutant and they had a bit of argy bargy with him and he came back and he said ‘we’re going home on the train’, we did we got [laughs] he’d got a , he’d got a ticket for the lot of us, so we the truck took us to the, I can’t remember where the nearest railway station was, um it might have been Cambridge even, I don’t know, I can’t remember now it’s a long long time ago. Anyway we got on there and we had to get on the train I think it took us to Norwich, then we had to go across to Peterborough, and then when we got to, we went through Boston and er we went back we got back to Grimsby, and then we had to get on a packed line from Grimsby to Elsham, now that railway train ran through Elsham that was still about three miles away from the camp, anyway we rung up and they come and picked us up, and you do, you don’t ‘cos we took our parachute with us and everything, and when you get on a train with your flying kit carrying your parachute you get some very funny looks off people [laughs], that was one of the most interesting things that ever happened to us, and anyway we had our ‘cos when you went on ops you emptied your pockets you’d no money, you’d nothing have you, you couldn’t even go in the sergeants mess and buy a pint as you’d no money. We had our Christmas there, and I, shows you in my book anyway, em I think we had Christmas and it was about four days after Christmas eventually one of our other crews flew us back to Graveley to pick our aircraft up, so we didn’t do anything for nearly a week [laughs] is that the sort of thing you’d be interested in?
MJ: Yes
SM: That’s a bit unusual and er.
MJ: Yes
SM: That was, we were halfway through a tour when we did that, but it’s just something that came to mind. I think er the first time we ever went out we got hit, I’m going backwards now. When you got the you’d finished your full training, ‘cos we did some further training after we got posted to a squadron and er we thought well we’d only done about nine and a half hours flying on a Lancaster, we did our ITW that’s interesting our heavy conversion[?} rather on Halifaxes, which wasn’t very good for me because I’d been trained to go on Lancs’ so I had to learn about Halifax a bit quick we did about sixty seven hours flying on heavy conversion unit[?} and then we went to Lancaster Finishing School and we went to Elsham we’d only nine and half hours flying on the Lancaster which wasn’t very much was it? We found out when we got there the reason was though because we’d, know you know what H2S is now the down [?] scanning radar and not all squadrons had it. The reason we went to the squadron was we were nearly there for nearly a fortnight before we did any operations because we’d never seen this apparatus before and the bomb aimer was the set operator so he had to learn all about the H2S and then we had to go on cross country flights using it to get the hang of it and get used to it so we were a fortnight really before we did any operations and of course we eventually we were ready [laughs], and that was I think it was the 14th October 1944, and er, the first, did I had already mentioned when we got, no I haven’t, um, so no I was going to say we got hit on our first trip didn’t I. We went our first trip was to Duisburg and er over the target we were going lined up you got, once your bomb aimer has taken over you can’t diverge you have to do what he says, he’ll say ‘left, left, steady’ and ‘right, right, steady’ and then when you dropped your bombs you also drop a photo flash and you take a photograph, well of course the photograph doesn’t want to happen until the bombs have hit the ground does it, so you going along straight and level over there you’re being shot at but you can’t do anything about it because you have got to keep straight and level and er then a light comes on on the dashboard telling you that the photographs been taken, and then you can open the throttle, put the nose down and get the hell out of it [laughs], and while we was over Duisburg I was also we used to have another job had to do was throwing bundles of Window, you know strips of silver paper, there was a chute in the nose of the aircraft and this stuff came in bundles with a bit of string looped through a brown paper wrapper, pull the string, tore the wrapper and you put it out the chute and it scattered all over and it caused blips on the radar which they couldn’t pick out the aircraft from the rubbish if you like, and I was down in the, down in the nose doing that, and of course er this pilot shouts out he said ‘come and look at this engine’, and I scrambled up and there were flames coming up out of the side of the end [?] port engine, and you remember to do your drill, the first thing you do is shut the fuel off, close the throttle, wait while the engine slows down then you know what I mean by feathering it, you know what I mean by feathering it , but if you don’t feather it the windmill will keep turning, so you have to turn the blades of the air screw so that the edge on to the wind so it’s stop turning and then and only then you can fire, fire extinguishers in the engine cowling, there’s two extinguishers in each engine fastened on the back plate and er you just press a button and er ‘cos there was flames coming out of the engine but we didn’t know what it was at the time and it went out, but we discovered afterwards if it had been petrol it probably wouldn’t have gone out, but a piece of shrapnel had gone through the side of the engine, smashed a hole the size of my palm in the engine casting and of course the oil spilled out and got on the red hot manifold [?] it was the oil that was burning fortunately for us not petrol, so that was our first time out we came back on three engines [laughs]. Just by way of introduction. Switch it off a minute. - Is it ready?
MJ: Yes.
SM: Well on this occasion I was asked to speak at a meeting which was a fundraiser aimed at raising funds for the new spire to go up on Canwick Hill, and I said I was wondering really what I could talk to you about, something I’ve often been asked about was what was it like to fly in a bombers stream at night, I said when you took off of course from your station you circled round over your own base until you had a time to set course, and I said there were several in er problems arose there because you’ve got people going right and people met head on an all this and collisions, so we had a special arrangement where we went from our base to Goole to Crowle to Scunthorpe and then back, all the aircraft in that area went round this big circuit instead of meeting other head on and that kind of thing and when it was your time to set course the navigator would tell you and you’d cut across and er so you set course at the right time, and well on this occasion I’m thinking about we often flew down to Reading and of course if there was no enemy activity over England you could keep your navigation lights on, you’ve got a red and a green light on your wing tip and a tail light that’s all you have got in’it, you don’t have any headlights or anything on car on aircraft, I said to you we flew down to Reading we changed course and then we [coughs], excuse me, we headed towards the coast and as we crossed the coast everybody starts to switch their lights off ‘cos you going in to over enemy territories and over the sea, so as up to then you can see one another ‘cos you’ve got lights on, now it’s all gone dark and it’s dark outside, I said the nearest thing I can give it to you is, you imagine you are driving down a motorway and everybody has their lights on and all of after time they start switching their lights off, first this one and then that one, and you finish up you are still bombing along there at about seventy miles an hour and now you can’t see one another, and I said you’ve got your eyes peeled you are looking in the dark because in an aircraft you you’re going a good deal faster er even with a bomb load on you probably cruising at about hundred sixty five or hundred and seventy mile an hour, and I said you find that er we used to have, I would sit beside the pilot, the pilot’s looking out in the front and over to his wing tip, I’m taking that side from the front round to the wing tip, the gunners are taking a quarter of the sky each at the back and if he is not doing anything else the wireless operator probably stood in the astrodome he’s keeping a look out as well, so you’ve got have five pairs of eyes looking out, and I said you see people sometimes coming when you get to a turning point everybody doesn’t always turn exactly the same you find somebody drifting towards so you have to go up a bit and he goes underneath you and then you turn and then you probably find you are chopping somebody else off, I said it was a bit scary, it was, that’s about as much as I told ‘em [laughs], and that was gonna’ last the rest of the trip wasn’t it, you didn’t put your lights on again until you were back over friendly territory at er it was a bit scary really the er you can imagine if it [unclear]. Anyway I er – I think that’s about it, was that any good? I remember being asked at a meeting some time ago to speak for a short amount of time I was at a loss to know what to talk about and I suddenly thought about to mention what it was like to fly in a column of aircraft at night, there could be three or four hundred aircraft all going to the same place, and er there would be spaced out of course, each aircraft had a time to be over the target and that sort of thing and it really meant that a raid that was gonna’ last er probably twenty minutes the aircraft flying at hundred eighty miles an hour roughly I mean, twenty minutes so that means that you’ve got a string of aircraft probably sixty miles long and that’s [perfectly fine until you get to a turning point when you find that er you’ve got you’ve got no lights on of course and er you might see a little bit of exhaust flame, but they carefully put some covers over the exhaust because it gave your position away to the fighters but also it mean’t so you couldn’t see one another either [laughs], it’s do debatable which is the worst situation, but getting along talking about what it was like at night if we were flying over England you could keep your navigation lights on providing there was no enemy action and I think on one occasion we flew down to Reading and then turned across head towards the coast as we got approached the coast everybody switched their lights off and of course you could see one another with your lights on so now we’re going along, your flying along at about hundred and sixty, hundred and eighty miles an hour and you can’t really see where you’re going, and on top of that you can’t see the other people who are going with you, er all you might get is a flicker of light now and then from something and er and I know it was the case of the pilot looking out the front and across to his wing tip and I’d be doing sitting at the side of him providing I wasn’t doing anything else keeping a look out, the gunners had got a quarter of the sky each er which they’re looking out for aircraft coming up behind you and er[coughs] excuse me – getting lost – I’m sorry I’ve lost my track.
MJ: That’s all right.
SM: The nearest thing I can tell you to flying along in a group of aircraft at night with no lights on, I want you to imagine that you probably driving down a motorway at night and everything is lit up as usual, headlights, sidelights, a bit of street lighting, you imagine what it would be like if suddenly the all the lights went off gradually, first one switches their lights off and then another, and you finish and you are still buzzing along probably sixty seventy miles an hour but now you can’t see one another and it was exactly like that in the air, unless somebody got very close to you, you couldn’t see them you had to keep a really good lookout, and er it was certainly the worst point was when you reached the point where you’re changed direction and you’ve got people cutting across the front of you and you went up a bit and let them go underneath or dived under or went underneath and so you could keep an eye on them and it really was quite exciting, never muind exciting it was ruddy dangerous really wasn’t it [laughs], but er that was what it was like, and er you had everybody provided everybody kept on time it wasn’t too bad but it was still a crush when something like three or four hundred aircraft all going to pass over the target in the space of about twenty minutes and er it really I think that was one of the most dangerous things apart from enemy action of course which er hopefully you’d avoid. – You asked me what I did on VE Day as it happens I was home on leave and of course as you can imagine there was great excitement everywhere and add to that we were very fortunate in Boston that the annual May Fair was there and of course this gave us something to do and I remember me meeting up with some of my friends I mean er a lot of them were away in the Far East and all over the place but there always seemed to be somebody you could meet up with, we’d got a couple of pals and then we got along with some er local people we had also one of my pals who was in the Navy joined us and we came across a I think it was a sergeant in the American Air Army and he seemed to be on his own a bit so we adopted him as well, and you know how it goes on these nights you [unclear] you pick up until you’ve got a little group don’t you and I remember particularly that we er went into one or two of the pubs and of course beer was always short in those days it wasn’t very long before they ran dry we came out of there and went somewhere else, there was a lot of toing and froing in that respect and by the end of the evening we had er several sufficiently to put is in a good humour I’ll put it that way, and I do remember particularly towards the end of the evening we had the sudden idea that we would swap clothes and I think I finished up the day with this American chaps tunic I think he was a sergeant actually, and one of my pals had got his sailors hat on, and we were all mixed up and we were going round, it was really very jovial and thoroughly I think we had a jolly good time and nobody considered the fact that we were improperly dressed or anything [laughs] silly like that it was just a jolly old night and a really memorable occasion, and it’s not the sort of thing that it happens every day very often is it?
MJ: No.
SM: Was that all right?
MJ: Sidney Marshall let me thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command History Project, this is the end of the recording taken by Michael Jeffries on the date of the 8th May 2015 at three thirty. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Syd Marshall
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:44:58 audio recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-08
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMarshallS150508
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney Marshall grew up in Lincolnshire and worked as an agricultural engineer. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force at eighteen and trained as a flight engineer. On his first operation to Duisburg one of his Lancaster's engines was hit by shrapnel and they returned on three engines. Returning from another operation they had to divert and land at a station in Norfolk with the help of FIDO, as the aircraft was nearly out of fuel. He also discusses what it was like to fly at night over Germany as part of a stream of hundreds of aircraft, and his experiences of VE day celebrations in Boston.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Duisburg
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-10-14
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jackie Simpson
103 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
FIDO
flight engineer
H2S
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Mosquito
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF St Athan
recruitment
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/4/9/PAndersonW1501.1.jpg
b8318f95c9e8a84de911a5de119b51d1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/4/9/AAndersonW150517.1.mp3
ef44f5cd625b5a6c6073e5750d52d7b0
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
Anderson, William
William Anderson
Les Anderson
W L M Anderson
William Leslie Milne Anderson
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer William Leslie Milne Anderson (1925 - 2018, 196733 Royal Air Force), and one photograph. William Anderson was a flight engineer and flew operations in Lancasters with 166 Squadron from RAF Kirmington.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by William Anderson and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Anderson, W
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
WA: My name is William Lesley Milne Anderson, and I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre, on the seventeenth of May, 2015 [pause] at – where am I [pause] at Beverley, in Yorkshire.
MJ: Right that’ll –
WA: Right [pause] I was a flight engineer on Lancaster aircraft. My rank a, at the end was flying [emphasis] officer. [Pause] I went to Edinburgh Aircrew Recruitment Centre when I was eighteen and a quarter, hoping to join the RAF and to fly. Everybody wanted to be a pilot. I went there with a school pal of mine who was going to join up as well, but we were told, at that time, if we wanted to be down for pilots, if we pass the various medical and tests, we would have to wait for nine months before we were called up. So this friend of mine decided, ‘fair enough’, to accept nine months wait so that he could eventually become a pilot, whereas I decided that I’d go for something else, and when I asked what was available to go more or less straight away I was told ‘a flight engineer’, so I said ‘that’ll do me fine’. [Pause] I w – when war broke out I’d only be, oh, fourteen [pause] and [pause] but, I thought ‘well, if I’ve got to go into the forces, I would rather fly somewhere than walk in the Army [laughs] to get there’, so that’s why I chose the Air Force. The training was at a place called Saint Athan in South Wales, that was after – well funnily enough, I had to report to Lords cricket ground, and that was where we had a medical and were issued with a uniform, and then we were marched along to a part of London called Saint John’s Wood, and when we had to go and collect our pay one day we were marched to the zoo [emphasis], I thought – was funny, I been in the Air Force and I’ve landed in a cricket ground, in a block of flats, and I get paid from the zoo [laughs]. So I thought ‘when do I see an aeroplane’. However, I was, was going to have to wait quite a bit longer [emphasis] because after, think it was a fortnight or three weeks, we were posted to Torquay, and when we got to Torquay we found that quite a lot of the hotels [pause] had been taken over by the RAF, and there, once again [emphasis], no aeroplanes in sight! But we did the basic training, the marching, ohhhh, the guard duties, even a bit of clay pigeon [emphasis] shooting, and this went on for about twelve weeks, and after the twelve weeks we were sent off to Saint Athan, and at last [emphasis] thank goodness, there were aeroplanes, because [pause] it was – I can’t remember exactly how long, but it was interesting, not sitting in little classrooms, but in a big [pause] building – a hanger I suppose – divided up into sections, where you could hear what was going on just across the wooden division that was separating you from the next group. So anyway – oh I missed the bit out where, at – the important bit, was I couldn’t swim [emphasis] [pause] and, they didn’t tell me, when I got to Torquay, until I got to Torquay, that I had to pass a swimming [emphasis] test, and so they took us down to the harbour, and the Corporal lined at the squad I was in [?], on the harbour, and told us we were going to jump in, and swim down just about twenty yards to a set of steps so that we could climb up to the top again. Luckily we had a Mae West , but [emphasis] my name being Anderson, on some occasions, is very handy because quite often you’re first, but in this case there was a chap called Adams before me, and when the Corporal said ‘Adams, jump in’, Adams said ‘I can’t swim, I’m not jumping in’, and so he said ‘Anderson, in you go’, and I said ‘I can’t swim, I’m not jumping in’, and so he said ‘if you go in the way I tell you to, you’ll go in and hit the water without doing yourself any damage. If I’ve got to push [emphasis] you in, you might land on your head or your back or your behind’, so bearing in mind that we got a Mae West on, he said ‘curl your toes over the edge of the harbour wall [pause] hold your nose, and take one step forward’, and of course, went down, and when I opened my eyes under water I saw millions of little bubbles, and with a Mae West on I was shot to the surface and up, and somehow or other I managed to get to the steps – don’t know how. But, when all the squad had been in, there was Adams, still in the water, still in the same spot where he’d jumped in, paddling like mad but going nowhere. So the Corporal said, ‘one of the swimmers, jump in, drag him to the side’, and that was our introduction to swimming. The rest of the swimming was done in the baths. And then, when we got to Saint Athan we carried on with swimming there. [Pause] Now, so, we did quite a bit of training at Saint Athan, I would say it was a very good course, and so, when the course was finished, although we’d made some friends during the time we were there, we were broken up by being posted to different placed training units up and down the country. I landed up in 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme just outside Doncaster. That was where I met the crew. The six other crew had been together for a while, flying of course, in two-engined Wellingtons, and the Conversion Unit was to convert them to four engine aircrafts so they had to pick up a flight engineer. At that time, which would be [pause] forty-three [pause] forty-three, most of the Lancasters were going from the factories to the squadrons, so we were actually trained on Halifaxes [pause] and then after a course there we went for a fortnight to RAF Hemswell which at that time was number one Lancaster finishing school, and we were only there for [pause] two weeks, and I seem to remember [pause] most of the work that we did there was ground work on the systems different in the Lancaster from the Halifaxes and the flying [pause] consisted only of circuits and bumps, daylight, circuits and bumps at night, and the number of flying errands we did was eight, and we were sent off to the squadron, and the squadron happened to be 166 Kirmington, which nowadays is, of course, Humberside International Airport. [Pause] At Kirmington [pause] it was a fairly basic [emphasis] airfield, had only opened in forty-three, near the end of the year, and [pause] roundabout in the countryside there were lots and lots of trees, forest, and the, the huts, the mission huts we were in, were in the trees. Fair bit of walking to be done to get to the airfield if you happen to miss the transports, but [pause] on the whole, it was Kirmington village, the people were very good to us, although I didn’t particularly drink, there was only one pub in the village [pause] that was in forty-four by this time – May. Now [pause] oh, got stuck, um, yes. The crew that I joined at Lindholme contained three Canadians, the mid-upper gunner, the rear gunner, and bomb aimer, were all from Canada. The pilot was English, from Halifax, the navigator was from Leicester, and the wireless operator was from a village – I’ve forgotten the name of the village again, but up somewhere around Newcastle. [Pause] Anyway, off we go, and start operations. We were lucky [pause] inasmuch that the battle for Berlin had finished roughly in the January of that year, because Berlin causalities had been heavy. Many of the trips that we did were not long trips because at that time – [pause] oh, forgotten, sixth of June, D-Day, that was the start, that was my first operation, sixth of June, D-Day, and that was to a marshalling yard north of Paris. A lot of marshalling yards had, were being attacked to make sure that the troops and supplies didn’t reach D-Day, er, reach the [pause] [knocks on something] [pause] and of course [pause] doodlebugs had put in an appearance, and so they had to be taken care of, and so many of the doodlebugs were, weren’t very far in to France, so a number of the trips were fairly short. For that we were thankful. Some of the trips of course were quite long. Anyway, we had got there in May, forty-four, and we did our last trip on the thirtieth of August forty-four. My skipper, the navigator, and myself, were all posted back to Lindholme as instructors. My skipper decided that he would like to stay in the RAF and by this time he had become a squadron leader, so he applied for a permanent commission. He stayed in and did his time after the war was finished, and finished up as Group Captain Laurie Holmes DFC, AFC [pause] and the OBE [laughs]. [Pause] When the war finished, because of my age I knew my demob group was a long way off, and I didn’t see much point in instructing to pass crews on to still to squadrons as if the war was still on, so I applied to join Transport Command. [Pause] Just as well, because, although the war finished, May, forty-five, I didn’t get out until, somewhere about August forty-seven! [Laughs]. But in that time I saw quite a bit of the world and got paid for it in Transport Command, flying on Yorks, which was virtually a Lancaster with a different shaped body. First flying carrying freight, because they changed the shape of the body so that freight could go easily in, or seats could be put in for passengers. After a number of trips taking us as far as Delhi and back, we were reassessed and went on to passenger carrying. Still Yorks, of course this time with seats in, and we went as far as Changi, Singapore, and that was our turnaround point, and came back. [Unclear muttering] [break in tape]. Well luck [emphasis] had to play a big part in things, I mean as I said earlier on, many, a number of our flights were fairly short because it was the time when doodlebugs were around, and they had got to be get rid [emphasis] of. Also, when you found that you were maybe down for mining. Mining was considered a, oh, quite a, you know, easy [emphasis] flight, mining, going along drop some mines in the water, come back. But we, one night, had to go to a place about fifty miles from Russia, right along the Baltic, and there were the airfield next to us, or closest to us, was called Elsham Wolds and there they had a, oh well all together there twelve Lancasters going mining at this target, all that distance away, and five were from Kirmington, and seven were from Elsham Wolds. Now because it was near the end of our tour, [unclear] some systems and some squadrons where, as you were classed as being more experienced, you moved up, from say maybe the third wave, to the second, to the first, and somebody got to be first in dropping – until this particular night we were down to drop first, the mines. But we went out with four hundred other aircraft that were going to Keel, but so we left this country, crossed the North Sea, in the company of four hundred other aircraft. Didn’t see four hundred aircraft but nevertheless, that’s what they said there were there, and then they turned off to starboard, to head for Kiel, where we kept on along the Baltic – twelve of us, supposed to be. As we got near the target [pause] a searchlight popped up, and another one, and another one, the three of them started waving around and we thought ‘they know we’re coming’. However, after they’d waved about for a little while they all went out – sigh of relief. So we were supposed to drop first. So we dropped and went through the target a bit and turned away and headed back, and as we turned away the searchlights came on, so the rest of the aircraft had to come through searchlights, but, although there was fire from the Baltic, from ships in the Baltic and [emphasis] from the harbour, we didn’t see any aircraft shot down. However, we had been told that we might not get back into Kirmington because of weather and so we were given an alternative route back to land at Lossiemouth, North of Scotland, so we landed up there, and but there weren’t twelve Lancasters, but we didn’t think much of it at the time because [pause] we knew that the weather was such that we weren’t getting back into Kirmington or Elsham, so then, landed somewhere else, maybe couldn’t get into Lossiemouth, or anyway, I don’t know, but it wasn’t until the next day that we got back to Kirmington that we found that we had lost two out of the five aircraft and word came through from Elsham Wolds that they had lost three out of the seven. Which meant five out of twelve, which wasn’t a very good result, and yet [emphasis] in coming back all [emphasis] that way, along the Baltic, we didn’t see an aircraft being attacked, or an explosion, but when the chap called – Squadron Leader Wright [?] came to read or to write the history of 166 Squadron, in doing research, they found the bodies had been washed up in, er, countries bordering the Baltic, from, from the raids. So, there we are – luck. Lost five out of twelve aircraft, but you haven’t seen one attacked, you haven’t seen one explode, you haven’t seen one on fire, you get back to Lossiemouth without any problems, you know.
MJ: And that’s unusual.
WA: Aye. But five out of twelve, aye. But for a mining trip, and people were thinking ‘oh, Holmsey [?] and crew they’ve been lucky they’ve been down to do a mining trip tonight’ you know, aye [laughs]. So, aye it’s, I don’t know. Anyway, anyway up there, that’s [break in tape].
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Oral History Project, I Michael Jeffries would like to thank Flight Officer Anderson for his recording on the date of the seventeenth of May, 2015. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with William Anderson
Description
An account of the resource
Flight Officer William Anderson began his service in the Royal Air Force at the age of eighteen when he signed up in Edinburgh. In this interview he speaks about his training, reporting to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, being paid at the London Zoo, and having to learn quickly how to swim in Torquay. After training at RAF St Athan, he was posted to 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit, and joined a Lancaster crew based at RAF Kirmington. His first operation was on D-Day to a marshalling yard near Paris. After that Anderson recounts stories of going on mine laying operations, particularly one over the Baltic, where five out of twelve aircraft were lost on one operation.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Michael Jeffries
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christina Brown
Heather Hughes
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AAndersonW150517
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:30:43 audio recording
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-17
Language
A language of the resource
eng
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
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England
France
Wales
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Devon
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Normandy
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Scotland--Moray
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1656 HCU
166 Squadron
bombing
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kirmington
RAF Lindholme
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF St Athan
RAF Torquay
recruitment
searchlight
training
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/88/1931/LYoungJ1569980v1.1.pdf
fb760915619d3e45c356c32067e67b27
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
Young, John
J Young
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Sergeant John Young (1569980, Royal Canadian Air Force), his logbook and 11 photographs of aircrew groups and Halifax aircraft. John Young was a flight engineer on 432 Squadron based at RAF East Moor, part of 6 Group. The collection shows a number of aircrew groups which include him as well as ground and air shots of his Halifax Mk 3 with Ferdinand II nose art.
The collection was donated by John Young and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Young, J
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
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
John Youngs’ flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
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
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Air Force flying log book for Sergeant John Young, flight engineer, covering the period 28 June 1944 to 6 January 1945, detailing training, and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF St Athan, RAF Eastmoor. Aircraft flown in were the Halifax III, V & VII. He flew 30 operations, 13 night time and 17 daylight with 432 Squadron. Targets were le Havre, Dortmund, Wanne-Eickel, Osnabruck, Kiel, Boulogne, Calais, Bottrop, Stekrade-Holten, Duisberg, Essen, Homberg, Cologne, Hannover, Oberhausen, Dusseldorf, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Julich, Munster, Opladen, Troisdorf, Hanau, Magdeberg. His pilot on operations was Pilot Officer Stedman. The log book has a photo after the last operation which shows seven aircrew under an aircraft. Captioned ‘Back Row: L to R: Self; ‘Cam’ (Mid Upper); Earl Fox (Bomb Aimer); Lloyd Gapes (Navigator) Front Row: L to R: ‘Buzz’ (Tail Gunner); J Hartley) W/Op; Les Steadman (Pilot)’.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LYoungJ1569980v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Germany
Wales
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Yorkshire
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Calais
France--Le Havre
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Homburg (Saarland)
Germany--Jülich
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Troisdorf
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-09-09
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-09-30
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-21
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-25
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-01
1944-11-02
1944-11-03
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-06
1944-11-16
1944-11-18
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1944-12-30
1944-12-31
1945-01-06
1945-01-07
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1664 HCU
432 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Halifax Mk 7
Heavy Conversion Unit
RAF Dishforth
RAF East Moor
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1281/19159/EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-020001.1.jpg
f1f754c0139d4eb580dc2d49cec3dc36
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1281/19159/EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-020002.1.jpg
85a3060e48a58d7666ff82806a323bf2
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1281/19159/EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-020003.1.jpg
9954a72fde4d595b295a2f108a94ef89
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1281/19159/EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-020004.1.jpg
66374b43a5112bad01297dc066182ed7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1281/19159/EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-020005.1.jpg
6f15929d27f33c3d1956b42c36459bd3
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1281/19159/EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-020006.1.jpg
f467c2a38151f897db3ebdb4ab5ffeaf
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1281/19159/EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-020007.1.jpg
fe68659eee4d2369151312760eb48c51
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1281/19159/EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-020008.1.jpg
8f26415a83109d0144e2ba994f752408
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
Valentine, John
John Ross Mckenzie Valentine
J R M Valentine
Description
An account of the resource
674 Items. Collection concerns navigator Warrant Officer J R McKenzie Valentine (1251404 Royal Air Force). The collection contains over 600 letters between JRM Valentine and his wife Ursula. It also contains his log book, family/official documents, a book of violin music studies and other correspondence. Sub-collections contain family photographs, prisoner of war photographs and a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings of events from 1942 to 1945.
He joined 49 Squadron in April 1942 and flew 10 operations on Hampdens. The squadron converted to Manchester in May when he completed two further operations. His aircraft was shot down on the Thousand Bomber raid of 30/31 May 1942. Five crew, including him bailed out successfully and became prisoners of war. The pilot and one air gunner were killed when the aircraft rolled over and crashed.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Frances Zagni and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-06
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
Valentine, JRM
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Start of transcription
1251404 AC 2 Valentine
D Flight
1 Squadron
RAF
[inserted] Queens Hotel [/inserted]
[deleted] ABERYSTWTH [/deleted] ABERYSTWYTH
[inserted] [circled See if you can do it first shot] [/inserted]
[deleted] Aberywth [/deleted]
Wales
28/12/40
Ursula Darling,
These few lines may seem a little incoherent but at the end of a long day & while waiting to have a bath 10 days overdue I am feeling a little jaded. Having so much that I would like to say & not feeling able to marshal my thoughts properly. I shall probably succeed in sending you a lot of disjointed trash.
I hope, my dearest little wife that you got home safely, were not too tired, had an uneventful journey & were not so foolish as to over exert yourself in any way. I know that you are sensible enough to try to restrain your impetuosity but there are times, I know, when you try to undertake too much. A suitcase, mammoth handbag & a high spirited dog comprise quite a handful for a woman in your condition I am just praying that you managed
[page break]
everything successfully & arrived home intact & not worn out. I hope the taxi turned up promptly and did not overcharge you. Let me know about your journey especially the last part from Paddington to Hendon. I was outside your bedroom window shortly after 5 am today and longed to wake you up to give you a good morning and another farewell kiss but I didn’t want to rouse the whole house at that ungodly hour so I contented myself with slipping a note under the door. Did you get it, my dear? I cant [sic] remember what I wrote for I did it about 4.30 am. but my heart was so full of you your sweetness to me, your [indecipherable word] to me after my confession, your great love for me, the thousands of kindness both large & small that I have had from you that I was moved even [deleted] that [/deleted] at that bleak hour to write you a few lines. They may not have read too well but the fact that I was unable to stop myself from writing only a few hours after seeing you proves what a terrific power
[page break]
you have become in my life.
I have now had my bath & am sitting uncomfortably in bed feeling very sleepy for I had only 180 minutes of sleep last night. Nevertheless I know that I shall continue writing until the other fellows insist on putting out the light so completely am I under your spell just now.
I loved the Christmas we had together despite the unpleasantness at P.M. Your many kindnesses in the form of [deleted] the [/deleted] a multitude & variety of [deleted] your [/deleted] presents completely overwhelmed me leaving me almost speechless when I had opened the lot. I feel that the precious days we had together [deleted] on [/deleted] [inserted] during [/inserted] your two visits were truly marvellous. The more so because they were wrested from the tentacles of the R.A.F, & not merely free gifts bestowed in a moment of weakness. We, particularly you, seized every possible moment and made the most of them all. I shall always treasure this happiest of memories of Stratford-upon-Avon almost as much as of Kellin.
[page break]
After I left you last night I made straight for my billet & marched boldly up to the front door. To my releif [sic] there was no guard at that time – he was prowling about somewhere in the house – and I was able to get into my room unobserved. Soon after I got in another night prowler arrived, he too was not caught and with the light of my torch we climbed into bed and had a final cigarette. I dropped off to sleep about 1 am, I think, only to be awakened at 4 am. sharp. We had, all thing being considered & in the light of my previous experiences of travelling with the RAF a positively delightful journey here. We waited about at Stratford for rather longer than we liked but after we started moving the journey became quite enjoyable. We had only 1 change & [deleted] always [/deleted] travelled in reserved coaches all the way. It was a truly glorious day
[page break]
bright sun and blue sky prevailing all the way. We went via Shrewsbury and then right through mid Wales. The scenery was most attractive & I spent most of the time in the corridor gazing out at the hills, trees, woods and streams, drinking in impressions of a lovely landscape bathed in sunlight and crowned by a clear blue sky. The sight of the hills brought back many happy memories of the happy times you and I have spent together in the mountains. I love hills; they grip me in a way that defies description; there is something so superb in their size compared with the paucity of men, their apparently haphazard shape, their clothing of grass bracken or wood gashed by little silver slips where water comes tumbling down, their silence and massive immobility combine to thrill me in a [deleted] most [/deleted] vague but very real manner. With you by my
[page break]
side I am sure that I could live out my days happily among mountains. Unfortunately we had to get here sometime although the train was obliging enough to arrive over an hour late.
We were expected here, which is quite a new experience for us. Two or three officers & N.C.O’s met us at the station, called the role & then marched us to our billets. I have been allotted a room with five others. Thompson is one of them but I am not very keen on the others. Since we arrived at this pub at 3.30 I have not been out for there has been quite a lot to do & to learn before one can settle down for the first night.
We have had a short talk from our corporal who gave us a rough idea of what lies ahead. It is certain that we are in for a really busy time. He told us so & this was confirmed by several fellows who have been here for a few weeks. They say that we shall not have a spare moment from 6.30 am until 5.30 pm.
[page break]
The whole station seems to be really well organised but very very [sic] strict. We are now entitled to wear white “flash” in the front of the forage cap. A privilege granted to enable us to be distinguished as “Air Crew under training”. We are obviously to be allowed very little chance of developing bad habits for the place abounds [deleted] in [/deleted] [inserted] with [/inserted] rules & regulations and we have a very full timetable which is adhered to strictly. The course lasts 8 weeks & we ought to be granted a 7 day leave upon completion. We have about half a dozen exams during the course, at each of which a few will fall by the wayside – I hope.
Someone has just hinted that they will be turning out the lights soon so I shall prepare to stop at a moments notice.
I hope your cold is better dear. Let me know how it goes I seem to have developed another in real earnest & will dose myself with aspirin when I go to sleep.
[page break]
I hope you can read these jottings. I am lying flat on my back holding the pad up with my left hand. It is not easy to write [deleted] like [/deleted] in this way because one can’t hold the paper still enough. Nevertheless it is the warmest posture.
Tomorrow, given time, I shall attach the accumulated arrears which have piled up against me since Xmas so please forgive me if I dont [sic] add to this.
I am dreadfully sorry, darling, that you should be saddled with so much of the fag of making arrangements for April 4th. It is not fair that you should have to do it. Please let me know of your progress & also whether you still want to inform my folk of our change of plan.
Goodnight dearie, fondest love May we have many more days as happy as the last few.
John.
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 John Valentine to his wife Ursula
Description
An account of the resource
Writes that he hoped she got home safely and how much he enjoyed her visit. Describes his journey via Shrewsbury and Wales to Aberystwyth where unusually they were expected.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940-12-28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Eight 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
EValentineJRMValentineUM401228-02
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
England--Shropshire
Wales--Dyfed
Wales--Aberystwyth
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-12-28
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.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John Ross Mckenzie Valentine
military living conditions
military service conditions
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/982/EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-020001.jpg
5b24d6ca7bd352ffcaf1b7e6ac6ecac0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/982/EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-020002.jpg
5b91dacd2bf13ea2d505cd67115c761b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/982/EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-020003.jpg
335754405264fc2b06a89c277704cbd3
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/982/EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-020004.jpg
96fd954a1e56a37713d17e97c5753ba1
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
Edwards, Ellis
E D Edwards
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. The collection concerns Sergeant Ellis Drury Edwards (1236492 Royal Air Force) and consists of his logbook, memorial booklet and four letters. Ellis Edwards was a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Lakenheath. He was killed when his Halifax crashed on an operation to Berlin 30 March 1943. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pauline Harkett and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />Additional information on Ellis Edwards is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/208271/">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
2016-05-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Edwards, ED
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[postage stamp]
[postage mark 23 Feb]
Mrs. Moreton
2 John Street
Rhos.Y.Waun
Chirk
[underlined] Wrexham [/underlined]
[page break]
Sgts Mess
Lakenheath
Monday
Dear Maggie
Thanks very much for the very nice parcel received safely but very late. You posted it about the 10th and I only got it last Saturday I had not noticed my name on the registered mail list so had not collected it You certainly intend me to look clean don’t you? especially about the [deleted] please [/deleted] face. Well Maggie news here is very scarce, as you can guess there
[page break]
is so much about here that I cannot write about. This last week we have had a concert in camp on Monday a Dance which I could not go to on Tuesday & on Wednesday a play by G.B.S and on Saturday a dance in the mess so last week was very busy. Apart from these things life still goes on here in a very quiet way nothing much apart from work You say you are busy well so am I and what you make I use now so it keeps us both busy
[page break]
May be home to see you in another month or so but will let you know later about it. What a huge funeral the Bwlch-Y-Rhiw people had all Wales was there I should think. By the way what kind of aircraft was it that crashed there must have been a big one to carry a crew of 7
Well Maggie I must finish off now. Thanking you once again for the useful parcel
Best wishes & love to Dad & yourself
Your loving brother
Ellis
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 his sister from Ellis Edwards
Description
An account of the resource
Thanks for parcel and comments on how slow the post is. Describes activities at Royal Air Force Lakenheath including a concert, a play and a dance. Thinks that he may get to see sister in a months time. Comments huge funeral in Wales.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ellis Edwards
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One envelope and three handwritten pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Correspondence
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-02
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
England--Lakenheath
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Andy Hamilton
crash
entertainment
military living conditions
RAF Lakenheath
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1992/37854/EWallisETNogalJ440912-0001.2.jpg
f6ac0486a5e5ae915da3b2eb8f581b90
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1992/37854/EWallisETNogalJ440912-0002.2.jpg
cb74fde10cc7280a0bac755457a2486c
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
Nogal, Jozef
J Nogal
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
2017-11-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Nogal, J
Description
An account of the resource
58 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Jozef Nogal (b. 1911, Polskie Siły Powietrzne) and contains his prisoner of war log, documents, objects and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 305 Squadron and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Wanda Elizabeth Atkey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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 Jozef Nogal from ET Wallis
Description
An account of the resource
Elizabeth writes that her training continues, she is going into Edinburgh to have dinner with a friend of her Mother's and she thinks she will work as a driver,
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
ET Wallis
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-09-12
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Scotland
Wales
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten prisoner of war letter
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EWallisETNogalJ440912-0001, EWallisETNogalJ440912-0002
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Allocated
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.
1944-09-12
ground personnel
prisoner of war
Stalag Luft 3
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1306/18208/CWhittleGG-160822-010024.2.jpg
9f6b4278cbe3ca8f1ffd468bb9091e44
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
Whittle, Geoffrey. Air charts
Description
An account of the resource
25 air charts of Great Britain and Australia, and a bomb damage sheet of Hamburg.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Whittle, G
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
North Wales and Manchester Sheet 4
Description
An account of the resource
Ordnance Survey map of North Wales and Manchester, Military Edition, scale 1/4 inch to one mile, sheet 4.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One colour map
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CWhittleGG-160822-010024
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Manchester
Wales
England--Lancashire
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
Great Britain. Ordnance Survey
aircrew
navigator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1306/18199/CWhittleGG-160822-010015.1.jpg
f21c46265b36b6bc6893e3314bf515a0
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
Whittle, Geoffrey. Air charts
Description
An account of the resource
25 air charts of Great Britain and Australia, and a bomb damage sheet of Hamburg.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Whittle, G
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
North Wales and Manchester, Air Chart, Sheet 4
Graticule edition
Description
An account of the resource
Ordnance Survey air chart of North Wales and Manchester, scale 1/4 inch to one mile, sheet 4.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One colour chart
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CWhittleGG-160822-010015
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Manchester
Wales
England--Lancashire
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
Great Britain. Ordnance Survey
aircrew
navigator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2333/42126/PCrossK22010012.2.jpg
f88ae0bee4cd9a6e0e45e8d26d902f6a
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
Cross, Kathleen. Album
Description
An account of the resource
27 items. An album with newspaper cuttings, photographs and postcards covering RAF personnel and establishments in West Malling, Penarth and Peterborough.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-05-07
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cross, K
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
Penarth and RAF Peterborough
Description
An account of the resource
A photograph of 24 members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in three rows; the first row of eight sat either side of a member of the Royal Air Force wearing a side cap. The second and third rows, each of eight women, are standing. All personnel are wearing gloves. It has been taken outside alongside a building and in front of trees. It is annotated 'Penarth - S Wales, 1943'. A second photograph has been taken inside a hall and shows members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force with Group Captain A Damms, wearing a greatcoat and holding an officer's cap with women civilians. It is annotated 'RAF Westwoood - Peterborough Left to right A\S\O, Staff Officer Kenny, Group Captain A Damms, Flight officer Walker, Staff Officer, Sergeant S Kelly'.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
Wales--Penarth
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two b/photographs in an album
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PCrossK22010012
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.
ground personnel
RAF Peterborough
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/156/1969/PCushwayAW16020006.2.jpg
d8a46190dc93ea701d344869dc7b521f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/156/1969/PCushwayAW16020007.1.jpg
939ee9a9c77d09cb7f764e31763343e8
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
Cushway, Arthur
A W Cushway
Description
An account of the resource
55 items. This collection concerns Sergeant Arthur William Cushway (1913 - 1942, 1285306 Royal Air Force). Arthur Cushway was a wireless operator / air gunner and was killed when his Stirling from RAF Waterbeach failed to return from an operation to Hamburg. The collection contains a photograph album, his service record and 52 photographs. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Lester and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />Additional information on Arthur Cushway is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/206596/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-04
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cushway, AW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
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
Ponterwyd
Description
An account of the resource
A view of distant hills and clouds. On the reverse 'nr Ponterwyd July 1939'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939-07
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PCushwayAW16020006, PCushwayAW16020007
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
Wales--Ponterwyd
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
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.
1939-07
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Cushway, Arthur. Family photographs
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/131/1290/BBascombeEJBascombeEJv.1.pdf
eabc73c631ca7566f5b41223c2a90bda
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
Jones, Ron and Bascombe, Betty
E J Bascombe
Ron Jones
R Jones
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview and a series of photographs and documents detailing the lives of Ron Jones (646212 Royal Air Force) and his wife Elizabeth J Bascombe (now). A document she wrote describes how she met Ron, their short marriage and his disappearance. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Elizabeth Bascombe and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. <br /><br />Additional information on Ron Jones is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/112508/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bascombe, EJ
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-01-01
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Reminiscence and Memories of the lives of Late RCH Jones and Mrs E J Bascombe
Ron
Sgt Ronald Claude Hamilton Jones 646212 – Flight Engineer of 61 Squadron sadly Killed in Action on 25th Apr 1944
Married January 1944 – Miss Elizabeth Joyce Jones (maiden name – Evans) – widowed April 1944 Remarried again in 1948 to Herbert Claudius John Bascombe but sadly widowed in 1985.
Ron was born in Canton, Cardiff, in South Wales, on 12th December 1920 to parents, Tom & Emma Jones. He had one sister who died at a young age and two half brothers and two half sisters, all older than him.
Ron joined the RAF on 1st June 1939 and whilst at 3 WING COSFORD in 1940 with 502 Squadron, he was ferrying aeroplanes to England from Canada. He was on a flight to Canada when it came down in the Atlantic Ocean, many of the airmen lost their lives. The few who survived with Ron, were rescued in a dinghy and taken to Hollywood Military Hospital.
Once recovered from his injuries, Ron was transferred from COSFORD to 51 AIRBASE then 61 SQUADRON, SKELLINGTHORPE which was the last airbase that they flew their last mission from, on 24th April 1944, to attack Munich.
How we met, my marriage to Ron and my loss
I met Ron in 1940, at his parent’s home, when visiting with my friend, Winnie who was courting Sydney, (Ron’s half-brother). Winnie married Sydney so Ron and I were often in the same company. On one occasion, whilst Ron was on leave, he invited me to accompany him to a party and this blossomed into a lovely romance. We spent every moment we could together and had a wonderful time – being together and planning our future was everything. We tried to forget the war when Ron was at home. We wrote regularly to each other when Ron was at ‘camp’ – he was very caring and had a great sense of humour and we both looked forward to his next leave.
[page break]
We had planned to wed once the war had ended but like many young people in those days, we decided to take a chance and marry, hoping that Ron would be one of the lucky heroes and return safely home to me and his parents.
We married on 26th January 1944 and lived with Ron’s parents, in Roath, Cardiff. During the war, the Government gave couples, extra food coupons towards their ‘Wedding Breakfast’ and together with coupons issued to parents and friends, we managed to enjoy a lovely meal with all our guests, on our Special Day. We felt our happiness would last forever, but life or fate can be very cruel sometimes and sadly, it was for us. We married on the second of a 4day leave, afterwards we were together for only one weekend and 10days leave. Ron was hoping to return home for my birthday on 30th April, but instead, I received a telegram on 25th April 1944 advising me that ‘RON WAS MISSING’. Only those few precious days, with so many plans and dreams unfulfilled but the few we had, are my treasured memories that will continue throughout my life.
It was January 1945 before I received the official letter from the Air Ministry, declaring that ‘RON WAS PRESUMED DEAD’. I kept in touch with the Red Cross Organisation in Cardiff who had made enquiries on my behalf, for many months but it was the Geneva Red Cross that first gave me the news, that Ron’s Lancaster had crashed in France. I notified the Air Ministry of my latest news and they confirmed my tragic loss. We all prayed that Ron had survived and was in a ‘Safe House’ in France, waiting his opportunity to return home. I couldn’t believe that Ron was never coming home to all of us. Oh how I hated Hitler!
In 1940, we experienced very heavy air-raids most nights and many street of houses were reduced to a pile of rubble. A German Landmine had been dropped, injuring many people and burying some in their garden shelters. The Wardens and Police were endeavouring to rescue survivors, whilst the Firefighters were tackling the fires. Nearby Llandaff Cathedral was badly damaged in the attacks, as were many parts of Cardiff, with many fatalities but Swansea, Liverpool, London and many other cities suffered much more.
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
Reminiscence and memories of Mrs E J Bascombe
Description
An account of the resource
Flight Engineer Ron Jones 61 Squadron, killed in action 25 April 1944. Details of his early life and service career. Some information how he met his wife, then their brief marriage. Initially he was declared missing but on January 1945 he was presumed dead. A second section, titled 'Betty' relates the life of his wife from birth, through early employment, covering D-day and overflying aircraft. Her later remarriage to Herbert Bascombe is described.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
E J Bascombe
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BBascombeEJBascombeEJv1
BBascombeEJBascombeEJv2
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales--Cardiff
England--Cosford
England--Lincolnshire
Wales
England--Shropshire
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four typewritten sheets
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.
1945-05-08
1945
1944
1940
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
David Bloomfield
61 Squadron
bombing
home front
killed in action
love and romance
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Skellingthorpe
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/156/1970/PCushwayAW16020008.1.jpg
ae4a2db64afd8422394ce6842f86f6ce
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/156/1970/PCushwayAW16020009.1.jpg
64b89fa25b523daaf93e5ca804552e11
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
Cushway, Arthur
A W Cushway
Description
An account of the resource
55 items. This collection concerns Sergeant Arthur William Cushway (1913 - 1942, 1285306 Royal Air Force). Arthur Cushway was a wireless operator / air gunner and was killed when his Stirling from RAF Waterbeach failed to return from an operation to Hamburg. The collection contains a photograph album, his service record and 52 photographs. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Lester and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />Additional information on Arthur Cushway is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/206596/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-04
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cushway, AW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
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
River Wye
Description
An account of the resource
A view of the river Wye. On the reverse 'River Wye nr Llanstephan. July 1939'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939-07
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PCushwayAW16020008, PCushwayAW16020009
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
Wales--Llanstephan
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
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.
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Cushway, Arthur. Family photographs
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939-07
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/156/1971/PCushwayAW16020010.1.jpg
dbf364cd701ec838e60e43ca8b76aa78
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/156/1971/PCushwayAW16020011.2.jpg
3362b4ae2edf9a55cb6839bde70c7477
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
Cushway, Arthur
A W Cushway
Description
An account of the resource
55 items. This collection concerns Sergeant Arthur William Cushway (1913 - 1942, 1285306 Royal Air Force). Arthur Cushway was a wireless operator / air gunner and was killed when his Stirling from RAF Waterbeach failed to return from an operation to Hamburg. The collection contains a photograph album, his service record and 52 photographs. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Lester and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />Additional information on Arthur Cushway is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/206596/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-04
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cushway, AW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
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
River Wye
Description
An account of the resource
A view of the river. On the banks deciduous trees and in the distance low hills. On the reverse 'River Wye. Llanstephan, July 1939.'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939-07
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PCushwayAW16020010, PCushwayAW16020011
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
Wales--Llanstephan
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
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.
1939-07
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Cushway, Arthur. Family photographs
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/131/1314/OJonesRCH646212-151022-02.2.jpg
c1194110cfd18f61818cf58b9f11b026
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
Jones, Ron and Bascombe, Betty
E J Bascombe
Ron Jones
R Jones
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview and a series of photographs and documents detailing the lives of Ron Jones (646212 Royal Air Force) and his wife Elizabeth J Bascombe (now). A document she wrote describes how she met Ron, their short marriage and his disappearance. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Elizabeth Bascombe and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. <br /><br />Additional information on Ron Jones is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/112508/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bascombe, EJ
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-01-01
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
Ron Jones and Elizabeth Jones marriage certificate
Description
An account of the resource
An extract of the Marriage Register, dated 26 January 1944.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-01-26
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed form with handwritten entries
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OJonesRCH646212-151022-02
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Wales--Cardiff
Wales
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.
1944-01-26
love and romance
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1306/18186/CWhittleGG-160822-010002.2.jpg
65f7755ee78951a6c76632773f48e3d7
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
Whittle, Geoffrey. Air charts
Description
An account of the resource
25 air charts of Great Britain and Australia, and a bomb damage sheet of Hamburg.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Whittle, G
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
South Wales Air Chart Sheet 7
Graticule edition
Description
An account of the resource
Ordnance Survey air chart of South Wales, sheet 7, scale 1/4 inch to one mile.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One colour chart
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CWhittleGG-160822-010002
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
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
Great Britain. Ordnance Survey
aircrew
navigator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/187/2440/SMarshallS1594781v10005.1.jpg
15c017f44b371c25b74f1268fc9e05f8
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
Marshall, Syd. Album
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Marshall, S
Description
An account of the resource
77 items. The album contains wartime and post-war photographs, newspaper cuttings, and memorabilia assembled by Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force). Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-08
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
Syd Marshall and flight engineer brevet
Description
An account of the resource
Half-length portrait of Sergeant Syd Marshall with flight engineer brevet.
Syd Marshall's flight engineer's brevet.
Captioned 'After passing out St Athan 12-7-1944
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-07-12
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph on an album page
One brevet on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Physical object
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SMarshallS1594781v10005
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-07-12
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC DIgital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
aircrew
flight engineer
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22522/MCurnockRM1815605-171114-008.1.pdf
1eace9778a4d8293c3066b0c2a62c393
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
Curnock, Richard
Richard Murdock Curnock
R M Curnock
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Curnock, RM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
92 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock (1924, 1915605 Royal Air Force), his log book, letters, photographs and prisoner of war magazines. He flew operations with 425 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Richard Curnock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Kriegie December 2002
Description
An account of the resource
The news-sheet of the RAF ex-POW Association. This edition covers the POW memorial, Recco report -stories of ex-POWs, the Larry Slattery memorial fund, the Second World War experience centre, an article by Vitel Formanek about his visit to the UK, BBC drama Night Flight review, a promotional tour for 'The Bomber War', the members march at the Golden Jubilee Parade, a memorial service for Bill Reid VC, 60th Anniversary of the Comet Escape line and Book reviews.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
The RAF ex-POW Association
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2002-12
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Eight printed sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCurnockRM1815605-171114-008
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Reading
Wales
England--Leeds
Belgium--Brussels
Germany--Essen
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany
Belgium
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Berkshire
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.
150 Squadron
35 Squadron
427 Squadron
49 Squadron
61 Squadron
617 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
Conspicuous Gallantry Medal
de Jongh, Andree (1916 - 2007)
Dulag Luft
entertainment
escaping
evading
flight engineer
ground personnel
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
memorial
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Hendon
Spitfire
sport
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
the long march
Victoria Cross
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1881/36283/SChristianAL29160v10018-0001.2.jpg
f0fe504b755231ef0dde629d171c66e5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1881/36283/SChristianAL29160v10018-0002.2.jpg
f8c5a511409d7101b7c1c56f2a12279d
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
Christian, Arnold Louis
A L Christian
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Christian, AL
Description
An account of the resource
93 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander <span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian </span>(1906 - 1941, 29160 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operation as a pilot with 105 Squadron and was killed 8 May 1941.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Steven Christian and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on <span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian</span> is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/204958/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
VINCENT FRANCIS CHRISTIAN
Nothing, beyond some of the addresses the family lived at, is known of Vincent’s early life before his marriage to Gertrude Louisa Barley in 1899 at the age of 22. At this time he was a commercial traveler [sic] in tobacco products and, in 1900 at his daughter Vera’s birth, he is described on her birth certificate as a tobacconist. We know, from the previously mentioned postcards held by Audrey that he travelled extensively, probably in support of of [sic] occupation as a tobacco salesman.
Between 1900 and 1903 Vincent and Gertrude were resident at 38 Cedar Grove, Charlton but, during 1903 moved to 93 Loder Road, Preston Park, Brighton. Their second child, Arnold Louis was born here on 30th January 1906. However, by this time Vincent had changed occupation, (maybe, with a young family to be at home more regularly), to that of cashier for the Brighton & Sussex Motor Company which was based at the Grand Hotel, Brighton. He held this position at least between 1905 and 1907. In November 1906 the family moved to 91 Addison Road, Hove, and remained here until 1912. This was their address at the time of the 1911 census which also shows that Norman had been born a few months earlier.
From the postcards, one was addressed to the family at ‘Shamrock’, Lyndhurst Road, (Hove?), but in May 1912 both Vincent and Gertrude were in the Isle of Man. It is not known if this was a short visit, (holiday?), or a longer stay. Nor is it known if the children were with them.
By 1914 the family address had changed to 111 Albion Street, New Brighton, Cheshire. (On the Wirral). Why the move here is not known but, most likely, due to employment opportunities. Between 1915 and 1918 the family address was 54 Duke Street, Birkenhead and Vincent either owned, or was employed by, Birkenhead Motor Works at Shoto garage. (My inclination is that he owned the business. Firstly, he had the financial capacity at this time to send his son Arnold to a first rate public school, (Ruthin College), and to move the business to, presumably, a much larger premises at 4 Devonshire Road. His second son, Norman, was also a student at Ruthin School around this time.
Note
Although there are gaps in dates between moves, the known addresses is where the post cards were sent. Dates are taken from the postmarks. It could well be that the family was at a known address but outside known dates and this would be because there was no postcard correspondence available to accurately locate them there at a particular time.
By 1922 the next recorded address was 4 Devonshire Road although the exact date of their arrival there is not known. This large property had a vehicle yard and garages with rooms above, (these buildings may have been stales and cart lodges previously). Daughter Vera was employed in an administrative and under manager capacity within the business. It was here that Vera met her future husband – George Bolton. He was employed as a mechanic/driver. Apparently, the match being one of employer and employee wasn’t with complete approval by her family at the time. After this date things become a little hazy. Vincent was the proprietor at least until 1924, but it is known that at some point after this date, and before 1930, Vera and her husband took over the business and it became Bolton’s Grey Cabs – a taxi company – and still run from 4 Devonshire Road. During WW2 a bomb fell in the area of the main vehicle entranceway just to the right of the house. No-one was hurt, but the archway over the entrance was destroyed.
After 1924 Vincent’s movements are unclear. During the mid to late 1920’s Gertrude certainly, and possibly Vincent too, owned, leased or managed at least three public houses in the Ruthin area of North Wales, though it is not known if more than one at any time. First was the King’s Head, (and Audrey believed they were together here), followed by the Druids Inn and then the Solusbury [sic] Arms In 1928 a ‘Christian’ was at Solusbury [sic] Arms though who isn’t known.
Did Vincent sell or give the motor business to Vera and her husband sometime in the mid to late ‘20’s and move into the hostelry trade – or was that just Gertrude while Vincent did other things? Did Vincent continue to own the motor company for a while with Vera managing it while he went elsewhere? The answers to these questions are not known – even by Audrey – who lived and grew up at 4 Devonshire Road while her parents owned the cab company.
It is known in the family, and was related to me first by grannie, and then by Audrey, that Vincent and Gertrude came to live separate lives but they remained married with a certain level of affection and would meet-up for family events – Christmas being one such – at 4 Devonshire Road, even sharing a room. The reason for the separation, at least outwardly appears to have been Gertrude’s profligacy. Both grannie and Audrey have said how she would spend considerable funds at Birkenhead & Liverpool department stores – often on account – on such items as shoes, bedding
[page break]
and linens, much of which was put away, unopened and unused. Eventually, Vincent took out newspaper statements that he could no longer be liable for debts she incurred if stores sold on account. This would have been quite a drastic step to take, particularly in public, and no doubt this occurred in the mid to late 20’s coinciding with the separation, and the general loss of who was where and when.
Note
In the ‘Barley’ family section of this history, see the handwritten letter to Audrey from her cousin Christine in which the purchase of ‘hats’ is mentioned. The same letter also mentions Gertrude’s father, James Barley, ‘drinking the profits.’ Is this history repeating itself?
My own feeling is that Vincent either sold or left the management of the motor business to Vera and her husband and then, in someway, set Gertrude up in the public house business before leaving her to ‘get on with it’ while he pursued his own fairly separate life. The location of the public houses is an area they both knew, but it was removed from the ignomy [sic] of remaining in Birkenhead after the newspaper statements. Coincidentally it was close to Ruthin school where Norman may still have been a pupil but, also conceivably, if this had all occurred in the very late 20’s, (Norman would have been 18 in September 1928), it was after all the children were grown.
Note
Norman owned or leased a succession of public houses in Bradford and West Yorkshire, (the Rose & Crown in Westgate, Bradford), was one of these, during the 1950’s and 60’s. Did he learn the trade as a teenager or young man in those North Wales public houses?
A postcard from the collection has Vincent sending or selling cigarettes from Birch House, Bodfare, Denbigh In June 1929. It seems, over the following years, Vincent only occasionally dipped into his family’s lives. Where he lived or how he gained an income, certainly after the mid to late 1920’s is unclear. It has been said that he worked for the Thomas Cook Company in some capacity. Vera, his daughter, claimed he lived in a caravan at some time which could all, to a greater or lesser degree, be true.
Vincent was certainly in the area of North Wales where Vera lived, (Pant Erwyn, Trelawnydd), at the end of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. At that time my family lived in Angelsey where my father was stationed with the RAF and either we visited Aunt Vera while Vincent was with her, or they visited us, (possibly with Norman – see his letter). Either way, I am told that as a very small child I was bounced on Great grandfather Vincent’s knee, though of course I don’t remember it. At the end of his life Vincent was living with, and being cared for by Aunt Vera. It was from her home that into hospital where he died in February 1964. His estate amounted to £9300 – enough to buy three good sized houses at the time. Much of this was held in stocks and shares and he seems to have been an astute investor. Wherever he had been and whatever he had done since leaving Birkenhead, he had been quite successful financially. Half his estate was used to provide an income, for life, for his wife Gertrude. The remaining half was equally divided between his children with Arnold’s share, (as he was deceased), divided equally by his children, Brian, Derek and June.
Gertrude lived at her small house ‘Firwood’ in Rhewl, North Wales, from at least mid 1937 until her death in 1968. After her death, the original half of Vincent’s estate was again divided equally as before. There are no graves for either Vincent or Gertrude Christian as both were cremated after death.
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
Vincent Francis Christian
Description
An account of the resource
A biography of Vincent, Arnold's father.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Brighton
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
England--New Brighton (Wirral)
Wales
England--Sussex
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SChristianAL29160v10018-0001, SChristianAL29160v10018-0002
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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/156/1968/PCushwayAW16020004.2.jpg
4bb5258863f2dbc98aa049f36da75992
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/156/1968/PCushwayAW16020005.1.jpg
ebcee270ca12f804f8f9d452117ed881
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
Cushway, Arthur
A W Cushway
Description
An account of the resource
55 items. This collection concerns Sergeant Arthur William Cushway (1913 - 1942, 1285306 Royal Air Force). Arthur Cushway was a wireless operator / air gunner and was killed when his Stirling from RAF Waterbeach failed to return from an operation to Hamburg. The collection contains a photograph album, his service record and 52 photographs. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Lester and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />Additional information on Arthur Cushway is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/206596/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-04
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cushway, AW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
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
Ystwyth Valley
Description
An account of the resource
A view looking along a river valley, on the left a track leads towards a rounded hill. On the reverse 'Ystwyth Valley, Cardigan. July 1939'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939-07
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PCushwayAW16020004, PCushwayAW16020005
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales
Wales--Cardigan
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
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.
1939-07
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Cushway, Arthur. Family photographs